sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really.
You’re being kind when you say “almost 100% fatality”. What people need to hear is: if you get to develop rabies symptoms, you’re dead. If you get heavytreatment after developping symptoms, you still need a miracle. Like, a real miracle, you should enter some religion if you escape that.
ALSO, I don’t want people feeling confident about petting stray/wild animals because there’s a vaccine available, either. I’ll explain why from my own experience (I’m not a doctor).
I got bitten by a wild tamarin once, on the pulp of my index finger. It drew blood, there are many wild animals in the area (tamarins, possums, bats, foxes) and it isn’t that uncommon to hear about 1 or 2 rabies cases every now and again (a puppy we gave to a friend got it, for instance), so I went to an ambulatory immediately.
Because I was bitten in an ultrasensitive area, I needed fast treatment. But it was also a small area, so the usual thing they do - inject the vaccine in the place - wasn’t a choice. They told me they’d divide the shot in 5 small ones, and inject me all over my body, so the antidote would get to my entire system fast.
Please stop for a moment and think that the disease is so worrysomethat they’d rather needle me all over than to give me one shot and wait until it spread through my system.
Then they said that, okay, but there was a catch first. I needed to take an antiallergic shot. “Why?” “Because the virus is devastating, and as the vaccine is made from it, but weakened (like almost every vaccine) it will still create a reaction, and it’s a strong one, and it’s veru common for people to have strong allergic reactions to it.” YOU HAVE TO TAKE AN ANTIALLERGIC SHOT IN ORDER TO TAKE THE VACCINE COZ THE VACCINE COULD POTENTIALLY MAKE YOU REALLY SICK
ALSO IT WASN’T JUST “A LITTLE ANTIALLERGIC SHOT”
IT WAS ONE OF THESE FUCKERS HERE.
It was OBVIOUSLY dripped in my body and not injected because HAHAHAHA. Truth be told I was an adult already and I’m tall so I have a lot of mass but STILL.
So after I had taken the antiallegic and was starting to feel drowsy (as a side effect of it) the doctor came with the 5 shots.
- One in each buttock
- One in each thigh
- One in my left arm
They all stung like a bitch and I usually don’t care about shots.
“Okay so can I go home now?”
“No, we have to keep you under observation for 2h so we’re SURE the vaccine won’t give you any reaction.”
BINCH I WAS GIVEN A BUTTLOAD OF MEDICINE BUT THERE WAS STILL A RISK.
I slept through the two hours and then was liberated to go home. My legs, butt, and left arm hurt all over, like I had been punched there, for a few days. I also had a fever (not feverish, a fever)
BUT DID YOU THINK IT WAS OVER?
WRONG!!!
I had to take fourreinforcement shots in the next month, one a week, so I could be positively be considered immunized.Every time I took a shot, my arm would swell and hurt like it’d been hit, and when night came I’d have a fever. Because that’s how fucking strong the vaccine is, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW VICIOUS THE VIRUS IS.
So yeah. DO NOT PUT YOURSELF IN RISK, GODDAMNIT. Rabies is a rare condition all over, THANK GOD, and 1 confirmed case can be already considered a surge and a reason for mass campaigning, AND FOR A REASON.
If you like messing with stray/wild animals, don’t go picking them up and be extra careful. Or just, like, DON’T- call a vet or an authority that can handle them safely.
I must add that I live in a country with universal healthcare, so I didn’t pay a single penny for my treatment. Is this your reality? If not, ONE MORE REASON TO NOT FUCKING PLAY WITH THIS SHIT.
Rabies is 100% lethal. Period. If you are scratched or bitten by an animal you’re not positive is vaccinated, you need to find treatment NOW. And probably go through all that shit I’ve been through (also if you are immunosupressed? I DON’T KNOW WHAT’D HAPPEN)
Stay safe and don’t be stupid ffs
Guys, I know this isn’t art nor anything like that, but I’ve been hearing about this rabies thing and ???? Look I trust none of you would risk yourselves like this, but maybe you can educate someone through my experience and stuff.
Also rabies does not necessarily cause frothing-at-the-mouth aggression in animals. Docility is also a very common symptom so any wild animal that is ‘friendly’ or ‘likes to be pet’ is suspect. Literally any wild animal is a vector.
Finally, you don’t need to be bitten. All you need is to come into contact with an infected animal’s bodily fluids through a cut that maybe you didn’t notice when you were handling it when it drooled on you.
Never touch a wild animal.
Infection with the rabies virus progresses through three distinct stages.
Prodromal: Stage One. Marked by altered behavioral patterns. “Docility” and “likes to be pet” are very common in the prodromal stage. Usually lasts 1-3 days. An animal in this stage carries virus bodies in its saliva and is infectious.
Excitative: Stage Two. Also called “furious” rabies. This is what everyone thinks rabies is–hyperreacting to stimuli and biting everything. Excessive salivation occurs. Animals in this stage also exhibit hydrophobia or the fear of water; they cannot drink (swallowing causes painful spasms of the throat muscles), and will panic if shown water. Usually lasts 3-4 days before rapidly progressing into the next stage.
Paralytic: Stage Three. Also called “dumb” rabies. As the infection runs its course, the virus starts degrading the nervous system. Limbs begin to fail; animals in this stage will often limp or drag their haunches behind them. If the animal has survived all this way, death will usually come through respiratory arrest: Their diaphragm becomes paralyzed and they stop breathing.
And to add onto the above, saliva isn’t the only infectious fluid. Brain matter is, too. If, somehow, you find yourself in possession of a firearm and faced with a rabid animal, do not go for a head shot. If you do, you will aerosolize the brain matter and effectively create a cloud of infectious material. Breathe it in, and you’ll give yourself an infection.
When I worked in wildlife rehabilitation, I actually did see a rabid animal in person, and it remains one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, because I was literally looking death in the eyes.
A pair of well-intentioned women brought us a raccoon that they thought had been hit by a car. They had found it on the side of the road, dragging its hind legs. They managed–somehow–to get it into a cat carrier and brought it to us.
As they brought it in, I remember how eerily silent it was. Normal raccoons chatter almost constantly. They fidget. They bump around. They purr and mumble and make little grabby-hands at everything. Even when they’re in pain, and especially when they’re stressed. But this one wasn’t moving around inside the carrier, and it wasn’t making a sound.
The clinic director also noticed this, and he asked in a calm but urgent voice for the women to hand the carrier to him. He took it to the exam room and set it on the table while they filled out some forms in the next room. I took a step towards the carrier, to look at our new patient, and without turning around, he told me, “Go to the other side of the room, and stay there.”
He took a small penlight out of the drawer and shone it briefly into the carrier, then sighed. “Bear, if you want to come look at this, you can put on a mask,” he said. “It’s really pretty neat, but I know you’re not vaccinated and I don’t want to take any chances.”
And at that point, I knew exactly what we were dealing with, and I knew that this would be the closest I had ever been to certain death. So I grabbed a respirator from the table and put it on, and held my breath for good measure as I approached the table. The clinic director pointed where I should stand, well back from the carrier door. He shone the light inside again, and I saw two brilliant flashes of emerald green–the most vivid, unnatural eyeshine I had ever seen.
“I don’t know why it does it,” the director murmured, “but it turns their eyes green.”
“What does?” one of the women asked, with uncanny, unintentionally dramatic timing, as she poked her head around the corner.
“Rabies,” the director said. “The raccoon is rabid. Did it bite either of you, or even lick you?” They told us no, said they had even used leather garden gloves when they herded it into the carrier. He told them to throw away the gloves as soon as possible, and steam-clean the upholstery in their car. They asked how they should clean the cat carrier; they wanted it back and couldn’t be convinced otherwise, so he told them to soak it in just barely diluted bleach.
But before we could give them the carrier back, we had to remove the raccoon. The rabid raccoon.
The clinic director readied a syringe with tranquilizers and attached it to the end of a short pole. I don’t remember how it was rigged exactly–whether he had a way to push down the plunger or if the needle would inject with pressure–but all he would have to do was stick the animal to inject it. And so, after sending me and the women back to the other side of the room, he made his fist jab.
He missed the raccoon.
The sound that that animal made on being brushed by the pole can only be described as a roar. It was throaty and ragged and ungodly loud. It was not a sound that a raccoon should ever make. I’m convinced it was a sound that a raccoon physically could not make.
It thrashed inside the carrier, sending it tipping from side to side. Its claws clattered against the walls. It bellowed that throaty, rasping sound again. It was absolutely frenzied, and I was genuinely scared that it would break loose from inside those plastic walls.
Somehow, the clinic director kept his calm, and as the raccoon jolted around inside the cat carrier, he moved in with the syringe again, and this time, he hit it. He emptied the syringe into its body and withdrew the pole.
And then we waited.
We waited for those awful screams, that horrible thrashing, to die down. As we did, the director loaded up another syringe with even more tranquilizer, and as the raccoon dropped off into unconsciousness, he stuck it a second time with the heavier dose. Even then, it growled at him and flailed a paw against the wall.
More waiting, this time to make sure the animal was truly down for the count.
Then, while wearing welder’s gloves, the director opened the door of the carrier and removed the raccoon. She was limp, bedraggled, and utterly emaciated, but she was still alive. We bagged up the cat carrier and gave it to the women again, advising them that now was a good time to leave. They heeded our warning.
I asked if I could come closer to see, and the clinic director pointed where I could stand. I pushed the mask up against my face and tried to breathe as little as possible.
He and his co-director–who I think he was grooming to be his successor, but the clinic actually went under later that year–examined the raccoon together. Donning a pair of nitrile gloves, he reached down and pulled up a handful, a literal fistful, of the raccoon’s skin and released it. It stayed pulled up.
Severe dehydration causes a phenomenon called “skin tenting”. The skin loses its elasticity somewhat, and will be slow to return to its “normal” shape when manipulated. The clinic director estimated that it had been at least four or five days since the raccoon had had anything to eat or drink.
She was already on death’s doorstep, but her rabies infection had driven her exhausted body to scream and lunge and bite.
Because, the scariest thing about rabies (if you ask me) is the way that it alters the behavior of those it infects to increase chances of spreading.
The prodromal stage? Nocturnal animals become diurnal–allowing them to potentially infect most hosts than if they remained nocturnal.
The excitative stage? The infected animal bites at the slightest provocation. Swallowing causes painful spasms, so they drool, coating their bodies in infectious matter. A drink could wash away the virus-charged saliva from their mouth and bodies, so the virus drives them to panic at the sight of water.
(The paralytic stage? By that point, the animal has probably spread its infection to new hosts, so the virus has no need for it any longer.)
Rabies is deadly. Rabies is dangerous. In all of recorded history, one person survived an infection after she became symptomatic, and so far we haven’t been able to replicate that success. The Milwaukee Protocol hasn’t saved anyone else. Just one person. And even then, she still had to struggle to gain back control of her body after all that nerve damage.
Please, please, take rabies seriously.
This has been a warning from your old pal Bear.
Genuinely horrifying! I don’t go out of my way to get close to wild animals, but I now realize I haven’t taken rabies nearly as seriously as I should have. Be safe, everyone!
It’s almost 5 AM but I was alerted to the fact Pluto has been in retrograde since April 27th? And so I had to research what that meant and how it affected things.
Destroyer of lies. Out with the bad, in with the good. Turn towards the darkest parts and shine a light. Uproot the bad and plant the beautiful. Discover what lies beneath and expose it.
Here’s the part that I felt the need to share because there’s no way it’s not connected:
Pluto went retrograde on April 27th, 2021.
After six years of nearly consistent chronic pain, I finally found answers and was diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome on April 29th, 2021.
This is the first picture I was given of my unborn son
congratulations it’s a computer error
[Image ID: A close up of an ultrasound photo being held in a person’s hand. The ultrasound image is obscured by a pop-up window which reads “UP-D23M0 Warning: No ink ribbon. Please replenish ink ribbon. To continue printing, click retry. Window will automatically retry after 5 seconds.” There are two buttons on the pop-up, which say “Retry” and “Cancel”. End ID]
Things will be slow for a minute. I think I’m getting sick. I have felt like I’m running a fever all weekend and I have a migraine that will not break. I’ve been living the dayquil life just to make it through work and survive my days.
So everything will be slow or non-existent right now I can’t really think. As usual thank you for being patient with me.
im so sick of tiktok nurses and doctors trying to mock their patients for coming in and saying their pain is at a ten but not performing the pain for them
every time ive been in the hospital near death i was simply too exhausted to perform pain for these people. it was a ten on the pain scale but they thought i was faking it for whatever reason until they got my lab tests back and realized i would need to be checked in for quite a while
like maybe you, able bodied young doctor/nurse who has never experienced chronic pain and disability cannot fathom me rolling up near death and a flat expression unable to scream and holler about my agonies but I assure you some of us are just too fucking tired to scream about something we generally live with every single day
on god wanna punch the smug off their faces.
where do these people who have never experienced the pains theyre trying to judge others rankings get off mocking how chronically ill people express themselves?
one video in particular drives me up the wall, as it is some young nurse pretending to do patient intake in the ER and he is both the patient and nurse so he asks himself
what would you rank your head pain?
and he the patient flatly without emotion is like “ten”
so skeptically he as the nurse is like “so ten is the worst pain youve ever felt, like if someone with a chainsaw cut off your arm right now how would you rank your pain knowing that”
and he as the patient flippantly is like “9.5”
and the whole ~joke~ is “yeah youre lying”
but this situation really happened to my brother, he has a brain tumor and brain swelling to where he was dying, but was in too much pain to express it in a way an intake nurse would recognize as legitimate pain, so ofc they blew him off and he did get way too close to death because of that.
not all of us express extreme pains the same.
also need i fucking remind anyone, head pain and head injuries specifically can alter how you express your emotions and moods
theres a case of a man being literally shot in the head and he said he was in a lot of pain but everyone ignored that because he kept forgetting to act out the pain.
I have Cerebral Palsy. I walk and stand in eays that are not natural for our bones and after 28 years, that shit hurts. All the time. Its hurt my entire life, so I have a God damn HIGH pain tolerance.
Add onto that that my parents actively told me not to perform my pain. I was told that expressing or showing that I was hurting was selfish, annoying and needy. What’s the end result of that?
I get to an 8 on the pain scale and the only ways I perform that high of a pain are:
Deep breathing
Closing my eyes against it
Pinching my nose
Maybe rubbing the bones that hurt if I can reach it
I spent the last 5 or 6 years with my daily average being a 6 and I would hit an 8 at least 3 times a week.
Constantly being in that amount of pain means that you earn to mask it very well. And yeah, when I’m in terrible pain, seeing double, about to puke, my voice is flat as fuck. I turn really pale but I keep my mouth shut.
I’ve had doctors not believe my pain levels were that high regularly and all it did was make me reluctant to reach out for help managing my pain. They also refuse to believe my pain is that bad and yet I’m not taking opioid-based pain medication. I dont because I’m an addict. Same reason I dont keep a giant bottle of vodka in my house, I wont, but I also CANT. I promise if I did I’d become a raging alcoholic, just like one of my grandmothers.
My point, though, is that people are sometimes taught that they aren’t even allowed to perform pain or discomfort and fuck those doctors and nurses who mock their patients or dont believe them.
I literally had my back broken in four places as a kid and had to wait for my dad to essentially force the supervisors where I was working to take me to the hospital, because all I could do was sit and cry silently and they insisted I’d be screaming my head off if it was “that bad.”
My older brother has Downs Syndrome. He’s really good at masking his pain. Like, when he was 7 he had tonsillitis and my parents didn’t know until he passed out, because he didn’t tell them he wasn’t feeling well. We have to watch him to figure out if he’s hurting, and it scares the shit out of me that a doctor or nurse might not believe that he’s in pain because he doesn’t show it.
Would like to again point out my experience from being a firefighter/emt who has had to do triage at multi-car pile ups:
Dead people don’t scream.
The more hurt someone is, the quieter they are. People who are screaming are breathing. People running around and shouting for help have brain and motor function. It’s the person quietly sitting still on the corner who is going into shock from internal bleeding.
Also some people are just built different. I’ve had a person with a broken leg offer to limp themself to the ambulance. I had a woman complain of foot pain, apologized for calling 911 over something trivial, and when we put her on the 4 lead heart monitor she was clearly having a minor heart attack. The heart attack was presenting weird symptoms, which is not unusual for woman as they have higher pain tolerances than men. If we had assumed she was just being dramatic and skipped the ECG part of the assessment protocol she could have fucking died.
This is why when you go to the hospital every medical person who sees you keeps asking the same questions. We don’t know if the last asshat who did an assessment missed something important.
also, like, if I performed my pain according to expectations, I’d probably be shouting all day and crying all night
instead of doing literally anything useful, entertaining, or even distracting
I feel like this would start annoying my housemates fast and me faster
so like, how about I save expressions of intense pain for when it’s acute pain, something that needs immediate attention, not merely the chronic nonsense
Performing being in pain takes energy; pain itself also takes energy. At a certain point, the energy you would need to perform how much pain you’re in is deemed less important by the body than the energy needed to deal with the pain itself and/or the cause(s) of pain—or, depending on your circumstances, the basic acts of living. Medical and emergency professionals need to remember this.
I dissociate so bad when I have pain flare ups. I avoid going to the ER unless I really have to because of medical trauma, so if I go to the ER I’ve probably been in 10/10 pain for hours and feel like I’m dying. By the time I get to the ER, I look bored. The truth is I’m in so much pain that my brain can’t take it and I can’t focus on anything around me, but I don’t look like I’m in pain so they don’t care. They make me wait in the waiting room for a few hours, talk to me and send me home. The last time I thought I’d finally convinced someone to prescribe me pain meds but because of my dissociative state I didn’t realise until I went to the pharmacy that I’d been prescribed paracetamol.
It’s so frustrating because I’m not able to advocate for myself in that state because the pain is so bad, and they just assume that I’m lying because it doesn’t *look* bad. I gave up trying the ER after a few times and honestly I still haven’t been able to find a doctor who will help me get pain management or anything.
This is why we turn to drugs btw, and yes, I am in the process of finding a dealer so that I can turn to drugs too. I wish it wasn’t so hard to find a good doctor, I’m not sure if I ever will.
I have worked in women’s health for the past 6 months as a nursing student in the labor and delivery and postpartum unit of my hospital. Any overturn or change to RvsW is a devastation to women’s health.
Abortion will continue but will be more dangerous
This affects women of lower socioeconomic status far more as women of privilege will receive special private care or travel for abortions
This will increase the maternal mother mortality rate AND the gap between woc, especially black women, and white women maternal mortality rates.
This gives r@pists increased rights and power over victims because many states allow paternal rights to them and they can threaten to report her if she gets an abortion.
Pregnancy is a risk and having cared for 2 women who lost their uteruses and one almost losing their life and went to the ICU for weeks, adoption is not a valid alternative. Every pregnancy increases risks for multiple conditions and complication so her subsequent pregnancies are more dangerous.
Many laws in red states ALSO attack and strip protection and welfare for pregnant women and children. Food stamps haven’t increased since 2009 meaning people are getting even less money due to inflation. The income level requires to receive healthcare for children has remained the same as well meaning less children qualify for it. Many times they’ve tried to disband free school lunch, public education programs, and public libraries. Children literally aren’t being cared for in these states. They also limit insurance coverage and affordability of birth control and plan B. They ban comprehensive sexual education.
The foster care system is full and adoption of a child placed there is unlikely. Abuse and trauma is common in the system unfortunately. They are regularly treated as subhuman and thrown out when they turn 18 with no support.
Late term abortion is and has always been a medical indication only. These are tragedies where wanted infants are very unlikely to survive or the mother’s life is at risk. Many anti abortion laws tried to ban the safer practices for late term abortion and they depend on people to be horrified by the idea of healthy late term abortion. That’s also why they attack and limit chemical abortion. They want death as a punishment.
Also the propaganda they put out about how abortions are done and abortion clinics selling parts or targeting certain ethnicities are lies. There are even states who require ‘abortion education’ for people getting abortions and they are often full of exaggerations and falsehoods.
So after a second opinion with another surgeon who this time actually seems to care about my concerns… I guess I’m still having surgery.
I didn’t update about first consult cuz it went badly and I didn’t want to bother people with my crap, and I was also was still hoping there was a way to reverse it without surgery. Hoping that updating with this one might prevent me from trying to walk back on my decision later.
My brain won’t shut up and as per usual I’m hiding everything underneath a cut because I feel like my feelings are a bother to people. And I get it. There’s going to be at least one of you who tries to tell me. “Your feelings aren’t a bother Kira!” Iknow that logically, but it does not stop my brain and my heart from feelingthat way.
So now here I am ready to explain my existence to you because my brain won’t let me write and it won’t let me draw either and today I feel like a failure of a human being because I can’t handle stress and worse I can’t even cry to cope. So here we are.
So all that personal shit I don’t talk about.
I almost lost my migraine prescription this week.
So context for those unaware: I have a lot of medical issues. I take a monthly preventive shot to contend to my migraines and I have for well over a couple years now. It doesn’t make them go away completely but it does make them less and I haven’t had to go to the ER recently because of them so I mean that’s a plus.
The downside to this is, while it helps control my migraines pretty well, if I fall off it, as I did a couple times last year because of pharmacy screw ups - I end up out of work for however long it takes to get back to me and in urgent care because I get migraines so bad that I get so dizzy I’m unable to stand. So I mean fuck driving at that point right?
So I almost lost it because I got a text message telling me that my prescription had been changed / canceled and I freaked out and called the hospital like it told me to and they told me they didn’t know what I was talking about and didn’t have a record, etc. I basically had to hold my breath for the lady who fills my script to call this week, thank god she did. That was a mini-heart attack.
As for work, I’m on burn out. My Lead worker / direct Boss told me in feb. that he was getting ready to retire Spring 2023 and he needed to make sure he was getting everything around so I could take over. Todayhe says “I dunno when I’ll retire, haven’t decided yet maybe if Chris (his boss my boss-boss) pisses me off. Rumor some how got around that he was planning on retiring and because it got back to him he pulled back all plans out of spite. I have no idea when he’s going to retire now.
For those of you who have listened to my work rants (for many years now) know how devastatingof a blow this is for me. There was a planand he reneged on me. So basically long story short when it comes to work -> I’m still stuck doing almost all the manager work but not getting paid for it. And Chris - my big boss - knowsit’s going on and does nothing about it. I’m burnt out. My boss, Terry, literally looked at me and was like “it’s chill day, just do whatever.” because he didn’t feel like working and knows I will keep busy all day on my own.
What the fuck.
So I’ve been fighting the depression side of my bipolar for a little more than a month and half now:
Look I am over 1400 entries solid into this app. It is accurate to the day. I haven’t missed a day since 2018. Things have not been good.I keep trying to claw my way out of it. I have using every tool I have in my tool box but nothing is helping. My SOS is busted. Nothing works.
the kick in the ass is this is from beforemy idiot physiatrist started taking my anti-convulsant away:
But it’s not “doing anything” he says. I have taken anti-seizure medication for four years to help mood control and this fucker who barely talks or sees me since Aug 2021 decides that all the doctors before him and in my 13 years of being diagnosed with this suddenly decides I don’t “experience mania” and “Are you sure it’s depression? I haven’t really seen you sad.” SO he decides to look at one of my two mood stabilizers (the other is an anti-psychotic) and just go “yeah it’s not working let’s get rid of it.” but knows nothingabout what I'm going through or dealing with - you know things that effect my mood - and just starts trying to take me down on it. He already triedto rip me off the other one that controls my mania and proceeded to throw me into a two week manic episode as a result.
“I think you were having a manic episode.” I wanted to scream.
ANYWAY.
So that’s all going on. Away from the medical and work bullshit.
Here’s the thing I don’t think I’ve ever been clear about, so me being me - who instantly feels like a disgrace of a human being and the scum of the earth when I think I’m not being clear and I think I’ve been misunderstood again ->
If I’ve never said this to you before I’m autistic. There is no such thing as High Functioning / Low Functioning so don’t ask me that or even say it to me. I’ll scream.
So to get that ableist bullshit out of the way ->
High Functioning + Impairment = I’m going to deny you care because I don’t see your disability as valid enough to give you consideration or accommodation. Low Functioning + Impairment = I’m going to deny you validity because I see your disability as so aggrieviously detrimental to methat I’m not only going to refuse to help you with it but I won’t acknowledge you as a fully functional human either.
Just don’t fucking say it to me.
So with that out of the way, I need you to know,sometimes I go nonverbal. Sometimes it’s partial. Sometimes It’s completely. Sometimes it’s text. Sometimes it’s verbal. Sometimes it’s both.
Sometimes I can only speak / type in few words and that’s it
Sometimes all you’re getting out of me is GIFs and Emojis.
I need you to bear with me for this. I need you to bear with me. Sometimes I simply cannottalk and I also need you all to know and realizefor me that talkingandwriting a post / story isnot mutually the same. When I am IC that is my muse writing, not me. I am simply conveying a story through a muse, I am not processing real world shit.
Guys, if you’re new around here or I haven’t said this to you before. I writetocope. It’s not the same.
And for the new people, the rest of my medical issues include: C-PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar 2 rapid cycling, insomnia, chronic migraines
I take a lot of meds, and there is a small patch work system of people holding me together.
I am also a survivor of: Abuse, isolation (the act of being; not self imposed) , sexual assault, martial rape, gaslighting, and weaponized silence.
Do I owe you my life story? No. Do I feel like it helps me know someone as a person if I know a little of what they have going on? Absolutely. Doexpectpeople to tell me what they got going on? Nope. Absolutely not.
But I have been misunderstood and dismissed and passed over and talked over and ignored etc so many times I have become an information dumper and I do this because my brain is beggingto be seen clearly for once and to just have someone accept me even if they don’t get it.
Guys I have been in shut down all week day and I’m fighting so desperately to get out of his hole but here we are. With the ground breaking out from under us again. This isn’t a pity post, to clarify.
Nothing lights my brain on fire faster than pity. I will tell you right now my brain little instantly light to “I don’t want your fucking pity” just so you know it’s a trigger. This also isn’t a “tell me how strong I am” post because every time I’m told I’m strong my brain shuts down and stops working because the minute I hear the word ‘strong’ in relation to me my brain falls into that’s all you’re allowed to be mode and I shut down every emotional function and process I had currently active.
Guys I can’t grin and bear it anymore.
Can I get off this ride? This roller coaster is 0/10. Do not recommend. I’d like to stop now.
After we first got a handle on what was happening, I’d break the news to friends and family by saying “First. She’s going to be okay.” It’s one of the good things about how this played out. The doctors convinced us it was going to be okay, and I believed it all the way through.
You think of a lot of different things when you hear birth defect. Some scary. Some mild. Ultimately ours fell somewhere in between. Surgery was needed, but it was a safe and established procedure. The biggest risk was blood loss, so they’d have blood on hand.
We became people whose lives were determined by medical terminology for a few months. It hung over everything else. Sagittal craniosynostosis. Premature fusion of a cranial suture. Once we knew what to look for it was obvious. We could see that her head wasn’t growing right. The proportions were wrong. Surgery was the only option.
Surgery was supposed to be the hard part. We didn’t anticipate the Coronavirus. It added a new layer of stress to everything. We couldn’t get sick, because then they’d have to postpone and we didn’t want it postponed. We wanted it done. There was a date and we were mentally prepared for it. The surgery needed to happen.
She was tested the day before her surgery. I drove up to the area behind the hospital. I never got out of the car. I signed the paperwork while they swabbed her cheek. We would be called with the results that night.
They never called, and we didn’t go to sleep until after midnight despite needing to be at the hospital at 5:30 am.
It was just me that took her, that stayed the whole way through. Restrictions and changes to work schedules meant that made the most sense. Didn’t matter how much I wanted him at my side, how much he wanted to be there. It made sense for him to stay home.
I didn’t expect that the hardest moment would be afterwards. Walking into the PICU to see her with IV and monitors. She looked so small in the bed. There was something that felt so wrong about it.
When she came into my arms, things started back on the path to being right.
Another aspect that made things better than they could have been- she won’t remember any of this. She’s not even a year old. She’ll have a scar and a note in her medical history. She’ll have regular follow ups. But it won’t have any emotional impact, and that’s a blessing.
It’s a weight that was hanging over our heads for months, and now it’s gone. The worst is over.
Second T shot hurt like a BITCH which is weird cause the first one was fine? But I got to draw it up and show I know the whole technique up until being hesitant around the actual stabbing myself in the thigh, which I reckon is a reasonable hurdle to face. Also thanks to the high deid yin’s big party in June we’re moving my appointments to be on my day off work which means I no longer need to worry about hurrying to get it done so I don’t piss off my boss by continually requesting Friday morning shift cover. Means I lose the joy of trans gender it’s Friday but we cannae have everything
I don’t want to keep writing updates about my father’s health because it has not improved at all, but we still need all the help we can get.
I have taken two weeks off work a month ago to seek financial assistance from our local government and agencies but we have not gotten any response from them. His prescribed medicine amounts to $29 a day, and I only make about $16 (820 pesos minimum rate) daily, and unfortunately, that is not enough to cover all of our expenses.
At least 6 people from our department alone tested positive for Omicron since Monday. Thus, our operation temporarily ceased until our executives figured out how to administer us. And I don’t know what else to do nor where to seek help for us to survive these coming days/weeks.
We cannot bring Papa home just yet because we cannot pay the entirety of the hospital bill. Our family has written multiple promissory notes for the hospital to consider but was rejected each time. We no longer have anything to sell nor pawn (except our house) to make ends meet.
I am aware that it is nobody’s business but ours, but it would be greatly appreciated if anyone could spare us any amount until we get back on our feet.
(As much as I hate seeing him this vulnerable, this is what he looks like right now [a short clip taken a month ago when he was transferred to the common ward]. I hope this exhibits how desperate our situation is.)
You might’ve remembered reblogging the campaign post I created for my father who was suffering from Colorectal Cancer last year or not, but I am taking my chances here. I’m sorry.
I had a patient this week who was a transgender man who was beginning the process of starting testosterone therapy, and I got to have a conversation with him about pap smears and cervical cancer screening, so I thought that as your friendly Tumblrhood doctor, I’d share some of that information, as well as general screening guidelines for all individuals who own a cervix.
1)Trans men who still have a cervix and have not undergone hysterectomy should continue to get pap smears. Cervical cancer is still possible due to HPV infection, and according to current research the guidelines for men with cervixes is the same as those for cisgender women with cervixes. This could always change in the future as more research is done, because that’s how science works, but for now these are the recommendations.
2) Transgender medical care is still not broadly taught at most medical schools and residency training locations, so be aware that not all providers will be versed in how to take care of you specifically. Hopefully they’re not douches and will respect you as their patient and do their proper research if they haven’t encountered care for LGBTQ+ individuals before, but… I’ve run into a lot of douches in my training, so please take care of yourselves. If you have transgender friends or know of LGBTQ organizations near you, reach out to them to see if they have recommendations for particular providers that are LGBTQ friendly.
3) Transgender men on testosterone tend to have a higher rate of unsatisfactory pap test results due to cervical changes and atrophy caused by testosterone, and are recommended to have repeat paps for a better sample. Don’t be discouraged - a lot of time this can be mitigated by the provider making a notation for the lab that the patient is on testosterone and whether or not they are amenhorreic (not having menstrual cycles). Hopefully your physician will know to do that, but considering point 2 above, it never hurts to pointedly ask them if they’ll tell the lab that.
4) Insurance bounce-back/non-coverage can sometimes be an issue if your documentation has you labeled as male. If this happens, simply ask your physician to help you appeal this by either reaching out to your insurance to clarify the issue, or having them write a letter addressing it for your appeal. It should be covered once that’s cleared up.
Now, for general pap screening guidelines (keep in mind, these are for the USA, and other countries may/will have different guidelines):
Start at 21 years old (unless you have HIV, in which case speak with your doctor about when you should start, because it may likely need to be earlier).
Ages 21 to 29, pap smears for routine screening are every 3 years if your results return normal.
Ages 30 to 65, pap smears can be every 5 years if they return normal IF it is done as cytology with co-testing for HPV. If HPV is not tested, then it’s still every 3 years.
If you have never had vaginal (penetrative or oral) intercourse, you may not need a pap. There is still a very low risk of cancer development based on things such as smoking, family history, etc., but overall the vast majority of cervical cancer is caused by HPV, which is sexually transmitted. If you’ve never been exposed to HPV through sex, your risk of developing cancer is very low.
You still need pap smears even if you’ve had the HPV vaccine.
If you’ve had a hysterectomy in which your cervix was also removed (which is the standard way of doing it these days, but wasn’t always in the past), and your hysterectomy was not due to cancer (and you’ve never had a significantly abnormal pap), you do not need to continue getting pap smears.
I could say more, but I’ll stop here. Overall, please discuss pap smears with your doctor if you currently have (or have had) a cervix to see if you need to have them and when.
Also, if you have had experiences with pap smears as a transgender individual, please add on with any advice you’ve found! I was never formally taught transgender care in my medical training and had to learn it through my own research, so I’m always curious to see how other providers who may be more experienced than me with it practice.
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