cookinguptales

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if the truman show came out in 2020 trumans life would be livestreamed 24/7 and the twitch chat would be absolutely wildin. poggers

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I mean, I don't want to sound stupid, but I always assumed that the Ancient Romans were mammals

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Thots on the Pope

So the pope has thots now

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this does not apply if you wear exclusively leggings. Those things tear all the time you need like a million on standby

#I guess it depends what you mean by pants #I have two pairs of jeans #several pairs of leggings (like... 5?) #but what I wear most often are pj pants #like if you include pjs for around the house then 6+ #but I mostly wear leggings and dresses and occasionally jeans when I go out these days #my hips are happiest when they are not restricted at all #fabric more substantial than leggings or pjs tends to make my hips pop out sometimes so I'm careful with it

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in the continuing adventures of "body, please be normal" I've been dealing with pretty awful GI symptoms for the past month, and they have finally resolved themselves in a frankly bewildering fashion.

it feels gross to talk about, but I guess it was other people being gross and talking about their own symptoms that helped me figure out what was going wrong with me so like. maybe this will help someone else.

(cut for talk about medical issues, particularly gerd, endometriosis, and mcas)

Now... I've been dealing with pretty severe acid reflux for several years now. It seems to be attached to hormonal changes in the body because it flares up when I'm on any kind of hormonal medication (including birth control) or my period is approaching. It tends to manifest in ENT symptoms because the acid gets up into my sinuses and it's a whole fucking mess.

(Best guess is that it's related to the endometriosis and potential internal scarring, but the docs are REALLY hesitant to open me up to see the extent of the scarring because the EDS means that I heal poorly.)

Since I came off hormonal birth control, it hasn't been nearly as bad. I used to have to take fairly high doses of omeprazole at all times, but now it seems to be sufficient to take small doses of famotidine when it flares once a month.

That said! It's been flaring more often and worse since late last year, and I've been experiencing a particularly bad flare that's lasted for about a month now. Not to be too graphic, but I've had pretty severe burns in my mouth and pretty extensive oral bleeding. It's been... not fun!

(plus other GI issues, but they've been relatively mild compared to the... blood...)

I've been taking both omeprazole and famotidine, my usuals, but it's barely made a dent in it. I have been, safe to say, In Hell, but I wasn't able to get an appointment with a doctor until late May so I've just been kind of putting up with it.

Yesterday I really wanted to go to a street festival and I was like... okay, who knows if I'll be able to eat anything because even broth and oatmeal have been making me sick, but we'll give it a try. And I took some allergy medicine because it's spring and -- it went away. All my symptoms went away.

I AM... BEWILDERED... but yeah like I took the allergy meds and my symptoms went from 90% down to like... maybe 10%. Not perfect, but very bearable. And when I took my acid reflux meds, it actually got a little worse...?

So today I am off all reflux medications and on quite a bit of allegra and I feel almost fine. I am incredibly bewildered. All I can figure is that this time, as opposed to my regular flares, things were caused by some kind of allergic reaction...? I'm not sure to what, as I haven't really done anything differently lately, but I guess it could just be environmental.

I googled and Dr. Google says that acid reflux can be triggered by allergies, which has me back in the "wait, is MCAS a thing that's been ruining my life??" place. It's a diagnosis that my doctors have been toying with, but I've never worried about it too much compared to the others. But I guess the GI issues I've been experiencing aren't too unusual to MCAS, where your body has weird heightened allergic reactions to a lot of things, so like. orz

I guess I have been so allergic to the universe that my body was trying to literally eat itself.

I'm still going to go to the GI doc in a few weeks and see what they have to say but like. I guess I just keep mainlining allegra for now. It's a thing I'll have to be careful with (allergy meds give me eye problems, so I guess I'll be doing eye drops 10x a day again) but it's better than the life I've been living! :')

I guess I'm just happy that I've found some kind of solution but like. jesus christ. what the heck.

#on the upside I managed to actually eat food at the festival yesterday and I was thrilled lmao #cw: #chronic illness #mcas #gerd #endometriosis

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A commission with prompts including "beast," "gentle + cozy + taciturn + ancient," and "will go on a bookshelf to care for and protect the books"

#omg I love them

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such a dumb fucking pun. i love him

#booooooo lmao #dropout #game changer

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Crazy how quickly playing the lyre made me better at fingering

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solo jazz suicune

#pokemon

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You guys really liked my last poll so

#garden

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me when I began writing this story: it doesn't matter if the beginning is poor. you can rewrite it later. you can cross that bridge when you come to it.

me now, crossing that bridge: fuck.

#beginnings are always the hardest thing for me to write haha #I really half-assed this one and now I am reaping those rewards lmao #writing liveblogging

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all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.

#poor op #like i feel bad for you but I'm also laughin so I'm part of the problem

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the chocolate trigger thing is a myth??

Thank you for asking. The short of it is yes.

Chocolate as a posited migraine trigger came out of migraine journal studies. Basically, people suffering from migraine were asked to keep detailed journals of their lives, including what they ate, and this was compiled and trends were picked out.

One thing they found? People often ate chocolate before reporting a migraine attack.

There were two things going on here, though it took years for people to come to this conclusion. The first is that migraine prodrome can include sugar cravings– so people who were already well on their way to a migraine attack were craving chocolate, ate the chocolate, and then reported the migraine. The second is that stress is a trigger of both migraines AND sugar cravings. Thus for someone had a rough week, the stress induced both a migraine attack and a desire for chocolate.

Later lab studies in which people who suffer migraine were given chocolate, or cocoa, or small doses of caffeine similar to what’s found in chocolate, etc etc found that there was ZERO evidence for chocolate triggering a migraine. No component of chocolate triggered a migraine in sensitive people, even people who reported chocolate as a trigger.

So really, eating chocolate is a symptom of migraine, not a trigger of it.

These same food diary studies also led scientists to (briefly) believe that alcohol might PREVENT migraines. Why? People who reported fewer migraine attacks drank more alcohol. The actual finding here? People who have more migraine attacks don’t frequently drink alcohol because jfc who wants a drink when they have a migraine (also migraine fucks up social lives). Alcohol, unlike chocolate, DOES trigger migraine attacks.

So these are the kinds of limitations of food diaries when you are trying to figure out what triggers your migraine attacks, and also why doctors emphasizing food triggers, especially chocolate, get a side eye from me.

That said, there is ample evidence that when people feel in control of their health, they tend to feel better. If you believe that chocolate triggers migraine attacks and you feel like limiting chocolate helps you, I’m not going to tell you to stop.

But if your doctor handed you a pamphlet with 20 year out of date information on migraines that included the idea that you had to stop eating chocolate and cheese (no evidence for cheese, either, eat your heart out), I’m here to say your doctor is at least 8 years out of date with the literature.

TLDR; chocolate fine, alcohol bad, doctors lazy, science progresses

#yeah alcohol is a migraine trigger for me #only certain kinds of red wine but #be careful out there etc.

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Thanks for the question, Anon!

For me, I only go braless at home, even if others are there.

-submit your poll!-

#never wear them at home #I have pretty big boobs so most of my (cut-for-women) clothing doesn't fit if I'm not wearing a bra #but at home I rarely wear clothing and if I do it's so big that it barely touches any part of me #partially because with the EDS sometimes having any constriction around my chest or hips ends in tears #so yeah the bra (and everything else) comes off the second I get home #and if it's cold or there are other people around I change into oversized pajamas but other than that nah

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came home early from the festival like "wow, I'm so responsible, I didn't let myself get too overheated" and then lay down on the couch and slept for like 7 hours so maybe I patted myself on the back too soon there

#whoops lmao