#medical stuff

[hachama]

Favorite part of seeing a new doctor: when they ask about birth control

Doctor: Sexually active?

Me: I'm over 35 and have a toddler, so we'll say yes but it's really more of an aspirational thing.

D: Hormonal birth control?

M: No.

D: Are you trying to get pregnant?

M: Ha, no, once was more than enough.

D: Barrier method?

M: Just the aforementioned toddler, so no.

D: If you don't want to get pregnant, you really should be using some form of birth control.

M: Oh, I am. I find that the absence of fallopian tubes is extremely effective.

D: o___o checks my record Oh. Right.

M: >:-}

[figmentforms]

Part 247 of  “A Tale of Two Rulers” (Jan 24, 2024)

I managed to finish something!!! ᕙ(⊙ᴗ⊙')ᕗ

Thank yo all so much for your usual patience and kindness! Next update will be in about two months. Hopefully sooner.

I won't be able to go do conventions for a while since getting sick right now would be very very very bad timing with my medical situation, so I took on a big commission and a kickstarter to supplement my income a bit, so that will slow me down. If you happen to like Mothman or/or ita bags, you may like the upcoming KS. I will make a post when it's ready, but I promise I won't spam about it.

(Also, comic will be looking a little different like this from now on because my old set up broke and i had to switch to another one. ^_^')

★ Webtoon-  https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/a-tale-of-two-rulers/list?title_no=292453 ★ - I’m still building up this archive.

★Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/LorIllustration ★

★Store - www.etsy.com/shop/FigmentForms

for those that wonder how the medical stuff is going, I'll put that below the cut so anyone who doesn't want to see it can skip it easier:

Yay for not having cancer! A nice relief there! I'm now taking the various medications required to start my first embryo transfer. I'm really excited but also nervous. It will happen in just a few weeks and i'm really praying that the lil' guy lives and gets to be born. lol, now to enjoy the impossible task of trying to NOT be STRESSED as HARD AS I CAN.

[hellyeahsickaf]

The way addicts and chronically ill people are dehumanized is so exhausting

The normalization of this shit in medical and casual settings is genuinely mind boggling. Addicts and disabled people go through so much bullshit. I've dealt with many fucked up doctors when I just needed help

I had a kidney infection, some months back. This is always extremely medically urgent, and I was likely only hours from sepsis. I went to the hospital reporting my pain to be a 9/10. 9 because my 10 was gallstones. I experienced severe malpractice at the hospital and the doctor reported exams that never occured and false information while making me wait with nothing more than tylenol to hold me over (didn't touch the pain) and bring my fever down but that's a whole other story

They did however, deny me the pain medication I needed until it was time to go home. I'm deathly allergic to NSAIDS, but that's something an addict might say so they witheld pain relief because they'd rather me suffer just in case I'm a different kind of sick. An entire night, maybe 6 hours in the ER and they couldn't give me anything, not a small dose of morphine or one norco even a few hours prior to take the edge off of the pain while I was curled up shaking and crying. Just in case I was an addict looking for my fix, and my suffering was just withdrawals and good acting. In that case maybe I deserved it and should be denied my humanity. God forbid in that case I'm so desperate to alleviate unbearable withdrawals that I spend all night in the ER crying. Not the first time I've experienced red tape just to get relief from excruciating pain

But whatever. As per protocol I was asked to follow up with my pcp. So a few days later I called to set an appointment, but I'd also run out of norco and desperate to relieve the pain I asked if I could be filled even enough for a few days, until the pain was bearable. I had difficulty walking, laying down, and I again, can't take most pain relievers. The receptionist was nice and understanding, actually got me in touch with the doctor because she wanted me to be able to get my refill. Probably heard the pain in my voice even. She believed me

She transfers me over to the doctor and I tell him I'd like a follow up and ask if he could fill my painkillers. I would've acceped a no from him, I just needed my follow up. He asked about my condition, I told him my diagnosis and how much pain I was in

And he laughed.

Got a real hoot out of it, like he had me all figured out. Like he caught me trying to cheat the system. I must be trying to get high or make some money with a few days worth of norco as i'm nearly in tears from the pain even while calling

He tells me through his laughter "I don't prescribe painkillers for 'kidney infections'" saying it with a mocking emphasis on those words, as if I'd said "stubbed toe". Follows with "Yeah haha, bye." and hangs up on me. No follow up like I called for. Needless to say I no longer have a pcp but truly if he thought I was an addict trying to take advantage of him he should have still treated me professionally. Maybe not cackled when I said my pain was excruciating for a start

I just don't understand why the hell so many doctors can be so apathetic to people's suffering. Addicts deserve better and so do disabled people- whether you think they're addicts or not. The assumption that we're lying, trying to trick them and are feigning pain to do it is disgusting, listening to your patients is so important. And if that were the case they could have some sympathy and ask themselves what it would take for someone to go those lengths, take such drastic measures and go through that trouble to obtain those substances.

Addiction is not a moral failing. Many disabled and chronically ill people unfortunately rely on medications that have addictive properties. About 80% of heroin addicts first misused prescription drugs. However only about 4-6% of those addicted to prescription drugs switch to things like heroin. And instead of help or compassion for people who just need help (addicts or not), they just figure we're one in the same and treat us like subhuman degenerates, leeches on society. And I think people need to change how they view addiction. Doctors need to change how they view addiction

[faustandfurious]

Annoyed by people taking the line about how your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25 and using it to justify the most rancid takes that completely disregard teenagers’ and young adults’ autonomy, agency and opinions

[linastudyblrsblog]

paediatrics wrap up , days before the final exam

[bodhrancomedy]

My favourite thing about antibiotics is that they get rid of infections.

My second favourite thing is they achieve this by killing the infection slightly faster than they kill you.

[herzspalter]

Since I've been talking about it here and have been asked about it, I want to give you all a short health update. The short version is, we've finally figured out why I'm so fatigued, and unfortunately, it's not gonna go away, and I can no longer do as much art as I want to.

I want to keep this short: Very basically, most of you know that I've been struggling with fatigue for over two years now, and that every doctor's been telling me that I'm actually perfectly healthy, even though I'm clearly not.

Now, after a year of running to different doctors in vain, I've been diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. This explains not only my fatigue, but also my funky digestive issues, bizarre eye inflammation and other stuff I've had for a while and just thought heal on its own eventually.

Since it's a chronic disease, it won't go away, but we hope that it'll at least get a bit better once this flare up has been treated. What this means for me, is that I can never go back to drawing for hours as I used to. As much as that hurts me, I have to come to terms with it. I want to put my time into finishing commissions now, and dedicating the energy I do have into my comic project, and anything else like fanart and other doodles is going to be completely up to the spurts of energy I occasionally get.

It's nothing new, you all know how little I've been posting over the last year and longer, but now we at least know why. I'm still here ofc, nothing really changes, I just have to adjust my personal life and get used to this.

I'm okay, the people treating me are very kind and helpful, and while I am genuinely very upset at the prospect of likely never feeling fully awake again, I am too relieved to finally have closure and start treatment to be sad right now. Gonna have to move forward, there's no other choice anyway.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for being patient with me. I'm a private person and I don't like sharing too much about medical shit on here, but I know lots of you struggle with fatigue too and had asked me about my progress in the past, and I wanted to make sure that you know the conclusion to that whole odyssey <3

Love you all, take good care, I wish you the Best!

[alpaca-clouds]

The ADHD thing nobody seems to know (and that is kinda dangerous)

Okay, after having to explain this to several doctors at the hospital, and then shocking an AuDHD friend with it, who also did not know, let me write it here:

A lot of people with ADHD have paradoxical reactions to certain medications!

This goes especially for pain meds and anaesthetics.

This basically goes back to how our brains deal with certain drugs. You know how ADHD medication is stuff that to normal people will make them more active and everything? And how it actually makes us more mallow? And how a lot of ADHD people self-medicate with caffeine, when they cannot get medication, as it allows them to calm down? Yeah, that is also part of this.

But also goes for other meds that are made to affect the brain in certain ways. As I said, pain meds and anaesthetcs are part of that.

As one dentist put it once: "You need so much painkiller, it would knock out an elephant." Which, yeah. I just need a lot higher dosis.

And with anaesthetics? Well, I was under general anaesthesia 6 times in my life. Three of the times I woke up during the surgery. Two times I was about to woke up and they tried to keep me under, resulting in near death experiences. The one time that was not a problem was a super short surgery, that lasted only a few minutes.

And one time I had a surgery, where I was not supposed to be under complete anaesthesia but a medication that should make me sleepy. Yeah, it had the opposite effect.

And this really is common with people who have ADHD.

So, please. If you have ADHD and are in a situation that you need serious pain meds or anaesthesia, say it.

And if you are put under general anaesthesia, ask for them to use a medication called Ketanest, which has been proofen to work a lot better for people with ADHD.

[nonegenderleftpain]

Hey folks on t gel-

If you are taking Actavis brand t gel (it's in little metal tubes) and have a nickel allergy, keep an eye out for allergic reactions. I've been on three separate brands with no reaction, and then after three months of using this one, I had a horrific case of contact dermatitis everywhere it touched. I've had a patch test and have had no reaction to the ingredients in the medication, which leads me to believe the tubes may have nickel components in them, as that's the only contact allergy I have. This is entirely speculation, as I can't find any information on what the tubes are made of, but I'll be attempting to contact Actavis to find out. Just keep an eye on it and if you start to have itching at the contact site, please go to your doctor instead of waiting three weeks like I did.

[lastoneout]

I don't really know exactly why I'm posting this, I guess I just want to share my joy, but y'all...the nerve block worked. My migraine went down a little over the night so I was only at like a 1.5-2 but I swear to god the second they were done EVERY SINGLE PART of my head stopped hurting. The only pain I'm feeling rn is at the injection site and a smidge in my jaw, but that's not a huge deal bcs I know the steroids take a long time to do their thing and I usually have pain around the injection site when they do this in my back, plus I did already suspect something like 10% of my migraines aren't entirely due to my neck, but like...it worked. It fucking worked.

I've been living with chronic migraines my entire life, and in the last five years, they've gotten so bad that I can't work and have to cancel streams and hangouts with friends all the time. I have migraines more days than I don't and I've never been able to find out what my trigger is aside from not sleeping well and eating lays potato chips(rip I miss them so much) or gluten or being on my period?? and on some days I'm in so much pain I can't even feed myself or shower. 8-10 is the norm, they don't go lower on their own, they NEVER go away on their own, no matter how much time I spend lying in bed in the dark with icepacks on my face. My migraine rescue meds don't always work, or they work for a day and then it comes back, and I seem to be fucking Immune(tm) to Excedrin and ibuprofen. All that together has legit been ruining my entire life.

And I am not even a little ashamed to admit that once they were done and asked how I felt I broke down sobbing in the exam room because it WORKED. Instantly. Years of pain and agony and no help from my doctors, of blaming a medical condition that treatment hasn't fixed, telling me to limit screen time and lose weight, forcing me to try 50 different medications none of which help, of spending long nights in the ER hoping they can fix me even though it's typically a 50/50 chance....and now it's over. I don't have to do that anymore. They fixed it. They fixed it.

I'm crying right now as I write this. I never thought this was possible. Like I believed that it was my neck and my doctors agreed, but I was so worried that this would all be for nothing, I didn't think it would work, I know most disabled people dream of finding the One Thing that's causing all their problems even though most of us never do, but I guess luck decided to smile on me this day, this is what's causing my problems and it's treatable. It's over. I found the path out of this hell and it was the right one. I don't even know what to do, what to say. I'm so happy I can't even be happy, all I can do is cry because the hardest part is over.

There's still work to be done, but the path is clear. And honestly @ any gods that are listening, please grant this to my fellow disabled people. They deserve to feel this, we all do.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Current mad meta exercise I am indulging for no reason: trying to work out exactly where the Winter Soldier shot Steve in CATWS. 😭

[bomberqueen17]

cellulitis adventures

So on Friday I was cleaning in the barn, hosing rotting meat out of a floor drain. I tripped over the hose, and fell on the hand holding the hose sprayer, in a pile of moldy rat shit I'd tried to clean earlier but hadn't done a great job on. The hose sprayer scraped my thumb, opening up a little cut and tearing the skin, which was annoying and hurt a lot.

Naturally I was like, listen I need to clean this really well, so I did. But I was busy, so I washed it really well and then didn't bandage it, because I had a lot more grubby shit to work on and a bandage would just get soggy. I cleaned it again when I was done, but still forgot to bandage it. it was not a serious cut, it was more of a scrape, and it hadn't really bled much, it was mostly just sort of scabbed over. Not a big deal.

Drove home to Buffalo on Saturday, and noticed it was a little sore, maybe a bit puffy. Ah, not great. I cleaned it again, put neosporin on it this time. Went to bed. In the morning I reapplied antibiotic gel and put a band-aid on it, and went off to work, off to Dude's aunt's house where his mother is clearing it out. (Aunt had to go into a long-term-care apartment downstate near her daughter, after a stroke left her with poor working memory, and nobody's happy about this but the house needs to be gone through and her sister is the one to do it. And we are the ones to help her; her children live a few hundred to a thousand miles away, and wouldn't know what to do with the things in Latvian anyway.)

Anyway. Finished with that, took a nap, ran some errands. My thumb was a bit achy under that band-aid, but I was busy. It wasn't until I was making dinner and noticed a red line on my wrist that I realized I ought to give this more attention.

I finished making dinner, sat down, took off my watch to look at the red line a bit better. Now, I have really pale skin, and it shows red marks from everything; I expected it was red from steam from the cooking. But no, the line curved and went unaltered under where the band of my watch had been, and out the other side. It was under my skin, not the surface of it.

So I took a picture of it and sent it to an online buddy who is a nurse, who said immediately to go to urgent care, not to wait and see if it cleared up overnight because it was not going to. And now that I've come out the other side of this with some antibiotics, I thought I would write a little post and tell y'all what to worry about, because it was no big deal in my case but if I had waited it might well have been. So behind the cut will be a very non-gory photograph, which possibly will look more dramatic than it would on your skin because I have so little pigment in mine. But mine was a very clear textbook case, so I figure it's a good example. Again though, no gore, so I do encourage you to look even if you're squeamish, because it's really good to get an idea in your mind about danger.

For the record, urgent care turned me away so I went to the ER and while I waited a long time, the staff, rushed off their feet and far too busy, was still kind and reassured me I had done exactly the correct thing in coming in. This is the kind of thing it's trivial to fix up with a routine course of oral antibiotics if you catch it, but if it goes too long it can get into all kinds of bodily systems and become very difficult to safely eradicate, and can cause lasting, even permanent complications.

So I thought, for other dumbasses like me who would ignore a throbbing cut, here is a little PSA about Shit To Definitely Not Ignore, and thanks times several million to my online nurse buddy who told me so.

Behind the cut, a photo that does not include the actual injury or any gore or disfigurement, but very clearly shows the telltale sign, which is redness from inflammation from the infection traveling through the lymphatic system, and is like, a prime time danger sign and if you see this seek care and do not delay. I haven't been able to find good pictures of what this looks like on darker skin, alas, but here it is on me.

[Image description: the right forearm and hand of a pale-skinned person, lying on the edge of a table with the fingers loosely closed, thumb upward. The thumb goes off the top of the frame, and a bandage is just visible circling it. A red line wavers from the side of the thumb down along the back of the heel of the hand, curves down along the inner edge of the wrist, and then curves down to the underside of the arm. Several blue veins are also dimly visible through the skin, not following quite the same path as the red line, which is wider and blurrier than they are. The red line is quite blurry and hard to see in some places, clearer and more distinct in others, and in one place clearly but briefly splits to follow two channels before reuniting into one. There's also a faint dent visible in the skin at the side of the wrist, where the buckle of a watch was; the red line is not otherwise interrupted by where the skin had been covered by the watch.]

Again, the injury itself was a little gnarly but not anything I would have sought treatment for on its own; it was a bit sore to bend my thumb, it was getting a bit red and swollen but I had it under a bandage and wasn't monitoring it. The red streak was what made me look, and it's good I did. For the record, i don't know if this is typical, but pressing down at the point right on the side of my wrist where that red streak was widest was tender, like pressing a bruise, and isn't this morning; that was what really convinced me this was something from the inside and not a weird mark left by touching something from the outside. I don't know if that would be universal, and it wasn't tender along the whole length of it, but right there it's going over bone so I could really feel it. It's not raised at all, not a rash, it felt like bruising deep under the skin but if you pull your finger across it didn't fade or change color or have any kind of texture to it at all. This morning it's not tender anymore either, though the injury itself is a bit more painful than it was.

They gave me a dose of antibiotics last night around 10pm, and the streaking has faded, but the injury itself is more angry and swollen and is affecting my grip strength with that hand. I plan to follow the course of antibiotics, of course, and am grateful for modern medicine, which makes this mostly just an amusing anecdote. Who knew scraping your hand in a barn full of rat shit was dangerous! (Well, I did.)

Anyway-- off to see about filling this prescription. I gotta take it four times a day but like, y'know, I can handle that in exchange for not having sepsis, LOL.

[figmentforms]

I can’t update for a week or two. I really tried, but my IVF drugs are really interacting intensely with my brain and my body and all I can do is keep up with my self injections each day and suppress panic attacks by constantly distracting myself.

Good news is that, despite the fact that I constantly feel like a cat that has fallen into a bathtub of ice water and fire, the treatment is working (a little TOO WELL) so far and hopefully the egg retrieval surgery will happen a little sooner than expected and produce a big enough clutch of eggs that I NEVER have to do this again. 🙏🙏🙏🍀🍀🍀

Other Good news is that now I’m no longer terrified of needles. Now I’m just moderately frightened. That’s legit a win and I’m proud of that.😎😎😎😎💪

So in conclusion I HATE FEELING EVERY FEELING AT ONCE SO HARD I feel absolutely out of my freaking mind and I’m in pain and swollen and and I’m constantly freaking out and omg I can’t wait to get OFF this ‘journey’.

It’s ok to laugh at me because honestly i feel like this is so terrible it’s hilarious and laughing about it actually makes me feel better about it.

Love you all so much! Thank you all for your kindness🩷

[katy-l-wood]

Random trick to get doctors to listen to you about muscle/skeletal stuff if they give you the "wow, you sure seem to know a lot about this stuff" aka "you know too much and thus are lying" nonsense if you can accurately describe what's going on with your body and where:

Say you're an artist. Say you memorized the muscles and bones not because you spent ages trying to understand your own body, but because you wanted to learn to draw.

IDK why this works so well, but every time I've done it it has been like flipping a switch. "Oh, that's so wonderful, what do you draw?" and they start listening to you again. (Probably works because you're no longer a "threat" to their expertise, you just have adjacent knowledge now.)

If they ask to see your art just say you don't get good cell service in their office. Or pull up some random deviantART profile.

[faustandfurious]

Not linking the source here, because it isn’t relevant to the point I’m making, but just a friendly tip when writing about medical settings:

An IV cannula is a metal needle inside a small plastic tube. When you insert it into a vein, the needle is used to puncture the skin and vessel wall. You then pull the needle out, leaving only the flexible plastic tube in the vein, before administering meds or fluids.

This means that when a patient, like in the screenshot above, wakes up and promptly removes their IV lines, there are no needles involved. The needles were removed upon insertion of the IV lines. If they weren’t, medical professionals wouldn’t be able to give the patient anything through the IV access because the needle would be blocking the tube.

[thebad-lydrawn-sanses]

HOROR ARE YOU OKAY??? Please take these bandages, gauzes, cotton balls, antiseptics, rubbing alcohol, disinfectants, pain killers, icepacks, medical tape, sanitizer, hydrocortisone cream, hydrogen peroxide, antibiotics, cough and cold medicine, Tylenol, Ibuprofen and- *Dumps entire medical supplies in hands.* Please be okay, we're worried for you...