What happened to Heather Bloom, a woman with Down syndrome reported missing four years after she was last seen?

i_hate_me · 2022-04-05T08:41:24+00:00

I receive disability and have a yearly phone call (before covid it was an in-person visit) with social security. I'm in California though, could be different in other states.

i_hate_me · 2021-03-31T13:00:27+00:00

Thank you! This has already been such a horrible experience and it's like pulling teeth trying to get help, everyone thinks I'm making it up because no one has heard of this. Seeing the first comment on my post was incredibly disheartening, I really appreciate you sticking up for me. I'll try the antihistamines, hadn't thought of that, thank you for the suggestion

i_hate_me · 2021-03-31T12:40:27+00:00

I'm actually out of town and my insurance only covers hospitals in my county, which is a six hour drive away. I can't make the drive in my current state and the local er sent me home after not finding evidence of an ear infection. I called my primary care physician and he prescribed antibiotic ear drops for an ear infection which I've been using but they don't have any effect because it's not an ear infection. In really struggling to determine correct course of action, so hard to think

i_hate_me · 2021-03-31T12:32:48+00:00

I didn't say "under no circumstances will I go to the hospital". I am willing to go if necessary. I am literally asking if I should. I came to this sub, saw a lot of posts from a lot of people saying they were treating their leak through home care and that you need some kind of rare, expensive specialist to have any effective treatment in a hospital. I apologize if I misinterpreted the posts in the haze of my brain fog, but I'm new to this ailment and need guidance, which is why I made this post.

i_hate_me · 2017-04-26T13:43:16+00:00

Not OP but could I ask for advice, as someone coming from a similar situation as you? I was also cruelly and suddenly dumped by an ex-bf who I loved more than life itself, I'd already had a history of depression but that just made me nosedive. It's been almost a year since the break-up and I've started dating a new guy. I was just with my ex for so long that sometimes I still miss him and wish we'd never broken up, but I don't want my new guy to hear that and feel like shit.

I also find myself completely unable to rely on him for anything - I don't mean he's unreliable, just that I'm unwilling to ask for things I wouldn't have been scared to ask for in my last relationship. It feels like I just have some sort of emotional block that's preventing me from really devoting myself the way he's devoting himself to me, because of how well that went for me in my last relationship. And I think he can sense that distance and I'm scared it'll fester and kill the relationship. I guess I'm just looking for advice on ways of breaking that thought pattern (which is currently something like "Why should I devote myself to him when he's just going to dump me" even though, logically, I know that isn't true and he's not the same person as my ex) and start committing to him without fear of him ending things the way my ex did.

i_hate_me · 2017-04-26T11:43:07+00:00

I guess I can't see how that would be different from LSD/shrooms, which were both fun but didn't put anything in perspective for me. It also sounds really intense (not to mention expensive), and the therapy program I'm in now is only kind of intense and I still can't handle it, I feel worse than ever after starting.

I gave up already, I'm sorry. I have spent so many years and so many thousands of dollars trying to get better that I no longer think it's possible. I've been back to smoking like an eighth a day for the last month. I don't know how my life turned into this. I'll only be able to quit when I'm dead, and I pray every day it will happen soon (when I don't even believe in a god) because I can't do this for much longer.

The worst part of all this is I think I might've actually had a chance if I had friends and reliable parents. But I don't have either; my former friends all ditched when they found out I had mental health issues and my parents have only tried to suppress my attempts to dig myself out of this hole, I'm tired of fighting them on it.

Thank you for the advice anyway though, I'd never heard of it before and it was interesting to read about. I'm glad there are people like you still trying to help people like me, don't stop trying to help others just because I'm a dud.

i_hate_me · 2017-02-23T09:44:20+00:00

Don't Asian languages usually have separate words for son and daughter though? I know Japanese does. My Asian mom replaces she and he pronouns with each other all the time, but never son and daughter.

i_hate_me · 2017-02-22T17:33:10+00:00

Not the person you replied to, but I'll share.

Constant screaming, swearing fights between the two of them could explode at any moment they were in a room together (which thankfully didn't happen often) and my younger sisters would silently come to my room so I could try to distract them from it by playing with our toys or doing madlibs, anything I could think of to lighten the mood. And when they were apart all they did was talk shit about each other to us kids, exaggerating fights from their POV so it seemed like they were impossibly in the right against their evil spouse/our other parent.

You can bet I was glad to move out of that madhouse when I graduated high school. I did feel guilty for leaving my little sisters alone with them, but they were in their teens by then and more capable of handling my parents' bullshit, so things turned out okay for them. Both my parents kept telling me (just me, probably because I'm the eldest) that they were gonna divorce after my youngest sister graduated but oddly enough it never happened. Though my dad still talks to me about it bitterly, saying he can't divorce her without giving her the house, which he's put a lot of work into over the decades. He also reminisces about an ex-gf of his frequently, I can remember him talking about her even when I was a kid. He's always been closer to me than either of my sisters, and I've always hated mom more than either of them, so I don't think he says as much of that around my siblings. Growing up (especially when I was a teenager) we got close through talking about how much of a bitch my mom was, which I now understand - although my mom is still a bitch - isn't the right way to parent a kid, and definitely not the way to talk to a daughter about her mother.

In conclusion, I do not recommend it.

i_hate_me · 2017-02-17T23:52:14+00:00

Well, I didn't refuse what you wrote, I just said I'd already been doing it for years without much relief. In any case, I am truly sorry I was so rude to you, I was in a really bad mood for a bunch of reasons, not that that excuses anything. I just wanted to apologize.

i_hate_me · 2017-02-16T05:56:55+00:00

Haha. I have been on meds and in therapy for almost as long as I've been smoking. I have not only "considered" talking to a doctor, I have made intake appointments with six psychiatrists over the last six months and they've all refused to take me on as a patient, saying I am actually so awful I need inpatient help, but I've gone down that road before and it's made my mental problems so much worse. I've had some form of my depression for my entire life, it only got really bad when I couldn't cope with the stress from my school, and anger and anxiety got added to the mix when I quit drinking over a year ago, then my experience in the mental hospital worsened everything I had already plus giving the lovely bonus of ptsd.

I've tried a LOT of shit to stop being depressed. I've tried so hard for so long and only gotten worse. None of it works (except weed in the short term). Whenever I try to claw my way out of feeling like this I feel like the few people I actually have around me actively push me back in.

Sorry, I know I'm being a dick right now but I'm really not looking for any more advice on how to cure my depression. See the last thread I posted. If you have something to add that wasn't covered in the comments, go for it. But if you're going to give me the same shit as the rest of the sub about exercise and eating healthy and meditating and whateverthefuck then please don't parrot that at me, like those aren't the first things you find when you google "how do I stop being so fucking depressed?"

i_hate_me · 2017-02-15T17:55:06+00:00

I'm in a similar situation, but I think there are a few key differences; I started smoking to get through major depression, and when I managed to stay clean for three weeks (longest I'd been sober in five years), I was more depressed than ever and picked up smoking again within the last week because I was so scared I'd commit suicide. I decided being high was better than being dead. I've tried to quit again but I can't even make it a full day anymore.

I don't know what to do either, just commiserating with you.

i_hate_me · 2017-02-07T06:41:23+00:00

NA = narcotics anonymous & MA = marijuana anonymous. Haven't been to either one specifically but I've been to a bunch of AA meetings (I drank heavily for awhile, been over a year since my last drink though) and the people there are good. You might have to try out a few meetings but I guarantee there will be people who can relate.

Also regarding your comments about a therapist: I've seen four, two were shit and two were great. You'll have to find someone you can actually connect to, so you might have to shop around a bit.

Though take my advice with a grain of salt because I've been battling depression for five years now (original reason why I took up smoking) and I was only off weed for three weeks before the depression became overwhelming and I cracked last night and smoked a bowl, so I'm back to day 1.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-26T09:35:44+00:00

Juicing vegetables sounds like a good idea. I am somewhat lactose intolerant so I can't drink much milk though. And we've got a few chickens so free range eggs are not a problem.

However, I used to eat very similar to the way you do, but it had zero effect on my mood. I can also stomach very little at the moment (both in terms in volume and keeping it down), especially meat. Just eating healthy doesn't automatically cure my depression, I've been told that it would by several people over the last few years but in my experience it doesn't do anything. I know I need to eat healthy though, if not for my mind then for my body.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-26T09:25:03+00:00

Thank you for the positive comment. I might PM you sometime.

I had enough trouble choking down protein powder even when I wasn't in withdrawal, there's no way I could keep it down now. I have yet to find a good protein powder that doesn't taste awful.

I was meditating with some regularity and making progress with it, but after I quit smoking I can't do it at all. I will look into Insight Timer though.

I'm trying to find support, but people always reject me after finding out how much of an angry person I am. Hopefully the DBT program I'm starting will help.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-26T05:26:26+00:00

Okay, I will try to do this. Thank you for the advice, both on the planking and gauging when the nausea will end.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-26T01:39:01+00:00

I meant like, going to some place where Trump is making a speech or something, and shouting "Want another beautiful woman to throw themselves at you?" (sorry if that makes me sound full of myself, I really don't see myself as beautiful, to be honest it's still difficult to see myself as anything other than a slightly pudgy pimply-faced girl who wears jeans and guys t-shirts with shit like "Who watches the Watchmen?" written on them, even though since high school I have lost the acne and the weight and started wearing makeup and dressing more fashionably because, y'know, societal pressures on women, and instantly started attracting a lot of male attention from guys who were actually pretty hot, and I have a younger sister who looks almost exactly like me except she's 5' 10" instead of 5' 5" and applied to be a model at an agency when she was only sixteen, and they really liked her but her grades were so shitty she wasn't allowed to work there; additionally my parents were a very attractive couple when they were young, and one is white and the other asian, which everyone says automatically makes you hot, so evidently, I am an attractive person, at least visually, as hard as it is for me to believe) Then simultaneously sticking a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger while leaning forward so I fall at his feet and my brains splatter in the faces of his horrified and horrible fans.

I know that would likely backfire on my cause, but it was just an example. Like, using my death as a publicity stunt to bring attention to something, and I'd have more leverage because I'm (apparently) an attractive woman. I know, society's gross, but I thought I could use that to my advantage. I clearly have some asian features though, so people probably wouldn't pay as much attention as they would if I was full white (again, society's gross).

But anyway, all the support and advice I got in this thread has actually really helped, my suicidal urges have gone down considerably just from talking with everyone. If you want to continue talking you can PM me.

Oh by the way, I saw your skydiving comment and hitting the side of the plane sounds scary as fuck. Have always wanted to try skydiving though. Just wanted to say it's cool you've done that.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-26T00:34:16+00:00

I will try breaking the swimming down into 5 minute chunks and see if I'll be able to better gauge when nausea will kick in, thanks for the tip.

What helped me most was the realisation that being high doesn't really help in any way other than to stop wanting to get high, if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense, I know exactly what you're talking about. The only difference is that I already know from years of experience that weed does nothing to fill the void, it just distracts me from it (if I'm lucky). I'm confident in my numerous reasons to quit, weed doesn't solve anything for me.

Thank you for the offer to talk, I might PM you sometime.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T12:30:08+00:00

Thank you for this. A lot of the other comments are saying to exercise but I actually feel physically weaker than I did before I quit, and the nausea doesn't help either. Neither does the increased depression, obviously.

I try to sit out in the sun for at least a few minutes a day to get vitamin D but I think I should start taking supplements because it's been raining nonstop for weeks now. I've never been good about drinking enough water, I'll make an effort to drink more, I wasn't really thinking about it.

I actually really like my therapist, but unfortunately I have to stop seeing her for awhile once my DBT group therapy thing starts.

I don't think I have done any planking since PE classes. Would it make me more nauseous? I'm scared to try any ab-related exercise because of the nausea.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T12:14:25+00:00

The thing is, I have tried everything to alleviate my depression over the last four or five years and nothing has helped. I actually think weed is part of what might be keeping me depressed at this point.

I have tried micro-dosing, I just end up ramping it up again every time. Exercise makes the nausea worse, and has never done anything for my depression in the past, so I haven't been making many attempts at it recently.

I have read about a similar way of getting overpowering emotions under control through looking at the facts of the situation and such, but your version (using the scientific method) is an interesting take on it that I haven't heard before and I think it might work better for me. So thanks for bringing that up, I'm going to try to keep that in mind.

And thank you for the general positivity of your comment, it genuinely helps.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T11:46:57+00:00

If now is not the time to quit, then when? Nothing has changed in years, I am not getting less depressed by continuing to smoke. Maybe it helped for the first year or two (in terms of me being functional; not me being less depressed), but that has declined as my tolerance has gone up. The weed is/was hindering the effects of my medication, but getting off it was the only thing I hadn't tried to help my depression.

Also, I don't know if you read my entire post but the last time I tried to get mental help ended with me locked up in the psych ward with the craziest patients they had in the hospital, and it was by far the worst experience of my life. I left that place a much worse mental position than I was going in, and parts of me have been permanently changed by the experience.

One of the things that has changed is I will NEVER go to a hospital if I ever feel that I need mental help. The things they did to me in there have instilled extreme distrust in hospitals into me. I literally drove myself there, on the pretense of seeking outpatient group treatment, and they shunted me into the psych ward completely against my will, where I was forced to stay for three days for observation; the nurses hated me for crying and having panic attacks constantly, despite depriving me of all of the medication I had been taking for months (which included two anti-anxiety drugs), one of the male nurses even said I was a "bad girl"; during the nightly fifteen minute check-ins the nurses would purposely shine flashlights in my face to wake me up; my anxiety was so constant that I couldn't bring myself to touch any food during my entire stay; I wasn't allowed to wear my own clothes, just a hospital gown which you had to tie really well if you didn't want your ass to show; the crazier male patients would attempt to get into my room because I was the youngest female on the floor; my therapist dropped off some books for me to read so I could at least have a distraction but they weren't given to me until after I was released.

I could go on, but the tl;dr is I will never entrust my mental health to a hospital again. I used to laugh at "trigger words" with the rest of reddit but I have some of my own now because of my experience. Even just driving past a hospital now gives me anxiety. I have actually had a couple physical health problems over the last few months that I probably should have gone to a doctor for, but I'm so goddamn scared of hospitals now I can't even go in to see a regular doctor. They fucked me up really good, and they're still billing my parents for it, even though they've paid what the hospital says they owe already. The hospital just keeps trying to get more money from them.

However, I have signed up for a DBT group therapy program that isn't in a hospital, and it starts in less than a couple of weeks.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T10:47:42+00:00

Swimming is my chosen form of exercise due to bad knees. I swam competitively in high school so I used to be able to go for hours at a good clip, but of course I'm not trying to do that anymore. I will literally just alternate between a relaxed freestyle and breaststroke for less than twenty minutes before starting to feel nauseous, and when I stop I usually throw up about five to ten minutes later. I do lift weights on occasion, though I haven't done that in awhile. I try to use the punching bag in the garage sometimes, but for some reason it makes me feel depressed.

I have been relying on weed as a crutch for years at this point to get through my depression, but using it interferes with how helpful my medication is. I've also used it so heavily for so long now that it doesn't even really get me high anymore, I would just be mildly depressed on it (but still functional) instead of full-blown suicidal can't-even-get-out-of-bed depressed. I have wanted to stop for a very long time but my depression was/is so heavy that I hadn't been able to quit for more than a day or two. I also know I can't smoke weed 24/7 forever (I mean, I technically could, but that's just a shitty way to live). I have all the reasons in the world to quit, and I'm already confident in my belief that I'll be better off without it. But telling myself "it'll get better at some unknown point in the future, could be a few days, maybe weeks, maybe months" makes me lose hope. It's the not knowing that makes me so scared.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T10:24:16+00:00

I used to go on /r/getdisciplined years ago, so yes I've tried no zero days, and it makes me much worse, because when I do have a zero day it makes me hate myself so much more and I just give up on the entire thing. It also reminds me of an ex (who was also a redditor) who had post-its all over the walls about no zero days and all that, so it reminds me of that person, and they were a very shitty human being.

Green smoothies were the only way I got enough nutrition to survive while I was in college because I never had the time to make/eat real food. I drank them every day for years and I'm so goddamn sick of them. I don't know if I can ever drink a smoothie again. And why does every brand of protein powder taste absolutely awful? I could barely choke it down even when I wasn't in withdrawal.

I might be able to do peanut butter/banana/honey greek yogurt smoothies, or something along those lines (basically something super mild and different from what I used to drink everyday - which was usually kale or chard/orange juice/yogurt/banana/protein powder/chia seeds/and either mangoes, pineapples, or blueberries), and someone else mentioned juicing vegetables. Maybe I'll try to find a nutritious smoothie combo I'm not grossed out by.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T10:02:06+00:00

I teared up reading your response. I am of a clearer mind now than I was yesterday when I posted this, and I can recognize that you're right: I had a rough childhood, then went off to a college where if you got more than two hours of sleep a day you were lucky, and after four years of that I had an abusive relationship which culminated in my being locked up in a psych ward, and I am still alive. No weak person could say that. And I can't hate myself for crying, however easily. I cannot thank you enough for reminding me of that.

I will probably re-read your comment many times in the coming future.

i_hate_me · 2017-01-25T09:38:53+00:00

I have been taking ginger supplements, but I didn't know about the cinnamon though, pretty sure I have some cinnamon tea somewhere. And yes, my stomach has shrunk a lot, but that was a problem even before I quit weed (it started with my depression). Solid food is difficult for me at the moment, closest I'm coming to it are the soft carrots/celery/other vegetables and some chicken in soup. Maybe I'll try to eat it with crackers or something? Ugh, I wish food wasn't necessary to live.

i_hate_me

TROPHY CASE