Content Note:
This post discusses chronic illness, disability, medical trauma, pain, migraines, mobility struggles, emotional overwhelm, and the realities of navigating medically complex life. Please take care of yourself while reading. 💜
Welcome to The Crippled Cryptid: Saturday Health Updates.
This is your gentle heads up before we begin.
These posts talk openly about chronic illness, disability, medical trauma, hospital visits, symptoms, and the unfiltered reality of living in a body that doesn’t always cooperate. Some weeks are soft reflections. Some weeks are heavy. Please check in with yourself before reading and come back when you’re in the right headspace.
No one will ever judge you for skipping a post here.
We understand that things get heavy, especially in spaces like this.
If you’re new here, hi. I’m Sky.
Professional cryptid.
Unwilling amateur cyborg.
Occasional chronic illness and disability advocate.
Medically complex enough to make my chart look like a horror anthology. I cope with sarcasm, stubborn hope, whatever snacks survived the week, and a concerning amount of coffee.
Most days are lived inside a haunted meat suit with a questionable warranty and a long-standing feud with my nervous system. I spend a lot of time in Bed Jail™, but I’m rarely alone thanks to Luna, my medical alert service dog.
Guardian. Enforcer. Tiny chaos gremlin with a medical degree she absolutely gave herself.
She’s the voice that says, “Hey. Sit down.”
And when I ignore her, she upgrades to:
“Mumther, we are NOT negotiating with your bad decisions today.”
I like to joke that she’s the sassiest spirit guide there is, but when you’re a cryptid who is notoriously talented at ignoring red flags from your own body, you need a spirit guide with teeth.
And then there’s M&M.
My Player 2. My soft place to land. The person who shows up with ginger ale, soup, and the kind of quiet strength that keeps the world from tipping sideways when my body decides to startle everyone. She gives the 90% when I only have 10%, and reminds me that survival is still a team effort.
This space is for chronic illness without inspiration porn.
Disability without apologies.
Honesty without pretending it’s always neat or hopeful or easy.
There will probably be dog hair involved.
If you’ve been here before, welcome back.
If you’re new, take a breath. You don’t have to prove anything to exist here.
Welcome to the Lunatic Café. ☕🌙
Saturday Health Update: A Week of Big Emotions & Being Mobile Again
This week has been… a lot.
And I know you’ve already heard some of it from Luna, and a little of it from me, but I can finally say it out loud now:
I didn’t expect most of this to happen.
I didn’t expect to get a car this week.
I didn’t expect to suddenly have pieces of my independence handed back to me after spending so long structuring my life around not having them.
And even though that’s a beautiful thing, it didn’t arrive gently.
It came with leg pain from all the standing around.
Headaches from stress and weather swings.
Emotional whiplash from paperwork, waiting, adrenaline crashes, and trying to process something my nervous system almost doesn’t know how to trust yet.
Because this isn’t just “we got a car.”
This is:
I can grocery shop again.
Not maybe grocery shop.
Not hope Instacart gets the order right this time.
Not calculating delivery fees versus energy levels versus what we can survive without for another week.
It means walking through a store and making sure our family actually gets the things we need. Not getting emotionally attached to the idea of something before it’s in our hands, and then having to apologize for Instacart not bringing it.
It means choosing our own produce.
It means not feeling trapped by transportation logistics every single time we need shampoo, prescriptions, or soup ingredients.
And that sounds so ordinary to some people.
But disability has a way of turning ordinary things into sacred things.
Mobility changes your world.
Access changes your world.
Choice changes your world.
And I don’t think I realized how much grief I’d quietly wrapped around losing those things until pieces of them started returning to me.
I caught myself standing in a grocery aisle too long this week just because I could.
Not because I was overwhelmed.
Not because I forgot what I needed.
Just because I realized nobody was rushing me.
Nobody was waiting on me.
Nobody was deciding whether I got to come back another day.
And that feeling hit harder than I expected.
Disability can make spontaneity feel mythical.
Like a creature you only hear rumors about in old stories.
🐾 Luna Note:
Mumther says “quick errand.”
This is propaganda.
So yes.
There’s joy here.
But there’s grief tangled into the joy too.
And exhaustion.
And that strange emotional hangover that comes after surviving in “hard mode” for so long that your body doesn’t know what to do with relief once it finally arrives.
Pair all of that with trying to schedule Luna’s spay appointment, juggling pharmacy runs, handling errands, and existing through whatever cursed weather roulette the Midwest keeps spinning right now, and my nervous system has basically become a Victorian woman dramatically fainting onto a chaise lounge.
The Midwest weather has also apparently decided to discover mood swings as a competitive sport.
One minute it’s spring.
The next minute my joints are forecasting biblical events.
The migraines have been loud this week.
The headaches have been stubborn.
The temperature swings have been kicking my ass in steel-toed boots.
But even with all of that?
Life feels different now.
Because for the first time in a long time, I have options again.
Before this, if I had access to a ride, I had to go right then.
Didn’t matter if I was flaring.
Didn’t matter if I was exhausted.
Didn’t matter if my body was waving red flags like a haunted lighthouse.
If transportation was available, that was the moment. Otherwise, it became delivery fees, Uber costs, waiting, or simply going without.
That’s how a lot of disabled people end up living.
Not because we want to.
Because access is unpredictable.
But now?
Now I can decide:
“Actually, I don’t want to do this today.”
And that tiny sentence feels revolutionary.
🐾 Luna Note:
The orange Jeep has many important responsibilities:
- Grocery acquisition
- Pharmacy quests
- Pup cup retrieval
- Preventing Mumther from trying to walk through a migraine “just real quick”
Life is weird now.
But it’s weird in a really good way.
And for once, the future doesn’t feel like a locked door.
It feels like something cracked open just enough to let light through.
Sometimes healing isn’t about becoming who you were before.
Sometimes it’s about finally building a life your body can actually survive inside.
🐾 Luna Note:
I personally believe if Mumther buys too many things at Target, she should be legally required to sit down afterward.
This is called healthcare.
If something here hit close to home, you’re not alone.
If you stayed anyway, thank you.
You don’t have to earn your place here.
Before you go, a soft little check-in from the Lunatic Café:
💊 Take your meds if it’s time.
💧 Drink some water.
🍞 Eat something small, even if it’s just a few bites.
No gold stars required.
Just a reminder from one haunted meat suit to another.
-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid
Disability. Honesty. Survival without the performance.
🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
No pressure to donate. Reading, sharing, and existing alongside me is already enough.
If you want to support the long, unglamorous work of survival and mobility:
💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility
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