Day 24

A picture of something I wish I could change:

Let's face it, I probably could do more about my looks here, but I took the specific language of the prompt to imply, "A picture of something I can do little or nothing to change."

I wish I could change the treatment for a severe Sickle Cell Crisis.  I just ran some extremely underestimated numbers, and I figure that I've been hospitalized for pain crisis at least forty times since birth, for a total of well over 365 days.   This number only includes the hospitalizations I can specifically remember, and only the ones solely motivated by sheer pain - not, for example, by a sudden inexplicable limp, or sudden blurred vision.  Maybe I'd double again the number of ER visits made.  But lost time is not my lament.

I have mentioned addiction's genetic component before - not that it is automatically passed amongst families, nor that a woman who lives without any family history is "saved" and may now smoke coke to her heart's (unattainable) content.  But doctors are discovering more and more genes that increase the risk of addiction.  Examples range from Native American ancestry to a single amino-acid substitution on the dopamine-D2 receptor site.  For some reason, the predisposition breeds more truly from male to male than any other gender-pairing: sons of predisposed fathers are far more likely to be predisposed than are daughters of fathers or children of mothers.  At some point in the kid-building process, if too many of these markers are found present stacked atop one another, we say that person has a 100% addiction potential.   This is still not genetic damnation: even with 100% addiction potential, you'd have to be repeatedly exposed to an addictive substance in order to become addicted.

...Oh.  Oh shite.  Oh....pissbollocks.  (I have Scottish blood tae, don'tcha know?)

Doomed from the start.  A full genetic predisposition and a congenital chronic pain disorder - a disorder so painful and so chronic that it meets several criteria for childhood trauma.  This is what I would change if I could: I'd give myself a fair fucking chance.

The secondary damage is piling up, now.  My veins can't take the strain of the efforts asked of them; it took two specially-trained phlebotomists an hour with an ultrasound to find the IV.  Even with my body in a near-constant state of SNAFU-management, there are proactive steps I can take to improve my condition.  I was asked to confront something I only wish I could change; so I have.