Content Notes:
This post includes discussion of chronic illness and disability, acute illness (cold/flu), medical care and medication side effects, bed confinement (“bed jail”), caregiving and partnership dynamics, fatigue, food as survival care, medical testing, IV access, nuclear medicine, allergies (including contrast and adhesive), and medication management.
Please take care of yourself while reading. Pause when you need to. Come back later if today is heavy.
Welcome back to the Cryptid’s Den.
This is The Crippled Cryptid.
A soft-lit corner of the internet where disability, chronic illness, service dogs, and everyday survival magic gather like familiar spirits who know when to sit quietly and when to laugh too loud.
If you’re new here: hi. I’m Sky.
Professional cryptid.
Unwilling amateur cyborg.
Medically interesting enough to make half my providers sigh when they open my chart. I sigh too. Then I roll my eyes and ask for coffee.
I live in a haunted meat suit with a deeply suspicious warranty, spend a lot of time in Bed Jail™, and am almost never alone thanks to my medical alert service dog, Luna.
Part guardian.
Part shadow.
Part “excuse me, Mama. Sit your ass down. Right now.”
Then there’s M&M, my partner.
Always there to give the 90% when I only have 10 to give. My constant. My shoulder to cry on. My garden gremlin. Even when she’s sick. Even when she isn’t feeling well. She still shows up for me.
To make us soup. To make us bagels.
To shout “what the fuck was that just now” at the TV when something happens in one of our shows.
You know. The way a partner should act.
This space is about showing up for ourselves even when our bodies refuse to cooperate.
It’s about chronic illness without inspiration porn.
Disability without apologies.
Love without pretending it’s always easy.
Returning cryptids: welcome home.
New cryptids: pull up a chair.
Welcome to the Lunatic Café. The Den is big enough for all of us.
On today’s menu: “A Week Inside Bed Jail™.”
Not a highlight reel. Not a triumph arc.
Just the reality of what happens when the body taps out and the world keeps spinning anyway.
What actually happens when you’re stuck there.
The invisible labor.
The tiny wins.
And no, this isn’t the fun part.
I know there are people on the outside who think this is the fun part of being chronically ill and disabled. The resting. The staying in bed. The “must be nice.”
This is what I would call the not fun part.
If you didn’t know, the plague has hit our house.
And by the plague, I definitely mean a cold.
And the cold is bad this year.
Maybe it’s the flu. Maybe it’s just a cold.
But here’s what it is for sure: debilitating.
For people like me, with fragile immune systems that don’t like being bothered and don’t like behaving no matter how many vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, blankets, or “have you tried tea?” you throw at them, a cold is never just a cold.
This isn’t drama.
It’s risk management.
A cold is one of those awful plagues that can stick around for one week, two weeks, three weeks, or longer. It’s the kind of thing that crawls in, unpacks its bags, and makes itself very comfortable.
Too comfortable.
We’re going to call it an Unwelcome Houseguest.
The worst kind.
A Karen.
For us, it’s only been about three or four days at this point, and it’s already running amok.
Personally, when I’m sick, I find it hard to sleep.
This might be because I’m one of those people who would rather perish dramatically than be unable to breathe through my nose. But I haven’t reached that stage yet. I can still breathe.
The problem lies elsewhere. I can’t seem to get comfortable. I’m either too hot, too cold, or just… restless. Sometimes I’m rolling over to reposition. Sometimes it’s to check the time on my Apple Watch. Either way, it isn’t great.
M&M, however, cannot breathe.
She has the sniffles. Her head hurts constantly. I’ve been making her drink copious amounts of Korean ginger and honey lemon tea from H-Mart and take Buckley’s as often as she can.
If you didn’t know, Buckley’s is a Canadian cough medicine that has absolutely nothing on the stuff we’re used to here in the U.S. Buckley’s is what I like to call pain in a bottle.
M&M jokes that the Lakota people made it.
I think they just bottled up centuries of justified rage, slapped a label on it, and called it medicine.
She says that checks out. Aunt Lise laughed the first time I said it. Then agreed.
It tastes like absolute garbage.
It works better than anything else I’ve ever tried. I mean it. Robitussin has nothing on Buckley’s.
The first time I took it, I screamed.
Literally.
Because of all this, we haven’t been doing much. We’ve been staying in bed, watching TV and movies, and keeping things as low-key as possible. M&M also just got Tulin from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to come to her Animal Crossing: New Horizons island for the first time, and she is very excited about it.
It might be her favorite part of the Animal Crossing update.
Don’t worry. I’m not letting her leave Bed Jail™.
But I do occasionally allow supervised Switch privileges. Mostly when I want to escape to my desk for a few minutes at a time to work on little writing projects I can’t do from my iPad.
But don’t worry Luna has been keeping a very close eye on both of us.
Every time one of us shifts or tries to change positions, she’s up. She’s moving. Eyes on us. Booping. Monitoring morale.
This kind of vigilance is work. Quiet work. Constant work.
It’s not flashy, but it’s exhausting, and she does it without complaint.
She does, however, get cookies for it from the cookie jar by the bed.
You know.
Doing the good service dog stuff.
She is the Best Girl™ after all, even though her favorite place in the whole world had a fire yesterday. Something I still have a lot of feelings about. You’ve heard us talk about Reese’s Barkery before. Yesterday, I saw on Facebook that there was a fire there, and while thankfully all the workers and patrons made it out safely, our hearts are heavy.
Reese’s is where her Peanut Butter Pies come from.
Where Bear’s soft joint treats used to come from.
Where they both got their nails trimmed. It’s one of those bone-deep aches that I don’t fully have words for yet.
We’ve been passing the time watching things together from the safety of our blankets. Current Bed Jail™ rotation includes:
- Fallout, Season 2 (Amazon Prime, Wednesdays)
- Sinners (HBO Max)
- Chief of War (Apple TV+)
- 24 Hours to Hell and Back (Tubi)
- Final Destination: Bloodlines (HBO Max)
- The Black Phone 2 (Peacock)
- How to Train Your Dragon (Peacock)
- Despicable Me 4 (Peacock)
Nothing says comfort like horror, competition kitchens, cartoons, and watching Gordon Ramsay scream at people while you sip cough syrup.
If you play Animal Crossing: New Horizons and want to make a new cozy friend, M&M would love that. Truly.
If you want to drop your friend code in the comments or reach out, feel free. Boosting morale matters, especially when you’re sick, and she is a cozy gamer to the core.
And then there’s today.
Monday. Even though you won’t be seeing this until Tuesday.
I’m taking a few minutes away from Bed Jail™ to make sure tomorrow’s post is ready to go. There’s a seven-pound pork butt upstairs in the crockpot with carrots and other good veggies. Part of it will be eaten tonight as a roast. Part will become pulled pork for the week. And the broth will get saved and turned into soup.
Because that’s what you do when you’re sick.
You make comfort food.
You make sick food.
You make quick, easy, low-spoon food.
You don’t make things harder than they need to be.
This is what preparation looks like when you’re disabled.
Not productivity.
Survival, with seasoning. Because I like to joke that we might be white but we aren’t unseasoned white. We aren’t boiled chicken white. Or my favorite, thanks to TikTok- we’re not white practicing.
BJ, the Yard Yeti, doesn’t seem to have the plague yet. Doing a big food prep like this keeps us away from him, keeps him away from us, and lowers the odds that he’ll get sick too. No one wants to invite the man cold into their home.
I’m hoping I don’t get any sicker than I already am. I’ve been doing a bit better since switching to taking Keppra once a day, per my care team. While it does its job keeping me mostly seizure-free, the side effects are still rough.
The headaches. The nausea. The insomnia. The constant dizziness. The lack of appetite.
All of it is a lot.
Especially on top of being sick.
I have the Apple Watch now as an extra layer of safety, especially for times when I’m not with Luna or M&M. It’s not a cure. It’s not magic. It’s just another tool in the survival kit. One I plan to write a very long post about once I’ve lived with it a little longer and gathered more opinions.
What I can tell you is this: I think I want to get M&M and the Yard Yeti their own for Christmas. If that doesn’t tell you how much I like it, nothing will.
Still, no one likes being sick.
So, I’ve appreciated the brief reprieve.
I’m also prepping for a PET scan of my heart on Wednesday, which I’m sure you’ll hear all about in Saturday’s health update. Knowing me, I’m going to have a lot of opinions about it. Before I get into the logistics, here’s the important part: this is one of those appointments where being prepared matters.
Twelve hours before, no tobacco. (No big deal, not my thing.)
Twelve hours before, no caffeine. Including coffee, tea, soda, decaf, and chocolate. If you know me, you know this is cruel and unusual punishment.
Twelve hours before, no heart nitrate medications. (I’m not on any anyway.)
Drink plenty of fluids the day before, something I’m already vigilant about thanks to POTS and EDS and my emotional support water bottles filled with Sparkling Ice, Buoy, Liquid IV, or Prime.
Yes, I have two emotional support water bottles before anyone comes for me. One is the 42oz Coldest Limitless in the Baby Paw design, and it is always filled with Liquid IV or Prime. The other is an off-brand Stanley dupe that we found at Goodwill and brought home because it was engraved by someone who loved Halloween as much as I do- there are pumpkins, ghosts, graves, bats, etc. It’s positively spooky, like me.
The day of the test, no food or drink for at least six hours beforehand. Since I don’t wake up early, this effectively means twelve hours or more. I’m not pleased but, it is what it is.
Morning meds are allowed with a small sip of water.
Comfy clothes only. No metal. No zippers. I’m a hoodie gremlin. This will be easy.
They say to allow one to one and a half hours for the test.
There will be a nuclear medicine tech starting an IV. I’ll be calling ahead to make sure they have ultrasound-guided access available. My veins are fragile and unreliable, an EDS trait, and I’m not interested in being turned into a human pincushion. Again.
I’ll also be reminding them that I’m allergic to adhesive and contrast. I’ll be bringing Benadryl and my EpiPens just in case. The test involves an isotope that binds to red blood cells so a special camera can image my heart at rest and under stress to see if any areas aren’t getting enough blood.
On top of that, I’m anemic.
I’m trying to be very prepared for this test.
If you’re just as sick as we are, please try to take your meds on time. Eat something if you can. Drink water. Rest when your body asks, even if your brain argues.
And if you’re doing this alone, I see you too.
You’re not lazy.
You’re surviving.
Love you. Now say it back.
-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid
Disability, honesty, and a little chaos.
If you’re here, you belong here.
If today was heavy, thank you for carrying it with me.
If you’re reading this from Bed Jail™, give your service dog an extra scritch for me.
🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
There’s never pressure to donate. Reading, sharing, or simply staying is more than enough.
But if you’d like to support my ongoing journey toward health, stability, and mobility, you can do so here:
💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility
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