I was thinking this too!, I suspect it must be a factor Very sorry our Long COVID comrades have found themselves in this boat, but also very grateful to them for helping put MCAS on the map more
Multipurpose nerd. Engineering manager currently waylaid by a complex illness. On a mission to watch every Katharine Hepburn movie. 🏳️🌈 they (🇬🇧), elle (🇫🇷) Currently in Portland OR. Always a Mainer. ✍️ Blog at my username! 📊 @healthlog.kateviolette.com
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I was thinking this too!, I suspect it must be a factor Very sorry our Long COVID comrades have found themselves in this boat, but also very grateful to them for helping put MCAS on the map more
man anaphylaxis sounds scary as shit, I'm so sorry you have to deal with that I have "anaphylactoid" attacks which is basically everything except my throat physically closing up (I even get short of breath, despite my O2 usually hanging in there ok)
My daughter was one of dozens of students arrested at Columbia and then suspended from her PhD program for two years in response--a clear project of the Palestine exception. Jessie runs it all down here. Paywall but you can see a preview at least. zeteo.com/p/columbia-u...
nooooo :(
whooaa, this is very interesting (and also sounds seriously frightening, like so much of the shit we deal with, I'm sorry :( ❤️)
I'm still reeling (in a positive way) from it today! I've never had an ER visit like that!!
Ah sweet, yes will do!!
but yeah, ion channel effects of benadryl is also why I'll avoid taking it unless I really, really have to
famotidine can have potassium lowering effects? I didn't know this! (or you mean you read that in what I wrote?, I should clarify: my MCAS attacks often lead my body to dump potassium quickly; I was talking about that as an independent thing)
Yea! And if your MCAS attacks tend to be gut-centric like mine, it can be particularly helpful (I didn't even need the benadryl afterwards)
I'm going to write patient relations to let them know how amazing this visit was and mention the doctor by name, I'm blown away
ok time for sleep bc my mast cells took my body for one hell of a joy ride this evening and I am now pretty wiped out 🫡 always nice to hang with pocket friends while I'm at the ER, nighty night friendos
I am so glad for all of this but also now that I've tasted what it's like to get appropriate emergency care for my illness I'm like damn why can't it be like that all the time? lol (I mean I do think/hope it will continue improving like this as more doctors learn about MCAS, but still. I am wowed!)
(I told her I'd take some potassium once I got home because mine tastes better than the ER stuff 😆) In under three hours I: - woke up to a severe MCAS attack - got to the ER and got a room right away - got a dr who knows MCAS - got exactly what I needed to nip the attack - am now already home 😮
I almost couldn't believe it bc usually ER doctors are like 3.5 (or even 3.3) is still normal range, suck it up snowflake but given that this doctor knows MCAS, and saw me as a reliable narrator of my illness, I guess she even took that seriously I am just floored
the iv famotidine worked like a charm my potassium indeed dropped but only to 3.5 (my "peacetime" level is about 4.1 these days since we have me on daily rx potassium to boost it for this very reason), but the dr even offered me potassium anyway before leaving if I wanted--
(also I got funny nurses, and the paramedic placed a great iv on the way over 10/10 wish all my ER visits could be like this 😅)
like I think this is literally the first time in almost five years of ER visits l've had that privilege I would much rather have not woken up to a blistering MCAS attack but given that I did, this is a fascinating (complimentary) ER visit to come of it
it's been fascinating to see the slow but sure increase in knowledge of MCAS among medical providers over the past few years it's such a relief to feel like they know what to do with you at the ER instead of feeling like you have to play defense while shaking and halfway to passed out
omg they even knew to push it slowly over a couple mins I almost can't believe it a few years ago this would've been unthinkable (I had to wave my letter from my doctor which included "please push iv meds slowly!" to get them to do so, and even then...) officially best ER visit I've ever had
TFW the ER doctor knows what MCAS is and jumps right to giving you a liter of fluid plus benadryl and famotidine 😭🥹😭 (I declined the benadryl to start since iv famotidine is usually super effective for me, since my MCAS is so gut-centric, but relieved to know she's game to add it)
it really says something about the world millennials have inherited that so few of us will ever be homeowners without a lottery win (millennials with rich parents who paid their down payments are expressly not invited to this thread)
I mean how else are you gonna spend a cool half bil, there only so many yachts a person can buy anyway oh, I'd like to buy a reasonable, non-lavish house other than that, though, my first answer stands
I'd buy off a bunch of Congresspeople to get them to stop sending arms to Israel
Mutual aid requires "a deep belief in + commitment to nonseparation; it operates on the premise that my well-being is inseparable from yours + that, in caring for yours, I care for myself [+ us]... We are not mutual because of the provision of aid; we aid each other because we are already mutual."
and I haven't even cracked into the anemia book yet but I'd like to soon
The vagus nerve and Perrin books have self exercises you can do at home The lyme book is obviously well-loved lol, I highly recommend that one I haven't gotten too far into either Myhill edition; I've mostly been picking and choosing chapters as I need them, they've been decent so far though
(forgive me if anyone else is interested--I don't have the energy to alt text all these right now!)
oh! well let me get you a few covers then :) hold plz ☎️
that's mostly my sick person books pile 😅 got a vagus nerve book, a book on lyme, on ME/CFS, stuff like that then the classic Oh She Glows cookbook on top!
omg terrible typo, obviously should be "Dec-Feb = winter" ugh four people have now liked the post I'm not gonna go back and fix it, forgive me
omg terrible typo, obviously should be "Dec-Feb = winter" ugh four people have now liked the post I'm not gonna go back and fix it, forgive me
I had to change the water a few times!, I had let a few of these dry out (oops) so they needed extra soaking. Today they all seemed cleaned out enough so everything is just drying now. I hope to ink many of these tomorrow! I'll also try to share a bit of my journal set-up in case anyone's curious
Working on my seasonal pen cleaning and quarterly journal set up (I used to do calendar quarters but those chop up the seasons a little funny, so now I'm shifting things by a month and doing Sep-Nov = autumn, Dec-Feb = spring, and so on) First stage: a deep clean of all my fountain pen bbs
bingo 🎯 exactly this
yup!
well then do I have a pitch for them lol
Really good post. I can't speak for anyone other than myself in that I can relate, big time. sjdonado.com/posts/2025-0...
"They’re strategic passes to a teammate you’re rooting for" whew I really love this framing 👀
lmao too real 😭
We need a The Onion for covid-cautious people "Local Persons Who Previously Happily Relegated Others To The Wayside Now Upset To Find They, Too, Are In The Wayside"
they did a great job! love this lol
Oui, bien sûr! :)
lolsob 😂😭
- when I first moved out to Oregon and in my first dentist visit the dentist was like "you're not from here are you?" and I was like...uh...how did you-- and she was like "you grew up drinking fluoride, you have hard enamel" l o l (this is how I learned about ye olde Fluoride Debates in Portland)
other very fun times: - that time I gave my SSN to an insurance agent and he was like, "ah! Maine! you're a long way from home!" and I was like WHAT, HOW (this was in Illinois) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_...)
ha, no, there was no outside indication lol :)
(at this point I was fascinated and asked about other sport-induced body types she could recognize, and then, idly wondering just on the off-chance I end up a parent someday, asking her what sports she *wouldn't* recommend for children. her reply: wrestling and cheer, really can beat up the spine)
she replied "basketball does a lot to strengthen people's back muscles, you have very well-developed back muscles, in a recognizable pattern" and I was like "but I've been sedentary due to illness for several years now" and she said that sort of muscle development isn't really something people lose
When I was out in MI earlier this year and seeing a different atlas orthogonal chiropractor, after a couple visits she said "you played basketball when you were younger, didn't you?" and before I could even reply she added "and you started playing rather young" I was like 😵💫 "how did you know???"
I probably posted about this at the time, but I was thinking of it again this morning: I love meeting people who are so good at what they do that they can deduce things that seem like magic to the outside observer
"OMG THE CDC HAS BECOME POLITICIZED" bro where have you been for the past 5 (er, 40) years? none of this is new! this is the predictable outcome of the right being actual fascists and what passes for a center-left party in our country being fascism lite
like I don't know how to respond to "oh my god, the government wants us all to get covid, what are we going to do" I'd welcome people to the resistance but you know they're gonna go right back to abandoning disabled and higher risk people as soon as a Dem is in office again so 🤷
It's very surreal to watch people freak out about the CDC suddenly not protecting them like yes You were already not being protected by the CDC, you're just now noticing it because now the propaganda is red and not blue anymore
I love these guys 😭😍😭
("anaphylactoid" = basically everything except your throat physically closing up) (My first dose probably also was responsible for an ER visit but that was delayed by a couple days so I didn't make the connection at the time. But the second time, it started on the ride home from my vaccine appt.)
("Kate wHy CaN't YoU gEt BoOsTeD?" Well, my second original dose in 2021 sent me into an anaphylactoid crisis so bad the ER triage nurse asked if I'd ever had a stroke, thanks to a then-undiagnosed autoimmune condition and neither my doctors nor I am interested in repeating that misadventure.)
“Back to normal” has been an act of panic and trauma and selfishness, I get it. Pretending to be disabled or chronically ill to get something for yourself while actively endangering those who are is flat out despicable, there is no moral argument, it is *horrifically* unethical.
Yup. We'd really appreciate it. I can't get boosted, for very serious medical reasons. Your vaccination mostly only protects you, and even then not as much as you've been led to think by the government. (Sorry to share the bad news.) You wearing a mask actually also protects me and others like me.
no@fuckyou.com is a common one for me
same I went to a high school reunion in my dreams last night! it was a nice time
Ohh, I just learned that the continuous glucose monitor that Oura's been hawking isn't subscription-based, you can just buy a pair (=30 day coverage) at a time This is absolutely perfect for my infrequent use case, man it is so refreshing to not be forced into subscriptions you don't need
I think you'll be able to pick it up on the fly once you've gotten the more pressing stuff done! :) And good luck with the qual!!
Ok so what are you going to do about it? Asking as a constituent.
I was always looking stuff up even when I was using it regularly.
I agree, (as someone who used to use it a lot), the depths of LaTeX go pretty deep but just getting enough working knowledge to be able to write like a class paper in it is really just a weekend or two project!
😆
Aw damn, Seattle doesn't have something like Portland's Rent-A-Butch?
I could use a head pat about how isolated I am but that instead of giving up I choose to try to keep going anyway 🙏 and I even try saying nice things about myself even though *gestures around my perma-empty apartment* I have no external evidence for such
the least fun game ever 😮💨 (I'm playing the "why do I feel a bit short of breath?" game this afternoon/evening which is also not a very fun game un-fun game solidarity 🫂)
nice 'do, man! 😎
jfc doctors offices are the actual worst with this stuff a simple request! somehow cannot be reliably done! how! why! what is world!
oh damn -- thanks for the clarification; I was having trouble finding much helpful in a search
link?
it has not been for lack of trying, internet person
-- the number does not seem to be as high as many other people (not yay) it has been nice to be someone for whom it's easy to make lots of medium-circle kinda friends at least I guess, I am grateful for that but I would like more real inner-circle type relationships. 😮💨
my social life for much of my life has been a repeat lesson that I am considered a medium importance relationship to a lot of people (yay), and a high importance relationship to ... well, I have one friend in another city that would slap my wrist for saying zero so it's at least not zero but--
I would just like to be on someone's "I like to see this person on holidays sometimes" list instead of every holiday day and weekend just meaning I'm gonna be by myself while everyone else hangs out with their *real* friends/family/cuties just very boring, I'm really starting to dislike holidays
huh?
having a sad day :(
omg that's awful 😟
like I think Jesus would care about me authentically working to find answers than to rush the job and I would be honest about my spiritual work (all of this is accepting her hypothetical for sake of argument, not something I believe is going to happen)
I made me feel sad for her because there seemed to be such fear behind it for her. I remember her asking me, semi-panicked "what would you do if Jesus came back tomorrow and you weren't ready?!" and I was like I'd tell him I was working on it and I hoped that was good enough--
(I really enjoyed really about your experience! :) thank you for sharing it!)
extremely A+ verse ❤️
in the sibling rivalry, nay the massive six-state "Get Along" shirt that is New England, NH is always the kid adamantly refusing to put pants on so we can all go to the ice cream shop or whatever it doesn't have to be like this, NH 😭 (TBF a lot of NH folks would also love for it to be different ❤️)
goddammit New Hampshire
my face rn 😟
I kept remarking the whole way through the game how good the music is, and how much of it there was! The composer wrote a ton of music. I really should give the soundtrack itself a closer listen sometime.
I just finished the main story (still playing side quest levels though) a few weeks ago--agreed re: absolute masterpiece!
c'est si, si bon 🥹😭
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | Lumière youtu.be/LpNVf8sczqU?...
in high school (in the 90s) I remember a Pentecostal classmate telling me I was going to hell because I was Catholic like she was genuinely worried and wanted to "save me" I wish she'd known how badly *I* felt for *her* :/
It's ok if you hadn't come across this info yet, there's certainly been a lot of propaganda pushing hand-washing as the main way to fight covid. But please know it is almost useless to prevent covid spread. What actually works: HEPA filtration of the air, and wearing N95 or similar quality masks.
Hey, I say this kindly and sincerely--do you realize the covid virus is airborne and is primarily transmitted via breathing the air? Fomite or direct contact transmission can of course occur with covid but is vastly dwarfed by the rate of transmission that occurs through the air.
Want to get [FREE] Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes in your child's school this year? We've created an email you can share with the school principal to make the process easier. You can access it through the link on STEP 2 of our grant process. corsirosenthalfoundation.org/apply/ Please share!
It’s baffling to me that so much of the U.S. (and the world) has decided that letting their kids get sick at school all the time (and spread illness to their parents and everyone else) is preferable to just … adequately cleaning indoor air
Supporters are rallying for the #windmillmushroomboycott! Join us this #LaborDay weekend and don’t buy Windmill mushrooms!
📌