Welcome back to The Crippled Cryptid, where disability, chronic illness, service dogs, and everyday sorcery all gather under the same soft lamp like friendly ghosts trading stories.
If you’re new here:
Hi. I’m Sky.
Professional cryptid.
Unwilling amateur cyborg.
Medically interesting enough to make half my providers sigh dramatically when they open my chart. Truthfully, me too.
I live in a haunted meat‑suit with a deeply questionable warranty.
If you’re returning:
Welcome home.
If you’re new‑new:
Welcome to the Lunatic Café.
On the menu today is white chocolate cranberry coffee courtesy of M&M. (We love her.)
Usually Tuesdays are rest days around here, which makes this an unscheduled midday transmission from bed jail. I’m currently wrapped in blankets, absentmindedly running multi‑battles on Raid Shadow Legends, and pretending this counts as productivity. Since the last seizure stole what little sense of autonomy I had left, bed has been my most consistent destination.
Why We’re Here Today
Things have unfortunately been pretty lively around here medically, which means M&M and Luna have essentially had me glued to bed since Friday, when my body decided another seizure would be a fun creative choice. I should consider myself lucky that I escaped the house yesterday to see a doctor, and that I even managed to “make dinner” afterward.
And by make dinner, I mean crockpot chicken soup.
How hard is it, really, to throw homemade frozen mirepoix into a hot crockpot with olive oil, sauté until fragrant, then add a frozen chicken, two boxes of broth, and an aggressive amount of spices? Six hours later, M&M deboned the chicken, I added canned veggies and frozen rutabaga, and suddenly we had soup worthy of folklore.
The Yard Yeti had his with little star noodles.
We had ours with rice.
Honestly, a triumph.
Future Sky is already grateful for the leftovers waiting patiently in the fridge.
Sick‑Day Rituals, Then and Now
Which brings me to today’s completely out‑of‑schedule post. I should be proud of myself. Not only am I keeping some semblance of routine, I’m also sneaking in these small check‑ins whenever the mood strikes.
When you’re under the weather, do you have a ritual? A specific tea, a comfort meal, a movie you always default to?
When I was a kid, sick days meant chicken seashell soup from a local diner called Dino’s Den, followed by cooking shows or a movie on the couch with my mom until I either dozed off or got sent back to bed. Blanket Gremlin™ was my official title. As I got older, that ritual changed, especially after she passed. My grandmother would make German potato soup with little sausages, a milk‑based soup she grew up eating in Germany with her own Oma.
It wasn’t bad.
It just wasn’t that ritual. The one that makes you feel at home in your own bones.
Now, sick days usually look like bed or couch time with M&M and Luna. And I’m not knocking it. We spent over forty‑five minutes today waiting for Instacart to arrive, building a shared watchlist on Apple TV like it was a sacred task. Which is, apparently, a legitimate pastime now.
One I plan to get back to as soon as M&M returns with chicken nuggets and BBQ sauce.
The Care Team (Human, Canine, and Cryptid)
My lovely little Luna Bean has been alerting left, right, and center. I swear she’s been working overtime, and so has M&M. The two of them, plus the Yard Yeti, have been doing everything in their power to make these seizure days easier.
The Yard Yeti ordered pizza one night using his birthday money from our aunt so I wouldn’t get up and cook. M&M has been… well… M&M. She gets anything I need before I even realize I need it. Drinks, snacks, reminders to eat on Keppra, whether I want them or not. And for the record, these Keppra side effects are kicking my ass in a very professional, union‑approved manner.
Luna deserves a medal for working constant overtime while also providing emotional support. Preferably something engraved with Head of Bed Security or Medical Director of Laying Your Ass Down. She is the quiet hero of bed jail, snoring like a tiny jet engine at my side, on my legs, or directly on my feet at all times. If I attempt to leave my post as Bed Gremlin™, she’s instantly upright, staring holes through me like, “Mama. Absolutely not.”
And yes, I really do need to write more M&M appreciation posts. She is the quiet constant in all of this- the person who notices before I ask, who fills the gaps without making me feel like a burden, and who somehow manages to be steady even when everything else feels wobbly. Case in point: as I’m typing this, she’s upstairs making chicken nuggets, which briefly earned me a supervised furlough from bed jail. Temporary release granted due to active nugget production.
Because the truth is, without my support system, I genuinely don’t know where I’d be. And that’s a complicated thing for me to admit. I grew up helping care for my grandfather, then my mom, then my grandmother. I’m not used to being the one who needs help, and I push back more than I should.
Asking for and accepting care at 30, while watching peers get married, buy houses, and have kids, is… hard. There’s no neat bow for that feeling. No pretty box to tuck it into. And still, surviving, coordinating care, and getting through the day is work. Even when it looks like resting.
Bed Jail Entertainment Report
After my seizure on the 12th, which happened at home in the basement and scared the entire household, we came back and M&M made grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. Not the homemade mac and cheese I’d planned, but no one has ever been mad about a properly made grilled cheese.
The next day was a strict bed‑only situation. The Keppra the ER put me on absolutely kicked my ass. Exhaustion, no appetite, the works.
(Side effects we’ll have to learn to live with as it is a permanent addition to the roster of meds I’m on for the time being.)
So, we watched PLUR1BUS on Apple TV+. Burned through the entire season in one day. Immediately disappointed there weren’t more episodes. Please, Apple. I am asking nicely.
Then we moved on to Silo, which I’d seen floating around TikTok and somehow convinced both M&M and the Yard Yeti to try. (He watched it first based on my suggestion so, I knew it was going to be good.) Two seasons later, we were finished, emotionally invested, and yelling “what the fuck?” at the television on a regular basis. No spoilers here, just trust me.
With IT: Welcome to Derry wrapping its first season last night, we are officially at a loss. If you have horror or sci‑fi recommendations, now is the time to intervene before we start rewatching something questionable out of desperation.
And apparently, Fallout released episode one of season 2 today, so we’ll have that on our Wednesday watchlist now too.
Horror Is Self‑Care, Actually
I love horror and sci‑fi. Ironically, these are two things I’ve been gently told I should probably avoid right now because “stress is bad for you when you’re having seizures.”
But horror, thriller, and sci‑fi are my lifeblood. Some people skydive. I drink coffee and watch something unsettling. You cannot take this from me.
So here I sit in my Nightmare Before Christmas onesie, staring down the question of what we’re going to watch next. Leftover chicken soup for dinner. Hoping I’ll be released from bed jail again soon by M&M and the service dingo.
If I’m lucky, we’ll make Christmas cookies tomorrow. If not, I’m aiming for popcorn, movie snacks, and maybe a cold Coke later. I’ve been good, I promise. Running a household from bed is harder than it looks when you’re waiting on Walgreens, Instacart, and doctors who take their sweet time calling back.
Sometimes it feels like all I do is lie around and wait. And that waiting is frustrating. But it’s also what getting through this looks like right now.
Over to You
What’s your sick‑day comfort ritual? Tea, movies, snacks, or some obscure tradition? If you’re also in bed jail, what are you watching right now? Let me know in the comments so our little haunted parlor can fill up with even more friendly ghosts.
Blanket Gremlin™ out. M&M is back with nuggets, which means I’m back to Bed Jail. Make sure you eat something, stay hydrated, and rest when your body tells you that you should. Love you. Say it back.
© The Crippled Cryptid– disability, honesty, and a little chaos.
There is absolutely zero pressure to donate. Reading or sharing means the world to us.
Support Sky’s Journey to Health and Mobility
https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
There is absolutely zero pressure to donate, but sharing or reading means the world to us.
Support Sky’s Journey to Health and Mobility
(https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility)
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