MaoMao’s Small Smile When She Thinks How Jinshi’s “childish Tendencies” Come Out More Around

Anti-Inflammatory Foods:

Blue Spirulina

Strawberries

Broccoli

Turmeric

Chickpeas

Avocado

Kale

Raspberries

Matcha

Black Beans

Cabbage

Ginger

Bananas

Pumpkin Seeds

Almonds

Tofu

Blueberries

Lentils

Mushrooms

Quinoa

Bell Peppers

Pomegranate

Cherries

Pecans

Kidney Beans

Bok Choy

Pears

Tempeh

Spinach

Oats

Walnuts

Sweet Potatoes

Buckwheat

Carrots

Black Tea

Zucchini

Brussels Sprouts

I could fix so many lives by having people that complain about “manga” (but they are actually complaining about shonen) and “anime” (but they are actually complaining about shonen) and “Japan” (their sole exposure to the culture of the country is shonen) listen to me and read some good Anything Other Than Shonen Instead, such as Seinen, Josei, or Anything That’s Not Shonen.

I've been disabled for almost 29 years. Here's what I've learned.

Tablets sink and capsules float. Separate out your tablets and capsules when you go to take them. Tip your head down when taking capsules and up when taking tablets. Liquigels don't matter, they kinda stay in the middle of whatever liquid is in your mouth.

If your pill tastes bad, coat it with a bit of butter or margarine. I learned this from my mom, who learned it from a pharmacist.

Being in pain every day isn't normal. Average people experience pain during exceptional moments, like when they stub their toe or jam their finger in a door, not when they sit cross-legged.

Make a medical binder. Make multiple medical binders. I have a small one that comes with me to appointments and two big ones that stay at home, one with old stuff and one with more recent stuff.

Find your icons. Some of mine include Daya Betty (drag queen with diabetes), Stef Sanjati (influencer with Waardenburg syndrome and ADHD), and Hank Green (guy with ulcerative colitis who... does a bunch of stuff). They don't have to be disabled in the same way as you. They don't even have to be real people. Put their pictures up somewhere if you want; I've been meaning to decorate my medical binders with pictures of my icons.

Take a bin, box, bag, basket, whatever and fill it with items to cope with. This can be stuff for mentally coping like colouring books or play clay or stuff for physically coping like pain medicine or physio tape.

Decorate your shit! My cane for at home has a plushie backpack clip hanging from the end of the handle and my cane for going places is covered in stickers. All of my medical binders have fun scrapbooking paper on the outside. Sometimes, I put stickers and washi tape on my inhalers and pill bottles. I used my Cricut to decorate my coping bin with quotes from my icons, like "I've seen enough of Ba Sing Se" and "I need you to be angrier with that bell".

If a flare-up is making you unable to eat or keep food down, consider going to the ER. A pharmacist once told me that since my eye flares can make me so nauseous that I cannot eat, then I need to go to the hospital when that happens.

Cola works wonders for nausea. I have mini cans of Diet Pepsi in my coping bin.

Shortbread is one of the only things I can eat when nauseous. Giant Tiger sells individually-wrapped servings of shortbread around Christmas or the British import store sells them year-round. I also keep these in my coping bin.

Unless it violates a pain contract or something, don't be afraid to go behind your doctor's back to get something they are refusing you. I got my cardiologist referral by getting in with a different NP at my primary care clinic than who I usually saw. I switched from Seroquel to Abilify by visiting a walk-in.

If you have a condition affecting your abdomen in some way (GI issues, reproductive problems, y'know) then invest in track pants that are too big. I bought some for my laparoscopy over a year ago and they've been handy for pelvic pain days, too. I've also heard loose pants are good for after colonoscopies.

Do whatever works, even if it's weird. I've sat on the floor of the Eaton Centre to take my pills. I've shoved heating pads down my front waistband to reach my uterus.

High-top Converse are good for weak ankles. I almost exclusively wear them.

You can reuse your pill bottles for stuff. I use my jumbo ones to store makeup sponges and my long skinny ones to hold a travel-size amount of Q-Tips.

Just because your diagnostics come back with nothing, it doesn't mean nothing is wrong. Maybe you were checking the wrong thing, or the diagnostic tool wasn't sensitive enough. I have bradycardia episodes even though multiple cardiac tests caught nothing. I probably have endometriosis even though my gynecologist didn't see anything.

You can bring your comfort item to appointments, and it's generally a green flag when someone talks to you about it. I brought a Squishmallow turkey (named Ulana) to my laparoscopy and they had her wearing my mask when I woke up. I brought a Build-A-Bear cat (named Blinx) to another procedure and a nurse told me that everyone in the hall on the way to the procedure room saw him and were talking about how cute he was. Both of those ended up being positive experiences and every person who talked to me about my plushies was nice to me. If you don't feel comfortable having it visible to your provider during the appointment, you can hide it in your bag and just know it's there, or if you're in a video appointment, you can hold it below frame in your lap.

Get a small bucket, fill it with stuff, and stick it in your bed (if you have room for it). I filled a bucket with Ensure, juice boxes, oatmeal bars, lotion, my rescue inhaler, etc. in October 2023 in anticipation of my laparoscopy and I still have it in my bed as of January 2025.

If your disability impacts your impulse control (e.g. ADHD, bipolar disorder), you should consider setting limits around your spending -- no more than X dollars at a time, nothing online unless it's absolutely necessary, and so on. Or, run these purchases by someone you trust before committing to them; I use my BFF groupchat to help talk sense into myself when I buy stuff.

Feel free to add on what you've learned about disability!

there's something so raw and soul crushing about spending your late childhood+teen years suicidal then growing up and actually wanting to live, after an ungodly effort, only to see your health deteriorate because of chronic illness.

having an undiagnosed illness is like the check engine light being on all the time in your car, but when you take it to the mechanic, they announce happily that all the tests came back fine! and you just stare at the check engine light with dread.

oh women <з

love drawing during classes

It’s incredibly important to me that the anime decided to include this scene that wasn’t in the manga. In the manga, Maomao does pass out in Jinshi’s lap after saving him from what was obviously an assassination attempt.

HOWEVER, the manga cuts off at this point, keeping strictly in Maomao’s perspective, and cuts straight to when she regains consciousness in bed after being treated for her injuries. The manga doesn’t show how she got back. They SAY how, and she briefly mentions, “wow that must have been embarrassing; he carried me back,” but we don’t SEE it. We don’t get to feel the true impact of what that means. But the anime DID show us, and holy shit.

They SHOW us how taboo this is. They show Jinshi carrying her out of the temple, after a public attempt on his life.

They show us the shock and horror on Lakan’s face as Jinshi silently walks past him. Horror at the state his daughter is in, horror at another man—a man with a status he could never dare to question—staking such a public claim over his child, horror at the fact that he could never have this level of closeness with her (as Maomao would never allow it).

Everyone hides their gazes, as is their custom when someone of his rank passes by, but the air is different this time. Jinshi is furious, he’s terrified, and he could not give a single shit about how inappropriate it looks to these palace officials.

The shot that slowly follows her trail of blood—even though it’s a small detail—that in particular leaves such a intense impression of how poignant this is for him.

Maomao talked about this scene in the manga like it was nothing to her. She did what she set out to do: she saved the person who was targeted by the attack. She didn’t even know the target would be someone she knew. But she has no idea that this happened afterwards as a result of her bravery. To her, it likely wasn’t even an act of bravery at all. She acted on impulse; she did what she knew was the right thing to do.

The anime didn’t need to include this, because the manga didn’t show it. But damn, I’m so glad they did.

I copy pasted parts of this but I do hand letter everything, because while I'm trying to work easier as I'm chronically ill, I am still chronically stupid

The thing about PMDD that makes it so much worse then having just general depression or anxiety is how invalidating it feels.

Knowing that a sudden onslaught of negative thoughts or paranoid feelings is only occurring because of your period makes it really hard to be understanding or to reframe the thinking. A typical way of dealing with depression or anxiety is finding the root of the problem and reworking how one thinks but when those feelings are just something your body goes through because of hormones and there genuinely is no cause what are you meant to do then?

Plus, how do you even begin to explain that feeling to other people? If you admit how your feeling it’s not like anyone can actually help you, they can make things a little easier maybe but the feelings are always going to return every single month and there is absolutely no way to explain why you feel off unless you’re willing to tell someone it’s your period, and even then saying “my period is messing me up” isn’t going to actually get you sympathy or help. Other people who menstruate may say “oh I get that!” And joke a bit about how much it sucks but they don’t actually get how awful it is when you have PMDD, it’s not the same as a normal period. Most people don’t suddenly fall into a severe depression once a month because of their fucking period.

My point, I guess, is that having PMDD is both invalidating and isolating. It’s the sort of thing that can make you feel really hopeless sometimes because it’s never going to go away, you’re only option is to try and lessen it and push through it.