#it sure is fun to have gastric problems + not being able to eat

[darkredmage]

Hhhhhhhhhhh

#vent #cancer mention #thats right its one of those vent posts where i add important tags so tumblr sees them and the blacklisting work #anyways #fuck i hate this shit #it sure is fun to have gastric problems + not being able to eat #and it sure sucks how constant gastric problem can cause stomach cancer #at this point i wouldn't even be surprised if i ended up getting one #im at risk of getting it #so surely i wpuldnt get in trouble for eating right? #WRONG #IM NOT FUCKING ALLOWED TO EAT #i had free time and i was going to eat #BUT NO I ACTUALLY CANT BECAUSE WHEN I TRIED TO MY MOM GOT FUCKING MAD AT ME FOR TRYING TO EAT BEFORE CLASS #HONESTLY JUST IN GENERAL WHY AM I ONLY ALLOWED TO EAT WHEN MY MOM DECIDES TO #NO MATTER HOW MANY FUCKING TIME I TRY TO TELL HER IM OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW WHEN I SHOULD EAT #I STILL FUCKING CANT #EVEN WHEN THE FUCKING DOCTORS SAID SO

[lnsfawwi]

what if Hotch had eating disorder

It's canon that Hotch never eats much during cases so I take it a step further...also I always think Aaron has chronic depression, so here's that too.

He has had it since he was a child. At the time it's about control. His parents used to not let him eat as punishment, so Aaron started to purposefully starve himself as a form of rebellion.

It got much worse since he hit puberty. School was bearable at best, and his depression had got more pronounced. He was skinny and awkward, some people picked on him only to left him alone eventually cuz he never fought back, never begged. He was no fun.

He’s terrible in class and it got him in trouble even more at home. He used to come home with bruises only to come back to school with more.

The image of people eating made him feel sick so he was rarely in the cafeteria. But sometimes, students found him sitting there devouring food that's enough to feed 5 people. They never thought much about it, and Aaron never let them saw him throw everything up in the bathroom not 20 minutes later.

As a result, not only was he physically small and skinny, he also had serious health problems. He’s been sent to the ER multiple times for gastric bleeding, gastric perforation etc. He also past out a lot bc of low blood sugar.

Ever since he met Haley, his father died, and he moved out of home for college, things had gotten a lot better. It’s like he was suddenly cured, he was able to eat like a normal person most of the time. He started to gain weight, he grew 6 inches his freshman year, the growth pain was as terrible as it was welcomed.

He was mostly “normal” until his final days at the prosecutor's office. He felt powerless again so the disorder came back like an inspiring cheerleader from hell. He thought it's going to get better once he joined the FBI, but he was wrong.

SWAT and Seattle were not nearly as demanding as the BAU. The stress, long hours, and being away from his primary source of comfort—Haley—were too much. He tried to hide it from his teammates but Dave and Jason found out. They forced him to go to therapy, they were always mindful of what he ate (or if he ate at all), if he followed the nutrionist's receipts. Haley was aware of his condition but didn't know how bad it actually was, Dave and Jason made sure Haley was fully briefed on Aaron's situation, educated on this particular disorder, and part of the effort to help Aaron.

And it worked, Aaron was healthy, albeit slightly on the side of skinny for a guy his size, he wore suits one size too large for him to make him look bigger than he actually was, but he was healthy. Even after he and Haley had separated and eventually divorced, Haley was always there for him whenever he needed, Dave's return was a huge help as well.

And then Foyet happened.

At first he hid it. The team was always too busy, he played that to his advantage. He would pretend to have an urgent phone call or volunteer to go to the ME or something while others ate, he always ate a lot at post case dinners which he threw up the moment he got back home.

Of course they noticed he's loosing weight, but they chalked it up to just being attacked at his home by a serial killer who's after his wife and son. Who wouldn't lose a few pounds under the circumstance?

It got really really really bad after Haley's death.

He couldn't eat, not at all. Seeing Jack and Jessica sharing a meal made him sick, he couldn't even so much as looking at food without wanting to throw up.

He didn't deserve to eat.

But he had to for Jack's sake. Jack had already been through too much, he didn't deserve a suicidal & dysfunctional father. So he forced himself to eat, Jessica had to physically stop him on more than one occasion.

Jessica knew his problem, she learned everything she needed to from Haley, but she's not a professional there's only so much she could do. So she reached out to Dave.

Dave knew Aaron wouldn't want the team to know, so he hired someone to come to Aaron's place once a week to help him. Aaron opposed the idea ferociously, insisting that he could manage it himself, but Dave knew better. He didn't listen to Aaron's argument, he just did it, told Jack the nice new lady was assigned to daddy by the bureau, because adults needed help too when they were really sad.

He probably lied to the bureau's psychologist to get back to the field, Dave didn't care about that, he only cared about his wellbeing. Dave kept an eye out for Hotch, made sure he ate properly, went to his psychiatrist as scheduled etc.

The team was curious, Dave's attention seemed a little excessive even considering the circumstances. To which he only replied with a shrug, “I'm merely being a good friend. Maybe you all can learn something from me.”

#aaron hotchner #criminal minds #Dave is a good bro

[my-wayward-son]

And the story goes...

On and on and on and oh... (Thirty Seconds to Mars, Do or Die)

So.  Still waiting on the insurance to approve the visit to the specialty clinic for gastroparesis.  They claim to have up to 30 days to look at the PA before taking action, which is fucking nuts, but policy is policy and there’s nothing I can do about it.  But as soon as they approve it, I can make my appointment, and then DD and I are scheduling a road trip.  The clinic is still open, despite the coronavirus closures all around us, so we’ll be making the trip regardless.  We’ll be pretty safe taking a personal vehicle to a gastric hospital, I think, so no need to worry about us there.  And who knows how far in the future that’ll be, anyway.  The big danger might’ve passed by then (fingers crossed).  

In the meantime, I’ve run into a new problem that I’m embarrassed to tell you about, but I’m being blatantly honest on this blog, and it has kind of a funny transguy connection, so I’ll jump into it anyway.  

Neurogenic bladder.  Not sure if it’s related to my hysterectomy, or if it’s more related to the paralysis of my colon, but it’s happening.  I’m not going to explain it; google it if you’re interested in the minutiae.  Otherwise, you can probably guess what the issue is.  But, fun fact, this brand of men’s incontinence underwear gives a nice bulge in front if you’re ok with briefs and hate packing as much as I do.  It also does its job decently for whatever anatomy you happen to have, should you need such a thing. 

I also just started taking accutane, for I have pretty severe acne on my back and shoulders.  You wouldn’t know just from looking at a picture of me; my face is pretty clear (though slightly ruddy).  I’m trying to follow my dermatologist’s advice and slather on lotion to avoid the associated dryness.  I haven’t seen much of a result yet, though I’ve only been on for about a week.  One interesting thing is that I’m supposed to take the pills with food, and I’m on J feeds.  So I’ve been eating a tiny bit of broth or jello or something I can tolerate (clear liquids, mostly) with the capsules (which have to be taken by mouth).  I’ve been having slight stomach pain, but according to the derm, that’s a common side effect that should clear up within the next week or so.  I really hope it’s not associated with my gastroparesis, because I really need to be on the accutane to cure the acne and get rid of the possible source of infection on my body.  (Having any kind of wound on the body is really bad news if you’re in the hospital, for it’s very easy to pick up a secondary infection.  With my condition, it’s likely I’ll be in hospital again in the future, who knows how many times.)

That’s just about all I have to report, as far as the medical.  As far as the transition goes, I’m listening to Jim Carey and trying to grow my beard during the coronavirus quarantine.  I don’t have a ton of facial hair, but I’ve pledged not going to shave until the “healthy at home” initiative is lifted.  I’m trying to be more diligent about my shot (doing it at the same time and on the same day every week) in order to help with the growing of the facial hair.  I’m hopeful that with the increased nutrition from the NJ that I’ll be able to put some energy forth to stuff like that, and not just the basics of keeping my heart beating.

I’m also trying to get outside more and soak up a little spring sunshine (and give my eyeware wardrobe a little workout--gotta love my sunglasses).  Feel free to check out my instagram @llcupp01 to see plenty of pictures of me in my sunnies, plus pics of my art, my tiny cups of tea, etc.  I’m trying to be happy, I suppose.  I don’t know if I’m necessarily winning at that, but I’m not losing.  Not by a long shot.

#gastroparesis #hospital #health #quarantine #transition #ftm

[placesthatchangedpeople]

A former resident about Eating Recovery Center

Hi! I'm new here. I've procrastinated for ages wrt joining reddit because I generally don't like it very much, but some communities speak to me. This is one of them.

The place I was sent to wasn't as bad as some of what I see here, I think because it was (purportedly) single-issue, rather than "treating" all kinds of teen trouble. They were hand in hand with wilderness camps and boarding schools, though. Their marketing directors - the people who gussy up the website and advertise their 97% parent satisfaction rate - were trained by, and have past experience at, CRC Health. They run Aspen education programs, and a whole bunch of other ones. They regularly sent kids off to wilderness camps or schools after they finished with ERC. It was like the "next step".

The place that I was was called Eating Recovery Center (ERC) and it's located in Denver, CO, although they have off-shoot locations in Texas, California, and more. They do have an adult treatment center as well, but I believe it is less abusive.

The child and adolescent inpatient and residential facility is awful, but incredibly popular. They've spread to something like ten states, luring families in with their garbage website. The whole thing is written like "Parents, you're so stressed, and it's because your child is a Gigantic Problem. We know how hard it is to have horrible kids. Please, send them to us, and we'll rehabilitate them while you get to relax and connect with the fun parts of life, which you haven't been able to do with your lil problem child over here." It's marketing genius. Whenever a kid says "hey, this is abusive", not only do they say that the kid is a dirty liar who just wants to leave, they actually say that this is proof that it's working. Like, "Your child has been taken prisoner by their Evil Disorder. As we cure your child from the Disorder, the Disorder gets scared and lashes out. Your true child is waiting underneath, and they're very excited to be healing. The more that your child fights our program, the closer to recovery they are. Claiming that we are abusive is, in fact, a sign of recovery." That's a summary, but you get the gist. It's like a god damned exorcism.

I was a patient there in 2013, in September. I wasn't there for long, because I made a fuss about their abuse, and I was 18 and they knew they couldn't fully shut me up, so they transferred me to a lower level of care. They did, however, convince my parents (who, to their credit, were just desperate and didn't want me to die; they've since acknowledged that they fucked up) that if I signed myself out of treatment, I should not be allowed home, and should be left to live on the street. The idea, I think, was that this would "shock" me into getting better. Yet they (the RTC staff) also told me that they didn't care if I was any better when I left so long as I followed their rules in the meantime. But, details. So.

They were emotionally and psychologically abusive, as well as neglectful and I'd say perhaps physically. Psychiatrically, too. The shittiest thing they did, in my opinion, was lock my twelve year old friend in isolation for 14 hours as punishment for exercising (I do not know how much she'd been exercising, but since this place considers standing up from a seated position to be 'excessive movement', it was probably nothing - standing up without permission was considered an infraction). She wasn't allowed so much as access to a bathroom, and wound up defecating on herself. Staff didn't see this as a problem. They told her it was her fault, and that she needed to make better choices.

The threat of isolation as a punishment for ignoring behavior warnings (three "redirections" and you're punished) was always there, and this room was called the "quiet room", if I remember correctly. During my stay there, there was one patient who was eleven years old and had some sort of developmental disability, and they kept him in isolation for what I think was days. I remember that he regularly wound up in there and that we could often hear him crying and screaming. How therapeutic /s

Patients were given NG (nasal gastric) tubes if they refused a meal. I had an NG tube put in, which didn't bother me very much, but it made my nose run like no other and made it really hard to swallow solid food. It wouldn't stop dripping during nighttime snack, but we weren't allowed Kleenex or napkins. I asked a staff member for a napkin due to literally not being able to stop the deluge of snot from my nostrils, right, and she kept refusing and said she wouldn't help me until I finished my snack. I kept asking and eventually, she gave me a really bitchy look and threw the napkins at my face. This isn't particularly abusive, I think, because napkins don't hurt, but that's just not the kind of behavior that should be shown by somebody working in a treatment facility. The staff would regularly scream at kids who didn't finish snacks or meals.

I, along with several of the kids, regularly didn't finish meals. And by regularly, I mean over the course of my first day or two, so not much of a precident, imo. This issue was brought up after dinner, when the group gathered for a post-meal check-in. Patients were encouraged to name the patients who were not finishing meals, explain how said patient was bothersome to them, and then the staff would shame the patients who were named, and ask the other patients to help come up with an appropriate "response" (punishment). The staff decided that we should be made to sit at a separate table, in a separate room, during meal times, and not be permitted to speak to each other, nor communicate in any other way. If we made prolonged eye contact or started giggling, we were reprimanded. Talking at meal times was one of the ways that patients coped with having to eat large meals, and it kept morale up, and they took it away as a punishment. It certainly doesn't make anyone eat better. When we had downtime, we were closely monitored so that we never discussed our grievances re: the program, with each other. We managed to anyway, by whispering and speaking as quickly as possible, by writing notes which we then had to dispose of (since they went through all of our belongings and journals, and withheld these things whenever they arbitrarily deemed them inappropriate - my journal was confiscated because I wasn't displaying the proper mindset). But staff were always looming, and it was stressful.

I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure that I wasn't allowed contact with my parents for the first three days of my stay. I could be conflating it with some other hospital or center, but I don't think so. All parents of patients were encouraged to stay in the Denver area for as long as possible, and my parents rented a condo (while also forking out some $30,000 per month) and came in for family therapy a couple of times a week. Family therapy consisted of my "therapist" (she was licensed, but I've no clue how) encouraging my parents to complain about me, and when I said that I didn't like something my parents had done, she just said, "well, I don't think they're doing that. That's not what I see at all. Maybe you should change your behavior/perception/etc." She gave me these ridiculous assignments a few times each week, and I never completed them, because they were stupid and I was on Mission: Get Myself Kicked Out of Here, but I found the way she handled this to be a red flag. She was /so/ disappointed that I hadn't done the assignments, and looked at me all sad, and said "[name], that hurts me. It hurts me when you ignore these things that I've worked so hard on for you. I want to help you. This is hurtful, can you see that?" The fact that she was so manipulative without a single qualm really worries me, because the majority of the patients were younger and less defiant than I was, and bought into all of the brainwashing and manipulation that these people touted.

The majority of them came from abusive homes, but the RTC's whole philosophy is that mental illness treatment has been centered on parental flaws for too long, that parents are perfect, and that kids are bitchy little problems for no good reason. This is a tempting philosophy both for parents like mine who aren't abusive and don't want to be told that they are, and for abusive parents who want to be validated and excused.

Everyone there was deprived of sleep (I used to fall asleep on the concrete floors), water (only one cup with meals), and the right to use the bathroom when we needed to. Staff actually bragged about having had patients pee on the floor before, like this was some kind of accomplishment, not letting children pee.

The psychiatrists would keep children on medications that the children complained about, things that didn't help, and I was personally fine with my meds but I had friends who were being kept on awful medications. They eventually just started doing that thing where they move the pills to that little pocket between their teeth and cheek, swallow the water, pass the "swallowed pills" check, and then spit them out.

Somehow, at one point, the staff got it into their heads that I wasn't changing my underwear every day. I have no clue how this happened, but they implemented a policy where I had to show them my clothes each day so that they could "make sure" I was changing all of them. Like, what? That doesn't even make sense to me, because wtf, but it was just really degrading. This might be slightly TMI, but when I was on my period (and I have endometriosis, so it's really heavy and makes me nearly pass out/vomit when I'm not on 'round the clock birth control), they still wouldn't let me use the bathroom except on Their Schedule. I had to beg to be allowed to use it, and they got so mad at me. Like, sorry? I can't actually do anything about this?? That was really degrading too. As if I wanted to tell a whole bunch of hostile, abusive near-strangers that I'd bled through my clothes again, damn.

I don't remember ever having a phone call. I saw my parents on weekends for an hour, but there wasn't much communication. When they kicked me out of residential and put me in partial hospitalization (a ten-hour-a-day every day outpatient program in a nearby building, also run by them - it was a "step down" thing), they told my parents to never let me have my cell phone for longer than thirty minutes, and to watch me (and its screen) the entire time I had it. To go through all of my electronics and journals to make sure I was Doing It Right. They told my parents that withholding everything I enjoy until I recovered was completely reasonable, and that it was okay (even good) to kick me out on to the street if I was noncompliant. Hilariously, I'd nearly been sold into sex trafficking not two months before I went to ERC, when I was 17, and I'm like, y'all, if you'd kicked me out I'm absolutely sure I would have been trafficked for real. Like, damn, talk about a bad idea. The whole reason I developed the eating disorder, self harm, suicidal behavior etc was because I was sexually abused as a kid, but we weren't ever allowed to discuss anything of any real import in therapy groups, and anyway, I was just A Problem Child, not traumatized /s

To this day, I still can't handle the word "manipulative". I use it very occasionally myself, but for the most part, seeing it used to describe anyone just makes me bristle. Even genuinely manipulative people. I just can't handle it. I was branded as manipulative so many times just for hurting and wanting real help.

I know that most other patients there went through worse things than I did, but I don't know the extent at all. It seemed like the younger the kid, the worse the abuse. Some of the young kids were able to quickly adapt and become The Perfect Patient, but those who didn't, got it bad.

I'm glad that I was relatively lucky (a three month stay, a somewhat less abusive center, being older). But all of these places just piss me off so much. The general public knows nothing about it. I've lurked on this subreddit before and finally decided to bite the bullet and post on it. I know my RTC experience wasn't anywhere close to as bad as it gets, but it still screwed me up for a long time. Luckily, I'm 100% mentally healthy and happy these days, but it took a lot of work and was only ever made worse by ERC and abusive therapists like them.

#Colorado #Eating disorder

[dhominis]

Complaining about me having Food Issues. This is vaguely whiny and has way too many details and wow I’m gonna regret posting it!

Also, caveat: this is a vent post, but pretty much everything in my life is amazingly good right now and I am so lucky. Not representative of my broader brainstate.

Advice welcomed. “This part sounds stupid and distorted-thinking-y” especially welcomed.

CW: If there’s anything health or food/weight-related you want to avoid you should probably not open the readmore; the post consists mostly of detailed discussion of Things That Look Like An Eating Disorder.

The last half of 2018 was bad for me; it culminated in me dropping out of college and finally moving away from my parents (like, half a continent away), and things are weirdly better now. I am happy and healthy-adjacent and resolving Personal Problems that have been insoluble for most of my life.

(The home environment was not conducive to proper emotional development.)

Almost every part of it has been strangely easy. Getting an apartment, getting a job, managing money, catching up on the Normal Young Adult social skills. It feels like I’ve just got more cognitive resources to devote to life, now.

...The only thing that hasn’t become easy is food.

I don’t get hungry often enough, and when I do experience hunger, it doesn’t motivate me to eat (I’ve been describing this as essentially pain asymbolia but for hunger). I also just don’t enjoy eating -- intellectually I can recognize when food tastes good, but it’s still unpleasant to eat it. (Not an anhedonia thing! Other pleasant stimuli are far more enjoyable than they were a few months ago and life is amazing.)

There also are a lot of gastrointestinal symptoms -- nausea and pain, et cetera. They have been present at a low level for a while but worsen when I don’t maintain a relatively stable caloric intake. (I can’t eat because I am in pain! I am justified in not eating! Never mind that eating causes significant pain specifically because I haven’t eaten in a few days.)

Inflammatory and celiac markers are normal, IBS could explain part of it but not really the upper GI tract symptoms. It is maybe plausible that this is an autonomic thing? I already have a lot of autonomic dysfunction things and sometimes people with my connective tissue problems have weird gut motility. (Incomplete listing of symptoms I get that are plausibly gut-dysmotility-related: passive regurgitation and GERD and cramping and diarrhea and upper GI pain and vomiting and postprandial nausea/fullness and occasional difficulty swallowing and other things I am forgetting about right now.)

It also is plausible that at least some of this is psychosomatic -- stress sometimes seems to make it worse -- but the broader cluster hasn’t always coincided with periods of emotional stress. The first time the symptoms interfered with my ability to eat was during one of the happiest and most low-stress parts of my life, and it definitely preceded the Food Doesn’t Feel Good problem. (And autonomic dysfunction worsens with stress too.) Although it maybe helped condition me not to want to eat, since eating causes a grab-bag of annoying symptoms.

(the most accurate diagnosis probably is “neurotic-intellectual with-ill-defined-GI-problems syndrome”)

Having food in my stomach feels bad and wrong in a way that is not about the physical pain. (Meal replacement shakes and protein powders mostly fix this but are not financially feasible, are often incredibly low-calorie, and also if I’m mostly doing liquid calories I get worse physical symptoms when I do solid food.)

The maladaptive food behaviors have been present on and off for most of my life, and the GI symptoms have been a thing since like... early 2018?, but last semester was the first time I’d consistently gone for months with an energy deficit; I’ve had a lifelong tendency to not do well with eating but never to this extent. But this was -- there were some weeks when I ate maybe four meals, some two- or three-day periods when I didn’t eat.

Predictably I lost weight. (Weight loss is not good! I like having energy stores and muscle mass and also being able to sit on the floor without my ass hurting.) I lost enough weight that my doctor got really worried; I was not overweight and am edging down towards the lower end of the reasonable range. She was definitely worried in the context of physical symptoms, but I suspect that if I had presented the cause of the weight loss slightly differently, she would have been worried about the psych component. It’s stupid too. I do not want to lose weight! I want to have enough energy to do shit without dipping into fat stores!

Also last semester: vomiting. The postprandial nausea occasionally has been bad enough that it makes me vomit. (I have a supply of ondansetron and this is no longer an issue.) More frequently the postprandial nausea is bad enough that I can’t tolerate it, it’s a constant reminder that there is food where it should not be, and I induce vomiting. I haven’t done this since I moved out, but I have really really wanted to. Ondansetron helps here too but not completely. Or I don’t have nausea, but there is food in my stomach and this feels really unpleasant and, well, there’s one thing that’ll fix it right away (plus give me a nice adrenaline rush).

Solutions: ondansetron; don’t go to the bathroom for a while after I eat; if eating at home, try to do meals when my roommates are home so I can’t vomit because they’d hear it; distract myself until I don’t feel horribly full.

(Which takes a while, sometimes. Maybe too long. I have vomited basically undigested food a few hours after a meal. Not sure whether that’s abnormal, and if it is it’s really plausible that I did this to myself by not eating enough. Gastric emptying is not my strong suit?)

...Going days without eating because I just don’t want to. Weight loss. Defective hunger response. Being exhausted and not having the energy to eat. Hiding this from people, too; I had told people about the physical symptoms but not the fundamental aversion to eating, not the going days without eating. Conscious displays: mixing coconut cream into tea, here, I am eating, this is eating, I am making an effort, it is not my fault. And a refusal to reduce physical activity. I generally ate only dinner, if that, but still spent my breaks between classes pacing around campus. Even though I knew I shouldn’t. (Sometimes I justified this as an attempt to maintain muscle mass. That is patently stupid and honestly I could have just done some squats if that was my real goal. I didn’t have a real goal. The closest thing I had to a goal was -- keep moving.)

This guide from a SSC reader convinced me to treat my eating problems like a thing that is actually bad, not like “oh my stomach hurts if I eat so I’ll just not do that.” (Also took it more seriously after I started having difficulty resisting the urge to vomit.) But, uh. It’s scarily familiar. I am trying really hard to eat enough.

I’d hoped that getting out of the supremely stressful situation would help with the eating problems. To some extent it has -- I’ve been able to force myself to eat every day, there’ve been only one or two days per week where I’ve skipped one meal, I haven’t vomited since I left. As of three weeks ago I hadn’t had substantial further weight loss. Eating still is difficult to an extent that I can’t really understand, and it’s difficult when nothing else is. Finding an apartment was easy. Getting a job was easy. Work has been fun and easy and amazing. But pretty much every meal has been a struggle, I’ve been having to force-feed myself, I’ve felt more distress about putting food in my body than about anything else since I left home.

If it doesn’t settle down soon it’ll be pretty tiring. I am concerned that this level of effort is not sustainable.

And... I need to buy a scale. (Spending money is not a skill I have. I don’t like it and I don’t want to do it. Even on food and transportation. So I pretty regularly walk several miles instead of taking the damn bus, and if I forget to bring lunch I just won’t eat at work.) I suspect that I’ve started losing weight again, in large part because my physical activity is way up and I am really busy. Also I underestimate how many calories I need. I am young and physically active and hormonally male and it’s not reasonable to expect e.g. three 500-kcal meals and a snack to let me maintain weight, let alone gain it. It feels like I am eating so much and this probably isn’t true.

(Tracking caloric intake has historically been a bad idea, because my brain doesn’t do effortful things well, and there’s an observer effect: if I have to expend the necessary effort to write down what I ate, I will probably just not eat the thing so I don’t have to expend the effort. This was true even back when I liked eating.)

I don’t know. It might get better -- I’m putting a lot of effort into it but it’s reasonable that the eating problems aren’t resolving in the month and a half since I left home. Everything else has gotten substantially better and the food issues are only lagging by comparison. I am young and impatient. Also, I’ve gone from [regularly going days without eating, vomiting after I eat, losing a lot of weight really fast] to not doing any of that; this is a huge success and I am complaining about it not being completely solved within a month and a half!

In another month and a half I’ll have health insurance. If it hasn’t improved more by then, I’ll try to find a therapist. (Three months of having Significant Food Issues when not in a horribly stressful environment absolutely is enough to justify spending money on the copay.)

...I am worried it’ll get worse and I won’t notice or I’ll try to hide it. I am worried that it won’t get better and I’ll consider getting therapy and then not be able to stomach (pun intended!) the $20 copay, because even though I am financially secure enough for that not to be an issue, it’s twenty dollars and I don’t spend money on things. I am worried that it won’t get worse but it also won’t get better and I’ll have to spend the next several decades hating food and intensely wanting to vomit for like an hour after every meal.

(There are safeguards and I probably will not hide symptoms getting worse. I am pretty confident I can make myself find a therapist. I’ve had this problem for only six or seven months and most of that was under circumstances that extremely will not continue and I’ve gotten way better at handling it and it is way too early to be worried about this lasting indefinitely.)

Eh, I don’t know. I am handling it, I am taking steps to handle it. It sucks but I’m not concerned about my ability to handle and/or fix things that suck. Life’s awesome. Worst-case scenario is I just have to spend stupid amounts of money on meal-replacement drinks and get all my calories that way.

The best-case scenario, according to my brain: a doctor prescribes meal-replacement drinks and I get adequate nutrition and don’t have to eat solid food and also don’t have to pay for it. This would be really nice! I recognize that it’s not exactly great that I see this as the best-case scenario. A more reasonable best-case scenario: I figure out how to enjoy or at least not actively hate eating, and then I just do that like a normal person.

it’ll be fine even if it kind of sucks short-term

#cw eating disorder #cw disordered eating #cw vomiting #cw health problems #cw weight #cw me being neurotic #just heed the CWs; it's a vent post #personal #news from meatspace #original post #long post

[frommainetospain2020]

The Long Awaited Day

So the day had finally arrived. I say had because I’m writing this a couple days after the fact. But regardless, it’s here.

I guess I’ll start this post with the piece of the puzzle that I wasn’t 100% positive was necessary. The dreaded COVID test... -cue tense music-. They tell you to get the test within 72 hours of when you leave. The only problem with that, being it takes more than 72 hours to get the results back. I called the clinic where I had it done, and the guy told me that it took about a week to get results back. This was on a Tuesday. I flew out Sunday. Again I say, I didn’t know if I even needed to do it, but I still did it anyway. I did it a day earlier than I initially planned. When I went to get it done, it was another one of those swabs that practically touch your brain. This was the third COVID test I’ve had to do. The first two being for my endoscopy and gastric bypass respectively. If you haven’t had this test before, it almost feels like when you get pool water up your nose and it stings.

I didn’t get a response Wednesday or Thursday. So, on Friday, I called. They told me that my results had just come in that morning and that I could pick them up. So I drove to the walk in clinic and they handed me the results, which were negative, obviously, since I’m currently in Spain...

So, fast forward to the morning of the day that I left. My parents ended up taking me to Boston so I wouldn’t have to take a bus. We left pretty early in the morning so that my parents could get home without it being too late. We left at 8 AM. Honestly, I didn’t get emotional with leaving my parents, because I already left them to go to Europe for an extended period of time already. But my cats.... don’t even get me started. I picked up Pudge, my older cat, and I started to get teary eyed. It’s honestly still making me teary eyed to think about. I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye to my younger cat Chunk, but I saw them both on a video call with my parents, so it’s good now.

So off we went to our trek to Boston. After a rest stop, and a gas fill-up, we got to Logan Airport at about 1 PM. I said goodbye to my parents, and then proceeded to...... hurry up and wait. Didn’t I say that we got there super early? We got there at 1 PM, and my flight was at 8:45. It made for a LOOOOOONG afternoon. I found a seat and proceeded to continue reading my book. (11/22/63 by Stephen King if you need a great book suggestion. It’s a reread for me BTW....) I couldn’t even check my suitcase until three and a half hours before my flight. Because of this, I had to kill a lot of time before I could even go through security. Eventually I got bored of waiting and stood at the bag check counter. It took them a while to get there. From the point that I began to stand there, it’ probably took 20-30 minutes. The lady at the counter asked me where I was going, checked my passport, and replaced my advanced check-in boarding pass with a legit boarding pass. From this point forward, I was in the terminal.

At that point, I hadn’t eaten all day, so I wanted to find food. Now, what they don’t tell you is that because of the pandemic, most of the eating establishments in the terminal were closed. I figured this out the hard way. Initially I wanted to get a quick wake up wrap from Dunkin Donuts. Quick, easy, and not too much hassle. The first Dunkin I saw, directed you to go to another Dunkin. When I got there, that Dunkin was closed. I paced the entire length of Terminal C and E, looking for food. The only places I saw open were Burger King and Wahlburgers. I wasn’t going to have Burger King. I knew that straight away, so that left Wahlburgers. (Dieticians, I didn’t have much choice here, don’t hate me :P ). I ordered a “Smahlburger”, which, funnily enough, really isn’t that small. It came with fries. I was able to eat about half of the burger and a single french fry, before throwing the rest away. That’s the worst thing about this surgery I think.... wasting food. Normally you might say, “You could’ve saved it for later!” but what you’ve got to understand, is that I was shortly about to go on a plane. Airlines are pretty picky when it comes to a lot of things, and I wasn’t about to tempt the hassle I’d potentially receive.

Before boarding, there were two families that each had a ~3 year old girl. They began to play hide and seek with each other and film it on one of the mother’s iPad. However much energy they had, I can assure you that those kids got more sleep on that plane than I did...

Shortly after 7:45 when we began to board, The early boarders went on first. Then they split into zones. They boarded these from back to front. I was zone B so I was right in the middle. I was actually right next to the wing, which was nice. I was pleased with the overseas flight, because I had the row to myself. There were quite a few on the flight, but I managed to have the row to myself, so that was fun.

Only a few things of interest happened on this flight. I had an in-flight meal. I chose (look away dieticians) pasta. I had about 3 bites of it, and a small bite of cheesecake, and I was out for the count. I sipped on my diluted apple juice though.

About midway through the flight, I watched the movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” which features Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers. The movie isn’t so much about Mr. Rogers, as it is about the guy that interviews him. It didn’t really pique my interest at first, but as I watched it, it kind of grew on me.

Towards the end of the flight, they had a muffin that they gave out. I had two bites. And again, I was done. It was blueberry.

When the flight landed in Lisbon, we had to take a bus to the terminal. I’m not a fan of bussing flights, but meh, it is what it is. There were so many stairs to get to the terminal. There was a long line for people to just have their passport checked. Mind you, I said checked, not stamped. There was a lady that was directing people to either one side or another. I’m assuming it was connections and people staying in Portugal, but I could be wrong. She directed me to the less busy side, and I quickly got through. Then came the tedious part. The passport stamping line...

When I say this was probably the most tedious line I’ve ever experienced, I’m not kidding. There were so many people waiting in this line. They have those rope barrier things that airports have. It wound around and around. There had to have been around 20 different turns to this line.

So, I was stuck in this line for a good 45 minutes or so. When I got to the front, I told the guy that I had a Spanish visa, to which he just nodded, didn’t look at it, and stamped my passport. The stamp barely had any ink though. You can barely read it.

Then I went to security. This went a lot quicker. Standard deal, take the laptop and tablet out of the backpack, take everything non-clothing off of your body, run it through the machine, yadda yadda yadda. Old news at this point.

From there, I needed to find my gate, which was quite a trek, let me tell you... My flight was at 10:45, this was at 10:20ish mind you. I looked at the departure screen in the main food court area, and it said my Madrid flight was at Final Call. Because of this, I figured I had to get there and get there relatively fast. So I made my way to the terminal. This was quite a walk. I made it though, and the bus took us to the flight.

On the flight, I mistakenly sat in the window seat, when in actuality, I had the aisle seat. Once that was squared away, the flight was fairly uneventful. Obviously, this plane was much smaller. The flight only took about an hour, since it was only Portugal to Spain.

Finally at Madrid Barajas airport, I wanted to make sure I got to baggage claim before what happened to me at the beginning of my Italian study abroad semester, didn’t happen again. Just a recap, I apparently took too long in the passport stamping line, and my luggage was brought to lost luggage. Thankfully I did it right that time.

There was a girl on my flight who was also an auxiliar, like me. She was on her second year, so she was more well versed in both the language, and the airport. We ventured to the metro, since we were both heading there anyway. Once we got to the metro, we parted ways. So best of luck on your school year, friend.

I took the first metro to Nuevo Ministerios, and then apparently misunderstood the directions I got from Google Maps. What I didn’t know, was that the second form of public transportation that would’ve taken me to the station I needed, was a train, not a metro. So I instead concocted a method to get there by metro. In doing so, I dragged my suitcase up multiple flights of stairs, only to find that there was an escalator on the other side, so that’s my luck I guess...

I took the metro one stop over, which had the metro that I needed to get to Sol Station where my AirBNB was. On the last metro I took, there were two guys playing a guitar and singing.

When I got to Sol, I maneuvered my way to the street, again unnecessarily dragging my suitcase up stairs, when I later discovered a long escalator on the other side.

Now came the daunting task of finding my AirBNB. I went down what I thought was the street I needed to be on, found number 18, and tried to get inside. It didn’t look like the AirBNB host had described it. I managed to be let in the first door, and tried to connect to a free wifi in order to talk to the host about being there. A couple people informed me that the building was full of offices, and wouldn’t have an AirBNB. I pulled up my phone to verify the address, and the people told me I was on the wrong street. This street was Calle de Alcala. I needed Calle de Aranal. I then went to a different street. I got to what I thought was the street, only to discover it was Calle de la Aduana. The reason this street had looked familiar was because it was the street my program’s office was on. Finally, after the third attempt, I found the right street, and made it to the AirBNB.

I then slept away some jet lag, and went to supermarket, and bought some water, and juice because I was super thirsty.

And that about sums up my lengthy story of my flight to Madrid. And now I’m here, so that’s nice.

Just a brief summary of today (Day 2)

Got a few tasks out of the way. Got a Spanish SIM card. 22 gb of data, 800 international minutes, and unlimited calls to Spain. 15 euros. I paid $50 for basically a third of that...

Next I got breakfast. Spain has Dunkin Donuts, but it’s called Dunkin Coffee. I got a water and a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. It was a different kind of bun, but I didn’t eat it, I only ate the inside contents.

From there I went to go look at the apartment I’m looking at renting. I was met at the closest station by the landlords, who took me there. When there, I saw the apartment, and met one of the roommates. A guy who is the same age as me from London. He was able to translate between me and the landlord, which was nice.

After that, I went and got a tour of my school placement. I had to wipe my shoes on a rug twice, and put hand sanitizer on. Since my Spanish isn’t good, I had to use the Google Translate conversation feature, which worked decently well.

I then went back to my AirBNB, where I watched day 1 of the virtual orientation, went to the supermarket again. (I’m on the hunt to find blood orange juice again. I’m not having much luck to be honest...)

And that brings me to now, where I’m writing all of this down, for posterity’s sake. So thanks for reading, and join me next time.

KThnxBai

[venfx]

Oh boy, I got another idea for a prompt, something I was discussing in the Discord: After the day Phil and Rita spent together and her waking him up, he's steadily getting better and better. But it's not totally linear. Though being good to people is making him feel good, it feels more like a distraction from the larger aching emptiness still inside him. Even as he finds new ways to fill his time, he still sometimes longs for an end in sight. One morning, in a moment of weakness, he makes (1/2)

one more attempt. However, he doesn’t actually die this time and wakes up in a hospital bed. For once, it hits him how real his body and what he’s been doing to it truly is. He’s pissed at himself for falling back into this and doubts if he’ll ever be able to just look on the bright side like Rita said to. To his surprise, before the day resets, his mom shows up at the hospital to see him, having urgently booked a flight over there. She’s pretty angry and scared and upset and gives him some harsh words, and she also loves him so, so much. They talk and she stays with him until it’s 6AM again.

why do you make me hurt him so. anyways this was a doozy but also weirdly fun to write mostly because i just got my EMT certification and am therefore allowed to throw in useless medical jargon

(again sorry mrs. connors you don’t deserve this)

send me fic prompts here!

CW for suicide mention/attempt

It’s impossible to put into words just how much Phil despises the inventor of the alarm clock.

“That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

He slams his hand down onto the snooze button.

He’s never been a morning person.

Lately, his days look a little like this: sit up, stretch. Answer the phone on the first ring. Make sure to get the girl’s name- it’s Lisa- and wish her a good morning before heading out the door. Compliment Jonathan’s new sneakers, fix the coffee pot, meet up with Ned to chat about his family.

Then, get coffee for the crew and Rita, do the broadcast, change a flat tire, rescue a cat. Practice the piano, charm his way into staying a few extra hours.

Try to save the old man.

Fail to save the old man.

Drive Ralph and Gus back from the bar.

Wake up, do it all over again.

And, like, okay, it’s not all bad.  

Phil’s a new man, with a new lease on life and a steadily improving rendition of Hot Cross Buns to prove it. The more time he spends here actually living, the more he grows to love each and every resident of Punxsutawney.

He has friends here, as bizarre as that sounds.

Even if those friends don’t, y'know, remember him.-Here’s the thing: sometimes, his life feels like the weird second act of some two-bit play. The fact that the curtain will never fall is irrelevant.

Helping people of this small, quiet town should be enough. 

It is enough.

In terms of eternity, he’s won the fucking jackpot.-Still, it goes without saying that some days are easier than others.

“That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

"That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

He’s getting better.

He is.

It’s just, well. Sometimes.

Sometimes, he isn’t.

Here’s another thing: Phil spends the night before his seventeenth birthday locked in his parents’ bathroom with a bottle of his mom’s sleeping pills and a flask of gas station tequila he’d bribed off of his sister’s boyfriend a month earlier. 

He’s sixteen years, three hundred sixty four days, twenty two hours, and seventeen minutes old. 

People keep telling him that it’s going to get better, that he’ll be okay, that his problems are small and that everyone feels like this every once in a while. 

Maybe they’re right, but Phil’s not stupid, either- he knows that people aren’t supposed to be this empty, knows that there’s something in him that’s always going to be small and broken and wrong.

He’s just so fucking tired.

"That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

Twenty three years and a thousand endless days later, he barely thinks twice before swallowing the whole damn bottle.

Phil wakes up.

He wakes up.

He’s not in the bed and breakfast.

For one panicked moment, he thinks maybe-

He jack-knifes up, yanks the cannula out of his nose. “Excuse me!”

There’s a nurse passing by his room. She turns, looks at him with a special cocktail of muted pity and vague disgust, which Phil very politely ignores because he is a nice fucking person now, thank you very much.

“Sorry, but um,” he rasps, voice hoarse. It sort of tastes like something crawled into the back of his throat and died. “What’s today’s date?“ 

“February 2nd, dear. I’ll go tell the doctor that you’re up.”

February 2nd.

Right.

He wakes up again to a woman in a white coat standing at the foot of his bed, reading off of a clipboard. 

“Phil Connors, 40, found unresponsive underneath a bridge near Patsy’s Park. Presented with mild hypothermia, bradycardia, hypotension, and significant respiratory depression as a result of an alcohol potentiated benzodiazepine overdose." 

Phil just wants to go back to sleep.

“ER administered 0.8mg of Flumazenil intravenously upon admission and performed a gastric lavage shortly after. Vitals have been stable since seven this evening.”

“Huh,” he mutters. “Thought it’d been longer than that." 

His doctor sighs, like she’s unimpressed or something, which strikes him as kind of rude.

Phil almost died.

God.

"Mr. Connors, you went outside half naked in the middle of snowstorm to chase 220 mg of clonazepam- that’s fifty five pills, by the way- with a bottle of raspberry vodka-”

“It was grape, actually-”

“Regardless,” she says and, great, her voice is all gentle now, like being nice is going to change anything. “I don’t think we need to pretend that this was accidental.”

“Shit, what gave it away?" 

"Mr. Connors, was this your first attempt?”

And Phil-

Phil thinks of the toaster.

He thinks of suffocating, of bleeding out, of freezing to death, of walking into traffic, eyes shut, over and over and over again. He remembers the rope and the car battery and the fucking clock tower.

He thinks of the screwdriver- and, okay, that had been a little excessive, but whatever.

He feels sick.

"Yeah,” he says, slumping back against the pillows. “Yeah. First time.”

They keep him on mandatory 72 hour watch.

Not that it really matters, but.

Phil hates hospitals.

The phone rings when Phil’s on his seventh episode of Law and Order: SVU. He’s eaten, like, four things of green Jello and an entire bag of ice chips. 

On screen, Ice-T is arresting a pedophile with a clown fetish.

He’s pretty sure his nurse is avoiding him.

This kind of feels like a new low.

“Mr. Connors? You have a visitor. Should I send her up?”

Phil absolutely does not want to see Rita right now, but also feels like he owes her for blowing off the broadcast and then literally almost dying. 

Plus, he’s been trying to be less of an ass lately.

Really.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he says with a sigh. “Thank you.”

“Phil Connors, what the fuck.”

That’s not Rita.

He’s going to kill Rita.

“Mom? Jesus, who called you?”

“Is that how you greet me? We haven’t spoken in six months, and all I get is a Jesus-who-called-you?”

Joanne Connors is sixty four years old and 5'2”. 

She carries herself the way some people carry machine guns. 

“So, I’m in a hospital bed, don’t know if you noticed-"

"I noticed that you look like shit,” she says, scowling at the IV in Phil’s arm like it’s done something to  personally offend her. “So, I’ll reiterate: what the fuck.”

Phil’s been nursing a low level migraine since he woke up and the shrillness of his mother’s voice adds a special new dimension to this whole experience.

“Thanks, mom,” he says with a sigh. “Did you really fly all the way out here from Cleveland?”

“No, I was in the area,” she says bitingly. “Of course I flew out here. Your producer called-”

“Associate producer, actually-” he says, just because he’s feeling a little bitter.

“-saying that you were in the hospital, that it looked bad, that they found these pills-”

“I’m fine, oh my god-”

“-so, yes, I did fly out here in the middle of a goddamn blizzard. That flight cost me five hundred dollars, by the way-”

“I never asked you to-”

“-and that doctor you have is a real piece of work-”

“Mom! You’re yelling." 

She stops abruptly, looking stricken. 

With horror, Phil realizes that her eyes are welling up. 

He hates seeing his mom cry.

"You stupid, stupid boy,” she whispers. “You selfish, thoughtless child. What were you thinking?”

Phil can’t remember the last time his mother hugged him, but when she does, it feels like china, like glass, like something breakable and precious all at once.  

“Mom, I-”

He doesn’t know what he wants to say. 

There’s something ugly in his chest, some horrible emotion that makes his throat tight and his eyes burn. He can feel his mother’s tears seeping into the flimsy fabric of his hospital gown.

Phil grips her back like he’s drowning.

Eventually she pulls away, dabs at her eyes with a trembling hand.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Phil, I’m so sorry.”

“Um. Don’t be. This isn’t your fault,” he says thickly, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I just- uh. It’s been a long day.”

She chuckles weakly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Phil doesn’t want to talk about it, and for once, she doesn’t push.

They just sit there instead, watching crappy crime procedurals and eating Jello. She tells him blatantly untrue stories about his childhood and pretends to be interested when he delivers a ten minute lecture on introductory quantum mechanics (his newest research project) and a half hour summary of the first four seasons of Game of Thrones (that he only watched for Rita).

At one point, she leans over to press a kiss to his forehead.

“I love you so much, Phil. So much.”

He closes his eyes.

Here’s a final thing: the day always resets in the time it takes him to blink. 

In that brief moment or space between seeing and not-seeing, a cosmic rubber band yanks him backwards, pulls him taut through time. He knows it’s happening before it happens, even though he’s never actually seen the clock hit six.

"That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers, it’s-”

He slams a hand on the alarm.

It’s a new day.

#ghd #groundhog day the musical #ask #itsqueermrmarvin #prompt fill

[cameoamalthea]

Dumb Post About Gastric-Brooding Frogs

This is the Gastric-Brooding Frog.

Don’t worry, the baby frog is fine, that’s his mommy! He grew up in her tummy and now he’s old enough to come outside and play...as soon as he hops out of her mouth. 

They lived in a small region of Australia.

The Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog  was discovered in 1973 in the Blackall Range and Conondale Ranges in southeast Queensland, north of Brisbane, between elevations of 350 and 800 metres (1,150 and 2,620 ft) above sea level. They were only found in a very small in area. By 1979 they’d all disappeared.

In 1984 another species of Gastric-Brooding frog was discovered in the in rainforest areas of the

Clarke Range

in

Eungella National Park

and the adjacent Pelion State Forest in central eastern Queensland. These frogs too only lived in a very small area less than 500 km

2

(190 sq mi). Within a year of their discovery they too had vanished.

Now, you may be asking? “Why does it matter? There are lots of frogs in the world”

So Australia is famous for two things. Being really really dangerous and animals that cary their babies around around in pouches.

I’m not a biologist, but I assume these things are probably related. After all, tiny baby animals are safer is they can hide and be carried around by bigger, stronger, faster adults. Live birth, whether you’re a mammal that carries babies inside a womb for a long time or a marsupial that gives birth quickly and carries your baby in a pouch, is advantageous when it comes to keeping off spring safe. After all, eggs can’t run away.

((“Om nom nom Egg!” ))

And baby animals are small, which makes them vulnerable. Especially baby frogs, since frogs start out as tadpoles which are basically like the most pathetic fish ever.

(( This aquatic animal couldn’t be more basic if it had a pumpkin spice latte. Are we still making basic jokes and making fun of girls for liking spiced coffee? Anyway...))

Frog eggs and babies aren’t exactly 100% safe.

((Frog eggs don’t even have hard shells))

So if carrying your young inside your body, whether in a pouch or a womb is safer than laying eggs, but you’re a frog and do lay eggs? What do you do?

For the Gastric-Brooding Frog the answer was swallow them.

((It seems what Mario taught me about frog problem solving was more accurate than I imagined)).

The Gastric-Brooding frog mom swallowed the eggs and kept them in her stomach as they hatched into tadpoles and grew up into baby frogs. She then “gave birth” by spitting the babies out.

((Insert inevitable frog in your throat joke))

The frog didn’t have a pouch like mama kangaroo, but they figured out a way to use what they did have: their digestive system complete with big mouths and elastic stomachs. To make more room for the babies to grow the moms would even go into stasis, deflating their lungs to allow their stomachs room to grow until most of their body’s space was taken up by a very full tummy.

((You might think this is kind of gross, but then again, mammals spit babies out of their vagina and that’s also weird. Birth is weird))

Now when mammals have babies they might look like their stomach is getting bigger, but their young is in a womb. Stomach’s are for food. So how did the frogs turn their stomach into a womb/pouch thing? How could they keep fragile eggs and growing tadpoles in their stomach without digesting them. After all, stomachs are usually full of hydrochloric acid, which is a very powerful acid capable of pretty much melting most things.

((0 means most burning/melting/scary don’t ever touch this OMG))

The answer is mucus. “At the time the female swallowed the fertilized eggs her stomach was no different from that of any other frog species. In the jelly around each egg was a substance called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), which could turn off production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. This source of PGE2 was enough to cease the production of acid during the embryonic stages of the developing eggs. When the eggs had hatched the tadpoles created PGE2.”

((Apparently Disney was also surprisingly accurate about how frogs solve problems, mucus for the win))

Now this is actually pretty amazing, because the PGE2 did something scientists have been trying to figure out how to do for years. Control stomach acids. 

Not neutralize the acids: turn them off completely. If you’ve ever had heart burn, you know that, sometimes, too much stomach acid is bad. If you’ve ever seem a commercial for Heart Burn medication you know that the reason for the pain is your stomach going haywire and pumping more acid than it needs or can keep away from your throat which doesn’t have protective lining. 

Also if the lining in your stomach is worn away, stomach acid can start eating through your stomach lining. That’s an ulcer. If it gets bad enough, the side of your stomach can start bleeding.

 That’s bad. People have died.

((So yeah, be sure you see your doctor if you might have an ulcer))

Studying the Gastric-Brooding Frog’s acid stopping mucus could lead scientists to new treatments for ulcers and other stomach acid issues like acid reflex (too much acid) and GERD (the door between your throat and stomach doesn’t close well enough, so acid gets into your esophagus and that hurts). 

Unfortunately, since the frogs disappeared so soon after they were discovered, scientists didn’t have very much time to study them (hence no miracle cures). A few years ago there were attempts to clone the frogs and bring them back from extinction.

((like Jurassic Park but they’re just cloning a frog, and using a closely related frog to incubate the embryos))

Since you’ve probably never heard of this animal being brought back from extinction, you can guess how well that worked out...But we can keep trying.

We can also learn from what we’ve lost.

Nature is amazing and full of creatures that are completely one of a kind! Creatures that can do things that we’d never dream possible, and give us answers to problems we haven’t been able to solve. That’s why we need to care about nature, and climate change. We need to protect what we have or it might be gone before we’ve even had a chance to fully realize what we’ve got.

((Info from wikipedia))

#frog #frogs #animal facts #extinction

[bintaeran]

The Option Of Sleeve Gastrectomy New Jersey As A Weight Solution

By Peter Reed

The simplistic approach to losing weight is to tell people to take balanced, nutritious, low-carbohydrate diets and being physically active. But experts say that making small healthy changes to your eating and exercise habits is actually not realistic for someone who is overweight or obese, having a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or above. Hence the recommedation of sleeve gastrectomy New Jersey. For people who have bothersome areas of fat that don't respond to traditional non-surgical treatments, such as dietary and lifestyle changes, bariatric surgery can offer a solution. Bariatric surgery spans a variety of weight loss surgeries that can end your struggle with obesity forever by making permanent changes to your anatomy. Like in any surgery, Obesity surgery has risks. Some of the most commonly known risks include Gastrointestinal Leaks, Gastric Distention, Deep Venous Thrombosis & Pulmonary Embolism, Bleeding, Heart attacks, Arrhythmia (abnormal heart rate), Respiratory issues (Breathing difficulties), Wound infection, Intrabdominal abscess, Dehydration related issues, Gastric Prolapse (or Band Slippage), Ulcers, Bowel Obstruction besides some side effects which are less serious. Such are the patients who settle down for gastric bypass revision surgeries. Many procedures can be applied in this surgery. Sometimes an adjustable gastric band is placed at the top part of the stomach. This is done on patients who have had previous experiences of stapling of stomach and other problems. The procedure is normally conducted laparoscopically. Come to think of it; it's usually hard to lose weight. There's nothing fun about the prospect of shedding off those three letters - LBS. Weight loss tips are either utterly demanding or require considerable extent of sacrifices. More prevalent in people with obesity, research shows patients with type 2 diabetes can lessen or in some cases eliminate the effects of the disorder by reducing their body weight by approximately 10 percent. Despite this finding, the number of type 2 cases in the U. S. Continues to rise each year by about eight percent. Following the laparoscopic surgery, many patients are able to recover in a fraction of the time. Depending on their general health condition, some patients return to work in less than two weeks and many are able to quickly return to physical activity. Both laparoscopic and open approaches to bariatric surgery help you with your weight loss goals. However, not all patients are suitable for the laparoscopic method. The extremely obese patients, who have already undergone stomach surgery, or who have complex medical problems such as severe heart and lung disease may require the open approach. Likewise, not all bariatric surgeons are trained to perform this less-invasive laparoscopic method. According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), laparoscopic operation should be performed only by bariatric surgeons who are experienced and well versed in both laparoscopic and open techniques. Prior to the surgery, you basically need to start embracing the lifestyle that you will live after the surgery. Whether you are required to follow a new diet or not, you must learn what eating will look like after the surgery and make sure you can adjust to that lifestyle.

About the Author:

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, if there is actually one style of creating which attacks fear right into my heart that is actually the idea from having to create a passion letter. As well as will you permit yourself to just Be Actually and also feel the affection that resides within your heart - for you, for your lifestyle, for determining to provide on your own a brand new second where happiness has a place, where that fills the space within your heart as well as infects every one of you, in and out. Call Dr.Zabaza via e-mail: zabazalogan @ or provide him a contact [phone]. Staff members are allowed to one paid 10-minute remainder break if their work period is in between 2 as well as 4 hrs; one paid out 10-minute rest break and one unpaid 30-minute food breather if their job duration is in between 4 and six hrs; 2 paid out 10-minute rest breaks and also one unsettled 30-minute dish break if their work period is actually between six as well as eight hours. If you are actually disappointing your fanatic that he or she is special to you at that point you leave behind the door broad open for certainly not only dissatisfaction as well as unhappiness, but also for other people to give them the attention they yearn for. An essential segment from Stand out or Rock music is called the bridge, which gives listeners a break from the verse-chorus, verse-chorus construct. Essentially a rest every 60 minutes excels, but merely if students stick to just five-ish mins. In conclusion I would mention that in your mission to quit smoking cigarettes see to it that is just what YOU yearn for at a time that is right for YOU. In spite of being actually named at 1:00 in the early morning, despite having actually seen that it was a racket participated in by some local kids, he resorted to me as he claimed as well as left behind, This was actually really great to meet you, ma'am. If you adored this article therefore you would like to be given more info concerning mountains in england near london (http://gimmasio-fit1.info/eco-slim) nicely visit our own internet site. " Not as soon as performed he poke fun at just how silly this truly was actually - youngsters on Spring season breather enjoying yourself with an urban area lady who does not get the joke, certainly not in the minute anyhow. Likewise you could not choose any type of slim fonts if you desire making your calling card look the way you do. Be sure to select a thicker font style and also if you want to include a brand-new size to that, you can easily add reduce shades or even various other such effects to provide this the unique pizzazz! For those looking for Dr.Zabaza assistance can call Dr.Zabaza via email: zabazalogan @ or far better still you can easily offer him a contact [phone]. Stop aiming to translate his actions and also acquire a man which you don't have to function therefore difficult to identify. Together our experts can take a plan to reduce your worry and also give you that much-needed electric battery recharge while still receiving factors carried out. Dr.Zabaza i thank my God for permitting me contact you when i required the you most, As well as for those that would like to arrive aficionado back they need to gently speak to Dr.Zabaza on zabazalogan @ or even give him a get in touch with [phone], As well as i assure you within 48hours your lover are going to be back to you. Under the UK Working Time Instruction, an employer must offer a rest from at the very least TWENTY moments if the functioning day is actually longer compared to 6 hours. There are no guidelines for producing pop tunes- any mixture of verses and also music (or no songs or even no verse) proves out just as long as completion product is actually exciting or catchy good enough for a person to notice it! The factor is actually that from the ping pong players needs to damage serves confidently and the 2nd one performed that with challenge, having actually gained some video games on rest factors. You got her fascinated, called her unexpectedly, and really did not offer any sound responses. In addition starting a fast really isn't a brain surgery; for countless years, mostly all societies have utilized that in order to help clear the body system from poisons, offer our digestive organs the chance to revitalize and also recover optimum feature. The chart would certainly after that signify which bone tissues seemed to be to become the absolute most as well as minimum likely to damage. Reviewing these delighted quotes is simply the first step on ending up being a genuine idealist. Some folks affirmed that he brought their Ex enthusiast back, some attested that he repairs womb, treatment cancer cells, and other illness, some testified that he could cast a spell to quit breakup and more. i likewise come upon one specific testament, that was about a lady gotten in touch with Sonia, she testified regarding how he rejuvenated her Ex-boyfriend enthusiast in below 7 times, and also at the end from her testament she dropped High Priest ADODO's e-mail handle. QUIT as well as discover that intricate carbs are just a series from 3 or additional basic glucoses expecteded together. He pitched back in his squeaky office chair along with his practical his chin, Okay, I will definitely give you the cars and truck, and also you spend me when you can," he said along with a smile as he stretched his palm. As well as thankfully, my gastric did not offer me any kind of issues like over the last whenever I bypassed meals. I met this individual (29/12/1988) as well as I am actually Women (6/9/1989) I have actually been actually seeing/sleeping along with, on and off for 4 years right now between other partnerships (that our experts each have possessed, we appear to always wind up back with eachother after the connections our experts remained in deteroriate or stop performing. Our experts were so honored to become able to offer a breather to A.G. as well as her other half in January to commemorate their wedding ceremony anniversary. Micro-break - that short period of time like a complete, undisturbed lunch time hr or even an extended bike ride - that helps to provide a boost from energy to kick-start your mid-day in addition to a chance for originalities to surface. I totally coincide Mr Marriott about giving our own selves a break and also it are going to truly improve our performance. Velocity Reading Notes" In my manual I offer you a short summary of techniques to choose you your reading. Eating the best carbohydrates will definitely provide you longer phrase energy and assistance to fight physical body fat storage!Your perhaps pondering if there is actually a straightforward instance this so you can bypass today's quick scientific research training. Under these minimal standards, if your lunch time break is beyond TWENTY mins, that considers as your full privilege to a make that day. If you are actually truly endure, look into; it will definitely follow you and also offer you impressive reviews at the end of the time. That is actually not the cure for cancer cells, however it can easily offer you a worthwhile, as well as even better an assessed business version that may give you the financial self-reliance we all are worthy of. To crack fast, I observed the author's assistance from happening a soft diet plan as well as avoiding meat, log items, and oily as well as spicy stuff for the 1st two times. Because from a misconception from these differences and also that may lead to a whole host of issues, communication may break down. Meso-break - not unlike my little bit of 2-day resort into the nation, a meso-break could be actually a worry-free weekend where all electronics are shut off - which assists to offer you a little bit additional from a recharge in your batteries. I and also my fanatic possessed some problems which triggers our separate considering that after at that point my life has certainly never coincided i attempted all technique in order to get him back but they were simply misuse from effort and waste of time. That has a great deal to damage devoid of a partner, often times you'll separate 6 to TWENTY times. Do not offer up if you still love your ex-boyfriend. There are effective strategies in order to get back your ex lover as well as making them love you like never before. They will lose hope going to an occasion if the only choice they had was actually standing by level to get a buy a ticket. Possibly drop in at the Camelback Inn or Port Seaside - or even any sort of one of our various other 4,400 buildings - to reenergize, reconnect as well as return to the labor force emotion revitalized.

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