i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
Idk if I've posted about this before, but the most important thing I've learned in 2022 (The Year Of Never Ending Doctors' Visits) is to leave every medical appointment with a clear-cut set of next steps. When you have a chronic health issue, it's not just as simple as telling the doctor what's wrong and letting them take it from there.
If you go in for an undiagnosed issue, your should leave with:
An investigative plan: Orders for labs, imaging, or specialist referrals to try and figure out what's causing the problem. If your doctor doesn't want to order tests, ask why. It could be an insurance issue (e.g. tests denied unless front line treatments have failed), or it could be a bias issue. If it's a bias issue, things get more complicated, but the first step towards adequate care is asking your doctor to note that you requested testing for the issue and they denied it on the basis of [whatever]. I have some tips for next steps in these situations, so feel free to shoot me a message.
A "what-if" follow up plan: Ask your doctor, "What if the labs/scans/etc. come back negative or inconclusive? What if this treatment plan is not effective after [preestablished length of time]? What's the next step?" and make sure the next steps are noted. This helps keep you on your doctors' radar until you have an effective care plan in place.
A symptom management plan: Really spell out the effect the symptoms are having on your daily life. Let the doctor know you're fully invested in long term recovery, but that you need something to help you live your life as "normally" as possible until the long term treatment plan can be established and take effect. This could be medication, assistive devices, FMLA or other documentation for work/school, etc.
If you go in for a diagnosed issue, swap out the investigative plan for a long-term treatment plan. The goal should be to reduce your symptoms or prevent progression, if possible. For some conditions, this looks pretty similar to symptom management.
This has been working pretty well for me lately. At the end of my appointments, I verbally summarize my understanding, like "Okay, so we're trying to figure out the cause of my [symptom], and you've ordered XYZ tests. If nothing comes back abnormal, you'll [order different tests, refer to specialist, etc.]. In the meantime, I can manage it with [medication, lifestyle change(s), adaptive device, etc.]. Is that a good summary of our plan?"
Free PDF Workbooks for Japanese, Spanish, Korean, etc. (30+ languages)
If you’re looking to practice a bit and remember your target language better… here are tons of free worksheets/workbooks for 34 languages (Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French, German, Italian, etc, etc.)
It’s the same type of “fill in the blank” workbook across all of their languages but the magic in actually rewriting things over and over is that the words end up sticking. Plus, there are English sections where you’ll have to force yourself to remember and write the word/phrase in the target language - which is even better for your memory (called active recall - forcing yourself to remember). I’m personally a big fan of this approach and I’d do similar to pass vocab quizzes in my HS & uni language classes.
I thought I’d share some information about sensory processing disorder. Which a lot of autistic and ADHD people have. I hope many of you find this helpful. :)
With so many elections coming up worldwide it's probably a good time to remind everyone that tumblr once got infested with agents trying to convince everyone not to vote, or not to vote left because the candidates weren't morally pure enough.
Also a reminder that they were better at tumblr than most of us, comrade interloper was great at memeing. Like, the talent!
Anyway don't fall for it. There is no morally pure option.
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free
I like granola in my yoghurt but it's sort of expensive, even at Aldi. So I decided to try making some from scratch and uh...it's hella easy?
4 c oats, the kind you use for oatmeal; 1 teaspoon each cinnamon and salt, mixed into the oats while they're dry, and then about a half cup each of honey (or maple syrup) and of olive oil (or cocconut oil). I wound up adding more honey and oil because it wasn't enough to coat/saturate the oats. A splash of vanilla extract, and of maple because I had it, all mixed until everything is coated evenly. You can also add in nuts too! Then spread onto a parchment lined pan and put into the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes, pulling it out and mixing twice. Let it cool (it crisps up more as it does) and then store in the freezer for indefinite use, or on the counter to use within a few weeks. If you like big chunks of granola, press down with a spatula to compact things after you mix at the midway points. Keep an eye on it as it bakes to make sure it doesn't burn!
Obviously you can tailor this by changing your spices, adding dried fruit or nuts (fruit should go in after baking, nuts before) and any number of other ways.
you know what? fuck you. i think its cool to have no labels, or cool to have more labels then you have fingers, and cool to just say queer, or cool to say "queer but theres more i can explain if youd like", and cool to say sapphic because you cant figure out if you id as a lesbian or bisexual, and cool to say youre asexual even if youd "fit into demisexual" more, and cool to introduce yourself as a trans guy even if youre also complicatedly nonbinary. its amazing no matter. youre all cool. im cool. yeah.