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fox-bright · 24 days

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In Response to the H5N1 Ask:

I'm not answering the ask with your name on it, because I think you came off poorly, and I'm not in the habit of pointing my followers at people when I feel this angry at them. But having had some fresh chocolate chip cookies, some cat snuggles, some sifu-husband hugs, some delightful kindly asks from people who are prepared to behave like equals today and no shortage of groupchat “Would you look at the fucking cojones on THIS one?!” mockery, I now feel settled enough to take this line by line.

So let’s do it.

Hello. I am someone who works alongside people in ornithology. Hi! I work alongside a master of IT and frequently work arm-in-arm with medical doctors. What does that make me? I’m not a sysadmin and you’d better not trust me to install an arterial stent.

Your bird flu post was linked to me and I would like to privately share some reassurance about H1N1 as well as some problems I have with your post.

My post was about H5N1. H1N1 is the swine flu.

Bird flu has been studied for years and indeed is very lethal to humans, but it does not have the same viral characteristics as a mammal-originating virus like COVID does. This is not a useful statement. Bird flu has been studied for decades—over a century, in fact, as the 1918 flu was an avian influenza. You know, the one that killed tens of millions of people, to the point that it derailed a world war? Personally, I have been paying attention to and reading research papers about H5N1 since 2015, and giving my very close attention to it for the last five years.

Since the SARS outbreak, vaccines and treatments for these rare case of direct bird-to-human flu transmission have been developed and have been poised to be deployed immediately should direct bird-to-human transmission ever occur. Let’s be clear: bird-to-human transmission is occurring too frequently. More than eight hundred times in the last twenty years, and more and more rapidly in recent years, and again, more than half of those were lethal. That tends to be from exposure to wild animals hunted for food, or exposure to home-raised animals who get sick from wild animals. Bird-to-human transmission is not yet occurring frequently in the States, where our food is generally factory-produced and hunting is less common, but it is occurring with increasing regularity outside of the US. No vaccine will be useful to a person who is already infected (useless!); currently the treatment for infected people is antivirals and supportive care, alongside strict quarantine. Current H5N1 vaccines may or may not be very effective against any human-to-human variant, as it may have mutated to evade them. We do not have enough H5N1 vaccine doses to go around, and the ones we do will be concentrated first on the military and medical personnel.

The reason monitoring agencies and professionals are on “high alert” for these bird-to-cow-to-human incidents is because they are taking it seriously on a more theoretical level essential to their profession. Why are you so smugly, confidently incorrect? “We have never seen this scale of infections in mammals, and in such diversity of mammals. We have now seen more than 40 species of mammals infected during the last outbreaks, which is unprecedented.”

In this case, the people and cows who contracted H1N1 did not die. It’s literally been days since the human contracted it from the cows, and we do not yet know that he’s the only one. We are NOT in a position to say “okay, so things are peachy!” We also do not know how many cows have it (we’re up to what, fifteen farms now?) and we do not know how rapidly it’s evolving in those massive groups of mammals.

My first concern about your post is its lack of linked to sources and the framing of it as an advice post. The New York Times has an article available on this issue as well as the Audubon Society and various wildlife agencies. Some of these articles are a year or two old, This is the point where I started getting really pissed at you. You demand I provide citations, but you provide none. You suggest I go to the fucking New York Times to read outdated articles? So you haven’t read anything more recent, or from anywhere more reliable, and thus you don’t imagine that I have, either? Arrogance.

but that is because this strain is a very slow-moving development ABSOLUTELY not the case. It is mutating rapidly, over and over and over again. You demanded sources, so I expect you to read those, but if you’ve only got time for one, pick the last of them.

with no immediate signs of consequences for humans outside of people working directly with cattle getting sick— and these humans have neither transmitted the virus to others or suffered anything worse than pink eye from it. So since it hasn’t happened, we don’t need to worry about it happening, hmm? Are you familiar with the term “gain-of-function research?” It’s when an organism is changed, in a lab, to make it more powerful, more infectious, more virulent, something along those lines. When you put a disease into tens of thousands of animals, you’re performing a natural gain of function experiment, as it has tens of thousands of chances to mutate. The “Spanish flu” pandemic, which actually was first noted in a Kansas army base, was almost certainly the result of an avian flu infecting pigs. Pigs are really similar to us, in terms of receptors; what makes them sick is much more likely to make us sick; when this hits pigs-to-pig transmission, it’s time to batten down the hatches. Cows aren’t nearly as similar, but they’re still mammals, so they bring it a lot closer to us; and when you can get unaltered H5N1 from bodily fluids, guess what? Meat and milk are disease vectors. And we don’t actually know that pasteurization of milk inactivates the virus. As I said in my previous post, now is the time to prepare, and to be wary.

This strain is lethal and highly viral between birds and will likely remain this way for a very long time.

This strain has been rapidly, monstrously lethal to MANY animals. Sometimes in huge numbers. You may remember the mink farm where it mutated to spread mink-to-mink (those are mammals), or the sea lions (which I will point out to you are also mammals), where it spread sea lion-to-sea lion and rapidly killed them by the thousands. It’s killing polar bears. It’s killing other predators. It’s killing all manner of US mammals singly and in multiples. However, the mammal-killing mutations don’t stop it from still killing birds.

My final concern— Spring is coming and that means horny birds are about to start hitting windows. Wildlife rehabbers are currently updating the public’s general info on what to do with stunned birds— they often do not recover if left on their own to fly away after a window strike and concerned citizens need to take these birds to a rehabber immediately if found. If people read your post, they will likely conclude that bird-to-human crossover is likely and be afraid to touch a downed bird that needs emergency medical care. I want to be absolutely, painfully clear to any non-doofus reading this right now: I have loved birds since infancy. I grew up with a smalltime conservationist; I have spent no small amount of my photographic hours on birds. I have saved wild birds—poisoned by farmers, wingshot by rednecks, window-struck, sick, attacked by feral cats, orphaned by agricultural machinery--long enough to get them to rehabbers on many occasions, and I have on three occasions assisted with that rehab, including keeping very odd hours to feed nestlings with a dropper. I have assisted with ecological rehabilitation and rewilding programs to provide them with territory; I have written my politicians and donated to wildlife efforts. So know that this is not coming from a place of not respecting or loving the wildlife. This is not “framed as” or “presented as” advice, this is absolutely the advice I would give you face to face, in absolute conviction. This year? If you see a fallen bird? You WALK THE FUCK AWAY. H5N1 gives birds seizures, disorientation, clumsiness and gasping. Or, sometimes, it is completely asymptomatic, and a perfectly healthy-seeming bird could still give you the disease. You can not tell if that bird hit the window because it’s horny and stupid and you forgot to put the stickers up, or because it’s in the grip of a disease that could kill you if the creature breathes too closely to you.

Given all of this, I ask that you please delete your original bird flu post before it has the chance to scare a lot of people and potentially hinder them from helping birds. Yeah, that's not going to be happening.

If you’d like to repost it, please add linked sources and resources for those concerned about avian flu. As previously mentioned, the New York Times has an article with the latest developments on monitoring this virus. Fuck you and your ignorant superciliousness sideways. You do not walk into my fucking Asks with this bullshit like you know ANYTHING when you plainly haven’t read jack shit about the situation as it’s evolving on the ground.

Bird flu is indeed very scary but not nearly in the same league as Covid or even the seasonal flu for most people. You’re absolutely right, in absolutely the wrong direction. If-when this goes human-to-human, it will rapidly outstrip covid’s dangerousness to a shocking degree. Today, it is not dangerous to anyone who leaves birds the fuck alone, but that’s today, and we need to prepare for the potential of tomorrow.

I hope this information helps and please excuse my stiff language. I suspect I sound really angry and condescending when I haven’t had much sleep. Yeah, you came off as a total jackwagon. “This information,” you say, as if you brought ANYTHING with you but attitude.

Sorry if that’s the case, but I didn’t want anything picking up steam before sharing this with you! Please educate yourself more adequately before you attempt again to correct someone. I have myself in the past been raring to go with a correction, checked to make sure that I had my phrasing right, and been caught flatfooted by new information. It’s better to feel that embarrassing moment of “oh, shit,” and realign your understanding silently, than to go in without doing any of the work and waste someone else’s time having to educate you.

If you reply to this in any way that is even slightly confrontational, I'm just going to block you. You aren't worth my time--you weren't worth this time! I have things I am supposed to be doing!--and I genuinely hope you do better in the future.

#I have shit to DO!

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androgynealienfemme · 2 years

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Doctors have denied an American woman on holiday in Malta a potentially life-saving abortion, despite saying her baby had a “zero chance” of survival after she was admitted to hospital with severe bleeding in her 16th week of pregnancy.

Despite an “extreme risk” of haemorrhage and infection, doctors at the Mater Dei hospital in Msida told Andrea Prudente that they would not perform a termination because of the country’s total ban on abortion.

Prudente and her husband are seeking a medical transfer from Malta to the UK, which the couple say is their only option due to the risk to her life. They claim medical staff were uncooperative in their attempts to leave and in sharing medical records with the couple’s insurance company.

“I just want to get out of here alive,” Prudente told the Guardian from her hospital room in Malta’s capital, Valletta. “I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have thought up a nightmare like this.”

Activists in Malta say the case has alarming echoes of the treatment of Savita Halappanavar, who died of sepsis in an Irish hospital in 2012 after doctors refused a request to terminate her pregnancy when she began to miscarry at 17 weeks, due to the abortion ban that was in place in Ireland then.

Malta is the only country in the EU to ban abortion under any circumstances. The only options for those seeking to end a pregnancy on the island nation are to buy illegal abortion medication online or seek a termination overseas.

Prudente, 38, was on holiday with her partner, Jay Weeldreyer, 45, on the island of Gozo on 12 June when she began bleeding heavily in the night.

Doctors in Gozo prescribed her a drug to protect against miscarriage, but two days later when they were back on Malta, the main island, Prudente’s waters broke and she was admitted to St Thomas hospital, where she was told that her placenta had become partially detached.

A follow-up ultrasound 48 hours later found there was no amniotic fluid left in her womb, and the couple were told the baby could not survive. They were also told that because of Malta’s abortion law, there was nothing doctors could do to end the pregnancy as long as the foetus had a heartbeat.

Prudente was transferred to Mater Dei hospital, where she was additionally diagnosed with a ruptured membrane and an umbilical cord that was protruding from her cervix, putting her at even greater risk of haemorrhage and infection. She also tested positive for Covid-19. She is being kept in Covid isolation and receiving antibiotics to ward off infection.

Weeldreyer said medical staff came to check for a foetal heartbeat every day.

“It’s an inconceivable form of emotional and psychological torture,” he said. “Part of me still celebrates hearing the heartbeat … and at the same time, I don’t want that heartbeat there because this is just leading to more suffering for this woman that I love.”

Lara Dimitrijevic, founder of Malta’s Women’s Rights Foundation and the lawyer representing Prudente, said the hospital only provided medical records after she intervened, which has delayed a transfer to the UK.

“It took a day for Andrea to receive her file and we are dealing with an emergency situation,” she said. “Every minute could lend itself to putting Andrea’s life in danger.”

Mater Dei hospital confirmed that it had given Prudente access to her file, but did not comment further on the case.

Prudente said the current advice from Maltese medical staff was for her to leave the hospital and wait at the couple’s hotel for the foetus’s heartbeat to stop or for Prudente to develop an infection, after which they could intervene.

“I feel like I’m being actively traumatised,” she said.

The Women’s Rights Foundation filed a judicial protest last week on behalf of 188 women, claiming the Maltese government’s blanket ban on abortion breached their right to health, privacy and equality. The foundation is now preparing to launch a case challenging the constitutional ban.

Weeldreyer said the couple had no idea that Malta had an abortion ban when they booked the holiday, intended to be a “babymoon”, where they could spend time on a Mediterranean island before the birth of their first child together.

Prudente said she was “desperate” to get off the island and receive appropriate medical care, but also wanted to raise awareness of the situation in Malta to prevent others suffering in the way that she had.

“I don’t want this to happen to more people,” she said.

This is the reality of abortion bans. This is what it leads to. Being asked to wait until you get an infection before you can terminate a dangerous pregnancy.

#pro choice #reproductive rights #feminism #abortion #abortion bans #long post #news #world news

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punisheddonjuan · 2 months

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George Monbiot with a very good primer on the history of the psychologisation of ME/CFS, on the UK side of the Atlantic anyway.

This was a story that found me. In 2021, after writing about long Covid, I was accused by the psychiatrist Prof Michael Sharpe of spreading it. Apparently, you could induce such illnesses by discussing them. Investigating further, I was astonished by the failure in his presentation to support his claim with evidence, and perturbed by his lack of satisfactory answers to my questions. Sharpe takes a similarly “biopsychosocial” approach to ME/CFS, one which at the time of his long Covid presentation still dominated medical practice in the UK.

You can trace the origins of this model to a paper published in 1970. Without assessing a single patient or interviewing a single doctor, it blamed an earlier outbreak of post-viral ME/CFS on “mass hysteria” based on case notes alone. The reasoning included the fact that the outbreak affected more women than men. For centuries, doctors have been readier to classify women’s illnesses as hysterical or psychosomatic than they have men’s. ME/CFS, like long Covid, hits women harder, so, the thinking goes, it must be all in the mind.

Freedom of information requests to the National Archives show how the biopsychosocial model became embedded in research practice and government policy. The minutes of a meeting on government benefits policy in 1993 give a sense of the position of the psychiatrist Simon Wessely at the time. As summarised in the minutes, he told the meeting that ME/CFS is “not a neurological disorder”. He reportedly claimed that apparently severe cases were likely to result from either a “misdiagnosed psychiatric disorder or poor illness management”, while many cases were “iatrogenic”: caused by medical examination or treatment. His views were apparently that “the worst thing to do is to tell them to rest”, “exercise is good for these patients”, “most cases can be expected to improve with time” and, perhaps most shockingly, “benefits can often make patients worse”.

[...]

The believers were championed by the Science Media Centre, of which (now Professor Sir) Simon Wessely was a founder member. Some of the media’s reporting, influenced by the centre, portrayed ME/CFS patients as abusive, threatening, workshy and resistant to treatment.

As the doctrine spread through the medical profession, some practitioners adopted the same attitudes. A paper promoting psychological treatments lamented the “difficult challenge of … managing patients’ resistance to the treatment”, which arose from “lack of acceptance as to the rationale”. Nurses observed that “the patient should be grateful and follow your advice [but] the patient is quite resistant and there is this thing like you know, ‘The bastards don’t want to get better’.”

On the note of the SMC, I got to introduce Monbiot to a baffling statement made by the director of the Science Media Centre, Fiona Fox, which suggested that belief in the Revolutionary Communist Party could successfully inoculate one against ME/CFS.

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softeningthesound · 8 months

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Non-exhaustive list of reasons behind the delay when you go to pick up your meds at the pharmacy, from a pharmacy tech

It's a long one, so there'll be a read more after the first few points and more in a reblog

Tech filled a prescription for an antibiotic, but when it gets to the pharmacist, they actually need to call the doctor and have the script changed because it’s the wrong antibiotic for the infection indicated. Doctor doesn’t answer at first. Pharmacist starts validating a refill but the doctor’s office calls back and the pharmacist has to stop what they were doing.

We haven’t had time to restock the shelves with all the medications that are lying in bins in the back, and we’re out of your medication on the floor so we need to look through the order list, figure out what bin your medication is, and go rummage in the back.

Someone’s calling to get a box of Covid tests, but we have to give them our rehearsed speech on how the handing out of Covid tests in pharmacies is actually now restricted, and has been since May, to certain patients who are unvaccinated and at risk or to patients who are financially in a situation where they can’t afford to buy them, so unfortunately, person on the phone, you’ll have to go to X center or X clinic to get them, where they’re handing them out no questions asked. This call takes three minutes.

We just received a fax for someone who’s just left the hospital and we have to prepare six new medications for them and when we call the patient, they can’t get to the pharmacy on their own and no one can pick up their meds for them, so we have to organize a taxi for that person’s meds. The pharmacist also has to explain all these treatments over the phone and answer any questions the patient may have, which always takes longer than in person.

The pharmacist had to see two other patients for advice on their medications, patients who had ordered in advance but who find out at the register that the pharmacist wants to speak to them or explain this new medication or what have you, so the pharmacist takes the time to see these two patients who did order before you and also want to leave the pharmacy.

The slot for a certain medication in our pill-counting machine is empty, so I have to go fill that.

Someone’s insurance didn’t go through because they have a new card or are with a new company, so they need to go back over to the first counter and have a tech update that in their file and print the new receipt.

We… don’t have a full time cashier, so the technicians need to take turns being at the register.

It’s lunch time and people are on break, which they rightfully deserve, so there’s an employee or two less than there usually is.

You came in at the same time as four other people who also wanted just a single refill, but we still fill them one after the other and can get interrupted by phone calls, by problems at the register, etc.

We need to substitute your dosage, which is back order, for two different dosages that you’ll take at the same time. This takes more time, because we need to copy the prescription and modify it, have the “new” prescription validated by the pharmacist, have the pharmacist, legally, explain the new posology to you even if you were told at the first counter that we were going to have to make that change.

Someone wants advice for a cough syrup, and as a technician, I am not legally allowed to give any recommendations even though I know for a fact that the pharmacist is just going to say that the cough syrups we sell don’t do anything and mostly just have a placebo effect and you should just drink water. The patient has to wait behind people who came in front of them, just so the pharmacist themself can tell them that, because I can’t. It’s frustrating for me too, but I can’t say anything.

We’re behind on preparing the refills that people ordered hours ago because our day has been hectic, so I have to give you a longer wait time so that realistically, we can get some of those filled by a technician and validated by a pharmacist.

Daily patient comes in for their dose of methadone or suboxone to help with an opioid addiction, and the pharmacist has to prepare their medication, too.

This happened recently but uhhh some guy comes in pissing blood out of his arm and we urgently have to help him while we call an ambulance, and a patient comes in thirty minutes later and the blood has been mopped up and there’s no trace that anything happened but I’m at the counter and a little fucking traumatized and this patient wants me to synchronize their medications and I am not mentally processing anything

There are complicated files and prescriptions and types of ways we fill prescriptions (ex: people who get their medications weekly in these little packs sorted by day and time of day and their files are really complicated to navigate and usually taken care of by a specific technician)

Your medication is a special order medication that gets made by another pharmacy and we sent the invoice and everything and are waiting for them to send us the medication but the ball’s in their court and we still haven’t received your meds

Main reasons for delays are just… a lot of calls and lots of people coming in at the same time for refills and questions that require a varying amount of time and effort to fill and answer. People who come in when we just opened usually barely have to wait, but we have rush hours just like every other store and there are five people in front of you waiting for a counsel and/or their meds. Sometimes, a quick little refill that took the tech literally thirty seconds to fill is immediately noticed by the pharmacist and gets validated right away ahead of the more complicated cases and sent to the register, but sometimes it sits on the counter for a while because the pharmacist is resolving a difficult situation, or showing someone how to inject their insulin, or explaining side effects to someone, or in a consult to prescribe the morning-after pill and has lots of questions to ask the patient.

Sometimes, we have patients who are very mean and rude and short with us. They are often in pain, or have been slighted by the medical system, or have had bad experiences at the hospital or the pharmacy before, and they take a lot of time to talk to and try to reason with. During this time, your request, or even refilled medication, sits on the counter in a little basket waiting to be validated.

More in reblog

#pharmacy #medication #medications #meds #pharmacy tech #pharmacist #medical information

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spencerrscardigans · 16 days

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Doctors often tell patients, often chronically ill patients to stay off the social media that talks about their illnesses and to not look stuff up, and i can understand why this may be problematic but they also aren’t taking into consideration the positives and good things that can also occur from this.

POTS and other chronic illnesses are having a higher social media presence, and because of this it’s created quite a big stigma surrounding it, and people often think that these illnesses are just becoming a trend, but they don’t understand how helpful the representation is for so many people.

I do often see people in the comment section of these videos who will have one or two traits and immediately panic thinking they have these things and i can understand how that part isn’t great, but in some cases it actually is these posts online that help people get diagnoses and learn more about themselves.

I would not have been diagnosed with POTS and getting treatment if it weren’t for social media, and my doctors don’t know much about POTS so most of the tips and advice and treatment methods that i’ve found have been from social media, and i would not be where i am without it.

I struggled with dysautonomia for my entire life, and it had been established by my one doctor who actually knew about these conditions but he retired and the new doctors i was switched too don’t know much about my health conditions, so getting diagnoses and treatment has been a very slow process.

My dysautonomia is believed to have turned into POTS in early 2021 when i was 14 after i got covid, and for over a year i was struggling with debilitating symptoms and had no idea why. I was just starting high school, and i was getting sicker and sicker and it was causing quite the divide socially.

I had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and because of it i had already been limited in my physical activity, so i was just told that my POTS symptoms were because i was out of shape.

I tried to push myself to fix this, which only ended up making me feel worse. Sometime along the road of me trying to get more active, i got a fitbit.

I started using my watch to monitor my steps and sleep, and i noticed that my heart rate would shoot up to the 150s-170s when i was simply standing still, so i sat down, and my heart rate immediately dropped to the low 100s.

I thought that this may be a glitch with my watch, but was still concerned as i was aware that my heart rate should not get that high from just standing still, so i started googling. As a result of my search, the name Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome came up. I did some reading, and noticed that a lot of the signs were pointing to me, especially with the already established dysautonomia.

I had already dealt with a lot of doctors telling me that i was just paranoid and a hypochondriac, and i knew that watches sometimes glitched or didn’t work correctly, so i went to my pharmacy and got a pulse ox, and did the same standing test and it did the exact same thing as my watch.

I took pictures of my heart rate and started recording it on the charts that my watch had, and brought it to my next doctors appointment, explained my symptoms and then mentioned that i had heard of the condition POTS, and that it seemed pretty similar to what i was going through. My doctor had my do a short standing test in the office, and i had a 70bpm increase in my heart rate.

My doctor agreed that it definitely looked like POTS and she said that i met the criteria for a diagnosis, but she said she didn’t know very much about the condition and had only briefly heard about it, so she referred me to a cardiologist in another city as that was the closest specialist to me, but they denied the referral and said that they weren’t taking patients with POTS, and they gave her a information sheet and gave her some tests to do to rule out anything else.

The tests came back, and again it all pointed to POTS, but my doctor was scarcely familiar with the condition, and wasn’t comfortable giving me an official diagnosis, so she gave me an informal diagnosis. When it came to treatments, she also wasn’t familiar with anything besides telling me to drink more water, exercise, and increase my sodium intake, and the only medication she was familiar to treat it with was propranolol, so she prescribed that, but it unfortunately didn’t help much, so i wasn’t left with much help or advice.

The things my doctor recommended weren’t enough, and because i didn’t have an official diagnosis or really any information at all from my doctors it was hard to get accommodations with school, and i wasn’t sure what else to do, so i did what doctors recommend against and went to google and social media.

It was then where i found so many people like me who i could finally relate to, and found so much information about my condition and tips and tricks to help manage it.

Because i finally knew more about how to manage my POTS, i started trying out more things and in the last year i have learnt more than i had in years of going to doctors, and i also finally had a community where i felt less alone.

I was able to advocate for myself, and two years later, this february i finally got in to see a cardiologist and now have a proper diagnosis, and he was able to provide some more insight and treatment options for me and i’m finally starting to notice some improvement and have a hopeful plan for the future.

In cases like these, social media representation of chronic illnesses is not always bad, and can in my opinion, actually save lives. If i had not had access to these communities and help, i genuinely can say that i would not be where i am at today, and i am forever grateful for the communities that have been created.

#chronic illness #chronically ill #pots #pots syndrome #postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome #fibromyalgia #ehlers danlos syndrome #hypermobile ehlers danlos #heds #social media #representation #rant post #awareness #chronic pain

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scarletspider-lily · 4 months

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this is going to be a pretty long rant.

so my family is church of Christ (so like, babtist lite). I am a closeted agnostic. unfortunately, it's getting pretty obvious because my younger sister got babtized a few years ago, and I still haven't. I basically told my mom that since covid I've been disassociating, and can't "feel god".

she has freaked out and is using every chance to push religion on me. it's getting rough. what makes it worse is that our church hasn't had a permanent preacher since April. there's also this guy named C. C's family is very entrenched in our church. C has been both song leader and college group leader (our church is very close with a local college) for several years. C's sons run AV and events. C's dad was a preacher, and is now an elder. now, C wants to be preacher.

my mom is starting to think C is subconciously hungry for power in the church and is considering moving to a different church. however, she hates all the other surrounding churches of Christ. so she told me that we'd visit around and find whatever church helped me "feel god" best.

now I could totally reinvent myself at a new church, get babtized just to please her, and all would be well. except she wants me to do Bible studies on her Bible app and do family devotionals and watch her terrible preachy Zionist leaning YouTube channels. I'm exhausted. no matter what I do she'll keep badgering me because she believes it's her duty to make sure I get to heaven. I can't even ignore her, recently we went on a road trip and she got started on the topic again, and because I refused to talk to her about it, she pulled the car over and wouldn't move again until I talked. she begged me, said that the silent treatment was worse than anything I could throw at her, but I know how terrible my life will be if she finds out the truth. on top of that, I'm gay and hiding the fact that I'm dating one of my best friends.

she's even trying to find a church for me in a different city for when I move away for college. at least I only have 8 more months in this house.

my 18th birthday is in a few days, but I know that me being an adult won't change things. she's the parent, so she has the power. she'll never be happy until I'm under her control.

I know you probably don't have any advice, I just had to say it somewhere. I'm so tired.

hey, sorry for seeing this so late. to be honest, i dont have advice but i hope your situation improves, i can relate to some of it, like the finding a church when you move for college thing. once again i'm sorry for the late reply but i hope you know that youre in my thoughts, and i sincerely wish everything goes well and yeah, being 18 but still under your parents is rough, but not uncommon. it is good you're moving out though, i hope you can somehow find a way to lie that you're attending church or something, or just attend a few services- either way i hope it will be better than you staying at home now!

#asks #exvangelical

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transmutationisms · 6 months

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i am not asking advice i am just complaining so feel free to delete or whatever. but caden i went off ssris a couple years ago after half a lifetime on em, and am planning to wean off a predictably useless anxiolytic soon (still taking an antidepressant for sleep and stimmies for fun and profit), only to find out the first line treatments for my pain disorder are. SNRIs and tricyclics. im so mad about this. they don't even work for that many people lol there's just not much else. pain n suffring

this is like when they put me on a tricyclic for jaw pain lmao it's literally so annoying. it didn't even do jack. and like 75% of the time the reason antidepressants are even recommended in the first place is because the manufacturers will just do clinical trials for like any named condition that insurance companies will cover and if they can get a few positive results then bam, drug market expanded. i read they literally just did one of those with ssri's for long covid it's so dogshit out here

#godspeed to you xx

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flyonthewallmedstudent · 2 years

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What working is like during a pandemic 3 years on.

It still sucks. Less scary, but still scary.

I work a variety of as-needed-roles now as a hospitalist or physician. Sometimes I'm still a physician. Other times it's a COVID physician. In hospital. Or in out patients, which is a mix of telehealth, phone or in person. Just depends on the needs of the community at the time.

With how overloaded the system is (remember it was set up for non-pandemic times, we now have to have extra beds for COVID all the time), even when I'm not delegated the task of seeing COVID patients my main job seems to be getting patients out of the ED as fast as possible. For the sake of everybody essentially.

I'm not sure how many patients realize that when they show up to hospital, there's now a good chance they're exposing themselves to the COVID population we have (some mask up, some don't, of course we offer masks when they get to triage, but if you have delirious patients it's nigh impossible to mask in the halls while you wheel them to isolation).

It's not terribly difficult to treat COVID - it's the same set of widely accepted treatments now. We add to it as new ones get approved. It's just a struggle when despite all we do, patients still deteriorate. This is, however, a minority of cases - usually the immunosuppressed or the unvaccinated. i.e. lacking as sufficient immune system to fight off the virus even with the best medications on board.

You'll often hear doctors throw around that CT or CAT scans of the chest will resemble what looks like poured concrete in the lungs. And it's accurate, this is why patients struggle to breath or get oxygen in. All the inflammation and debris from the virus or from fighting the virus fills the lungs like concrete.

Air is black on the CT scans, white is bad. white means there's no space for oxygen to diffuse into tissues.

Image Source: ABC News

Once it gets this far, it takes weeks to months for our bodies to clear away the debris. It's a lot of long term rehabilitation, whether in hospital or in outpatients with occupational therapy, physiotherapy etc. Time off work. Breathing takes work, breathing is exhausting. So you re-learn how to breath with compromised lungs as they heal. You re-learn how to do simple tasks like shopping, showering, while you have long term breathing difficulties. It's like seeing the 20-30 years of smoking damage to the lungs occur in a few days.

Then I go from work to the community in which I live. There's no mask mandate so maybe 50% of the people around me mask up - voluntarily. It's a strange dichotomy. But it's started to feel more normal.

In outpatients I see a lot of long COVID, just in general in outpatients-anything-now. Just simply refers to persisting symptoms of COVID long past the initial infection, by weeks to months. Sometimes 1-2 years, since whenever the first outbreak occurred.

The previously young and healthy are suddenly feeling breathless and helpless as a result. I feel terrible, to have to suddenly welcome them into the fold of chronic illness and it's ability to destabilize everything they know. Many never had to go to hospital, they just had mild symptoms, that got worse or never went away. I spend a lot of time confirming what they have is long COVID and acknowledging it's existence, and that they're not alone. many are millenlials who've already joined online forums or googled it to death. They don't approach conversations as know-it-alls, on the contrary, you get a frank discussion.

I would, however, emphasize using reputable resources, like local government health websites catering the general public or other institution backed articles. For instance, Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins. It's okay to be critical or skeptical of the information out there, but be sensible about it. Filter through the noise to the expert advice. The Curbsiders has a great podcast on LongCOVID and what dedicated outpatient LongCOVID clinics are like. Mainly rehabilitation focused.

It's a tough one, outpatient clinics. most will have not actually been to hospital, rather have been referred by the ED or their local PCP. Tough in the sense of the confusion they have - they haven't been to hospital. They had it mild. And yet they're still unwell while the rest of the world moves on without them. The rest of their family may have recovered. But they haven't. Many are in their peak of their careers, work lives or personal lives (young parents with young kids). And now they have to slow down as if they're already past prime. Most of the time it is temporary. If not unusual. I mean, you don't see this with the flu or common cold.

#covid #medblrs #medblr

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flower-biter · 3 months

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29 January - 4 February

Got cross-trained on a different system at work (yay knowledge) but the processes in place are not the most efficient (reader, they suck). We have related programs that work so smoothly and are basically the same thing a little to the left. Why, oh why, can’t we implement those tweaks here?

Made myself go to the doctor for the first time in like. Five years. Finally got this season’s COVID booster (have had such a hard time with the pharmacies around here and finally this clinic had it). I even scheduled my follow up appointments. I haaaate the meatsuit-maintenance aspect of ~self care~ (do not perceive me!) even though I know it’s necessary.

I’ve gotten really bad about starting books very enthusiastically and then just…not finishing them. I started three books this week and finished none of them (I did read several short stories for that ghost stories class, though!)

My coworker’s 14-year-old daughter recently came out as a lesbian and my coworker is frequently asking me for advice on how to relate to her, and is always excited to share with me all the cute stuff her daughter and her girlfriend are up to - this weekend it was a painting-each-other date and picnic, which, aw. The kids are all right and my heart is full.

I started my next crochet project, a simple baby blanket for my sister (we all have our suspicions, but if not, well, the blanket can wait). I did the first dozen rows and ow, my hands. But the yarn is so so soft and such a pretty shade of green, and I love the rhythm of it while I let my brain just zone out.

It’s been cooler this week but we got lots of sunshine. The local coffee shop a few blocks down from my office released their February specials, and while I’m not normally into their funky flavor combos (they’re usually way too sweet) they do have a rose-vanilla latte that might be my new favorite. The coziness of winter with the floral promise of spring.

I went for dinner with a close friend that I hadn’t seen in a few months, and while we were catching up he told me he had been diagnosed with and started radiation treatment for bone cancer. I didn’t know what to say. All I know how to do is help with cooking and household stuff and just hang out, and trust that if he needs more he’ll tell me. He’s estranged from his family and has just a few close friends, and while I respect his reservations, I worry that he’ll suffer more than he needs to, that he won’t let the people who do care about him do more for him. But so far his prognosis is good, so we’re hoping to have a really enthusiastic celebration for his 30th birthday (and hopefully remission? Please?) in June.

Hello, February. Please be kinder.

last week

#catalog of little joys #and little heartbreaks but I'm trying not to dwell on those #my city is ugly but i do love golden hour light & shadows #butterball may look exceptionally grumpy but it's just because I was taking too long to admire him waiting to greet me #and he wanted me to be petting and feeding him #not looking at him #i do have to keep him away from the yarn because he will eat it and then be sick #adorable idiot #i told my friend if he has to do chemo too and loses his hair i'll shave my head with him #he's more vain about his hair than I am about mine so idk what comfort that'd be but he laughed so I count it as a little win #ah well. chugging along.

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