Category Archives for Spoonie Problems

To Date (Or Not) With Chronic Pain

Some months ago, a friend I’ve known since junior high school had a very pointed conversation with me about dating and intimate relationships. He caught me off guard with his questions about my romantic life or lack of one. He was curious to know why, since becoming ill just over three years ago, I haven’t dated at all. His concern was that I am allowing my illness to define me and overtake my entire life. He pointed out that I am more than my illness and pain and that people with more severe disabilities and/or debilitating health conditions still manage to engage in fulfilling intimate relationships.

In our conversation, I told him I couldn’t get into a relationship because I was focusing on my health and all I need to do to restore it. In return, he asked how long I planned to focus on my health alone since almost three years had already passed. Would five years be enough or maybe ten? What would happen if I let all those years pass without any improvement to my health and never taking the time to explore the possibilities of sharing my life, even with an illness, with someone?

Interestingly, he didn’t talk about what I might gain from dating or being in a long-term relationship. He talked instead about what I have to offer. It was embarrassing to hear him describe me so positively, especially at a time when I don’t usually feel attractive, engaging, and bright – the brightness of my intellect is often dulled by pain and pain medications – nor do I feel particularly sexy. Feeling sexy is hard when pajamas and sweats have become my standard wardrobe staples.

Nonetheless, I promised him I would think about all he had said to me. And think I did. The first thing I thought about was the person I had started dating a couple of weeks before becoming ill and how uncomfortable I was being so vulnerable with someone I’d known for barely two weeks. As he called the ambulance, stayed with me in the emergency room, and visited me practically every day for the first week of my hospital stay, I was grateful for his support and kindness. However, having someone I hardly knew see me that way was overwhelming in the context of so much unknown. It didn’t feel right to move forward with a relationship. It felt unfair to burden him with that level of responsibility when we didn’t even know each other’s favourite colour or foods.

Thinking about that conversation with my friend led me to deciding I would give online dating a chance. I set up a profile detailing my interests and what I look for in a partner, I posted recent pictures of myself where I look happy and healthy, and then I waited for interested prospects to contact me. I wait instead of initiating contact with anyone who piques my interest because I’m still uncertain about how to explain my current life circumstances. The thought of telling a potential partner about my daily struggle with pain still causes me great anxiety. Although my hope is that those feelings will soon change.

However, being online and exchanging written messages about my interests and who I am, as a lead up to deciding whether to meet in person, has been helpful. It gives me a chance to sort through and figure out who, of all those I communicate with, might be the type of person who would not be phased by what is happening in my life now. It’s also a chance to rediscover the part of myself I’ve neglected because of my pain and better understand how I’ve changed in recent years. Being online also provides a way for me to manage the pace of the process, while making sure I don’t feel too overwhelmed.

I have to admit that, with my friend’s urging, I am opening myself up to the possibilities of what my life could be like, even if I’m never pain-free. I know that not everyone I meet will be as compassionate and open to my situation as the friend I’ve known since I was a child, but now I’m hopeful for the chance to meet someone who is.

Red (Maybe) Tulips Sketch

 

My iPhone 6s: No Replacement Joy

Today, Apple released its much-anticipated iPhone 7, with the usual fanfare to a gaggle of media and Apple acolytes, who seem to wait with bated breath each time a new version of an i-something is announced. Yesterday, I picked up my replacement iPhone 6s. There was no excited anticipation, or celebration, on my part and it took less than ten minutes for the representative at my local Apple Store’s Genius Bar to hand me my replacement phone after removing it from a nondescript white box and inserting my phone’s SIM card. My replacement phone, or as Apple calls it: a ‘service phone’, is a refurbished iPhone 6s that replaces the brand new, shiny, Space Gray, iPhone 6s I bought at the end of June that was defective out-of-the-box.

The store representative was happy to send me on my way after that brief interaction. My destination was home, to load my backed up data on to this replacement and pretend the defective phone was replaced with something new. The problem is, I know it’s not new. I know – because I asked someone an unexpected question – that Apple’s policy is to replace their products, when they are defective out-of-the-box, with refurbished products. Products that have had part(s) interchanged within their shells when they have failed diagnostics tests that indicate a hardware, not a software flaw; and knowing that makes me feel like crap because it’s not in any way – at least not to me – comparable to the phone the I paid hundreds of dollars for roughly two months ago. A decision I feel stupid for making, not because I’m an avid Apple fan, but on the basis that I didn’t have to learn how to use a new manufacturer’s phone and that my iPhone 4 had been reliable for four years so I believed this new improved model should be just as good.

In recent conversations I’ve had with Apple Support representatives, they’ve made it clear to me that Apple doesn’t have a problem explaining and supporting this policy of replacing the defective products people pay hundreds of dollars for with refurbished equipment. Even the Apple Store manager, to whom I made it clear that I paid out-of-pocket for my phone, when she flippantly suggested that my phone was a freebie I received as part of a locked-in-until-your-kids-are-old-enough-to-drive contract many people sign on to with their mobile phone service providers, only stumbled for a moment before getting back on-message. Not even my mobile service provider was aware that this happens with Apple’s defective out-of-the-box products, until I called them to see what options I might have in lieu of accepting what I consider a sub-standard replacement. In fact, the representative I spoke with stated, that he’d never had another customer call with my issue and that “I’m dumbstruck, especially coming from Apple that’s supposed to be the ‘Cadillac’ of companies,” when I explained some of the Apple Store manager’s rationale for why they use ‘service phones’.

I guess giving customers refurbished product must be at the top of the lesser-known policies Apple uses to grow profits and keep a high percentage of product market share, while presenting their glossy image – as they did today at the iPhone 7 launch – because people rarely think to ask the question I did. Now I get to walk around, until I replace my phone in another three or four years, with the displeasure of knowing that I have an iFrankenphone that was built to replace defective part(s) instead of the brand new, shiny, Space Gray, iPhone 6s I spent a shitload of money for.

 

Jerry Reed – She Got the Goldmine, I got The Shaft

 

My iPhone 6s: Screwed By Apple

Illness has ways of removing things from our lives that we take for granted when we are moving through the world in a healthy body. For instance, I haven’t had sex for more than three years mainly because I haven’t been in a relationship since the arrival of my illness, but more importantly because I’m in pain all the time. However, this morning after getting off the phone with the Manager from my local Apple Store I felt as if I’d been screwed  for the first time in more than three years – my apologies for the vulgar characterization.

In a conversation filled with platitudes, customer handling jargon, and loads of BS about saving the environment; the outcome is that I will not get a new phone to replace my brand new, shiny, Space Gray, iPhone 6s, which I recently purchased and was defective out-of-the-box. Instead, a phone that comes from Apple’s service inventory will replace my new phone that I was so happy to have purchased. The Manager did her very best to assure me that the quality of the ‘service phone’ will not vary in any way from my brand new, shiny, Space Gray, iPhone 6s because it comes from the same assembly line as all new Apple phones – with the only exception being the fish logo missing from the front of the box. However, none of what she said reassured me.

My iPhone 6s -Screwed By Apple

My brand new out-of-the-box iPhone 6s was defective and, according to the Manager, the only way to replace it under warranty, less than two months after it was purchased, is with a phone assembled with random components meant to revive a previously defective phone; I don’t find that at all reassuring. I also don’t find it reassuring that this Manager could not understand why such a policy, which was not disclosed to me during my earlier visit to the store, would not only be unappealing but also unacceptable to someone who had just shelled out hundreds of dollars for what is marketed as a “most advanced” product. When I pick up my replacement phone from the Apple Store: I will know it is not the same quality product I spent a considerable amount of time making the decision to invest such a great sum of money in. I will also know that Apple has done the expedient thing to save the company money at the cost of customer loyalty.

I know that many people will think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. However, when you get ripped off by a mammoth company and they smile while doing it and tell you they have no options because Apple has no process “to return your defective phone to inventory” and you know that options do exist, it’s a pretty shitty feeling.