#just trying to do actual research cause diagnosing a 14 year old with an actual mental disorder is……… I don't like it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

modernidolater · 4 years

Text

TW: Violence, dark humor, all that jazz. Go no further, angry shit, yadda.

So, yanno...i'm just gonna yell into the void about something.

When i was very young, I read a lot of encyclopedias. Most of my knowledge of the world was attributable to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which my mother kept because well, a home should have a nice, impressive looking set of books. Along with a bunch of other old books that just...really weren't the best choice for a regressive anti-technology apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, but then, as we used to joke, my mother doesn't have to make sense, she just has to make decisions.

So, I eventually started plumbing the depths to try and figure out "what the hell is wrong with my family."

While i didn't get an answer about my family in general, I did note that i seemed to be oddly suited to the definition of "psychopath," minus the whole "being a problem for society at large" thing. Asocial, low empathy, lack of guilt, inability to plan cohesively, difficulty conceptualizing consequences, near total lack of emotions except curiosity and rage, both of which are carefully stifled, aggressive tendencies...frankly, I look at my younger siblings and i can definitely assure anyone that asks that had I not been raised quite far away from society, or if I'd stayed in the cult, I would most definitely have been a problem for society.

But psychopaths are *monsters,* you see. They're so, so bad, you see. Everyone assured me, at great length, that I couldn't be that, no, no sirree. I was too nice. Too kind. I didn't punch people nearly often enough (largely because I don't like being punched outside of sex, and I like to be in charge of where I'm being punched, and even that mostly cause I'm kinda badly out together physically, but that's aside the point.)

I wasn't *hate-able.* My empathy was too high.

On that last note, I have spoken elsewhere and i believe here regarding my empathy. My empathy is specifically a learned skill picked up by reading Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin stories. Dupin explains his near preternatural ability to get inside people's heads by his learned skill of micro-mimicking body and facial language and then analyzing what he feels when he copies someone else. Works absolute wonders, particularly as up to that point (i was 8-9), I was using the classical technique of provoking and hurting people around me to experimentally figure out how other people worked. Admittedly, it's somewhat like recording a speech and listening to it at the lwvel of a whisper in a crowded room, but then mimicry is far less likely to get you punched, and see previous for my feelings on getting punched.

But now i had, for all intent, a system to demonstrate empathy. Thanks to my mother's abuse, I had a complete paranoid delusion aping guilt. I could check plans past others, and once I got my hands on Google at 14, I had the capacity to directly look up what the general, societal consequences of most actions were and model behaviors that achieved my ends. I further had 18 years of direct training in mind control and manipulation, thanks to my cult.

You may notice that what you just read sounds like the origin story of a serial killer. Ape people around them to avoid detection, paranoia making them scrupulous enough to not get caught, and careful study of laws to find the lines, plus a hyper manipulative persona.

Roll with me here. This continues forward.

So, i'm out and about, 2, 5, 6 years free of my cult. I have married a self avowed psychopath who actually HAS been diagnosed with antisocial disorder thanks to a teenage habit of theft and punching people. He is fairly sure I am not one, since I perform guilt and empathy fantastically, by rote at this point. I literally have days that my face hurts from faking emotions for too long, i am slowly developing agoraphobia because there are far too many people to mimic in a retail job, and my guilt subroutine is just a voice chanting in my head, "they're coming to get you, don't fuck up" 24/7 to the point that i am developing hallucinations, but yeah. It's definitely not psychopathy. At this point, that's just ASPD, and i'm just too darn social. Never that. I'm no monster, you see. I'm "nice."

About this point, I have learned to use mind control techniques to help people, carefully applying them with direct permission to help people open up and discuss problems. My near preternatural ability to get into people's heads, my ability to find information, and my absolute lack of fucks about morals (thus making me wildly nonjudgemental), makes me the go-to confidant for many of my friends. This neatly surrounds me with people that can smooth my life out, but you can't tell people you're friends with them cause the world is made of grey paste and you're deathly bored 24/7 and being allowed to pick through people's minds and help them optimize is the closest you get to not wanting to shoot yourself or others. Or that you carefully maintain contact with people so you can check and make sure you're not doing anything jail worthy. Or that a large group to mimic lets you blend in easier, and finding one that also is transgressive, but socially permissable (thanks, kink) blows off some steam.

Of course, people that don't know me find me deeply off-putting, as I am at this point rapidly learning to turn off the mimicry when not immediately interacting with people. This results in me appearing utterly emotionless, but as soon as people talk to me, bing, back on. I had also joined the kink subculture, giving my hedonistic and transgressive sides an outlet.

I'd also gone to the trouble of getting a multifaceted degree. Ostensibly, my degree is "multimedia journalism." If you aren't aware, this means I have a degree in research, interpersonal communication, public speaking, written communication, mass communication, some psychology, critical thinking, media creation and analysis. In short, I have the literal perfect degree for figuring out, communicating with, and functionally understanding people, as well as a vastly enhanced ability to locate obscure information.

Fast forward again. Three mental breakdowns, four years of therapy, poking at my gender, figuring out a lot of mental health problems, and a rotating series of diagnoses, life is...slowly improving. I've left a toxic marriage (toxic on both sides), moved to a completely new place, started over. I have sort of resigned myself to focusing on my (admittedly annoyingly complex and wide ranging) physical disabilities.

And it comes up, in talking to my partner, that his adoptive mother displayed (she's dead) quite a few signs of ASPD. And he asks curiously if there's any connection between ADHD, autism, and ASPD, mainly cause the "personality disorder" part. PD's can, with long or early exposure, sometimes be passed on, you see.

Guess what's being studied, right now? Not a connection between ASPD and ADHD. A connection between psychopathy and ADHD. Wait, but I thought psychopathy wasn't a thing, says I? I thought there was only ASPD, now?

Ah, but for you see, the DSM is a load of horseshit. And i have heard that from multiple communities with different relations to it, and from multiple therapists, psychiatrists, professors...as a general rule, when the people who use it, the people it's used on, and the people who teach it all agree that a document is manure, I get a touch distrustful. I get more so when current studies use umbrella terms disavowed by a document known for being reductivist and that has been noted as having a great number of entries that were manipulated deliberately to make them as narrow and unusable as possible.

So anyway.

Turns out that while no, ADHD and Autism don't make you a psychopath, there's a distinct overlap. Empathy issues are a possiblity in all three, though both ADHD and autism can create *hyper*empathy. Inability to navigate social constructs is another point of overlap.

But really, it's the serotonin deficiency that hurls it across the line for me. And the genetic factors. Can psychopathy result from environment? Yeah, seems so. But there does seem to be a genetic and neurochemical component. Which is...curious for a disorder presented as purely a traumatic abreaction that creates dangerous amorals.

I then looked it up. And wouldn't you know, psychopathy is only pathologized as ASPD/APD, and DPD? The former is the sort of psychopathy that is characterized by violent amd criminal antisocial behavior, and the other an inability to understand and perform social mores at all. But this is the DSM, so these are of course diagnosed by problems caused for others as a first line.

Violation of societal norms, lack of emotions other than rage, aggression...it's almost like the same people that named a serotonin and function deficiency Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to enshrine the disorder only by those aspects that make neurotypical people uncomfortable rather than seeking to help the neurodivergent person, the same people that invented torturous behavioral correction therapies to "fix" the neurodivergent person? Those strike me as people that might possibly have looked a serotonin deficiency that causes rage, limited emotions, impulsivity, difficulty conceptualizing consequence, and potentially a hell of a lot of other fun side shit and decided to call that "Doesn't get along with others well" disorder.

What really kicks it in the teeth for me, however, is that psychopathy used to mean more than "a social pariah." You see, Theodore Millon, the guy that wrote the book on personality disorders, noted between 5 and 10 subtypes. Do you know what they are?

Nomadic

(including schizoid and avoidant features)

Drifters; roamers, vagrants; adventurer, itinerant vagabonds, tramps, wanderers; they typically adapt easily in difficult situations, shrewd and impulsive. Mood centers in doom and invincibility

Malevolent

(including sadistic and paranoid features)

Belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, sadistic, malignant, brutal, resentful; anticipates betrayal and punishment; desires revenge; truculent, callous, fearless; guiltless; many dangerous criminals, including serial killers.

Covetous

(including negativistic features) Rapacious, begrudging, discontentedly yearning; hostile and domineering; envious, avaricious; pleasures more in taking than in having.

Risk-taking

(including histrionic features) Dauntless, venturesome, intrepid, bold, audacious, daring; reckless, foolhardy, heedless; unfazed by hazard; pursues perilous ventures.

Reputation-defending

(including narcissistic features) Needs to be thought of as infallible, unbreakable, indomitable, formidable, inviolable; intransigent when status is questioned; overreactive to slights.

(It should be noted: the features listed above are simply what each presentation is most likely to display if disordered. A reputation-defender may not display narcissm, a risk taker may not be histrionic. A malevolent [what a terribly judgy name...] could be negativistic, or avoidant, or histrionic. And so on.)

Now, ya may be going, "wait, hold up, narcissism is on there! We still have that! Schizoid is on there, we have that! Sadism, paranoia, we got all those things!"

Flash quiz: do you know what a personality disorder is? It's a series of learned behaviors that require moderation and unlearning.

Why yes, they did spin multiple neurotypes off into diagnoses that require behavioral therapy to "fix." Why on earth would you think they wouldn't? They're still trying to use reparative therapy on auties. Hell, near as I can figure, histrionic got spun into Borderline Personality disorder. You know what the therapy for that is? DBT, aka, "it IS your fault and you SHOULD feel bad."

Beyond knowing there used to be different flavors, did you know that there is about a millionty scare articles about how psychopaths are everywhere? Guess why.

What do you get when someone has an absolute need to see what's on the other side of the hill and no real fucks to give about how you get there? You get scientists, explorers, people utterly driven to find out. Think about how many of our science and exploration heros are noted as deeply weird and off-kilter. We have whole stereotypes about this. There are books and articles devoted to the transgressive personas and behaviors of famous scientists and explorers.

What do you get when someone is belligerent, paranoid, truculent, violent, fearless? Snipers. Literally. The army has openly stated they like psychopaths quite a lot. Someone that can look at a map of human lives and commit calculus with the phrase "acceptable losses" makes a damn fine general, wouldn't you say? Hunters, too. Make a good king? Or bounty hunter. Or, if we're going to be honest, a martial artist. Hell, think of all the ways our society accepts violence in real terms and symbolically. Management. Video gamer. Espionage. Actuary. Pest control. There are THOUSANDS of of societal uses for people like this.

Covetous? Well, banks are openly quite loving towards psychopaths. CEOs are indicated here. Businessmen. Fandoms with collection as a function have any number of anecdotes of individuals who have an intense drive to get more. "Focused on the chase, rather than the victory, to the exclusion of all else" is considered a positive, laudable personality trait. To put it in other terms, "can't stop, won't stop, never done." Sports players, yes? Football, rugby, hockey...

Risk takers are the real standouts, in terms of societal love. Doctors. Firemen. EMT's. Skydivers. Extreme sports players. Equipment testers. The list goes on. Society loves risk taking psychopaths. Hell, look at the diagnostic criterion up there: it's mostly traits with high positive connotations.

Reputation defending? Politics. Law. Advertising. Acting. Writing. Religion. Leadership of any kind.

I'm not talking out my ass here. All those fields have been noted as friendly towards, attractive to, and having a high representation of people who fit the behavioral model of psychopath.

But only if they're useful. Like literally every other non-normative neurotype.

Society loves ADHD and autistic people when they're displaying savant abilities or when they can mask well enough to use their sensory and cognitive differences to societal ends.

And if they're a problem for people around them, that's treated. The underlying difficulties? The societal structures that punish and harm them? The pain of adapting their entire neurobiome to do all the work of interfacing with different neurotypes while being driven to harness anything useful and discard the rest of their brain? No, we don't treat that. That's just the price of doing business. "Pull yourself up and don't be a problem."

And here's the problem, in plain terms: psychopaths who learn to cope, to mask, to adapt like I did are never diagnosed. I have spent most of my life fairly concerned about the fact that I seem not to have emotions or compunction, that i am always consciously working to figure out and connect to people around me on the most basic level, that I am constantly working to keep an active model of social norms going at all times. And I don't mean "shake hands, eye contact." I mean I have the same mental conversation regarding "don't shoot that person" and "use a turn signal." All prosocial behaviors, all social behaviors period, are a struggle to understand.

The funny thing is, it also makes antisocial behaviors difficult. Shooting someone seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Regardless of whether I care about getting caught or not, shooting somone will interrupt my day.

Not shooting them also seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Yes, it'd be a pain in the ass to shoot them, but then again, if I do it correctly, I only have to do it once.

But again, "correctly" is a wildly unfixed variable, and the whole question won't come up if I always ensure I fail the "do i currently have a firearm" step. And I don't. Ever.

That's how my brain works. Y'all go on about moral and ethical and legal reasons. That's an exhausting conscious mental conversation to have every other day, so my shortcut is:

"Should I shoot them? Oh, right, I don't have a gun. Guess not. Should I get one? No, cause I might shoot someone, and that'd be a pain in the ass. Welp, no shooting people."

And so it goes. I don't understand any social norms. Good or bad. I have all the problematic issues still, mind you. Environmental factors. I mimic and I was raised in an apocalypse cult in Oklahoma. I spend a lot of brain space sorting between prosocial behaviors and the violent antisocial behaviors I was taught were prosocial.

Because, you see, I can't really understand the prosocial behaviors, but I can see they work. And antisocial behaviors don't, really. Have i impulsively pocketed something? Couple times. Even got away with. Can't steal a house, though. And theft gets boring, for me.

Ok, except piracy. I may quite enjoy piracy.

Cooperation with a larger whole can and does yield benefits. Forcing myself to sit through mind numbing gratification delays does seem to yield results that are beneficial, though I really try to keep that one to a minimum. I refuse to be bored if I can help it. Making nice talky sounds gets me shit faster than making angry talky sounds.

Possibly this is a result if being raised manipulative. No idea. Kinda don't care.

Point is, I'm one of the psychopaths that, while not immediately useful, is also not actively a problem. So no-one will listen when i talk about everything being gray and cold and exhaustingly complicated because people make no sense and almost all my emotions are dialed so far down it's a joke i lack the ability to laugh about.

No one has believed me that the one emotion I have in spades is rage and that i have to literally consciously work out from first principles why violence is a bad option as my sole method of controlling that, my ONLY EMOTION OF ANY STRENGTH, which I cannot allow myself to feel for any length of time because I start losing sight of that consequence model and I worry i'll make a mistake I can't unmake. Or that it took me two decades to learn not to smash things I need when someone looks at me funny. Or just smash them.

Or that i have to keep my hands in my pockets and chant "don't steal" in my head some days. That I wear tight clothing with shallow pockets to make stealing harder so that, like guns, I simply can't do it easily and therefore short circuit my behaviors.

People are more than happy to hurl me at any problem that requires a lack of emotion, but if I dare to be less than appropriately emotional on a date? At a wedding? Funeral? If I make an error and don't diagnose it myself and perform contrition appropriately, regardless of if I knew there was a social or personal rule there? Well, I'm fired/broken up with/punished/evicted.

But I am not actively a problem for society. So none of those things are worth diagnosing. Or helping in any way.

And those that are useful? Are often fed utter horseshit and encouraged to break society. Bankers creating recessions. Generals commanding useless wars. Cops. Doctors that uphold a broken system. Politicians that pursue a broken society.

I know, I can see, that ASPD people catch a shit ton of shit cause they get blamed for "useful" psychopaths mistakes, and none of the benefits when said same psychopaths are lionized. Looking back at what it was, and what it is now, pathologically speaking, it makes perfect fucking sense for the asshats that designed a diagnosis to only include the people they don't like as the "sick" ones, and label the "good" ones as "heroes." Makes a nice distinction there between people we want to demonize and people we want to lionize for having the exact same chemical imbalance, and neatly creates a fall group when any of the "heroes" trip up. Silence those who can't cope, elevate those that can, treat neither effectively, and if an elevated one stops coping, we can just "realize" they were "sick" all along, and oh, yeah, those sick people are so bad, you guys, nothing like those heroes at allllllll.

I am...so tired of this society bullshit.

So anyway, I'm a psychopath. Paranoid, some schizoid. So whatever grains of salt you feel like taking, grab 'em, I guess. I'd mostly like for people like me to stop being weaponized, lionized, or punished for having a different neurotype. I'd like to be able to talk to a doctor about that and for there to be some options beyond "stop that," "get locked up," "have you considered the army" (yes, a doctor actually asked me that as a teenager) or "you seem fine, tho."

And if you resonate with this, well...I'm 32, never been arrested, mostly managed to avoid terrible shit, and I've got a life, couple partners, and I'm surviving, so like. You can do this. Lotta people wanna tell you you can't have this or that cause "you're not bad, tho." They're stupid. Y'ain't evil, just different. Don't let them get to you.

And (this is a joke) if you decide to shoot someone, do it once, correctly. Saves time.

#actuallymentallyill #vent #tw violence

14 notes · View notes

skippyv20 · 4 years

Text

💜💜💜💜😁😁😁😁😁PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON😁😁😁😁😁💜💜💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON ……… “ we have 4 hours to get a ring of garlic “ ……… I dispute my results ……… poor maintenance!! ………… first responders warm to Charles …… 7 million mortgage 🤣🤣🤣…………… £3000 !!!…………” I shan’t be buying any Tuna on rye” ………… staycation on the up…………” it arrived in a crate!!!!” …………… algorithm and blues…………” not eligible to serve”.

Thank you😊❤️❤️❤️❤️

Aug 14/20

😊😊😊😊💜💜💜💜💜Thank you MM Anon💜💜💜💜💜💜😊😊😊😊

Riddle #85

August 14/2020

THESE ARE HARD EXTREMELY OBSCURE CLUES😁😁😁🥺🥺😩😩😩😩😩😩😩😩OBSCURITY HAS MET WITH TENACITY AKAPG ME!! TODAY MM ANON!!!! I SAY, CHECK MATE😁😁😁😁😁

“ we have 4 hours to get a ring of garlic “ ………

What the heck is a ring of garlic? Here it’s called a head of garlic. Who wants a ring made of garlic? I don’t understand this clue at all! I think I’ve lost my mojo because I just makes absolutely no sense to me. OK I have searched, now a ring of garlic is not actually a ring nor is it garlic, it is oh thing of sausage a great big long whatever you call it in the in the tube I guess I don’t know if it’s in the casing that’s what it’s called casing casing. Why do you only have four hours to buy meat? I know this is not it but it is awfully gross. A disgusting video shows the moment a mother cuts into her sausages and finds a ‘rubber glove’ inside.Shona Barton, from Sandy, Bedfordshire, was horrified to discover the foreign object inside the £3 Jolly Hog sausages, which she purchased from a Sainsbury’s store.

The 37-year-old sat down to dinner on July 27 with husband Jamie, 37, and their daughter Ellie, 6, before she made the grim discovery.DM. Well this must have something to do with the closing of travel ban I don’t know but you certainly could be able to buy garlic sausages in the UK. I don’t understand this clue it just makes no sense to me.

Is Nicola Sturgeon running Britain? Scottish First Minister causes holiday chaos for thousands by demanding France is put on quarantine list by 4am tomorrow rather than Sunday amid fears GREECE will be next.The UK Government has placed quarantine on arrivals from France, the rules set to come in at 4am Saturday.It has triggered scramble among hundreds of thousands of Britons in France as they try and rush home today.

Many are desperately trying to return home today to avoid having to quarantine for 14 days from tomorrow.Demand for the Eurostar has soared, while a BA flight from Paris to London has increased from £66 to £452.There are fears Greece could be the next country added to the infection list after a spike in its daily cases. I RESEARCHED GARLIC AND RYE ENDLESSLY! This closure must affect wherever this fancy meat comes from in the EU. DM

I dispute my results ………

The UK’s under-fire education secretary Gavin Williamson has said that the government would cover the appeal costs to ensure that head teachers are not put off from making appeals by the cost. The government is facing a storm after nearly 40 per cent of results were downgraded by the computer model deployed when exams had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis. Around the same proportion of GCSEs as A-levels are expected to be downgraded when results come out next week. Meanwhile, students face being forced to take a gap year after Oxford, Cambridge and other universities said they may not have room for them – even if they successfully challenge their A-level grades. Lucy Lipfriend missed out on a place at Cambridge University after her grades were downgraded, which she thinks could be due to her poor performance in A-level exams last year - which she took when her mother Tina had been diagnosed with breast cancer - being taken into account. Bottom: Students protest outside Whitehall

poor maintenance!! …………

KINSHASA, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A plane carrying four passengers crashed late on Thursday in dense forest in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, authorities said.

The plane, thought to be one of two small cargo planes owned by Agefreco, went down during a flight from Kalima in Maniema province to Bukavu in South Kivu province, said Theo Kasi, governor of South Kivu.”The investigation will determine the cause of the accident. I share the pain with the grieving families and offer my deepest condolences,” Kasi said on Twitter. The wreckage has not been located, but the suspected crash zone is a vast dense forest, said Desiree Kyakwima, a spokesperson for South Kivu administration.”The airport services who informed the governor of the crash told him that, while trying to locate the wreckage of the plane, there is no chance of finding any survivors,” Kyakwima said.Air accidents are relatively common in Congo because of lax safety standards and poor maintenance. All Congolese commercial carriers are banned from operating in the European Union. (Reporting by Stanis Bujakera and Fiston Maham Editing by Gareth Jones).

13th August

Housing group under fire over ‘poor’ maintenance of open spaces in Castle Mead. CAMPAIGNERS on the Castle Mead estate in Trowbridge say housing provider GreenSquare’s maintenance of open spaces is not up to scratch.

They say litter is not picked up and grassy areas are not weeded.

Wendy Evans said: “We just want a fair deal. I fully support Castle Mead residents’ objections as we too understand the frustration of being denied a fair go.

“We, too, have become increasingly aware that work done is at a bare minimum, leaving many disgruntled by the shabbiness of the central garden and surrounds. “The lawn is cut regularly during the summer, however litter pickup, weeding and plant management is virtually absent.”The 67-year-old says 79 residents in the Union Street area are collectively paying £12,000 a year in fees for a poor service.

first responders warm to Charles ……

Prince Charles Thanks First Responders at the Site of a Deadly Train Crash in Scotland

Queen Elizabeth said in a message of condolence, “Our thanks go out to the Emergency Services for their response and dedication”Prince Charles paid tribute to those who died and showed his support for the emergency services who rushed to a tragic train crash in Scotland this week.The 71-year-old royal headed to Stonehaven early Friday to visit the site of the train derailment and speak with first responders who aided the injured and helped at the scene on Wednesday.The 06:38 Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street ScotRail train service derailed in the area of north eastern Scotland, and local transport police have confirmed that three people died, including the ScotRail driver and conductor. Several other people were injured and taken to hospital. Charles arrived just after 11 a.m. local time and surveyed the scene from high up on a bank. He then chatted to some of the emergency crews who have been on site following the crash.It’s believed that the derailment was caused by a landslip following heavy rain, the BBC reported. On Wednesday evening, Queen Elizabeth sent a message of condolence to the Lord-Lieutenant of Kincardineshire expressing her “great sadness.”“The Duke of Edinburgh, and the entire Royal Family, join me in sending our thoughts and prayers to the families of those who have died and those who have been injured,” she wrote. “Our thanks go out to the Emergency Services for their response and dedication."People.com

7 million mortgage 🤣🤣🤣……………The Sun

Prince Harry( nope she is lying!!) and SEAHAG are believed to have taken out a massive £7.25m mortgage on their lavish nine bedroom, 16 bathroom estate - which they are calling their "sanctuary”.The couple reportedly moved into the luxurious £11.1 million mansion which boasts a pool, theatre, arcade and guest house in Montecito, California, back in July. Pictures from a previous listing of the huge 14,563 square foot property on five acres of land show it appears to have a stripper pole installed in its gym.🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥It is not known if the quirky feature has since been removed. The huge pad also has its own kids playground.🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥Despite the hefty price tag, it looks like the couple got themselves a bargain as the estate is actually valued at a whopping £20m ($27m).

Deeds, obtained by The Sun, show the buyers for the property took out a £7.25m ($9.5m) mortgage to be paid back plus interest by the year 2050 - indicating they put down a deposit of £3.8m ($5m).They will also have to pay a whopping yearly property tax of £220,000.The records show the property was bought by a mysterious company called the Residential Real Estate Trust.🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥While there are no names listed for the mysterious trust, it matches that of a previous LLC set up by Meghan called Frim Fram Inc.A source close to SEAHAG and NOT!! Harry says the couple are calling the luxury mansion their “sanctuary”.🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥“NOT Harry and SEAHAG have settled into their new home and say they are still figuring things out, they hope when Covid lets up their lives will become easier,” a source said.🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥

£3000 !!!…………

Here’s another one £3000 what like what what where do you like are you doing this on purpose making these ridiculously obscure clues? but I don’t give up!Excess baggage: Average traveller packs £3,000 worth of clothes, gadgets and toiletries (three times the cost of holiday) When it comes to packing, everything but the kitchen sink appears to be the order of the day for most holidaymakers. The concept of travelling light seems to be as foreign as their destinations. For it emerged yesterday that the average British holidaymaking family crams £3,000 worth of clothes, gadgets and toiletries into their luggage – worth almost three times as much as their holiday.DM. This is just absolutely ridiculous! I retract any sympathy I had for anybody who Mr. vacation or who got stuck or had to be quarantine. If you have that much money on stuff that you’re toting along with you and then the cost of your holiday I got no pity for you no pity at all!😁ME I have not been on holiday since my last trip to Scotland in 2005!! Any sympathy for me?!😁🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

“ I shan’t be buying any Tuna on rye” …………

Well I would never buy tuna on Rye because I hate fish and seafood of all kinds. This is in quotation marks but if I search it as such nothing shows up. I hate these clues! Wall Street Journals Coronavirus Has people Hooked on Canned Tuna, and Producers Are Playing Catch-Up.People have been buying more canned tuna during the economic downturn, in part because it’s a cheap protein. Tuna fish has surged in popularity thanks to pantry loading during the coronavirus pandemic, but producers of the canned fish are dealing with higher prices and other challenges that are making it difficult to keep up with the increased demand.

staycation on the up…………

Fully booked! Scramble for staycation spots after Cornwall and Dorset’s top camping areas reach capacity - with some booked up until the end of SEPTEMBER - and there’s hardly a hotel room or cottage to be found.None of the top 20 campsites in Cornwall have any availability for a week’s stay for two adults from tomorrow.Parks and campsites across Britain are seeing a boom in bookings as Britons give up on planning trips abroad.Haven, Butlin’s, Center Parcs and Hoseasons are being inundated while cottage bookings are being swept up.Officials in St Ives, famed for narrow streets, introduce a 'keep to the left’ policy amid soaring visitor numbers. DM

“it arrived in a crate!!!!” ……………

UPDATE: Call of Duty publisher Activision has revealed plans to unveil the new game on August 14.According to influencer NoahJ456, the next Call of Duty 2020 teaser will go live at 5pm BST on August 14. That’s based on clues uncovered from the mysterious Call of Duty crates, as well as the discovery of a new teaser site.

“I just heard directly from Activision. What we solved today was just the FIRST step of the Call of Duty 2020 reveal. What comes out on Friday at 12 EST is just the next part. We go again.”

ORIGINAL: Call of Duty publisher Activision is finally ready to reveal the 2020 release, titled Black Ops: Cold War.

After months of waiting, fans will get a glimpse of the new game during a reveal planned for 5pm BST on August 10.

The extent of the reveal is yet to be confirmed, but fans will be hoping for more than just a cinematic trailer or logo.

After such a lengthy wait for any kind of information, fans want a release date and extensive gameplay footage, or maybe even a look at next-gen upgrades.

The timing of the reveal was confirmed by COD influencers such as CharlieIntel, who recently received a mysterious Call of Duty crate.The locked crate can only be opened when Activision sends out a code at 5pm later today.Elsewhere, Activision has started dropping hints about the upcoming release in Call ofDuty’s Battle Royale spinoff Warzone.Visual glitches featuring the message, “know your history”, started appearing in Warzone late last week. This was followed by the appearance of mysterious gas cannisters scattered throughout the Warzone map. Other leaks suggest the reveal will take place in the Gulag.

THE EXPRESS

algorithm and blues…………

Where I live the COVID-19 cases are increasing. They’ve been steadily increasing each day and today they’re at the highest level that they were April 2. I don’t think we are even done the first wave yet and wait till the kids go back to school and flu season comes I am already stocking up and still have a stock pile but I’m continuing to have a stockpile.DM Britain records 1,441 Covid-19 cases in biggest daily jump for two months as officials announce another 11 deaths - but separate statistics show the crisis IS under control with the outbreak definitely shrinking each day and the R rate stable.Department of Health statistics show the daily spike in cases is the largest 24-hour jump since June 14 (1,514).The rising numbers of positive tests have ignited fears that the virus is rebounding and sliding out of control.But prevalence of the coronavirus in England is mostly unchanged since last week, official statistics show.Office for National Statistics report estimates 0.05 per cent of population are currently infected with Covid-19.Official daily cases are rising but this is likely because testing is better targeted and finding cases well.SAGE today revealed Britain’s Covid-19 R rate remains between 0.8 and 1.0 - the same as last week’s estimate.And it said that the outbreak is shrinking and cases are fall. Algorithm referred in the clue is the algorithm used to calculate the R rate etc. The blues is obviously the death and disease.

“not eligible to serve”…

CAVEAT HERE THIS IS NOT! I REPEAT NOT! MY OPINION

President Trump said he heard that Ms. Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee born in California, was not eligible for the ticket, repeating a theory that is rampant among his followers. Constitutional scholars quickly called his words false and irresponsible. WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday encouraged a racist conspiracy theory that is rampant among some of his followers: that Senator Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee born in California, was not eligible for the vice presidency or presidency because her parents were immigrants.

That assertion is false. Ms. Harris is eligible to serve.

Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters on Thursday, nevertheless pushed forward with the attack, reminiscent of the lie he perpetrated for years that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.“I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Harris.“I have no idea if that’s right,” he added. “I would have thought, I would have assumed, that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president.”Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to a widely discredited op-ed article published in Newsweek by John C. Eastman, a conservative lawyer who has long argued that the United States Constitution does not grant birthright citizenship. Ms. Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, was born in 1964 in Oakland, Calif., several years after her parents arrived in the United States. The New York Times

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿

Thank you😊❤️❤️❤️❤️

Aug 14/20

Wow…I don’t know how you do it PG! Thank you, interesting stuff…😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

#Ask Skippy #submission

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kathleen-meyer-lyme-survivor · 4 years

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DISCLAIMER: I have signed a waiver and become a contributor to an upcoming book by a fellow, healed Lyme patient. Some or all of this story may be published in the coming months. I have added and updated some of this information 9.12.2020, so hopefully I will not violate any copyright laws.

NOTE: Do not assume everything I write here or on my Facebook Lyme page will help. Everyone heals differently. Working with a knowledgeable, sincere doctor and finding the right combination of medication, herbs, personal lifestyle and diet changes will help. One size doesn’t fit all for Lyme disease treatments. Don’t be afraid to research and consult with your doctor. Get a notebook and write down EVERYTHING; diet, exercise, symptoms, dates, times, and ANY physical or emotional stress-causing events. Stress seems to be the biggest culprit of all diseases. Hypocrites stated, “All disease begins in the gut”. HE WAS RIGHT!!

NAME: Kathleen Meyer

I live in Northern VA. I am a retired, 60+ year old Grandmother. I am widowed, and I was living alone when Lyme hit. Symptoms began between September 12-14, 2012.

BACKSTORY: September 12, 2012. I felt something prick my lower back. When I reached around to check, the area was very hot to touch. This was in my car in Reston, Virginia, on a 90+ degree day. I had left the car windows open slightly during the work day.

The previous two weeks, I had been on vacation to the Pacific Northwest, to visit my Sister. While there, I visited a national park, which is highly populated by deer and other furry animals; large and small. There was hiking and a few photo ops while sitting on a rock wall. Deer roam around freely in the town where my Sister lives.

After going to my family doctor almost daily between 9/14-10/12 to complain of strange symptoms, I was finally tested for Lyme, West Nile virus and Rocky Mountain Spotted fever. My doctor was skeptical at first, but I kept insisting the symptoms weren’t normal for any flu I had ever had. When I mentioned living by woods and recently spending time in a national park, I was taken more seriously.

I was diagnosed with Lyme on October 12,2012, (clinically by relating symptoms) and blood work. Side note: Because I had Mono at age 18, I was also diagnosed with Mono “exposed”. I was instructed to go home, stay on bedrest and get clearance from an infectious disease doctor, before returning to work. I was on sick leave and coworker’s leave donations between 10/15-11/13/2012. I was also instructed NOT to work or look at work email while out sick; which I now understand completely. The philosophy seems to be, “Being out on sick leave means you’re too sick to be at work, so don’t try to do any work at home”. Never mind that after two weeks of bedrest, going stir crazy and wanting to do something, is very normal.

TREATMENTS: I was immediately placed on Doxycycline 200 mg, by the family doctor, for 20 days. That didn’t work. Then Doxycycline 200 mg for 10 days. When that didn’t work, there was 30 days additional. When I ran out, I waited between prescriptions about a week or two, to see if symptoms would come back. Symptoms kept coming back. I was on/off Doxycycline for a total of 60 days. My insurance company wouldn’t authorize more than 60 days, so I was given Cefuroxime 500 mg for 30 days.

NOTE: At the beginning of the Cefuroxime prescription I doubled the dose for the first 4 days, just to see what would happen. I realize that wasn’t a very smart thing to do, but I wanted to kill what was making me so sick. After the 4 days, I used the prescription correctly. At the end of the 30 days, no symptoms returned.

NOTE: I always eat yogurt in between any oral antibiotic dose. The reason is because all antibiotics kill all bacteria, including the beneficial bacteria we need in our gut, where the main part of the immune system is located. The other part of the immune system is our brain. The brain and gut communicate with each other UNLESS we have an illness like Lyme. The brain is affected and doesn't communicate correctly with the gut during Lyme, and probably during other autoimmune illnesses.

MYSTERIOUS SYMPTOMS BEFORE TREATMENT: High blood pressure, cardiomegaly, chronic bronchitis, prolapsed mitre heart valve, GERD, Barretts esophagus, large hiatal hernia. Other symptoms; short term memory issues, difficulty with vision, floaters, reading, sensitive to bright light and sunshine. Difficulty walking, bumping into walls, problems with grip and dropping things. Insomnia, sometimes several nights in a row. Constant buzzing, tingling, pain throughout my entire body. Chest pain, head and neck pain, difficulty with bowels, difficulty swallowing and anxiety from feeling so ill for no known reason, except Lyme. I was able to swallow correctly again, after an endoscopy and scraping of webbed growth (non-cancerous).

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW: ALL doctors, nurses including E.R. personnel need to be made aware of how many hundreds of symptoms Lyme can have. It is known to mimic at least 400 other illnesses and syndromes. Millions of people worldwide are being mis-diagnosed or given catch-all diagnosis out of frustration. Doctors have about 15 minutes per patient and don’t have time to research and address everyone’s symptoms. More research is needed and the patient’s symptoms need to be taken more seriously. The phrase “The customer is always right”, needs to apply to patients as well. Haphazard treatment of symptoms and covering up symptoms DOESN’T WORK FOR LYME!!

NOTE: Most medical schools are funded by big pharma. They do not provide enough education to upcoming doctors about Lyme and similar illnesses. They don’t stress enough on nutrition or healthy eating as a benefit to patients. I have asked my doctors and chiropractor about this, and they said the same thing.

Do NOT listen to any doctor who tells you your child has “Growing Pains”. Find a doctor who is knowledgeable about Lyme, preferably a young doctor with a growing family of his/her own. My family doctor diagnosed and treated me correctly, was THAT doctor, not a specialist, a general practitioner.

HOW HAS LYME CHANGED MY LIFE; GOOD AND BAD: Lyme caused me to be bedridden for over 3 weeks, afraid to drive for fear of getting lost, and feeling like I had early onset Alzheimer’s. I now feel that it was an eye-opening experience, which awakened me to how poorly I had been managing my diet and exercise on a daily basis. I also believe the 2012 influenza shot might have been flawed, because I never felt healthy after that, and it possibly weakened my immune system so Lyme and Mono could sneak in.

I went from quick and easy meals and very little exercise to self-improvement. I learned from the Lyme pages on Facebook from reading other people’s stories. It was almost like putting a really large jigsaw puzzle together, very slowly and not having all the pieces in front of me.

SOMETHING I DO NOW THAT I NEVER DID BEFORE LYME: I now pay closer attention to my physical and emotional health, what foods I eat and the amount of daily exercise I get. I also developed pre-diabetes type 2 during the Lyme period. I am now eating real food and watching my weight in order to keep the pre-diabetes under control, without medication.

NOTE: Doctor’s won’t tell you unless you press them, that medication for everything is NOT the best way to control anything, because you’re stuck on the medication for the rest of your life. Our bodies are capable of healing, with help by US.

THE MOST FRUSTRATING PART OF LYME DISEASE: I would have to say, lack of compassion for what patients are going through on the part of medical professionals, insurance companies, news media, and the general public. “Take these pills and you’ll feel better”. This doesn’t work with Lyme disease; trust me. However, I know many people who believe everything their doctor says and I hear, “My doctor says it’s__________. More research is needed and the actual CAUSE should be researched and treated instead of pills to cover up underlying symptoms.

MY BIGGEST SUPPORTER(S): I have a private Facebook page called “Where is Lyme Disease”, which has 249 members. I consider all of them to be my supporters; we support each other. I have been posting there since March, 2015, before any of us realized Lyme is EVERYWHERE!! I HAVE POSTED HOW I TREATED, HEALED AND WHAT I AM DOING NOW TO STAY HEALTHY. Those answers were not readily found using an internet search in 2012. Everything I post on the page is from what I went through. I am trying to help others with Lyme get through it and not give up.

I give all credit to healing to authors of books about Lyme struggles. There are too many to mention, but “Cure Unknown” by Pamela Weintraub was the best one. I read it several times, because the first time I tried to read, the words ran together and blurred because of Lyme. I am now able to read again, and have re-read several books I couldn’t comprehend before. If there’s a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD, suspect Lyme!!

BIGGEST DAILY STRUGGLE: Praying it never comes back and thanking God for every day which I am granted. Experimenting with different diet plans and keeping healthy. Getting away from white sugar, white flour and other overly processed, easy to fix foods and getting real food into my body is a daily challenge.

Continuing to learn about and helping others deal with Lyme. I have helped quite a few people NOT give up. I wish I could help everyone or was a millionaire so I could donate money for a cure.

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thel3tterm · 5 years

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Our Author is Dead

This is my current novel project. I’ve been working on it for ~5 years, and its been through many painful drafts and revisions.

Current status: about halfway through the final draft. ~23 chapters and counting.

Read it here! What is it about?

When Rouge’s boyfriend, Michael, goes missing under mysterious circumstances, he leaves behind boxes of incomprehensible research, and a realization that he hadn’t been the meek eccentric they always believed.

Rouge wanders from town to town, trying to piece together what happened and hopefully bring him home.

Along the way, they have to deal with biological monstrosities, an enigmatic being who eats words, a vigilante in a rabbit mask, overpowered teens on the run from a nightmarish organization, and worst of all- a war over who gets to be the protagonist of the story they apparently live in.

The World:

Our Author is Dead takes place in a country known as Doma.

Doma is very similar to our contemporary society. There’s junk food, convenience stores, comic books, air conditioning, interstates… but no electricity. The east is bordered by an ocean, and its western desert ends in an incomprehensible, uncrossable ‘wall’ of abnormality.

Lets Talk Biomancy: All technology is based upon living organic tissue- a field known as Biomancy. The field is completely normalized in their world. It gets them from place to place, lets them communicate long distances, runs the factories, does pretty much everything electricity does for us. In many cases its unnoticeable, running through the walls or inside of gadgets one might not even suspect are alive. The most noteworthy examples though, are full fledged lab created ‘animals’ of sorts. They might be pets, household assistance, or most commonly, vehicles. Zap Heads: Some people actually do study electricity, and believe in the merits of it as an alternative means of engineering. …Of course, we all know that its just a fringe science and that there’s no way to actually use electricity for anything substantial. People who study it call themselves Electricians. Everyone else calls them Zap Heads.

Novus: A subgroup of people in this country are known as Novus. A Novus, for one reason or another, is born with a slight or major split from their own body. Most people are only able to have an influence within themselves. They are only able to think inside their heads and move what’s attached to them. A Novus is able to have an influence outside of themself, which can manifest in a myriad of ways. Some might bend reality around them to their will, some might be able to reach into another person’s head and change things around. -Novus are looked at negatively by most of the country, and are often disparagingly called ‘Wiz’, based on the thought that they’re like witches. -Medical researchers believe that it is some kind of a birth defect, but are unable to determine if the root is environmental or genetic. -They’ve been noted to have a much higher average body temperature, and a weaker immune system. Flexing their 'abnormalities’ seems to require an extreme amount of energy, so they need to eat a lot more than average and struggle to keep a healthy weight. -Religious people believe that it is caused by a moral failure, and that Novus need to have more self discipline to 'correct’ themselves. -Upon discovery, Novus are immediately documented and given a facial tattoo and serial number. -Most Novus wind up being seized and taken to a 'rehabilitation’ center before they reach the age of eighteen. Few will ever actually leave the rehab centers. Only a small number remain free to adulthood. The Bones: One of the oldest and most prestigious families in Doma is known as the Bones. Despite appearing frequently in history textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, important dinners, parties, and the like, very little is ACTUALLY known about the Bones. Here are some definite knowns: -They invented Biomancy several hundred years ago. -They are the only family who actually knows how to make a Biom from scratch, and they hold this secret very close. (Factories merely assemble the Bioms, but an outside party is not able to make a working one unless it comes from them.) -All of their children are women. No Bones has ever been a man. -They seem to have an extreme influence over all the goings-on in the country. Politics, Novus control, science, media, you name it, they’re there. Melissa Bones is currently in charge of their family operations, and her daughter Pamela is the up and coming heir. Characters: Rouge: -27 years old -Novus -Non-binary (they/them) -Very thin, brown hair (unless they dye it) usually in a sideshave or shaggily uneven, long face, tan skin, chipped front tooth, average height -Almost always wearing a patched up and shabby blue coat. -Anxious, self loathing, self-described as 'completely ordinary and boring’, sarcastic, artistic, tenacious -Was diagnosed a Novus at age 17 in a freak accident. They had never caused anything to happen before, and have done nothing unusual since. -Was rescued from a rehab center under equally bizarre circumstances by a childhood friend, and is a rare 'adult’ Novus. -Has a taste for the finer things in life, and likes to critique food and visual design -Loves outlandish fashion, but has no money for it -Is looking for someone dear to them who mysteriously went missing Valence: -Is that even her real name? -19 years old -Extremely powerful Novus. Perhaps the most powerful there ever was. -Can bend reality around her, create bursts of light and heat, move objects at a distance, alter the shape and material of things -Stocky and muscular, on the shorter side, round face, tan skin, black hair typically kept short -Prefers masculine clothing -Prone to anger, determined, stubborn, courageous, strong moral compass, black and white mentality, fiercely independent -Both of her parents are well known 'Zap Heads’. Her siblings are well known activists and researchers. While smart, she was more drawn to music, and felt trapped under the expectations placed on her by her family. -Was friends with several vigilantes and rogue freedom fighters who knew her family -Was taken at age 18 after snapping someone’s leg in half, and brought to a secret facility run by the Bones -Broke herself out and has been on the run since -Was in a shitty garage band. Plays bass. Loves comic books and underground music. Tariku: -14 years old -Novus with the ability to 'see’ into people’s inner selves and mess with their heads, plus a few other things I won’t mention here yet. -Dark skin, thick hair, short because he’s still young but will grow to be tall, on the thinner side -Prefers to dress crisply, usually opting for collared shirts -Wears a blindfold most of the time to prevent accidentally spying on people. (Also because he was taught that his ability is a sin, and he can’t turn it off…) -Thoughtful, cautious, strategic, quiet, prone to guilt, shows little emotion but feels things intensely, rarely shares what he’s thinking about, extremely curious but is often too afraid to explore or take risks -Never swears or uses contractions while speaking -Grew up in a facility with several other Novus with similar abilities who were being trained for a specific, mysterious, goal -Knew Pamela Bones -Decided to escape with Valence after an incident he is keeping a secret, for now -Is curious about 'normal’ things people his age do, but is so far underwhelmed by the reality of the outside world Corvid: -??? -This thing seems to show up randomly in Rouge’s room at night. Is it even real? -It talks in garbled voices patched together -Wears a raven mask. Who knows what it is or what it wants. Is it even human? Michael: -A childhood friend of Rouges, then boyfriend -Tall, gangly, dark curly hair, freckles -A bit of a know-it-all, passionate about everything, pleasant and friendly, keeps things to himself, doesn’t like to share uncomfortable details of his life -Difficult family life, a lot left unsaid -Might be involved in really dark and shady things -Got kidnapped and who knows where he is now Proto: -Lives in the woods -Always wears a rabbit mask, even while they’re sleeping, like a weirdo -Supposedly a friend of Michael’s, but Rouge had never heard of them -A friend of Valence’s as well, and worked with her family -Vigilante, destructive Pamela Bones: -20 -Pale skin, freckles, bright red hair kept long, perfectly aligned teeth, green eyes, a bit on the shorter side, fit, curvy figure -She’s everywhere, it seems. An international icon -Sounds bubbly and friendly enough, but there’s something wrong with her voice, and her eyes, and her smile. It seems a bit uncanny, a bit... off somehow Read it here! ________________________ Tag list: @leonajasmin-writeblr @zburatorii

#oaid #writing #writeblr #wip #spilled ink #writers of tumblr #current project #original writing #original characters

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thenightnurse · 5 years

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Understanding Diabetes

Let’s discus diabetes. More than 30 million Americans have diabetes, and yet most people don’t understand just how serious of a disease it is, or how it exactly works.

Before we begin, let’s clarify that there are many different types if diabetes, from Type 1, Type 2, Gestational Diabetes, prediabetes, and much more. I’ll talk about them later.

Anatomy

Let’s take a look at a few key players; The pancreas, the liver, the kidneys, your blood cells, and well, the rest of your cells lol. Insulin, glucose, ADH hormone. The stomach (breaks down and absorbs food), your muscles (stores and uses glucose)

Physiology

Okay so all foods, once they are broken down, are only one of three things, a carbohydrate molecule, a fat molecule, or a protein molecule. Glucose is a type of carb, a very simple one, and it’s what your body turns all carbs into.

Even though I said glucose is a simple carb (one of the smallest), its still really big, in fact its too large to be absorbed into most cells, like your skeletal muscles (aka most all of the muscles you think of), your fat cells, and your cardiac muscles (your heart). Glucose can however be absorbed by your brain, pancreas, and liver.

So after you eat some carbs, its broken down into glucose. This glucose is now chilling in your blood stream until its taken up into your liver and pancreas. The pancreas realizes that theres a good amount of sugar in the bloodstream and it releases insulin, which allows your muscles and fat cells to use that glucose. Now here’s the part that I personally hate because no one ever explains how insulin lets your body use glucose other than “it works like a key”, but to be fair it doesn’t actually help you to know how, so skip this part if you don’t care to know.

[Ight nerds, so remember how I said earlier that glucose is literally too big to just squeeze into the cells? Well then you must be wondering how does it? Good question. So inside your cells you have these things called hexose transporters, which are some cool yet boring membrane proteins. For the most part they kind of just chill in cytoplasmic vesicles, doing nothing and floating within a cell, but when insulin comes and binds to receptors on the outside of the cell, it basically summons all of the hexose transporters, to which they then join together like a fucking mech from power rangers and attach to the surface of the cell, creating enough space to allow them to be channeled through via facilitated diffusion, which is like passive diffusion (high to low), but through a channel/passageway. When the insulin goes away, voltron disassembles and glucose can no longer just float into the cell. Dope shit.]

Diabetes Pathophysiology

Let’s first discuss type 2 diabetes, since it is the most common type. 90-95% of people with diabetes have this type. At the end of the day, the cause of type two diabetes is Ineffective Insulin use.

Now, what does that mean? Well, it might mean that the body isn’t producing enough insulin, or that the body’s cells aren’t responding to insulin. I’ll give a few examples to help explain.

Let’s say that you wake up and eat a large breakfast of sugary ass cereal and drink a lot of juice. On the way to school or work you have a bar of what is basically sugar, and a cup of coffee. Which is in reality (if you are like me at least), is just liquid sugar and caffeine. For lunch you go and decide to eat a sandwich, which, while it might not be bad, still does have carbs which turn into sugar. You then proceed to have another cup of coffee or soda or something high in sugar. You later have a candy bar as a way of congratulating yourself for getting through the work/school day (honestly, fucking mood, same. lmao) and then for dinner you eat some pasta (again, not innately bad, but because you already had so many carbs it’ll just fuck you up). You also drink some high sugar liquids because you like the taste of it. Then you have another snack before bed. Probably high in sugar.

Well you remember how I previously said that insulin is released by your pancreas when blood sugar levels are high? Yeah well that shit is going to always be fucking high with a diet like that. Eventually the insulin receptors that are just chilling on your cells become fatigued and no longer respond to insulin because they’re just so done with it. Well the pancreas freaks out and decides to release even more insulin to try to compensate, but it will never be able to keep up, but it keeps trying and trying.

That’s basically how type 2 diabetes goes for the majority of people. Now for type 1.

So type 1 diabetes is a lot more rare. Less than 10% of people with diabetes have it. Type 1 diabetes is when your body’s immune system (the thing responsible for fighting infections) decides to attack the cells of the pancreas instead. It’s funny how the things meant to keep us safe can often times hurt us the worst. Ouch. Anyways, the scientific and medical community still aren’t sure what causes the immune system to do so. Some believe it’s due to genes, others believe its caused by viruses, or other environmental factors. More research is coming out every day. Really dope stuff. I guarantee you that the first person to discover the cause will not only quickly become incredibly rich (fuck the bourgeoise though) but will also win the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

Well since the pancreas is no longer functioning, your body is unable to actually use any of the carbs you eat, and since your body kind of needs glucose to live and do anything, you quickly waste away. Before the invention of insulin in 1921, the average life expectancy for someone with type 1 diabetes was only 3 years. Imagine being a parent and bearing a child that quickly just died at 3 years old for reasons you didn’t understand. Terrifying and tragic.

Most people with type 1 diabetes get diagnosed at the age of 14. There are some very telltale signs. So because the cells are unable to actually use the glucose, it kind of just sits in the bloodstream. This puts you at an incredibly high risk for infections, since bacteria will gladly use that sugar and grow rapidly in the bloodstream. Well because of concentration gradients (dude nature really loves conserving energy, I’ll write about it later), the water from within cells decide to leave the cell and enter the bloodstream, to balance out the concentration gradient of the high amount of molecules in the blood. Well on top of that the body really wants to get rid of the high sugar in the blood so it decides to urinate a lot to get rid of it, causing polyuria (poly meaning a lot, and uria meaning piss. So you piss a lot.)

So in your body your kidneys are whats responsible for creating urine, and then it sends it off to the bladder to be stored till you piss it out. Well it works by filtering your blood and then getting rid of stuff it doesn’t need, like sugar, urea (which is the main part of urine, so your body uses proteins a lot, and when proteins are broken down you are left with nitrogen. Well this nitrogen when combined with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, create urea. Which isn’t healthy for you. That’s why you piss it out ), and toxins like ammonia. Among other stuff.

Normally your kidneys reabsorb the sugars and put it back into your bloodstream, but because you have so much sugar in your blood it’s unable to and instead the glucose goes to your urine. This is why they test your urine for sugar, and why diabetic patients can have urine that smells sweet. In fact old timey ass doctors would even taste your piss because if it was sweet you probably had diabetes. Well due to concentration gradients and your body naturally wanted to go to equilibrium, more water from your cells and body goes to join that urine. Because you are urinating so much, aka polyuria, you become really thirsty since you have no more liquid in your body. Like incredibly thirsty. We call this polydipsia. It’s almost an insatiable thirst.

Well remember how I said your cells are unable to absorb sugar? Well your cells don’t like this and so it tells your brain to become hungry, to make you eat more, so that it can get sugar. But because you are unable to use the sugar no matter what, you stay hungry and continue to starve. This intense hunger is called polyphagia. (poly means a lot, phagia means eating.)

These three form the trinity of signs of diabetes. Polydipsia, Polyuria, and Polyphagua.

There is a fourth sign however. Diabetic Ketoacidosis.

So a question you might have is how do people manage to live for so long if they aren’t able to process sugar? Good question.

They process fats instead.

Okay so this isn’t innately bad. Yay, your body is burning fat, not too bad right? Well. Because someone with DM1 (diabetes mellitus type 1) can only process fats and no carbs, they quickly build up the amount of ketones (whats left when your body processes fats for energy) in the blood, and since ketones are a bit acidic, when they are present en masse they are able to change the pH of your blood.

Other bad things that can happen due to DM1 and Ketoacidosis include having your electrolytes thrown out of wack due to them being urinated out, and with enough potassium gone you can have irregular heart rhythms which is never good. Lets see, due to severe dehydration your kidneys can decide to give up causing kidney failure. Because your body no longer gets rid of waste you can get really sick, and I don’t want to go into depth on that, but just think of all the troubles that can occur in your own house if you never threw out the trash. Tough shit. This is why so many patients with diabetes end up having to go to dialysis. Since they can’t filter their blood, a machine will have to. On top of this, because your fluid levels get thrown out of wack, fluids can actually build up in your lungs which makes it really difficult to breathe, as you can imagine. Basically it all just sucks.

Treatment

So treatment for type 1 diabetes is pretty straight forward, everytime you eat, wake up, go to bed, or feel terrible, you pretty much have to prick your finger, check your blood sugar levels, then give yourself a shot of insulin to compensate and everything works out. It’s very annoying, but something you ultimately have to just live with. And if you live in America then it is incredibly expensive and good luck fam.

For type two diabetics treatments a bit different. For a good amount of people, most people actually, if they were to just have a proper diet, eat less sugars and carbs, and just exercise daily, they would be fine and would be able to go about their days without worrying about diabetes. But this is the modern age we’re talking about and people are lazy sacks of shits and are unwilling to do the bare fucking minimum to ensure they have a good life and so instead we’ve developed a lot of drugs to compensate.

Different drugs do different things. Heres what the main ones do:

Biguanides like metformin or glucophage combat insulin resistance and they decrease hepatic glucose production.

Sulfonylureas work by increasing insulin production from the pancreas.

Meglitinides increase insulin production from the pancreas as well, but these are absorbed much quicker than sulfonylureas which means that they are a lot less likely to cause hypoglycemia.

alpha glucpsidase inhibitors work by decreasing the absorption of carbs in the small intestine.

Theres more drugs but honestly I’ve spent more than 2 hours writing this already and I have to be at the hospital at 6 in the morning and I just want to shower and sleep. I’ll just say this is part 1 and I’ll continue writing about diabetes later on. Like gestational diabetes.

#diabetes #medicine #type 1 diabetes #type 2 diabetes #insulin #nursing #ketoacidosis #dm1 #dm2

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morethanithoughtofficialblog · 5 years

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Chapter 14: Isn’t that punderful?

In which puns and feelings hit you like a brick.

*Your POV*

Something that still surprises me is the simplicity that the Underground people had in their daily lives. It was like living in a small town, where everyone knew everybody. Kids would go walking from their home to school and return safely, never fearing to be attacked by anyone. Because they knew them perfectly, and they knew them as well.

I've been learning that recently, hearing Asgore's stories. And thanks to all those generations and all those hidden memories, we could finally create one of the projects I was more eager to make: the Underground history book.

I must say that I had a lot of support on this project by a lot of people, either monsters or humans. Gaster provided me his scientific researches, Alphys and (surprisingly) Sans did as well. The three of them had an important role in the lab, but Gaster was the main Royal Scientist. Still, they all contributed with some information, making me understand the concept of souls and magic better.

Toriel got to meet and protect the eight humans that fell into the Underground, and that was really useful to establish how The Barrier was broken and why it was needed to be that way.

And well, every civilian helped me to know a general idea of how the Underground was: awful but full of hopeful people.

The most interesting part, or should I say person, it's Gerson: monster-turtle that has been living for a ton of years, and that was an important warrior in the war. He was alive before Asgore was even born! And so I spent some good hours talking to him...

"What... what was the name of your King when the war happened?"

"Reynor. Reynor Dreemurr, the great-grandfather of Fluffybuns"

"Fluffybuns?"

"Oh, hahaha! I mean Asgore, it's just a silly nickname I gave him! Don't mind this old man, hahaha!"

I smiled remembering that talk we had, being full of charm and comedy (from Gerson's part, of course. I'm no good at jokes). Monsters normally have the same age structure as humans do (years have 365 days usually, they turn one year older after that specific amount of days, etc.). That means that one human year is equal to one monster year: there's no difference at all.

And just like turtles, Gerson has lived a lot of years. According to his exceptional memory (that surprises me a lot, mine being not able to remember what I ate yesterday), the war happened three hundred and twenty-one years ago, and it ended three hundred and nineteen years ago. He was just a young warrior when that happened, he being in his mid-twenties (just as I am right now, yay! ...I need to concentrate).

Reyson Dreemurr lived a ton of years as well and married at a very old age. That explains mostly why there hasn't been a lot of Dreemurr generations after the war. The interesting fact, though, is that the eight human children fell into the Underground during Asgore's commandment, none of them before him.

"Those eight buckos, including the Prince Chara, fell into the Underground probably because the legends were starting to fade, young lady"

"So you are insinuating that people took the story as a joke, especially the kids?"

"Yep, like a bedtime story... just like us, isn't that right? Hahaha!"

Gerson was right: monsters were almost recently taken as fantastic creatures, as myths, and nonexistent. In all honesty, I considered them that as well. But if I was living in Ebott City since I was a kid, maybe it would have been different.

...

Maybe.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I was on the Prince Chara's place... and no, I don't mean in his current place, but to actually have Toriel and Asgore as parents and have a goat brother. I wonder how it could have been to go to school with the young monsters I know, or if I would ever babysit Papyrus and help him with homework. It...

It sounds like a good life, honestly.

Way better than mine, at least.

But I realize that, even if that would have happened, life wouldn't be full of roses and glitter (that idea doesn't sound appetizing either). And I know it's rude to talk like this, but Sans's case is a pure proof of what I'm trying to imply. But maybe there was something in his life that made him different...

After all, he has PTSD.

God, I sound like a jerk.

I mean, I have PTSD as well, so... there's no difference between his case and mine. The only important thing is that his painful past happened in the Underground, the "simple town" I was describing so cheerily five seconds ago. My painful past happened in the Surface, the place all of them cherished for years.

So even if we can go on and live in Perfection Land, our lives will never be perfect. Mine, for example, was shitty and uninteresting before they came. And I only have a general perspective of their lives, but I don't know them deeply...

And we return to why monsters are so similar to us: because they have a story behind that smile. And not all people will know that story. And that includes me.

Depression is an easy topic to talk about if you find a person with the same thing. However, the reasons behind it it's the difficult part since that's what actually shows your vulnerability. So yeah, when you already have it diagnosed it's easy to tell others "Hey, I have depression!", but to tell them why or when it started it's technically telling them your story.

And when you can't tell your story and neither can cry about it, then what's the matter in feeling like not saying it? Just scream that you have depression and, well, the rest will come later...

You: Hi Sans!

Sans: hello kid

Sans: how ya been?

You: Good good, how are you feeling?

Sans: eh, i guess i'm fine

Sans: not that i'm depressed or anything

Heh.

There's no difference between his case and mine.

You: Yeah, I know how it feels

Sans: to be depressed all the time?

You: Sans

You: I'm even depressed right now

Sans: huh

Sans: then u need someone raisin your spirits often?

And he just sent an image of a raisin.

Great.

You: Sans, you are awful

Sans: hey, whaddya mean?

Sans: i put my heart in it

You: Well

You: Thanks to you, I have no raisin to continue living

You: You jerk

Sans: oh my god, i'm sorry

Sans: i never meant to make your pain more...

Sans: unpearable

You: Nah, don't sweat it

You: My life was already a peach of shit

I laughed way too hard when I saw Sans calling me after that lame pun. It took me a while before gaining my breath and finally accepting his offer.

"Hello?" I asked in a fancy tone, like if I didn't know who was calling.

"hello, ma'am. may i have a word with you before i can let you live your slow death in peace?" he replied with the same fancy tone I used, and I instantly burst out in laughter, he following me immediately.

"Sans, why are you calling me?"

"to congratulate ya. you have my respects now"

"What are you even talking about?!"

"not everyone can joke about wanting to die, ya know" he let out a laugh, then continued "and less using puns"

Well, he's right, I guess.

"Sans, just end the call already"

"ok"

He just remained silent, but the call still continued. I stared at the phone with a silly smile on my face, then I groaned silently. I heard him chuckling at my reaction, then he said he will never hang up, which was bullshit since he hung up five seconds after saying that.

Sans: are u there?

You: No.

Sans: rude

Sans: i just wanted to say hi

You: That's the biggest lie I've heard in a while

Sans: what?

Sans: can't a skeleton cover his crippling depression?

You: Oh c' mon

You: Don't go all meloncholic over me

Sans: wow, another food pun?

Sans: please berry me alive before the world ends

You: Do you know what food I would be if I got to choose?

Sans: ?

You: A donut, 'cause I'm empty inside

Sans: same

Sans: i donut see the point in living anymore

Is it necessary to say I was having the time of my life? You can't tell depression jokes to everyone and having a partner to do so felt amazing. Medicine and therapy? More like jokes and puns!

Sans: do you want a tip to deal with depression?

You: I hear you

Sans: drink coffee

You: really?

Sans: yeah

Sans: expresso expresso, no more depresso!

And you bet I laughed, mostly because I drink coffee every day. Maybe I should start ordering expresso though.

You: Oh my God

You: PEMDAS

Sans: pemdas?

You: Please End My Depression And Suffering

And Sans called me again, only to hear him dying of laughter. We ended up telling more jokes all over the phone instead of chatting, him not caring about his brother hearing. Then we both went to tell darker jokes and really cruel stuff that a depressed person would joke about... just like us.

So I really don't understand why I take my problem as something humerus, but if one thing I've learned through all these years dealing with the same things is that crying is horribly useless. And people say that laughter is the best medicine, so I'm technically helping myself and, of course, Sans.

But hey, life hasn't been that bad lately. I was admitted to have a job interview (which I'll have tomorrow) in that small company, and I have more reasons to wake up and do things of my own. And I've been trying to put myself into drinking pills again, even if I don't like the fact that my mood depends on some medicines.

Talking about medicines...

"Hey Sans, do you have the pills you need already?"

"eh..." Oh he doesn't "crap, i forgot to go to the drug store yesterday"

Knew it.

"Well, I can gift you some if you want to. I have some spare pills here in my drawer, and I think I have the same medicaments the doctor prescribed you"

"that would be nice, but are you sure you want to bother yourself? besides, they are not that cheap, kid..." he had this slight hint of doubt in his voice, which made me smile gently.

"Eh, consider it as a present" I simply answered while I shrugged, even if he couldn't see me doing so.

"kid, if i'm gonna take the pills, then..." he made a long pause, then he sighed sadly "can you promise me something?"

Promise?

"It... depends"

"kid, you need to take care of yourself as well" he startled me a bit, and he somehow noticed how taken aback I was "if it wasn't for papyrus, i would probably have killed myself by now. so i just want to tell ya that you don't have to deal with this alone. it must suck being alone with the crap of your head all the time. so whenever you want to talk about, well, anything... you have me here, kid. and paps is more than open to help as well"

Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

...

Shit.

"Hey, thank you. It means a lot to me"

"no probllama"

Seriously-

"An animal pun? Really?" I stopped right there, then I smiled "You've cat to be kitten me"

"i'm sorry, i didn't do it on porpoise"

"That's the sealiest joke I've ever heard"

"i never asked you to let minnow what you think"

"You're giraffing me crazy"

"nah, you're lion"

And so all seriousness disappeared and the puns were all over our conversation. I'm not that good on them, but Sans is clearly experienced with them. I'm better telling jokes of dark humor than silly animal puns. Still, I tried to keep 'em going.

"oh, by the way, papyrus says hi"

"Tell him I say hi as well"

"shore thing, (y/n)"

"I sea what you did there"

And after a few minutes, the call ended, me remembering that I had to give Sans the pills before the day was over. Or well, Papyrus remembering me all over the phone, screaming to his brother to go to the drug store before he dragged him himself (savage).

I took a skele-ton of pills and put them in my laptop's briefcase (since I'm too poor to buy a Gucci bag), then I ran to the bathroom to check myself in the mirror. Decent hair, no rests of make-up... perfect. I dragged a pink hoodie (because why not) that said: "Yes, I'm CUTE: Cringy Ugly Terrible Empty", some simple black shoes and I left my apartment behind... not before going back to grab my almost forgotten briefcase.

I took the subway and put my headphones on, forgetting the rest of the world while I heard some Nirvana music. Yep, this is who I've become: a young adult that takes the train every single day of her life and puts on music all the trip, trying to dismiss my problems.

What a good life.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Arial's POV*

I heard some lively and deep laughter coming from Sans's room, my older child. I wanted to go on and check on him, but... does he really wants me there with him? I haven't been the best mother for my two children, especially for him, so... I let it be.

Sighing desperately, I went over the kitchen to see if I could do something, anything, with my time. I wasn't at home often in the Underground, so cooking isn't my strength. But if I really want to become a normal mother for them, then I had to start making dinner. I sighed again, knowing this was never the life I wanted out in the Surface.

I know this is really selfish to say, but I genuinely preferred my life down there. I was part of the Royal Guard (as a secretary mostly) and one of the most important roles in the Kingdom. I'll always let the King now if there was any problem at the schools, or if there was any planning of a protest. On weekends, my husband and I would sometimes have fun like our teenager times, or I would casually (and awkwardly when Sans grew older) visit the kids.

...it would be pretty stupid for me not to know what I did wrong. Sans trusted us, and he once felt happy when he was around us. But we treated them as only a partial company, and now he's angry and almost mad. Now he doesn't trust us anymore, and Papyrus is trying. We were never parents to our smaller child... but to Sans, we once were. And that's why he's the most hurt.

I first became a mother when I was sixteen years old and Gaster eighteen. It's unnecessary to say it was an accident, but I was too scared to try this method called "abortion", which was recently adopted in the Underground at that time. Gaster was afraid that our new son could ruin our professional lives, but he recognized himself that the abortion wasn't secure. And so I gave birth to Sans, which I don't know if it was the best for him. I haven't given him the life he deserves, and I deeply regret being too young and too stupid to not understand how beautiful the role of a mother can be. I've seen how Toriel treated her boys and how now she treats her girl, and I can't help but admire her for being brave enough to sacrifice everything she dreamed of and decided to make THEIR dreams come true.

But instead, I choose to make my ideal life come true. Because I never wanted any children... not until Papyrus, I guess. That was seven years after being responsible for Sans, just when I told myself I should be a better mother, and so I felt forced to have another one to take care of.

I, however... never got to be the responsible mom I wanted to be deep inside of me. And so Sans had another problem: taking care of his little brother...

There...

There was even some time that I COMPLETELY forgot about their existence...

I just remember that, after realizing I had children, Sans started to hate me. He was overprotective (and he still is) over Papyrus, and whenever I tried to make him understand, he would say "you should not waste your words into lies".

Can...

Can I have a chance to be a good mother, even if now my grown son is twenty-two years old?

I...

Before breaking down in tears in the kitchen, I heard Papyrus running unheavenly fast through the door, then I heard a familiar feminine voice. That voice was not more and not less than the one of our dear ambassador, (Y/N) (L/N). She greeted him as kind as she's ever been, and he exclaimed happily how honored he was to have her in our home. She laughed politely, then Sans teleported to the living room, talking in an enthusiastic tone I haven't heard from him in years. I should have felt good, but it wasn't for me who he was happy for. It was her.

I...

I mean, she could get his trust faster than I'll ever be capable of.

I...

I don't know what to think.

She waved at me discretely with a lovely smile, and I felt more like crying. She's young and making her dreams come true because she was smart enough. She planned her future perfectly, and here she is: healthy, a bright future reflected in her eyes, and a beautiful heart and energy that both the kids admire.

I saw how (Y/N) gave Sans some... medicaments, I think, and he thanked her with a smile he never gave me. They joked a bit and Papyrus groaned playfully, then all of them went into a fit full of laughter.

"OH (Y/N)! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, ENJOYS YOUR COMPANY A LOT! AND I BET SANS DOES AS WELL! WE'RE TRULY HONORED TO HAVE YOU HERE, YOUNG LADY!"

Yes, he's a wonderful child, but I can't be proud of him.

Because I didn't raise him...

Sans did.

#sans x reader #sansxreader #more than i thought fanfiction #more than i thought #chapter 14 #sans #x reader #undertale

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system-of-a-feather · 5 years

Note

I've dated before without the knowledge of having DID. I'm honestly scared to date now. How do you deal with dating in your system? -Host

I realized after writing that this was way longer than I remember. Synopsis is that I put a bit of a personal story, and five main points to consider while dating with DID. For a full explanation, click “Keep Reading”. XD I don’t want to fill up everyone’s dash with this long message

Hey sorry to hear about your experience dating with DID. Honestly for us it is a long story. I’ve been in two ‘relationships’ and I put that in quotations since one was kinda a situation of me being groomed by an online friend that was 22 when I was 14 and it was kind of bad and we don’t need to go into that tbh.

As for the one more relevant to the topic of DID, it is just kind of something that we had to figure out as we went. We technically weren’t diagnosed or really knowledgeable on what DID was for the good like first year and a half of our relationship and the first year dating was so incredibly shaky.

When I had started dating my current boyfriend / fiance, it was WELL established that I was mentally ill, depressed, full of anxiety, and had some notable trauma issues as well as issues with expressing my emotions, trusting people, and just the general concept of love / friendship due to some issues with us being friends, him asking us out, and then a bit of a manipulative extended rejection from Aderis, our old persecutor protector / primary protector at the time. We only started talking again over a shared club leadership and because our therapist at the time said that I HAD to make friends.

Anyways, we had major major issues when we started dating him, partially because we had really poor communication and even worse coordination, especially since we weren’t diagnosed and while we generally knew of each other’s existence, the extreme denial was real since Lucille and I wrote it off as a delusion we developed to please a toxic friend and we wanted to have nothing to do with being a system. A lot of my tips with dating with DID came from a lot of trial and error the hard way and a really patient partner with experience having a mother with PTSD and dissociative tendencies.

This pretty much led to my fiance getting thrown a lot of my really bad depression at the time, suicidal from our suicidal alter, emotional disconnect / disinterest from Lucille, and outright attempts to push, scare, and torment him away from Aderis. I 100% consider him crazy for staying as much as I am super grateful.

Anyways, story time aside, if I had to pinpoint the main issues with dating with DID I would say the following.

1) The System is Not All On Board / Okay With Dating.

The most important detail and largest issue I’ve found with dating with DID is the host (or even another alter) starting a relationship out of their own interest without trying to communicate or check in with the rest of the system. This is ESPECIALLY problematic when a persecutor-protector is against the relationship from what I’ve seen. It might suck, but having DID is pretty much like having a democracy over a monarchy and often times that means that decisions have to be made as a team. If one alter starts working too much in their own self interest and disregards the system, chaos is going to start and inner system drama will start.

When it comes to dating with DID, I feel it is important that you are able to get most of the system on board and for those that you can’t, make plans and give your partner a warning about them / apologize ahead of time. This doesn’t mean all the alters have to date that one person, but rather that they aren’t actively against it.

This was the core issue that I had in the early stages of my dating as Aderis saw him as a place of vulnerability that will get us hurt and cause us to kill ourselves when “he inevitably left us” and as annoying waste of our time. Additionally, Lucille really didn’t see him as a long term relationship and took a while to actually take the relationship seriously which was a minor problem in comparison but still caused issues. It is important that before anything, you make sure the system knows and that there aren’t any major issues.

2) Poor Communication of Rules Within the System Regarding Dating.

Like anything within DID, its important to have rules established within your system on what is okay and what isn’t okay. This is especially true for dating. Maybe one alter would feel cheated on if another alter is dating them. Are your alters allowed to date your partner? What are they allowed to do and say with your partner? Are your alters allowed to explain what you are feeling for you to help solve the issue or better inform them? How should all your alters behave in order to try to respect the relationship? If an alter is uncomfortable with the relationship how should they mention / handle it? The questions vary from system to system and alter to alter so it’s important to see what is important to your system.

This honestly was only something we started to pick up and still are working out since we have poor communication outside of me and Lucille to my knowledge. One important thing, if anything, that I found most useful is figuring out if it is okay for an alter to explain a situation for you as PTSD and depression may make it hard and leave the partner confused or in the dark and such lack of transparency causes relationship issues. This wasn’t discussed in the system at the start, but when Lucille started explaining the situation to my partner and giving him an explanation on what would be best to handle the situation, it really helped make mental health complications easier and smoother. It let my partner understand what I was going through when I otherwise couldn’t mention it and made it easier for him to be patient and supportive rather than confused, stressed, and upset.

3) Poor Understanding of Each Alter’s Boundaries with Partner

This one I have read more about than personally experienced but I do have some details on this too. Not all alters will see the partner in the same way. Some might find them a full on romantic and sexual partner, some might only see them as a sexual partner, some might see them as a close friend and some might just see them as a stranger. The way each alter sees your partner may vary and this can cause issues both within the system and the relationship.

If one alter dislikes the partner but tolerates it, then the system shouldn’t try to force them to like your partner if they don’t want to interact, and your partner should try to understand that that one alter has yet to warm up to them and not to expect anything, not to treat them the same as one that loves them, and understand that it isn’t anything personally attached to those that are dating them. Also, if one alter sees the partner as a platonic relationship, it is important that the partner doesn’t “make it weird” by treating that alter in a romantic or sexual way.

4) Partner Not Understanding DID Properly

This isn’t something that has to be found immediately into the relationship, but it should be built overtime. It is important that your partner understands how DID works and the myths vs facts about it as it can cause some barriers that may make problems understanding one another. They don’t necessarily have to study up on it, but perhaps just doing a bit of research or you explaining it to them can do some good. If they actually bother to understand it, then it will do a lot to help the relationship be more smooth. This is integral to really get a good number of these details to work.

5) Co-Morbid Mental Health Issues.

I can’t specifically talk too much on this as there is way too many things that might be involved, but it is important to know that DID often comes with a number of co-morbid mental health issues that likely will come into play as well that should be looked into.

Overall, I really have to stress that this is easier said than done and I am lucky to have the guy that I do since I don’t have to deal with the issue of being forward to a new person I am dating that I have this disorder. It is important to keep communication within the system and with your partner strong and the better everyone can communicate with one another, the better the relationship will be able to stand. It isn’t easy but it is possible.

And this isn’t specific to like, DID and dating, but generally I would recommend trying to get to know your partner on a platonic level before trying to date them romantically. That way you guys can have a stronger foundation to build a relationship on and a level of communication is already set in place that would assist a lot in figuring out all the communication that is needed in a relationship.

-Riku (Host)

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healendometriosisnaturallyuk · 6 years

Text

Susanne - Success Story - Heal Endometriosis Naturally With Wendy K Laidlaw

Listen to Wendy talk with Susanne from Sweden about her successful journey on Heal Endometriosis Naturally, 12 Week Online Foundation Membership Program with Wendy K Laidlaw.

Discover more about how this may help you and download your FREE Top 5 Jump Start Tips at Https://HealEndometriosisNaturally.com

Read full transcript below:

Wendy: Good afternoon. My name is Wendy K Laidlaw from Heal Endometriosis Naturally.com. I'd like to thank Susanne for being with me today. She's agreed to be interviewed about her experience with Heal Endometriosis Naturally book (Heal Endometriosis Naturally Without Painkillers, Drugs or Surgery, and the online 12 Week Foundation Program.

Welcome, Susanne. Susanne: Thank you very much. Wendy: Great to have you here. You look lovely and healthy today all the way in Sweden there. And so yes, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed. It's always such a joy to have a chat with women who have obviously experienced the book and experiences of the program. And I just wonder -- this is where I can ask you some questions about your experience. So maybe you could just tell people a little bit about your background, just how you first heard about me, about the book and then a bit more about the 12-week foundation program. Susanne: Okay. It's so much so -- it's difficult to know where to start, but my background is that 14 years ago I had the first flare of endometriosis and actually I was lucky enough to get diagnosed quite soon. I only had it for a couple of months before I got my diagnosis and that was through [stutters] Wendy: Laparoscopy? Susanne: That's right. Susanne: Then they took away three cysts. That's what they could see and after that they wanted to put me on a medicine to get me into the menopause. And I did some reading about it and I was working with health, actually, some alternative therapies, and the side effects of the drug they wanted to give me -- I can't remember its name -- but it was horrible, I thought, and back then there was not so much information on the internet but there were a few, what do you call it -- not blogs but...losing the name. It was a group of people having endometriosis. They were connected and you could only see the bad things, how horrific everything was. When they got this medication they got better from the endometriosis but they got a horrific side effects so they couldn't go to work anyway. And I thought that's not my way. I'm not gonna do it that way and so I went to a couple of different alternative therapists and they led me into thinking about if it had something to do with my stomach. And I usually had a bloated stomach.

I was sensitive for different kind of foods. I knew that, and when I asked the doctors to see if there was a connection between my intestines, the flora in my intestines with bacterias and the endometriosis. They said, "That costs too much money. We can't do that. You need to get me scientific studies that there is a connection before we can do that kind of research on you." And then I thought, well, I need to do this my own way, and through hair analysis I got to know that I had too much manganese in my body. It was actually 80 times as much as you're supposed to have and we found that I was from our water. There's a filter but it needed to be adjusted to get the manganese, so a nutritionist helped me with detoxing my body. I was practicing yoga to be able to stand the pain. And that actually helped me get well, so now after having got more and more knowledge about estrogen dominance and everything around, I think that it was not just the water that was the problem but the way I treated my body helped me out of the condition. So I've had 13 very good years after that. I've had two kids. I did have three miscarriages in between the kids, but two healthy kids and I thought that endometriosis, although the doctor says that it's a chronic disease, I thought that that's not in my life anymore. I was so worried that my daughter might get it so I started to do some reading last autumn so that I could have more lot knowledge about it. And the scary part is that my endometriosis actually flared up again after not having felt those specific feelings of pain that endometriosis gives me. And so I thought well, I've been well once. I just need to do the same things again and I will get better again. But it didn't come back quickly and I was a bit stressed I thought what what is wrong and I didn't know what triggered the endometriosis this time. And so I was searching the internet and I found your page and your really nice offer to get the book for free so I sent for it. I started reading it and this time I was worrying that I might not get rid of the endometriosis if I don't go in and do a surgery to take away the cysts. But when I read about serrapeptase and your experience with that, I thought great, that gives me hope again. And last time I went on a very strict diet. I didn't have any flour, not wheat, not any grains at all and this time when I read more about your experiences with wheat and gluten it was actually easier than last time. So I went back to a quite strict diet. And what else did I do? Well yes, I started to do some journaling just from reading your book. Not at all the three pages as you encouraged us to do now, but I started to write pain scores and what my activities were and what the outcome was and then I thought now it would be really nice to get a support, to get help to work it through, so that's why I entered the 12-week foundation program. Wendy: Yes, that was fantastic that you reached out. So when you applied for the Foundation Program I think you said that you were just trying to pick up from where you'd left off the last time. You had tried to manage it through diet and serrapeptase. So what in particular, when you're saying you wanted support, what did you feel that you needed support in? Because obviously you've been very successful before. You felt something had changed this time and you weren't able to identify the trigger, what had caused it to flare up, but what in particular made you sort of reach out for support through the foundation program? Susanne: Well, I knew that there was something that I missed, so I needed to have a detective to help me go through everything. I had -- when my new flare up-- it was in September 2017. And it was at worst in December, January, February. I was bedridden for eight days after my period and with pain scores from two to six so it wasn't as bad as 14 years ago. I was bedridden for two years - no, two weeks every month and the pain scores up to ten sometimes and that was such a depressing time. I had a really difficult time before I made it all turn. And I knew I don't want to go there this time. And when I started the program I was down at pain score from zero to two so I was quite good but I wasn't satisfied. I knew that life can be better. I do want to be able to plan what to do because that is so sad, not being able to plan anything, not being able to promise the kids to go there, to take them there, to be with them because you might need to stay on the sofa all day.

So I thought, well, I need I need the support, a detective to know what is causing it this time. And I am really happy that I did join because during this time, during the 12 weeks, I was still making progress. In the beginning of the program it was more repetition what I had done before, and of course you have written it all in the book but you always get new things. You see things from a different perspective and it was very good and I felt better and stronger. But I think it was four weeks into the program and that my mother got very ill and we needed to go in and out to the emergency with her and it was very stressful and not being able to help her. She wasn't in a state that she she could take in what we are we were telling her. And that situation would probably have caused me to go backwards into the more difficult stage of the endometriosis because of all the stress and because you don't -- well, I shouldn't say you don't but I knew I know myself and if somebody needs my help I go there and help them and I skip the things that are important for me. For this stage I needed to to do certain things for myself and you helped me stay there to do the basic things and to actually coach me through this difficult time with my mother, and that's something that I never would have expected. I'm sorry. I get a bit emotional now. It was so good having you, to talk to you, and to support me in the Program well, I needed to take some some more digestive enzymes in that period and that's something that I wouldn't have been thinking about myself so it was great and actually now my mother is much better and her situation has stabilised and I think that the most things about her illness and your Program and support has helped me. It was actually very good timing. It has helped me to get more in contact with my emotions and to get much deeper into the relationship with my old family. Wendy: And I know that was very important to you because it was such a shame that you just started the (Foundation) Program and then this had happened. But equally, it was great that you were open to do the support, I keep I referring to it as the ‘oxygen mask’ scenario, where if you don't put on your own oxygen mask and don't look after yourself then you can't help other people. You then become very very ill. But a lot of women with Endometriosis are fantastic caregivers, very sensitive and perceptive, and aware of other people, and whilst that is a lovely quality, sometimes -- I know I was guilty of it too -- of doing it too excesses, where I had nothing left to give but I kept giving out to other people.

And I think that certainly one aspect of the (Foundation) Program is remembering you have to look after yourself so you can help other people. And with your mother being so ill, and you're right, normally in these situations then you forget to eat and you forget to look after yourself and it's just remember to keep the basics. And full credit to you. You kept turning up on our calls and you kept turning to the group calls and you you kept going. Because I do believe that life throws you obstacles in the way.

Sometimes on this new journey when you're trying to heal yourself and it can be very, very frustrating. So what about the emotional element you talked about; developing your relationship with your emotions? And I know and I'll share this for people who are listening -- you found it quite difficult to cry before, didn't you? You were saying that to show your emotions in that way felt, felt challenging for you and now you feel a bit more comfortable with yourself, to show your emotions. So thank you for being so vulnerable on this interview with us. But maybe you want to share a bit more about your relationship with your emotions now? Susanne: It's not easy to say words on it, but the journaling has helped me a lot to sort out my feelings and to structure my feelings and to to prioritize what to do next because in that situation where we were it's such a chaos. And nothing really works as usually. All the routines disappear> And the journaling and doing it in the morning, it was so good. And I know that you say in the beginning of the program that most people think that that's the most difficult thing to do. I thought it was difficult as well even though I started before, but then it was just some tiny notes. And after a while I did it in the evening you told me the importance of doing it in the morning.

I started doing it in the morning after my yoga session, which is something that I wouldn't let go now. It helps me so much. But now I actually do it before my yoga. I do it right after waking up and I have -- I'm surprised that I do remember so many dreams. I think that it's almost impossible that I have dreamt as much as I do now earlier. But probably and I know now that if I do something else before my journaling, if I go around do things for 10 minutes, the dreams disappear. I don't remember them anymore. But right after you wake up they're still in your head and it's very interesting to -- most of them are strange. They don't make sense at all, but now I've been going back look through my journaling and I see that it's almost scary because I saw things in my dreams have actually developed to be true. To be honest, it doesn't make sense when you write this but after a while and you see that, wow, I could see that coming. And many science I I've been thinking about "Am I doing this right?" the journaling, but you said that there is no right and wrong. Just try not to be judgmental and I've had that in my mind. And, well, many of my emotions, they have as soon as I get the courage to write them down, they are not scary anymore. As soon as I write them I can work through them, see if there is something I need to do, somebody I need to contact, next step with somebody in a relationship, or if it's somebody something I just can let go. And quite often it is it is something that I don't need to carry around. I can just let it go and it gives me a sense of being much stronger, wiser, calmer, and by that it's been easier to talk to friends and relatives about emotions. When we talk it's not just about daily things. We tend to talk about more emotional things and and sometimes I cry. Sometimes my friend cries. Sometimes we both cry, but it's just nice. It's not any hysterical crying, just transforming feelings that are released and it feels so good. Wendy: Weah that's fantastic. And I should share that obviously, as you mentioned, the journaling is one part of the three daily basics or the foundation program and there are other layers of changes that we we make throughout the program, but the journaling was a challenge for you at the beginning and it is a challenge for everybody because normally when you've got endometriosis and your chronic pain and you're literally just getting through your life, just taking the time to journaling feels counterintuitive. But what the purpose is, and I'm glad to hear it's the same for you, is that you're getting in touch with your emotions. They're not big and they're not scary and you're learning to make the connection between what is happening in your emotions and how that manifests or how that resides in your body. And how would you say the program, the 12 week foundation program has helped you with regards to the relationship with your body? Susanne: I don't know. That was a difficult question. Wendy: Do you think through the journaling and through the education and the webinars that you maybe feel a bit more confident about your body? If there are any signs and symptoms in any aspect, you know have a better relationship with your body? Would you feel as well as your emotions? Susanne: Well, as I -- bodies are very much in my interest. I trust bodies to heal themselves. I've always had that in mind but it's always more difficult when it happens to yourself and you don't see the whole picture. It's easier to just stay in one corner and it's very easy to become a victim. And it's also difficult when it's a close friend or relative that is sick or ill or hurt in any way. It's so much easier to see what other people could do to get better. But, well, as I said, I've always had that with me since I was a kid, that the body is amazing at healing itself and now it was so good to have you as a as a coach to help me with this wider perspective to have a look at my body. Wendy: I think it was the multimodal approach to the program that was very important to me because I was unaware of how your emotions would affect your hormones and how symptoms and signs in your body could be different -- types of signs and symptoms that we're giving out different messages. Different emotions we're giving different messages in relation to the body, and I think that's what I hear from you and I hear a lot of the women in the program, is they develop this confidence, not only within their own instincts, their own emotions. They're more comfortable with their emotions, recognizing their emotions are messengers, they're telling them things, and then also been able to tune in to their body in a slightly different way than they've done before because the body before was invariably screaming out to them in pain when something was wrong but any pain and any symptoms are signs and messengers that there's something there that needs attention, and that's as you said earlier in the beginning, that's where you and I work together as detectives to try and fine-tune different things. But I think what's been lovely in your particular experience of the foundation program is, as you said, you really understood the body is an amazing thing, which is probably going to be hard for some women to hear if they're writhing around in pain and bad with endometriosis. They may not feel that loving towards their body right now, but when they learn what's causing the pain, because there's always a cause -- it's cause and effect -- if they identify what the causes are and remove that, then as you said the body is an amazing thing and will heal itself. But what I've heard from you is that you really appreciate the emotional component, which is not something that tends to get talked about, and dealing with that and then becoming more comfortable with your emotions and things So if anyone was listening and considering joining the foundation program, what what would you be saying to them? What are the key aspects, apart from the journaling and the power shakes thing? What, for you, has been most significant or important aspect that you would take away from the foundation program? Susanne: Well, I was thinking about joining for a long time. As new and had this belief about the body, and I knew that I had been healing myself before I thought I can do this on my own again. But after a while I thought, no, I don't have time to do this and when you're in pain you're tired and I thought I got some kind of dizziness, so it was difficult to do a lot of reading and studying on my own. And in the beginning it felt a little bit like I was giving up by joining, but as soon as I had joined the program I thought, "Oh shit, why didn't I do this earlier?" because it's such a relief to have somebody to talk to you with the experience of healing endometriosis yourself. And, well, you were talking about the emotions. I had done everything I thought possible with the products and physical stuff, but I didn't have a clue about the emotions. I did I did a lot of relaxation training and mental training because I know that mental training has helped me very much before, both in sports situations and in in daily life. But this is another way of looking at the emotions and, well, one of the first things, actually -- I think it happened the first week -- was that you advised me to include my family. And I thought that I don't want to drag them down into this boring and -- well, I can't really find the words for it, but this black hole that endometriosis is for me. I did everything to provide for them, to have a good time. I just put myself in a sofa and said, "Did you go out and do this?" and my husband and my kids they went out to see friends and do fun things while I was in the sofa. And I didn't really inform the kids about what was going on and the first week I realized that I'm so stupid. Of course, of course they want to know what's wrong with me and as I'm as soon as I did that that was the first relief, actually. And I get emotional again. But I've got a six year old and a 11 year old and this six year old, he was listening but he thought, "Oh, can we do something else now?" when I was trying to tell them about the disease what I was doing and that I was getting help through this foundation program. But anyway, after that little family session it was so much easier and that was the first stage of my emotional trip, actually, to let them in and to -- well, the idea I'm not carrying the burden all by yourself. It's not a sign of being strong, trying to fix everything yourself. I have learned that it's more courageous and you're stronger if you can ask for help and if you're willing to take help. Wendy: Yeah, and I think he done so brilliantly in that regard because I know that that was very difficult for you at the beginning. And again, that's very common with women with endometriosis. I knew I was the same. It felt like a sign of weakness to ask for help. I felt like a burden. I felt like a drain. I didn't feel very good about myself either when I was in a chronic stages of pain and lying on in bed. But I think when you have the support to be able to say and explain it does take more courage to share with your family -- this is the situation, this is what I need from you, and would you help support me through this program -- because I want to get myself -- well, I want to live my life again and sometimes, you know, it's even just getting support and the language and how to approach it, ow to do with them because sometimes you're just getting through the day dealing with the pain without trying to think about how you might communicate that. But I agree, it is definitely takes more courage to share you know what's going on. And that's why in the first week of the program I encourage you all to sit down with your families and let them watch the video of the laparoscopy. Suddenly they've got a whole new perspective on the laparoscopy operation and what's going on in your inside. And that's, again, just part of building your confidence, building up your voice and helping you share your emotions. So if anyone was considering joining the program, what would you say to them? What would be your your parting words to people if they're maybe struggling on their own at the moment? They're maybe following my book and maybe taking them longer than they'd like. What would you say about the foundation program? Susanne: Well, I would say don't hesitate. I really recommend. It's the best support to really get going because there are always things in your life that turns up. And then it's so easy to get your actions for endometriosis on hold and that's dangerous to do that. But the program is the best way to really keep fighting and the twelve weeks, they passed quite fast, and it's difficult to really see the difference all the time. And although I just did the basic things in the program for five weeks and then I had a lot to catch up, it was so interesting now in the end to look back in the journaling, see what I've done, how I felt and to reflect on how I have changed. And it's not only the pain score in the endometriosis that has decreased. There are so many more things that has happened and the things that I wrote at the beginning of the program, what I would do when I felt pain free, I've already started to do. I achieved them. Yeah, and by then I felt like a dream, a dream that might be impossible even though I did have this feeling about natural healing, that it would work. But it was still a dream that I didn't know if it would come true ever and now they have come true, many parts of it. And it's it feels like I'm the boss of my life now. And I think that one reason that my endometriosis flared up again was that I had lost contact with myself, both by caring more for the kids than for myself, and I had a job that was quite demanding, a lot of traveling, and I had a bad conscious of leaving the kids so much. So when I was home I just spent time with them and there was never time for me, for myself, and in this program you really need to look after yourself. What do I need? And get in touch with yourself. Now it feels so -- I can't find the word for it, but it's so natural. It's not strange at all. It's just as it's supposed to be and instead of just running around in circles doing what other people want me to do, now I'm the boss in my life. And I didn't think that would be an outcome or this program. I was just looking forward to a pain-free life. Now it feels like it that is a small thing. That is the greatest thing when you are in pain but now I even get more so that's something to look forward to if you're planning to join the program. Wendy: Fantastic. And I think that's it. I remember feeling had this great desire to get well when I was bedridden but didn't know how to do it so that's what I put everything that I learned into my book., by putting into the program. And people just have to plug in to the various steps that I've taken and learn from what I learned and not have to just struggle to find out these things themselves. And as you said, there's normally a number of different elements that we need to look at any one given time and it's hard to do that when you're on your own. And then obviously we do have the group Q&As every two weeks, as well. How do you find that coming together with other women that are going through the program? Susanne: That it's very good. You get a perspective and they take up things that I haven't thought about that turns out to be important for me as well. And it's very important not to feel alone and even though I've just listened to them during these group calls it feels like we're a team. We're fighting together and it's so great to hear that they're getting better as well. Wendy: I feel that that's really important. Women with endometriosis -- and I knew I felt exactly the same. I felt so alone, terribly alone, and I made a vow, I made it my mission that once I got well that I would write what worked for me and make sure that there was enough support in place for women so that they felt part of a group and a community that was not just talking about the pain or the symptoms or surgery but actually talking about getting well and healthy and and getting their life and their body back. Because they can be so designing when you got a flare-up or when you know you're bedridden again and you don't know why. But as you say, when you're going to the program yourself -- that's why it's 12 weeks because it does take time to start to see the changes with planting seeds along the way whilst removing and swapping out any offending products or people or foods or anything, depending on what's what's the issue for you -- but having a support and hearing other people, again, it just makes you feel you're part of something and not alone enough. That's a big thing> But thank you so much for taking the time out to chat me today. I would say if anyone is interested in getting more information on the foundation program, it is over a 12-week. It's an online membership program with 12 one-on-one appointments with me, group calls, handouts, downloads, Facebook group.

You get all the support that you need.

Please go to HealEndometriosisNaturallyCourse.com or go on to HealEndometriosisNaturally.com and you can click on details there on how to join up.

Equally, if anybody would like to get a free paperback copy of my book which lays out my story and a step-by-step guide of what worked for me then go on to Https://HealEndometriosisNaturallyBook.com and you can order your FREE copy there (I just ask you to pay the shipping and handling). Wendy: Susanne, thank you so much for taking the time out. I know there will be so many women to get so much encouragement and hope and from hearing your story. And full credit to you. You've had a lot of challenges thrown your way throughout the program, but you stuck with it, you kept going, you didn't give up and I'm so pleased that you've seen the benefits on the program that you have. Susanne: Thanks, and I want to encourage those with the Endometriosis that I'd never give up because it is true the body is going to heal itself if you give it the opportunity and it's so great to get the life back again. So go for it! Wendy: Well, thank you so very much, Susanne for sharing. Take care. We'll speak soon.

Want to learn more;

Download your FREE Top 5 ‘Jump Start’ Tips at Https://HealEndometriosisNaturallycom

Check out this episode!

#Endometriosis

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xtruss · 4 years

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Nine Former Michigan Officials, Including Ex-Gov. Rick Snyder, Charged in Flint Water Crisis

— JANUARY 14, 2021 | By Sarah Childress Abby Ellis | FRONTLINE

Former Gov. Rick Snyder leaves the Genesee County Jail in downtown Flint, Michigan, after his video arraignment on charges related to the Flint water crisis on Jan. 14, 2021. (Cody Scanlan | MLive.com)

It was a moment many in Flint, Michigan, feared would never come.

More than six years after residents learned they had been exposed to lead-contaminated drinking water and a deadly disease outbreak, top leadership in the state and city at the time have been indicted on criminal charges in connection with their role in the crisis.

The sweeping criminal cases announced Thursday include Rick Snyder, the former Republican governor; Snyder’s top aide and his chief of staff; as well as both the state’s top doctor and health official during the crisis, who face the most severe charges: nine counts of involuntary manslaughter each, as well as official misconduct and neglect of duty for “grossly negligent performance.”

“The impact of the Flint water crisis cases and what happened in Flint will span generations and probably well beyond,” said Kym Worthy, one of the special prosecutors appointed to investigate the crisis. “This case has nothing whatsoever to do with partisanship. It has to do with human decency … and finally, finally holding people accountable for their alleged, unspeakable atrocities that occurred in Flint all these years ago. Pure and simple, this case is about justice, truth, accountability, poisoned children, lost lives, shattered families that are still not whole and simply giving a damn about all of humanity.”

Snyder, whose term as governor ended in 2018, had apologized to residents for letting them down. He was charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty and entered a not guilty plea. His lawyer, Brian Lennon, said in a statement that the charges are “wholly without merit and this entire situation is puzzling.”

The former governor’s closest aide, Rich Baird, was charged with four felonies: misconduct in office, perjury, obstruction of justice for attempting to influence the legal proceedings around the crisis, and extortion for “threatening” a state-appointed research team investigating the Flint water crisis — an incident that was first documented by FRONTLINE in Flint’s Deadly Water.

Baird also pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Randall Levine, told the Detroit Free Press that Baird is “innocent of any wrongdoing and is being unfairly prosecuted by the state’s Democratic attorney general.”

Overall, the indictments paint a grim portrait of a cast of officials not only failing to act to protect people’s health but concealing information, lying about the extent of the problems and threatening those trying to get the word out.

Among the others indicted on Thursday were Snyder’s chief of staff, Jarrod Agen, for perjury; Nancy Peeler, a state children’s health official accused of concealing, and later misrepresenting, data on blood-lead levels in Flint’s children; Gerald Ambrose and Darnell Earley, both state-appointed emergency managers in Flint charged with misconduct in office; and Howard Croft, Flint’s director of public works at the time, who faces misdemeanors for failing to protect the safety and quality of the water supply. He was the lone city official indicted in the case.

All nine officials indicted on Thursday entered not guilty pleas.

The two officials at the center of the prosecution, Nick Lyon, the former head of the state health department, and Dr. Eden Wells, the former state chief medical executive, could face 15-year prison sentences for each of nine counts of involuntary manslaughter. Both were also charged with willful neglect of duty. Wells faces an additional felony count of misconduct in office for attempting to prevent the distribution of information about Legionnaires’ disease in Genesee County.

Lyon’s lawyer, Charles Chamberlain, said in a statement that his client was innocent and not responsible for the decision to switch Flint’s water supply, which led to the crisis. “Our hearts go out to Flint citizens who have endured the fallout from that decision,” Chamberlain said. “But it does not help the people of Flint — or our criminal justice system — for the state to charge innocent people with crimes.”

While much of the focus on Flint centered around lead contamination, many of the charges stemmed from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ that occurred during the crisis. Officially, 90 people were diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease, and 12 died, according to state data. But a FRONTLINE investigation strongly suggests the actual death toll was much higher, as doctors unaware of the threat failed to properly diagnose and treat sickened patients. FRONTLINE also found many victims who succumbed to Legionnaires’ in the months and years following the outbreak, long after the state stopped counting the dead.

The crisis in Flint began in April 2014, when state officials switched Flint’s water supply to the Flint River, billing it as a cost-saving measure for the cash-strapped city. They also failed to require the city to properly treat the water, which corroded the city’s aging pipes, releasing lead into the water and creating a breeding ground for deadly bacteria. Residents complained of foul-smelling, brown water. Then people began to get sick.

As Legionnaires’ cases began ticking upward in 2014, state officials, including Darnell Earley and Jerry Ambrose, exchanged emails speculating that Flint’s new water supply might be to blame. Some worried that word might get out. By the end of 2014, there were 40 confirmed cases of Legionnaires’, and three people had died.

By March 2015, emails show that at least three of Snyder’s aides and two cabinet members had been told about the outbreak, including Lyon.

At a press conference in January 2016, Snyder finally announced the Legionnaires’ outbreak — 18 months after it began. He was joined by Wells and by Lyon, who made a point of noting the outbreak couldn’t be linked to the water switch.

The governor also hastily convened a task force of prominent scientists to investigate the source of the outbreak. The scientists got to work but quickly began clashing with the administration over their findings, when they identified the presence of Legionella, the bacteria that causes the deadly disease, in the water filters of people’s homes.

One of the scientists told FRONTLINE that in late 2016, he received a call from Rich Baird. “He didn’t want to take away funding from the university if I wasn’t able to get on-message,” he said, adding: “I viewed that as just a threat to me and my team about the work we were doing, that we needed to better align our results with what their position was.”

The charges against Snyder come after an earlier effort to hold officials accountable was abandoned in 2019. Todd Flood, a special prosecutor appointed by Snyder’s attorney general, had charged 15 officials in connection with the crisis — including Lyon and Wells, both of whom judges then decided should face trial for involuntary manslaughter charges after months of pretrial hearings.

“I know we worked tirelessly to put a great case together and continue the investigation. I know that, right? And I can say that without equivocation,” Flood told FRONTLINE in the film. “And candidly, look, the facts speak for themselves. We won. … We did things the old-fashioned way, of moving from the bottom and going up in the investigation. And the investigation for us was far from over.”

After Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer replaced Snyder in 2018, she brought in a new team to pursue the Flint water case. They dropped the existing charges and began the investigation anew, saying the previous effort had been incomplete.

Millions of dollars and more than six years later, Flint residents are still reeling from the fallout of a crisis, the full extent of which may never be known.

Eric Mays, a Flint City councilman who represents the North End, a predominantly African American area of the city that was hit hard by the crisis, said he hoped the charges would bring more answers and accountability. “I’m hoping that people will cut deals and start telling the truth, now that they see the risk of a felony charge,” he said. “In terms of justice for Flint, today I’m going to reserve my opinion and watch the legal process unfold.”

— Jacob Carah contributed reporting.

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sevenpabosandabunchoffans · 7 years

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Another Rant

No, this one is not BTS related, but I can’t help myself from making this one.

I think I’m PMSing and about to start my period and that’s why I’ve been so annoyed and making rants lately.

Now, I know things can’t be 100% accurate, and I’m not directing this towards any one specific person except Stephanie Meyer since this pet peeve started with Twilight

If you are going to write about a certain topic, or include something in your writing, please do at least a minimal amount of research.

The amount of people who will write about something they know nothing about, and refuse to google it saddens me.

This goes for multiple topics.

Children/Pregnancy

As a child development major, this irks me more than it does most people, and as I said, I know things can’t be 100% accurate, and that since not everyone studies child development, there are things they can’t know, but there are somethings that’s just common sense.

Like it’s common sense that a 4 year old will not still be teething.

It’s common sense that a 2 month old will not be sitting up on their own.

It’s common sense that a 1 and a half year old will not be speaking in full grammatically correct sentences.

Onto pregnancy, why does everyone seem to think that you find out the sex of the baby on the first doctor’s appointment? Like, no. The genitalia begin to form at 6 weeks and aren’t finished until 14 weeks. The majority of people have their first appointment during that time frame, meaning it’s impossible to know anyway.

Also, morning sickness does not only happen in the morning, it’s just more common. The amount of times I’ve seen people writing fics about pregnancy, only for something to be wrong with the girl, and when someone questions her she says it’s just morning sickness, “but it’s not the morning”, please stop that.

Also, people will write about a bump at 2 months. If it’s the first pregnancy, like how it is in most fics, a bump usually won’t form until the 2nd trimester, which is 4 or 5 months. Maybe 3 months in some women, but not 2 months.

Smut

Okay, say it with me: the butt hole is not a vagina

The amount of gay smut where they talk about how “wet” the hole is getting when there is no lube or saliva involved, or the amount that says it’s painless without any lubrication. I’m a heterosexual female and even I know that’s not how it works.

Second, girls do not orgasm the same way guys do

A female orgasm is an overwhelming feeling of pleasure followed by sensitivity. There is no “flow of juices” and certainly no “white substance dripping down her thighs”. When “juices” do come out of her, that is called squirting, and only happens very rarely, some women never being able to at all. And after a women squirts, she can be very dehydrated and exhausted, and definitely not ready to go a second round, like described in quite a few fics. There are some women who can squirt quite often, however, they are in the vast minority, and therefore it should not be included in every. single. fanfic. Rarely do I see a fic that accurately describes a female orgasm.

Mental Health

This one really hits home to me, and quite a few others, as I suffer from mental illness, and have for years.

I would really appreciate if the people who don’t have a mental illness, but choose to write about it would do adequate research about the mental illness they have chosen.

I could go on about all the mistakes people have made about many mental illnesses, but I’ll focus on anxiety right now as that’s what I have and is the most common mental illness since it comes in many varieties.

The one that I notice the most is the misrepresentation of Social Anxiety.

In most of the fics I have read that have incorporated Social Anxiety, they always describe it as feeling uncomfortable around strangers, but it is way more than that.

Social Anxiety is:

constantly feeling like everyone in the room is watching you and scrutinizing your every movement

not being able to eat at someone’s house or at a party because your stomach hurts so much that the thought of food makes you want to throw up

wanting to cry when you’re forced to sit close to people you don’t know

being almost 20 years old and not being able to order for yourself at a restaurant

thinking that sitting alone in the car is a better option than having to go inside a place you’ve never been

It is so much more than being uncomfortable around people you don’t know. The feeling I get can’t even be described using the word “uncomfortable”. If you are not actually having anxiety over the situation, it is not anxiety.

Another thing that people don’t research with this is how you get diagnosed. I always see it described as they went to their normal doctor the second they started to have issues, told them they had it, and they automatically get a prescription for medication, and they’re done in 10 minutes. That is not how it happens.

I had been living with anxiety for at least 5 years before ever even going to be formally diagnosed. I didn’t bother with telling my mom I thought I needed more help than just her, who also has anxiety, until after I was tempted to remove the blades from my razor and slit my wrist to where they couldn’t sew it back up.

I had to have suicidal thoughts before realizing “woah I need help”. After that, my mom had to make an appointment at a psychological assessment center, not my regular doctor. That first appointment, it was me, my mom, and a therapist. There was no official diagnosis of that. All it was was the three of us talking, with me and my mom telling her about the struggles I had been having, how long it had been happening, how it gradually got worse, and so on. Then she gave my mom a questionnaire to fill out about what she has observed about me, and gave me one to give to one of my teachers at school to fill out.

A week later, I went back and spent two hours being tested in different ways. They varied from “what do you see when you look at this picture” to testing my memory skills. Two hours. And that wasn’t even the day I was diagnosed.

My mom and I went back a week after that to meet with the therapist, and that’s where she gave me the official diagnosis, the degree it was to, and then discussed treatment options. Then she had to send my regular doctor the results so that she could write a prescription.

It was two more weeks before my doctor got around to it and I was able to start on medication.

It is way more than “oh I’ve been feeling this way”, “okay, here’s some pills to pop”.

If you’re going to write about a mental illness without having it, then at least have the courtesy to research it.

Then comes to the idea that it can be cured and one day they won’t have it anymore. I don’t know how many fics I’ve read where it ends with a completely happy ending in the main character no longer has the mental illness.

That is complete and utter bullshit. Mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and those can’t be fixed easily. There is no “cure”, you just get to the point where you can handle it better. There are people with depression who can go years without and episode, then wake up one day with no motivation to even roll over in bed. My mom has some of the worst social anxiety, yet she’s a hair stylist, meaning she has to constantly be around and talk to people she doesn’t know. She has overcome her illness enough that it doesn’t get in the way of her job, but she’s still on medication and she almost had a panic attack when she had to walk me up on stage for the Senior Walk at my final orchestra concert.

Mental illnesses do not have a cure. You just get better at being able to live without them getting in your way.

There are a few authors and works out there that do a great job of trying to be accurate in the topics they write about, but they are sadly outnumbered by the people who just do not care.

So please, if you read this and want to write a fanfic or regular fic about a topic you’re not to sure about, please do at least a minimal amount of research before rather than bullshitting it like Stephanie Meyer did when she decided to write about vampires.

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havegaysex · 4 years

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This is just a train of thought essay, I guess to get some feelings out so I can process them, because I don't have therapy this week and it's my first week off since starting treatment and I've been doing a lot of processing on my own but it's hard when I get stuck in loops because I don't remember what I just said, if you do for some reason decide to read this, trigger warnings for abuse and CSA and probably other stuff but I don't know

I use speech to text and sometimes mumble or talk too fast so there may be some weird wording but I don't want to proof this.

I really hope Tumblr cuts this off so there's a read more, I'm doing it from mobile and I don't know how to make that happen on the phone app

I started learning about dissociative identity disorder because I have a friend who has it, and before she told me about her diagnosis she sent me some YouTube videos and some reading on it I guess to kind of gauge my reaction before telling me, which is understandable,

and then my brain being what it is and having a huge special interest in psychology I hyper fixated on it for a bit,

and I started this research deep dive after I started therapy, and I started realizing that my therapist has been pointing out things that are symptoms of a dissociative disorder for a little bit now, which would explain a lot of things that I haven't been able to get explained with other physical or mental diagnoses

and she gave me a referral for "diagnostic clarity" and I'm just waiting for that to go through, and I'm not self-diagnosing but I feel like I relate way too much to DID and OSDD to be singlet (not system),

and I had no idea that any of this stuff wasn't normal because my whole life was just focused on survival and my brain did what it needed to so that I could survive the highly abusive and volatile environment I grew up in, and now that I am halfway out a lot of stuff is starting to surface that was suppressed or hidden before,

I used to be really high functioning towards the end of high school because it was avoidance, I spent 14 hours a day at school and completed over a year and a half's worth of classes in one semester to get caught up after failing, and then college started out rough but it started getting okay my second semester, and then covid hit which caused me to have to withdraw because I couldn't do online school, and now I'm taking a semester off to do intense mental health and physical health therapy,

and I don't know how to function,

I don't know how to function without being in a high pressure environment where I'm scared of verbal, emotional, and occasionally physical abuse,

Now that I'm existing in a space where I have privacy and I'm allowed to have feelings and thoughts of my own I don't know how to take care of myself,

At first I thought I was just depression and maybe for a little bit it was because I have a bit of seasonal effective disorder, and one of my friends went a few states away and he's going to be gone for almost a year, and I went through some other stuff that definitely should trigger depression

But after getting my physical pain under control again, and increasing and being better at taking my antidepressants regularly and realizing that it's so much more,

I was never allowed to become my own person and have a solid sense of identity, because self-expression was punished I became as my therapist says "fragmented" and I learned to suppress a lot of parts of myself,

I have huge gaps in my memory and people I know now who knew me back then have talked about things that I supposedly did and said and the person I supposedly was during some of those gaps and I just don't understand who they're talking about, I know to them that person and me are the same person but to me they're talking about someone that I don't know, I have no recollection of ever being that person,

At my last in-person therapy appointment she had me start telling her The narrative of my life and at first I thought I didn't have many memories from before 5 years old but it's like she had a switch in me and once I started I just kept going and I feel like I haven't fully been the same person since that session because it pulled something from deep within me that I haven't been able to put back in its box,

And it's been getting worse the farther I get from that visit

For the past week I've probably eaten two days worth of food and I've maybe had four days of water, because my body just can't handle eating and drinking as much as it should for being this size, I don't like feeling like my body is too big for me, I feel like I'm in a grown-up's body and I'm still a kid but I know that I'm an adult, I'm expected to do adult things even though I have no idea how to start doing that, because on top of abuse holding me back and mental health issues I have physical health issues that make it impossible for me to do a lot of minimum wage jobs,

I don't have fully realized different parts of myself the way it seems like a lot of people with dissociative identity disorder do, but I definitely feel like a different version of me is running the show sometimes and I don't understand the actions of my past self because that's something my current self would never ever do or think or feel or say,

And I've always had a kind of discomfort in my body because of dysphoria as well as being bullied for my appearance and having adults make comments on my body when I was way too young as well as being groomed by pedophiles and then having my mom threatened to kill herself over it instead of sitting down with me and having an actual conversation about how starting to have sexual feelings wasn't that horrible but it was the fact that I was talking to adults who were four times my age that was the problem,

And on top of that I went through Catholic School as a girl who was realizing that she was into other girls

And my personal Catholic School experience told me that sex was wrong unless it was for the purpose of procreation and female sexual pleasure is always wrong and homosexuality is also always wrong and that I need to be thoroughly ashamed of being this way because I am having eternal damnation over this thing that I have no choice in,

Recently every time that I try to exist as a sexual human being I experienced the personalization and I stopped being able to look at any piece of my body and I have to avoid mirrors for my reflection because it makes me feel so mentally and physically uncomfortable because in my head that's not me and that's not my body, even though I know both of those are false it doesn't change the fact that I don't feel comfortable in my own skin,

It's so hard to do basic self-care things because in where I'm living right now I can't shower in the dark because I'm not familiar with the shower which means that either I shower in my clothes or I don't bathe at all, and because I can't drink the tap water here I've been getting dehydrated because sometimes I love tea especially green tea, but sometimes I can't stand the taste of it and I just want plain water which I don't have here,

Don't get me wrong this living situation is insane amount better than previous ones, and up until the past week and a half or so I was functioning adequately, but it's like pieces of me that I had to walk away are coming out now and they don't know how to function in any environment but especially in this one where we don't fear getting kicked out over something like not doing the dishes correctly, and I have more privacy than I've had in the past 10 years combined, and it's weird to me I think autonomy, when I go back to my abusive environment I don't have this kind of autonomy, it sucks because in one environment I feel like I have too much autonomy even though I have a very healthy amount of autonomy for my age, and in the other environment I don't have enough even though even theere I have more autonomy than I've ever had because I fought tooth and nail for it, but it's still way less than I should have

I don't know how to exist and feel comfortable anywhere, I don't know how to take care of myself anymore, and I know this won't last because none of my moods/thought patterns ever do, but it'll likely come back because they tend to come back,

I feel like I've been in a dissociative fog for the past few months and sometimes I'm highly functional and I get a lot of things done but sometimes I can't even brush my teeth or eat anything, because my mouth feels so different and I can't tolerate things being in my mouth,

Nothing that I do feels right, video games I used to enjoy, TV shows, movies, food, music, at best I just don't get the full enjoyment of it that I usually do, at worst it triggers a negative mood because I'm reminded of how much I don't feel like myself right now,

And the isolation of being in a global pandemic doesn't help, texting people is great but you can't get held while you cry over text,

It could be worse I suppose because at least I know that how I'm feeling and thinking right now won't last, in previous bad mental health episodes one of the fears I would have is that I would be stuck that way, and now I know better than to think that which definitely helps eliminate or at the very least minimize the feelings of hopelessness and despair

#dont reb/og #personal #trauma things

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naynenay · 7 years

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An Inconvienient Womb

I got my period at 8 years old and it was mostly regular right away. For three (or more) days every month, I would lie to my mother to skip school, cancel plans with friends and just die for a few days. I was told that this was the way it was: my mother suffered, and my mother’s mother suffered. I remember being in Gaspe with a friend at 9 or 10 and sitting on the bathroom floor crying until her Mom came in and coaxed the information out of me. She gave me a Tylenol and I slept until the next morning. I was prescribed the pill at 14 years old and I jumped from birth control to birth control, plagued by side effects and restrictions. I tried Yasmin, Micronor, Ortho Tri-Cyclen, Yaz and at least three others I can’t remember names of - all in the name of getting some relief. At 23, I had surgery to cure my cervical dysplasia and ended up with pain related to the scar tissue.

At 24, I had a single migraine with aura that landed me in the hospital. I remember thinking that I knew how being hit with lightning would feel like. As a result, the neurologist I saw told me I couldn't take any form of hormonal birth control anymore because it was a major countraindication. That ended up being extremely necessary for me to realize that something was wrong.

A few months later, my doctor suggested I see a gynocologist (Dr. Lortie) so that I could discuss family planning and my never ending cramps. I was in a super stable relationship, but we were not ready to have children. That’s when she suggested I get Mirena, the IUD. I remembered my aunt telling me her horror story with the copper IUD and did a lot of research before I accepted. The actual procedure to get it done was extremely painful and I remember worrying that people in the waiting room would hear me scream, becoming irrationally angry at the clownfish mobile dangling above me. I took a few days off afterwards, even though I was supposed to be able to go back to work the same day. Three days later, I was still spending my days and nights crying in the tub and my partner urged me to go to the hospital. Turns out that my cervix was too small and inflexible due to the scar tissue I had from surgery. I then spent a few weeks waiting for my appointment with the gynocologist and the pain subsided with hydromorphone, allowing me to return to work. Dr. Lortie told me that there was a new type of IUD, much smaller than the first. I reluctantly accepted to remove the old IUD and put in this one. The removal was quite painful and she had some difficulty putting the new one in, but I was more prepared this time as I was given cervix softening medication and an Ativan to manage anxiety. I took a taxi home and slept the rest of the day. I tried to go to work, hydromorphone in hand and heating pad in the other. I made it through a few months with intermittent visits to the hospital and way too many sick days. That’s when the doctor finally discovered what had happened: the IUD had become imbedded into my cervix and was causing contractions. I took advantage of the short-term disability at work and impatiently waited for my surgery with Dr. Lortie. The surgery itself was the most pain I have ever been in my entire life, even with sedation. I had to be in a birthing position and therefore I couldn’t be put under. I remember one nurse talking to me and holding my head up while holding a tray with the other and people running around the room, but I can’t tell you how long it took, what was said or done. Again, I remember thinking about how scary it must be for people in the waiting room hearing me scream. Fast-forwarding a year or so, I quit my job because of the pressure my boss was putting on me to get better, taking way too much hydromorphone and sleeping the days away. My pain was still way too significant and I had been bleeding on and off (but mostly on) for three years after coming off birth control and into the time I had the IUD.

My marriage ended two and a half years ago, when I was at my lowest physically. I had been going back and forth between my family doctor and gynocologist and I was skeptical I was ever going to get better. I couldn’t work, eat or shower properly. Walking was usually done bent at a 90 degree angle. My doctor accused me of “drug seeking behaviour” and sent messages to specialists requesting that only she prescribe the hydromorphone. This was said after I admitted to smoking marijuana because I felt the hydromorphone wasn’t helping enough. She also told me it was probably just anxiety or “all in my head.” The only outing I can remember from those days was to Ikea in a wheelchair and I was mortified that an old coworker saw me. It wasn’t until my lovingly stubborn best friend Jessica brought up taking birth control pills again that I rallied again to make a change. She also had migraines and was allowed to take pills, albeit different ones. I made an appointment to discuss with Dr. Lortie, and she had just come back from a conference or speech of some kind where they had questioned the contraindication of taking birth control. She subsequently agreed to give me continuous birth control. I started to get small moments of relief, where I was able to get outside. I even managed to keep a job for a few months! In November of 2016, I was officially diagnosed with endometriosis based on my symptoms and ultrasounds. I had seen and heard the word bounced around so many times, as early as 18, but no one had ever followed through. Dr. Lortie provided me with two sheets of paper that included all the possible treatments that I could try to alleviate endometriosis and pelvic pain. I started an endometriosis specific birth control, Celebrex for pain and an anti-depressant that would help block pain centres in the brain. The birth control reduces the effect of estrogen on tissue, preventing further growth. The Celebrex and anti-depressant help me manage my every day pain and I take the over the counter Codeine with Tylenol for breakthrough pain. I’ve changed my diet to exclude dairy and other inflammatory foods, get massaged and will be starting physio in April to get my body back up to par. I now spend time on Endometriosis groups, cheering people on and giving advice. I’ve referred tons of people to Dr. Lortie, because she has made such a significant impact on my life. I’ve come a long way from that girl hiding in Ikea, but I could have prevented all of this if someone had prescribed me continuous birth control. We need to do better for women. No person should have to go through almost fifteen years of this.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000005618112/birth-control-your-own-adventure.html

#endometriosis #endo #worldendometriosisday

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fem-mem-mine · 4 years

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At the posthumous retrial of Joan of Arc in 1455, two decades after she was burned at the stake as a witch and a heretic, she was declared an innocent martyr. During the trial, a personal valet offered evidence of Joan of Arc’s piety and purity during her 19 years on Earth: “She never suffered from the secret illness of women.” As far as the people closest to her knew, he claimed, she never got her period.

Saintly qualifications aside, amenorrhea—the abnormal absence of periods—has historically been linked with misfortune. In 400 b.c., Hippocrates wrote that “when the menses are stopped, diseases from the uterus take place.” In 1652, the physician Nicolas Fontanus identified amenorrhea “as the most universal and most usual cause” for palsy, melancholy, burning fevers, nausea, headaches, and a distaste for meat. Some 18th-century physicians believed that suppressed menses could cause a married woman to spiral into deep hysteria, and even in 1961, the epidemiologist Frances Drew proposed that a young woman might manifest mental anguish by losing her period.

But some doctors today offer amenorrhea to patients as young as age 14 or 15: Menstruation has now become an elective bodily process. “Once your periods are established, we can turn them off,” Sophia Yen, a pediatrics professor at Stanford Medical School, told me. “We now have the technology to make periods optional.”

Few are as passionate as Yen about the possibility of a world with far less cyclical bleeding. “It’s my crusade,” said Yen, who also co-founded and runs Pandia Health, a birth-control-delivery company. “This is my moonshot.” People who have periods spend an average of 2,300 days of their lives menstruating. If more people chose to silence their period—or even just dial down the volume—that would mean a decrease in iron deficiency (which women experience at far higher rates than men), and fewer plastic tampon applicators littering landfills.

Yen envisions the period of periods soon coming to an end. But even though menstruation is often messy, painful, and expensive, it’s a meaningful fixture of adulthood for some, and one that can be hard to let go of.

Gabrielle, a 24-year-old who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, got her first period in fourth grade. (The Atlantic allowed her and others in this story to use their first name only, to protect their privacy.)

“It felt incredibly, incredibly unfair,” she told me, to have been the first among her friends to menstruate. “There were all these little moments where it was embarrassing and bad and painful and weird”—sneaking off to the bathroom with bulky pads stuffed in her shirt, swimming while on her period, learning how to use tampons. Then, at 20, Gabrielle got a hormonal IUD (intrauterine device) for birth control and, as a side effect, stopped getting regular periods. “It feels really good to not worry” about keeping the bathroom well stocked or missing a day of work, she said. “I will keep getting an IUD until I’m ready to get pregnant.”

Today, any doctor will tell you there is no medical necessity for periods unless you’re trying to conceive. The body preps for pregnancy by thickening the uterus’s lining, like a bird building a nest for her eggs; hormonal birth control prevents pregnancy, in part, by keeping the uterine lining from ever building up. Many of the roughly 19 million Americans who rely on the pill, the shot, IUDs, implants, patches, or rings see a change in their period—often it’s lighter, but it can also disappear altogether. In clinical trials, more than 40 percent of the Liletta IUD’s users no longer menstruated by the end of the product’s six-year life. More than half of people who get the Depo-Provera shot every three months will become amenorrhoeic within a year, and almost 70 percent in the second year. And anyone using the pill, patch, or ring can safely skip scheduled withdrawal bleeding.

But getting a lighter flow as a side effect of birth control is different from choosing a contraceptive method in the hopes of turning off a period completely, and there are all sorts of reasons someone would want to do so. The cost of so-called feminine products can add up to thousands of dollars over a person’s lifetime: A recent study found that nearly two-thirds of low-income women surveyed in St. Louis couldn’t afford menstrual-hygiene products during the previous year. (This study, and others cited in this story, did not specify whether participants included trans men or nonbinary people who get periods). Amenorrhea can be a medical necessity for people with certain health conditions—such as those born without an intact uterus and vagina. It’s also a treatment option for heavy bleeding or otherwise painful periods, which afflict about one in five women, and can help relieve symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects 6 to 12 percent of U.S. women of reproductive age. Or a period simply may be one burden too many, especially during a pandemic: A tweet in March proclaiming that “menstrual cycles also need to be suspended until this ordeal is over” started racking up hundreds of thousands of likes.

For those whose periods are not just a monthly nuisance, but a medical complication in and of itself, amenorrhea can be a revelation. Valentina, a 20-year-old in Medellín, Colombia, was diagnosed with PCOS at 14, after her periods became practically intolerable. “The cramps were so, so strong; I couldn’t walk. I went through one tampon in one hour. I couldn’t sleep at night,” she told me. “It was traumatic.” In 2017, Valentina got a hormonal IUD and has since stopped menstruating. “After losing it, you see how much easier life is,” she said. “I’m not sure I want to have a period again.” For Nik, a 20-year-old transgender man living in Chicago, getting an IUD to suppress his period provided both mental and physical relief. “You don’t want the physical reminder every month that you weren’t born in the right body,” he told me. He went from doubling up on pads and tampons to, now, the occasional spotting.

For more than a decade, associations of obstetricians and gynecologists have assured doctors that it is safe for patients to try to reduce or eliminate menstrual bleeding—for personal or medical reasons—with hormonal contraception. There is far less certainty about how often that’s actually happening.

A 2013 survey asked 4,039 women of reproductive age in North and South America and Europe about hormonal contraception and periods; one-third said they knew it was possible to regularly reduce menstrual bleeding with birth control, and about 10 percent of respondents had done so. Other, much smaller studies have also documented the use of birth control to suppress periods. In 2016, researchers examined menstrual suppression among 400 Iranian Muslims who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca; they found that all but a few reported taking birth-control pills to quiet their period, and three-quarters of them successfully. A 2011 questionnaire of 500 U.S. veterans found that two-thirds of them had wanted to suppress their cycle during their deployment, and almost all of the subjects expressed a desire for mandatory education on how they could use birth control to avoid menstruating in combat zones.

Yen sees a future in which many more people know they can opt out, and do—in which no one menstruates unless they’re within two years of their first period or are trying to get pregnant. “In my ideal world, it would be about 28 periods over the course of a lifetime,” she said. Right now, that figure is in the hundreds. For Yen, a mother of two daughters—a 10-year-old who hasn’t gotten her period and a 13-year-old who has—that rebalancing would place her own children on a more level playing field with boys. Without periods, she says, they won’t miss two days of school or work each month, or get cramps during the SAT or swim meets, or deal with any of the other related stresses. “I want them to be competitive against those who don’t have uteruses,” Yen said. “Teenage years are so turbulent and horrific as is. I don’t want them to suffer unnecessarily—and I can alleviate this for my child.”

But a period-free future still remains a radical idea. “Menstruation can limit some people, but I reject that’s true for everybody,” says Colleen Krajewski, a family-planning specialist for the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Contraception and Family Planning. Many people, for example, rely on periods to know they’re not pregnant. Those recovering from eating disorders might see them as a sign that they’ve begun recovering from malnourishment. And some just enjoy the feeling of being in touch with their monthly cycle.

One key reason people will continue to opt in is the persistent, deep-set discomfort about not having your period. Last October, a group of researchers in Indiana and South Carolina reported that across a mix of focus groups, individual interviews, and online surveys, “most found the idea of not menstruating strange, unhealthy, and worrisome.” In a small, 2016 experiment, Canadian researchers discovered that a majority of the participants were suspicious of ads that presented the pharmaceutical suppression of cycles as a lifestyle choice; many specifically cited health concerns. “I know my body is healthy when it bleeds every month,” one participant told researchers, “and I would be very concerned if that didn’t happen.”

Patients tend to have a lot of questions about what not menstruating means for their reproductive health, says Margaret Nachtigall, a reproductive endocrinologist at NYU’s Langone Health. Do I risk infertility? Am I losing bone density? Am I clogging up with trapped menstrual blood? Some people harbor the unsettling misconception that without a period, toxic blood will build up inside them, Chelsea Polis, of the Guttmacher Institute, has found in her research. “That’s very scary for someone to worry about that,” Polis told me.

And that confusion makes sense, because amenorrhea can be a symptom of medical conditions such as eating disorders, pituitary or thyroid disease, and hepatitis. “Not getting a period is normally something worth investigating,” Nachtigall says. She and other gynecologists told me many of their patients struggle to feel normal without a period. I certainly did. I haven’t had a regular period since 2017, when I got my hormonal IUD. After so many years of ebbs and flows, I felt inert, as if my body couldn’t tell time once unmoored from its monthly cycle. It was an uncomfortable realization: I hated having my period, and I also hated losing it.

Yen fields similar concerns from her patients. “I tell them, ‘It’s okay to bleed less,’” she said. “The reason people feel like it’s quote ‘unnatural’ is that so many of us have had one every month for so long.”

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dominickamfz126 · 5 years

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Exactly How Does Medical Marijuana Work For Weight Reduction From Lack Of Appetite?

"At the Peace in Medication Recovery Facility in Sebastopol, the merchandises on display screen include dried out cannabis - including brands like Kryptonite, Voodoo Dad as well as Train Accident - and also medicinal cookies organized below an indicator saying, ""Shut out of Reach of Your Mother.""

A number of Bay Area medical professionals who suggest clinical cannabis for their people said in recent interviews that their client base had expanded to consist of teenagers with psychiatric problems consisting of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

"" It's not everyone's medicine, but also for some, it can make a profound distinction,"" claimed Valerie Corral, a founder of the Wo/Men's Partnership for Medical Cannabis, an individuals' cumulative in Santa Cruz that has two loads minors as registered clients.

Due to the fact that The golden state does not call for physicians to report cases involving clinical cannabis, no trusted data exist for how many minors have been accredited to obtain it. However Dr. Jean Talleyrand, that founded MediCann, a network in Oakland of 20 centers that license clients to utilize the medication, stated his team member had actually treated as many as 50 individuals ages 14 to 18 who had A.D.H.D. Bay Location physicians have actually gone to the center of the intense dispute about medical marijuana, winning resistance for individuals with major ailments like incurable cancer cells as well as HELP. Yet as these doctors utilize their discernment a lot more liberally, such assistance - also here - may be more difficult to summon, specifically when it pertains to making use of cannabis to deal with teens with A.D.H.D.

"" The number of methods can one say 'among the worst ideas of all time?'"" asked Stephen Hinshaw, the chairman of the psychology division at the University of The Golden State, Berkeley. He pointed out researches revealing that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the energetic component in marijuana, interferes with attention, memory, and focus - functions already jeopardized in people with attention-deficit disorder.

Supporters are equally as adamant, though they are in an unique minority. ""It's safer than aspirin,"" Dr. Talleyrand stated. He and also other marijuana advocates keep that it is additionally more secure than methylphenidate (Ritalin), the energizer prescription medicine usually utilized to deal with A.D.H.D. That drug has actually recorded prospective negative effects consisting of sleeplessness, anxiety, facial tics, as well as stunted growth.

In 1996, voters accepted a tally proposal making California the initial state to legislate clinical marijuana. Twelve various other states have done the same - enabling marijuana for a number of specified, major conditions including cancer cells and also HELP - yet just The golden state adds the grab-bag expression ""for any other disease for which cannabis supplies alleviation.""

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This has left those physicians willing to ""advise"" cannabis - in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of medical cannabis, they can not legitimately prescribe it - with the flexibility that some use to a bold degree. ""You can get it for a backache,"" claimed Keith Stroup, the creator of the National Company for the Reform of Marijuana Regulations.

Nevertheless, expanding its usage amongst youths is controversial even amongst physicians who accredit medical cannabis.

Genetics Schoenfeld, a doctor in Sausalito, stated, ""I wouldn't do it for anybody under 21 unless they have a serious problem such as cancer or HELP.""

Dr. Schoenfeld included, ""It's harmful to teenagers who persistantly utilize it, and also if it's being used clinically, that implies persistent use.""

Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, stated she was especially fretted about the danger of dependency - a danger she claimed was currently high amongst teens and also individuals with attention-deficit problem.

Counterproductive as it might seem, nonetheless, clients as well as physicians have actually been reporting that cannabis assists reduce several of the signs, particularly the stress and anxiety and temper that so frequently go along with A.D.H.D. The condition has actually been diagnosed in greater than 4.5 million kids in the United States, according to the Centers for Condition Control and also Prevention.

Scientists have actually linked the use of cannabis by teens to increased risk of psychosis and also schizophrenia for people genetically inclined to those ailments. Nonetheless, one 2008 record in the journal Schizophrenia Study suggested that the incidence of psychological illness among teenagers with the condition that made use of marijuana was lower than that of nonusers.

Cannabis is ""a godsend"" for some people with A.D.H.D., stated Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a psychoanalyst who has actually composed numerous publications on the disorder. Nonetheless, Dr. Hallowell claimed he prevents his patients from using it, both since it is - mostly - unlawful, and also since his observations show that ""it can cause a syndrome in which all the person wants to do all the time is obtain stoned, as well as they not do anything else.""

Till the age of 18, people asking for clinical cannabis must be gone along with to the medical professional's appointment and also to the dispensaries by a parent or accredited caregiver. Some doctors spoke with said they suspected that in at least some cases, moms and dads were accompanying their youngsters primarily with the hope that clinical consent would certainly allow the teenagers to avoid buying medications on the street.

A recent College of Michigan study found that more than 40 percent of senior high school students had actually tried cannabis.

"" I do not have an issue with that, as long as we can have our clinical conversation,"" Dr. Talleyrand stated, adding that individuals need to have medical records to be seen by his doctors.

The Medical Board of The golden state began examining Dr. Talleyrand in the springtime, claimed a board spokesperson, Candis Cohen, after a KGO-TV report thorough questionable methods at MediCann facilities, which, the report claimed, had actually earned a minimum of $10 million in five years.

Dr. Talleyrand and also his team member are not the only one in being willing to suggest cannabis for minors. In Berkeley, Dr. Frank Lucido stated he was questioned by the medical board yet inevitably not disciplined after he licensed marijuana for a 16-year-old boy with A.D.H.D. that had tried Ritalin unsuccessfully as well as was racking up a document of small arrests.

Within a year of the brand-new therapy, he said, the young boy was getting better grades and also was also elected president of his special-education class. ""He was telling his mother: 'My mind works. I can think,'"" Dr. Lucido stated.

"" With any type of drug, you evaluate the advantages versus the dangers,"" he added.

Even so, MediCann clients that obtain the permission should authorize a form listing feasible drawbacks of cannabis usage, consisting of ""mental sluggishness,"" memory problems, uneasiness, complication, ""enhanced talkativeness,"" fast heartbeat, trouble in finishing complex tasks and also hunger. ""Some clients can come to be dependent on cannabis,"" the firm also advises.

The White House's recent signals of even more federal resistance for state medical marijuana regulations - which pointedly omitted sales to minors - reignited the dispute over clinical marijuana.

Some advocates, like Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard College, recommend that medical cannabis's stigma has much less to do with questions of medical effectiveness and also more to do with its organization, in popular culture, with illicit enjoyment as well as addiction.

Others, like Alberto Torrico of Fremont, the bulk leader of the California Setting up, argue for more oversight in general. ""The cannabis is a whole lot much more effective these days than when we were maturing, and also excessive is being dispensed for nonmedical reasons,"" he stated in a meeting recently, candidly adding, ""Any kind of kids being provided medical marijuana is undesirable.""

As advocates of boosted approval try to win assistance, they might find their significant disagreements compromised by the dispensaries' playful atmosphere.

OrganiCann, a dispensary in Santa Rosa, has a Web site advertisement detailing the ""edible of the week"" - butterscotch rock candy - invitingly photographed in a present box with a ribbon. OrganiCann also supplies a 10 percent discount rate, every Friday, for consumers with cbdforsalenearme.com a legitimate trainee ID."

#CBD #cannabis #cannabidiol

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xtcpanda · 5 years

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Seriously, is playing Video Games as BAD as mom says?

If you grew up playing video games like I did … you’ve probably heard lots of conflicting information about games from your parents and people. Some say too much gaming will ruin your vision or rot your brain … While others claim it improves your hand-eye coordination, response time and can even make you smarter so what exactly does gaming do to our brain and body?

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with video games.

I would stay awake for more than 48h till I wake up with keyboard marks on my face, red eyes and my body is so tired to even get up and drink some water... trust me I am not exaggerating. After all that I would go to sleep only to dream about the perfect headshot with that “AWM”.

But there were physical effects, too. My thumbs turned into machines, quick and precise. During especially difficult levels of play, my palms would sweat. My heart would race. I’d have knots in my stomach from anxiety. It was the same feeling I’d sometimes get from watching scary movies or suspenseful TV shows.

These days the gaming industry is booming and becoming more like sports with fans, medals and everything! and thanks to smartphones and free games like fortnight and League of Legends … Gamers are increasing more than ever before. So, given that we can play virtually anywhere at any time How is all this gaming changing us physically?

Scientists are discovering that playing video games can change the way we act, think, and feel. Whether these changes are good or bad has become a subject of intense debate.

Action games like counter-strike, overwatch and PUBG are some of the most popular with gamers these days and probably you’ve heard once or twice your grandmother says “these games will make you more violent from all the blood you see!”

Whenever a wave of teenage violence strikes, movies, TV, or video games often take the heat. Some adults assume that movies, TV, and video games are a bad influence on kids, and they blame these media for causing various problems.

But media don’t necessarily cause violence, says James Gee. Gee is an education professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“You get a group of teenage boys who shoot up a school—of course they’ve played video games,” Gee says. “Everyone does. It’s like blaming food because we have obese people.”

Video games are innocent of most of the charges against them, Gee says…

Well, based on 15 years’ worth of study researchers have found that action games biggest positive effects were on perception: how our senses interpret external stimuli like sights and sounds, spatial cognition: which helps you orient yourself in navigating 3d environments and top-down attention: the ability to focus on one object while ignoring distractions.

A good video game is challenging, entertaining, and complicated. It usually takes 50 to 60 hours of intense concentration to finish one. Even kids who can’t sit still in school can spend hours trying to solve a video or computer game.

“Kids diagnosed with ADHD because they can’t pay attention will play games for 9 straight hours on the computer”, Gee says. “The game focuses attention in a way that school doesn’t.”

The captivating power of video games might lie in their interactive nature. Players don’t just sit and watch. They get to participate in the action and solve problems. Some games even allow players to make changes in the game, allowing new possibilities.

Different games have different impacts on the brain and that has to do with what you’re asked to do … just like food it doesn’t have the same vitamins after all, does it?

“Failure is key to success”.

Ask anyone who has ever had any success in anything if they have ever failed. You will get a big clear “Yes!” because everyone has failed at something. Most people probably know about Thomas Edison and his spectacular failure rate but here are a few other examples:

J.K. Rowling -known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series- was rejected by 12 publishers

Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4 and didn’t read until he was 7

Van Gogh only sold 1 painting in his lifetime

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

In games you get 1000 lives and more! We don’t stop playing till the game says “Game Over” but then we click on “New Game” or new try.

“Gaming could be good for pain relief”.

a 2012 literature review published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that in the 38 studies examined, video games improved the health outcomes of 195 patients on every front, including psychological and physical therapy.

Plus, in 2010, scientists presented research at the American Pain Society's conference, which found evidence that playing video games, especially virtual reality games, are effective at reducing anxiety or pain caused by chronic illness or medical procedures.

"The focus is drawn to the game not the pain or the medical procedure, while the virtual reality experience engages visual and other senses," said Jeffrey Gold from the University of Southern California.

“Better Decision Making”.

Shawn Green from the University of Rochester wanted to see how games affect our ability to make decisions.

The study had a group of young adults with no gaming experience play an action game for 50 hours.

A second group of the same age played a slow-paced strategy game instead.

After the study, Green had nothing but good things to say:

“Action video games are fast-paced, and there are peripheral images and events popping up, and disappearing. These video games are teaching people to become better at taking sensory data in, and translating it into correct decisions.”

A colleague of his even went on to say that shooters can change the brain by dramatically enhancing many of our low-level perceptual functions. Definitely good news for all the Halo and Call of Duty fans out there.

“Games Can Help (Not Hurt!) Your Eyesight”.

Who grew up without ever hearing their parents say “you’re going to go blind watching that screen all day”.

For a while, it did seem like they had a point since we tend to blink much less frequently while playing a game.

This can cause serious problems like eyestrain and dry eye syndrome.

Another team of researchers from the University of Rochester sought to prove if games really worsen our vision.

The 2009 study involved having a group of experienced first-person shooter gamers plays Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament 2004 while more casual gamers played slow games like The Sims 2.

After testing, those who played the first-person shooters showed signs of having a better vision than the others.

Daphne Bavelier, the leader of the study, discovered that playing action games improves an ability called contrast sensitivity function.

This ability helps us discern between changes in shades of gray against a colored backdrop, which is very beneficial while driving at night.

“Video Games May Help Treat Depression”.

A few years back researchers in New Zealand sought to find out if video games can be used to treat mental disorders like depression.

This was done with SPARX, a game specifically designed to provide therapy to teenagers in a way that’s more active and enjoyable than regular counseling.

Over 168 teens with an average age of 15 participated, with all of them having shown previous signs of depression.

While half of the group received traditional counseling, the other group got to play SPARX.

The game involves creating avatars to rid the virtual world of enemies representing gloomy, negative thoughts.

Every stage also introduced general facts about depression, including ways to relax and deal with negative emotions.

Here’s their conclusion after discovering that SPARX players did better at recovering from depression than the other group:

“SPARX is a potential alternative to usual care for adolescents presenting with depressive symptoms in primary care settings and could be used to address some of the unmet demand for treatment.”

“Games has a purpose, meaning and can actually help!”.

Darfur is Dying is a video game made in 2006 by Students at the University of Southern California that provides a window into the experience of the 2.5 million refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan. It is designed to raise awareness of the genocide taking place in Darfur and empower college students to help stop the crisis. The game was developed in cooperation with humanitarian aid workers with extensive experience in Darfur.

First, you choose a Darfurian character to represent your camp. Next, you are instructed to go out and get water, which is the goal of the game. You are warned about the implications of some of the game's rules,

In the game, the user chooses a Darfurian character out of 7: a guy at the age of 30, a 26 years old woman, 5 kids from 10 to 14 years old from both genders to find some water... but watch out hide yourself from the Janjaweed militia! Upon success or failure, they learn that their chances of succeeding were predetermined by their gender and age if they are still young the militia takes them, if they are adults they get killed or raped. The navigation system in the game enables the player to learn about the situation in Darfur, get involved with stopping the crisis.

As we saw no one plays a game and doesn’t gain something ... either you get a positive impact or a null impact. We haven’t seen any area that has been damaged where there is worse performance.

Playing video games can be very high speed, can create a lot of chaos, create a lot of multiple environments where you have to make decisions, and all of these are forming skills in brain so … No, I think games really help improve our cognition and awareness training our brains making us better Human beings.

But of course, too much of anything is going to be bad after all.

You will get more learning gained from smaller sessions spread out over time than one BIG block.

When it comes to my own experience, I’ve played games for more than 13 years never suffered any gaming related injuries. While may I never know if gaming helped my brain, I do know it didn’t destroy it … so take that mom!

— Moaaz Akram

#games #serious gaming #gamedev

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