- Hello, lovely people.
Welcome to a video from my bed.
Yes.
It's that time of year where you get a video from me
because I'm ill, or injured,
and it comes from my bed.
(Jessica laughs)
Claudia's not there.
She just needs to, flowers are magically held in place.
Ah!
- [Claudia] Think people would notice an arm?
Or not- - I don't know.
- [Claudia] If I kept it really still-
- I don't know, actually.
Do you think people would notice?
- [Claudia] Dunno. Let me do something more useful.
(Jessica laughs)
- No, you were excellent.
You were perfect.
- [Claudia] I need to reposition you better.
- Yes.
So, in my last video,
I was talking about my first three months
of being a disabled parent,
and how that's been going,
and how, so far, we've only had one major kind of incident,
which was when we all got norovirus,
but mainly it was just been that I've been quite exhausted,
dealing with back pain,
but, you know, he's amazing, he's worth it.
And then I managed to injure myself
in the world's most unglamorous way,
with an Asda delivery.
And you know how they deliver the food in crates,
and you have to like take it out of the crates,
and put it in to your bags at your front porch,
so you can then take it to your kitchen?
It's a thing.
Whereas like the Waitrose food comes in the bags.
It's fine.
Just tell the world that you sometimes get Waitrose.
Special occasions, okay.
Claudia was, at the time of this food delivery,
breastfeeding.
So, I was like, "I'll do it."
I went to the front door, and I was there,
getting the food out of the crates,
putting it into the bags, like, "Yeah, ooh, watch me go.
Being efficient.
Being useful.
Being helpful."
And my body- (Matilda barks)
Hello, Matilda. Thank you for barking.
I'm also a little bit drugged up right now
on the painkillers,
so, this story may meander.
So, my body
gets some rather delayed signals,
which, I think as a result, see,
I have two different genetic disabilities,
and sometimes, I find it really hard to say
what symptoms come from which thing, right.
Because I don't know.
I've always had them.
So, I get very delayed signals
for things like needing to pee, for instance.
That's a very delayed signal.
My body tells me,
"You need to pee, and you have three minutes."
(clock ticking)
That's it. That's how much warning I get to pee.
I don't know whether
that's because of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome,
or Hereditary Neuropathy with Liability to Pressure Palsies.
(fingers click)
Please let me know in the comments,
whether you also only get a three-minute warning to pee.
I get no warning about pain, (Matilda barks)
and whether I'm in pain,
and whether something is causing me pain,
until a good 10 minutes after it's too late.
So, I was there, bending down.
Oh, I hit the lamp.
Well, 'cause I'm doing that, I'm not standing up.
It's all down. It's all down. It's all down.
Like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I'm just lifting, right.
But you're only lifting with your back,
because you're not standing,
so there's absolutely no opportunity to lift with your legs,
and by the time I'd done it all, I was like,
"Okay, bye. Thank you."
Closed the door, turned around, and I stood up,
and I was like, "Whoa."
And then,
my legs weren't working.
I basically had to drag myself into the kitchen
with only one bag of the six (laughs).
I'm in excruciating pain,
and my legs have stopped.
And as I was walking, I was just like,
"Ooh,
ooh,
ooh."
Because unfortunately,
this happened last year, as well.
As you can tell, this new injury is setting me back.
It's getting me down for a whole host of reasons.
I mean, including extended bedrest
being a bit of a,
kind of similar to some past medical traumas
that I'm currently working through with my therapist.
So, let's talk about therapy.
I get my therapy through BetterHelp,
an online therapy platform,
and, in fact, the world's largest therapy platform,
and sponsor of today's video.
As this video perfectly encapsulates,
my health is pretty up and down.
Perhaps a better way to say it would be, all over the place.
I cannot tell you the number of in-person appointments
I have had to cancel
because I was too injured or ill,
or I was just exhausted.
It was just too much to be able to make it out of the door.
However, I still had to pay,
but it's not just the hole in my pocket that it hurts.
No, it's that I still needed that therapy session,
probably more than I did than when I was on top form.
By speaking to a therapist online,
I know that I can always make my therapy sessions.
I can still speak to them,
even if I can't sit up,
and I'm drained of energy,
and I'm just not great at human-ing today.
Being able to talk to someone
when you're too ill to even leave the house is excellent.
Especially when what you need to talk to them about
is how frustrated you are
that you're too ill to leave the house.
Oh, don't worry.
It works for healthy, busy people too.
(bells chiming)
They're all winks.
I've taken a lot of pain medication.
BetterHelp makes professional therapy affordable,
accessible, convenient.
It isn't just self-help, it's not a crisis line.
It's actual professional, proper, genuine therapy,
with licensed therapists.
BetterHelp have more than 15,000 licensed therapists
with a wide range of specialties.
And you can start communicating within 48 hours
of being matched with a therapist.
Also, for those of you who are new here,
hi, I'm deaf.
I know.
And if you use ASL, American Sign Language,
well, are you in luck,
because BetterHelp has therapists who use ASL themselves,
but hey, not everyone's a fan
of the actual chatting face to face,
online communication style.
So, if you prefer writing,
you can also just chat to your therapist
using BetterHelp's chat boxes.
If you're interested in trying BetterHelp yourself,
and as someone who uses the service,
I really highly recommend it,
then you can get 10% off your first month
by clicking the link in my description down below.
Now on with the rest of my video explaining
what on earth is going on with me.
And I just smacked my hand on something else.
God, it's going well.
It's going well.
Last summer,
last July,
injured my back,
and at the time, there was, you know, a pandemic lockdown,
like we're not currently in a pandemic,
we are in a pandemic.
Last summer was a very bad pandemic,
and we were very much like,
"Ah, let's not go to the hospital.
I'm not chancing that one, ha, ha. No."
So, even though my back was really painful,
we were just like,
"Ah, well, we'll just go round on crutches for two weeks
and ignore it."
So, that's what I did,
but it got worse, and worse, and worse, and worse,
and worse,
and then I stopped being able to pee
for like 32 hours,
and we were like,
"Hmm, we should probably go to the hospital."
So, we went to the emergency room,
and they were like,
"Hmm, this does seem like a very big problem.
We should admit you."
Because they worry about something called cordia quina,
which basically is where you get
a big trauma to your spinal column,
and if they don't sort it out immediately,
because it's like a big emergency,
if they don't sort it out immediately,
you could just become paralyzed forever.
They were very concerned, obviously.
And they gave me an MRI, and they were like,
"Ah, okay, well, it's not that."
(laughs) And I was like,
"I said it wasn't that all along."
I said, "It's probably just my nerves being weird,
because I was born with a nerve condition
that makes my nerves, well...
I was born with a nerve condition
that means that my nerves just don't have the protection
that most people's nerves do."
This is a very ramble-y video.
I can't just ask Claudia
to take me to A&E,
because now we have a baby, you know.
It's not just so easy.
You can't just be like, "Hey, pop me in the car. Let's go,"
because there's a baby seat.
And also, I do a lot of looking after that baby,
and that was a big worry, and concern, and fear of mine.
And so, that is what we're talking about in today's video.
So, last year I ended up, after the hospital,
spending about a month in bed having to recover from this.
And I'm hoping that this time,
because we took action before,
rather than having to spend two weeks
just walking around on crutches before it got really bad,
this time, what we've done, is that as soon as it happened,
I immediately started taking care of myself.
We contacted the GP immediately,
who did, admittedly, say I should go to A&E,
and get admitted to hospital,
and have all the scans and whatnot.
But no, I hate hospital.
Am I sat here sulking at the thought of going to hospital?
Yes.
So, started by taking painkillers immediately,
which is really good,
because it means
that I'm not tensing up the muscles around the injury site,
which could then lead to more injuries,
or to hurting another part of my body,
overusing another part
in an attempt to not use the injured part.
Uh, the amount of times
I've accidentally injured another part of my body
in an attempt to not hurt the part that I have hurt is...
Today is Thursday.
I have been here since Sunday,
and it sucks,
that now we have to cope with having a baby,
and my emotional side of,
"Oh, I can't do things with him."
Like I can't do the bathtime routine,
which I normally do every day.
I do bathtime.
And he's not very happy about that,
because that kid loves routine.
So, he's like, "What? No. Mummy doesn't do bathtime.
Mama does bathtime.
Where's Mama?"
So, Claud brings him in to say goodnight to me
before she takes him up to do bathtime,
and he's like, "Hey, Mama, you're coming up, yeah?"
But Claud brings him in throughout the day,
and he comes and plays in the bed here with me,
and we have cuddles,
and we do toys and stuff together.
So, I see him, but I don't get to do his nappy changes,
and the fun stuff that we normally do,
and I'm missing that.
And I miss going for trips to the park with him.
So, that's a whole ball of emotion.
And at the same time, Claudia's having to do so much,
because right now I am in between carers.
Normally I have my own carer,
and my own person who looks after me,
and therefore Claudia doesn't have to be the one
doing it all herself,
and I'm just feeling very bad for her.
Just a bit much that she's having to do the baby,
and the disabled wife.
Someone left a comment on the Baking Bad
that we did right before Rupert was born,
which basically said something along the lines of like,
"Oh, Jessica and her memory loss.
She says that it's really bad
that she can't remember how to do ingredients,
but she always remembers how to do her hair and makeup.
Poor Claudia.
Once this baby's born,
she's gonna have two babies to look after."
Oh, wow. Thanks. Yeah.
Cut me deep. Cut me deep.
I mean, yeah. You know, not how memory loss works.
Also, I can't even remember
whether I've even talked about that comment before
(snorts)
because that's how memory loss works.
Claudia and I were talking about this
at the start of the week,
where she felt
grief because she felt
that we were in such a good little routine at the moment,
and it's going really well,
and we're really happy.
And she's like,
"Yes. Yeah, we're having such a lovely time at the moment,
and really enjoying Rupert."
And now things have to change, and that really sucks.
And dealing with that grief is always difficult.
And that's why I think it's always
important to talk about it.
And it's always important to talk about
the effects on our mental health
that poor physical health has.
And
we don't enough, still.
Well, I can really tell my drugs have worn off now, ha, ha.
Oh, oh, I'm in so much more pain,
but I'm so much more clear-headed.
Thank you so much for watching and being here with me.
Hopefully I shall see you again next week,
when I'm sitting, not propped by pillows,
and I'm feeling a bit better,
and I'm not taking a lot of painkillers.
Thank you as well to BetterHelp for sponsoring this video.
Remember that you get 10% off your first month
if you sign up using the link in my description.
Thank you again for watching,
for putting up with this, all of this.
Follow me on Instagram for updates as to how I'm doing
at Jessicaoutofthecloset.
And also thank you to my actual BetterHealth counselor
for talking me through some issues.
Okay (laughs).
Bye, bye. Now I sleep, okay. Yes.
Everyone else who's having the day in bed,
love to you.
(blows kiss)
(tranquil music)