People Have No Idea

Published September 21, 2026 by helentastic67

People Have No Idea

So, every now and again things get added to the already full bucket of shit to deal with, and it’s a long process to get answers and solutions. People just have no idea.

Earlier 2025, my left foot had started to hurt. While I was already dealing with my base line of my fifteen years plus disability and the recent hernia surgery, vertigo, etc.

For a while when out in the community I was alternating between grunting/growling or swearing every time I stepped on my left foot. People with chronic pain have become really good at hiding it from others. Because nobody knows how to react when we answer honestly to the age-old question “How are you?”

I know I’ve started being blunter because people will never know if we don’t tell them, and then I must remind them I don’t expect them to fix anything. Because they cannot. I remind people this is why I have such a dark sense of humour and that I appreciate the gentle laughs we share.

Several conversations over time with all the people. The OT, the Podiatrist, my AFO guy in Richmond and to be clear my AFO guy stretched out the side of the AFO using a neat trick of putting lipstick on the raised calluses on my left foot of which there are two.

One particular day in this process I had mentioned it to my Neurophysio while she was working on my left calf and foot.

There was a moment of quiet contemplation where we were not chatting as she did her brand of torture to the muscles in my calf and foot. She sits slightly in my blind spot on my front left but I look down and she has removed her shoe and she is very clearly checking if her foot has the same bumps and bones where mine now has.

She catches me watching her, She’s twenty plus years younger and from the UK. I really like her. I snort a little laugh at her as she thinks she needs to explain what she’s doing. It makes perfect sense; this is not the only time someone alludes or outright tells me I have weird feet. If you haven’t gathered, the point here is it’s a process of elimination.

My GP sends me to the nurses at the clinic he works from and one of those nurses is the other Helen. We now have history also. At that appointment I’m lying on the bed in the nurse’s prep room and checking my foot she calls in the other nurse and I mean, why not make it a party right? Helen says to her colleague, sorry Helen. I don’t mean to offend you, but you have weird feet. Like I hadn’t been telling the beautician this on the few occasions I had her do a foot treatment, me trying to tuck my toes from one foot behind the other, in an effort to hide the very things I was there to have her make them soft and pretty.

I also moved to a much better podiatrist in this process and how to get even more by using tape on my foot to rotate it even a little for her.

Again, I snort a little laugh and my GP finally decided I needed an X-ray and an Ultrasound. I know, sounds extreme right?

One early evening in 2026, my GP calls to tell me of my results. I prompt him with my brand of dark humour. “They say amputate at the knee?” He returns fire with “Yes, the neck down!” Touche!

The diagnosis was a really big cyst of 4mm by 2mm. I know. Huge! It sounds tiny so why does it hurt so much? You know there were ways to put more swear words in there.

So, I don’t know if it’s too late to warn my delicate readers but here’s a picture from only yesterday. So, even after a year this still hurts like a Mother trucker!

Apologies if people needed a warning?

Cast Your Mind Back

Published October 27, 2025 by helentastic67

Cast Your Mind Back

Who remembers the time back in early 2024, when I had a wound on my left side? It was a slow healing wound that was being poked and packed and prodded by my GP and a nurse twice weekly for months. I had described it to a family member as my left side due to the bad circulation as like being diabetic. Wounds on my left heal slowly. They asked, “But you don’t have diabetes, do you?”

You know those day’s people do not pick up what you’re putting down? If I can’t get a family member to understand what I’m dealing with, how do I get anybody else understand?

This is again relevant as I’ve been nursing along pressure wounds on my left foot and as my only course of exercise is walking, I really need my scooter to reduce this. I also need my left foot not to have me grunt or swear every single time I put weight on my left foot.

The last few months I’ve been managing the outside of my left foot. I wear different bandaids or second skin level bandaids every day. I’m lucky I don’t have any wounds as in broken skin. People may not realise this would be the beginning of the end. I would be on the couch, house-bound, feet up, eating, eating, eating. So, I’m told, and flinging rubbish on the floor until case managers apply for me to have new carpets. Again, the stories I hear. I like the fact I get out and do things and get motivation and inspiration from being around people. Also, people I encounter out would have NFI this is what’s going on under everything.

Anonymous

Published November 11, 2019 by helentastic67

Anonymous

I think I might need to write a book one day, which I will need to publish under a pseudonym and that would be because it would definitely require a warning about antidepressants and a requirement from pharmaceuticals to do something about the crazy dreams I keep having.

Case in point:

I’m with a group of guys (I don’t know, but I seem to in this reality), a guy is walking me around a shop pointing out which things to grab. He seems not to care who sees or hears him. We are in a shop with jewellery, crystals and incense. There are a lot of crystal figurines and such, it’s not a place I recognise.

Later in the evening, I’m back in the shop with now a group of guys, I’m walking around grabbing the items that were earlier pointed out to me. I put my hand into my bag and pull out my Nanna granny shopping bag. I find it’s inside out and I can’t quickly put it in the right way one handed. I ask the guy closest to me if he will help and we both notice at the same time he has a matching bag. We wordlessly brush it off. Embarrassing and I put the items in my bag anyway.

We escape the shop as the police arrive, darting down a quiet street in a residential area. It’s a long weekend and there are a few taxi’s about to fill up with families, young children and luggage. There are terrace houses, I don’t recognise with small front yards and a footpath that cuts along the first of all of them.

I’m alone now, walking along the footpath that is raised up along an embankment. I don’t remember which house I’m to go in. I’m not faster than the guys, just got there a different way. Two of the guys are now nearby telling me which house to duck into.

Later, I’m moving through a busy marketplace and going down some metal stairs with a handrail. Not very accessible but I manage going down my left foot on each step.

Left foot. Left foot.

My adrenaline is rushing. I get to the bottom of the steps and I’m in a weird kinda tattoo/hairdressers. One of the guys I was with earlier is standing there and before he had longer hair and now, he has a very blunt doo at just under his ears. Not stylish at all. While we are not alone, I still give him some sass. I give him some shit about his new hairdo, it’s terrible.

It was done so he can be unrecognisable if he is caught. All of a sudden, I realise my hair is down, all curly and fluffy around my shoulders. I feel the whizzing around my head.

Next, the police come in behind me, I’m on my knees and the haircut is nearly complete. My lost vision as I came awake is me with a mostly buzzed off hairstyle with what was left of my hair coming out from somewhere off the top/back of my head, a long thick dry messy plait.

I’m told, dreams are from a parallel universe, I just think pharmaceutical companies could do something better.

Please hit ‘Like’ if you made it this far.

I woke from this dream this morning and it’s taken all day to write it own. Are your dreams as vivid?

Danger – SWEAR WORDS AHEAD

Published April 29, 2019 by helentastic67

Danger – SWEAR WORDS AHEAD

FUCK ME! I know, I know! Inappropriate, but that is the worst thing I think I growl or mutter at people when I’m out in the city getting to an appointment of some sort and negotiating all the ANNOYING people who cut me off or get in my way, they trip me, etc, etc ad nauseum, all while they are too damn preoccupied with their mobile phones.

The “FUCK ME” I deliver to people a I’m carefully making my way about the city is only after I have exhausted every other grumpy less offensive comment.

I did encounter at one point, a guy walking up some steps (there were about ten and I was heading down as he was heading up) and I am completely about to switch the grumpy off to cheeky. He was looking at his phone too as he ascended the steps, as he made it to the top, I felt the need to inform him. “Now, you are just showing off.” He did have to stop a moment and give me all of his attention and I did need to point out that I was being cheeky. But people have NFI (No Fucking Idea) what I do to manage when I’m out and about.

To give you an idea, I make a habit of walking on the side of the street, so I’m going in the direction I need to travel. I walk close to the shop fronts, so my better eyesight (right peripheral) enables me to see people dart out of shops without noticing anybody else and I can slow my pace to not get bowled over. I cross the lights at the lights and someone will always cut across me to stand at my righthand while looking down eyes glued to their phones. That generally gets a growl.

ent

I was off to the city yesterday and in the course of the day I got a taxi (I love Young John) then a train, then a tram, then did way too much walking before doing another train out of the city, then finally a tram home.