commotiocordis

Is it weird to cry about not being in pain and feeling kind of good?

TL;DR — omg Valium + Gabapentin is all I want for Christmas.

I took a Valium for my dentist appointment, and some of my dad’s Gabapentin afterwards because I have some kind of nerve issue on one side of my mouth that becomes excruciating when people poke around in there idk.

And this evening was probably the best I have felt in recent memory, easily.

I don’t realize how just generally on edge I am until I’m not anymore. Feeling relaxed is such a foreign concept to me that it was almost weird. And my mouth stopped hurting, and the fibro pain that’s been killing my back lately went away, and I was able to straighten my legs after sitting crosslegged without literally rolling around and biting my fist to keep from crying, and EVERYTHING WAS BRILLIANT.

I wanted to play music and write stories and go run around with my dogs outside and frolic in the sun and I’m pretty sure this is how life is supposed to feel for normal people.

It’s long been a wonder of mine how much my depression contributes to my chronic pain and how much my chronic pain contributes to my depression, and this certainly seems to lend support to my theory that fixing the pain would make me a much happier person.

But then I started thinking about how it’s all going to wear off in a little while and then all the crying because askdjfalskdjf I want to feel like this forever. WHY CAN’T I JUST BE A NORMAL PERSON WITH NORMAL PERSON FEELS AND NORMAL PERSON LACK-OF-PAIN?

I think the only reason I didn't cry at Harry Potter was because of my anti-depressants. And while it's nice that I'm not, you know, seriously contemplating suicide because now I have nothing else to live for, I sort of feel . . . cheated. I've been upset/anxious/wary/sad/excited about this for months now, and then nothing. It was sad, but the only part where tears even threatened to spill down was the moment the credits began to roll. During the actual film, my favorite characters were dying left and right and I was just like "oh."

Basically, I cried much much much harder at the book. I'm not sure whether that's a flaw in the translation of the book to the screen or a flaw in my personal emotional response, but judging by how much everybody else seemed to find the movie appropriately upsetting, I think it has to be the latter.

Spent several hours on Sunday collecting names and phone numbers and everything of about 10 different psychiatrists sorted by increasing distance from home (since there are only 2 covered by my insurance here in my university's entire city, despite it being the 3rd biggest in the state). Was planning to call as many as it took this morning to hopefully find somebody who could fit me in on Thursday to tack on an anxiety disorder diagnosis and get some horse tranquilizers to maybe get me through the rest of the semester without, you know, having a panic attack so bad (or continuing on this unbreakable series of them) that I kill myself.

But then I realized. If I don't get my lupus/fibro/whatever diagnosis legitimized by a rheumatologist before I get psych diagnoses, it will be impossible for me to find a doctor who will look twice at any organic cause of my issues ever again. Especially because I don't have a very elevated ANA and need to find somebody who will try treating me based on mostly self-reported symptoms (you'd think the malar rash would be sufficient, but since I've figured out my triggers for that, I only have two or three bad ones a year, and what are the chances of making it in to a rheumy on one of those pairs of days?).

So.

Um.

Fuck.

AGH and this is an irregular installment in I-generally-only-write-in-here-when-bad-things-happen.

( TL;DR -- kitten died; I am le sad. )

Fall break = \o/

I get home, and mom's like "hey, got a copy of dad's pet scan this time, want to see it?" I'm like "sweeeet, medical geekage." = \o/

Giant white spot in the middle of one of his lungs that wasn't there 8 months ago = /°\


Also, from the third hand info I'm getting, the guy is trying to tell them that it's totally different cancer. I'm like ya rly? Suuuuuure. Previously generally healthy (minus diabetes, but very well controlled) guy in his 50s with randomly multiple simultaneous cancers? Hahaha, no. I mean, obvs possible, but give me a fucking break. You just don't want it to count as a metastasis because then the surgeon's numbers go down (dude boasts this like high-80% cure rate after just surgery and mid-90% cure rate after surgery and radiation, and dad having had both and it still spreading means both would drop). Pics of the matching tumor genomic sequences or it didn't happen, bitch. Also, stfu "oh, it looks like it was the shadow we saw last time". I looked at the pet scan last time and there was no lung spot, so it obviously hadn't angiogenesised up, and if you thought there was a mass on the CT, why the motherfuck didn't you check?

If there's anything in the entire world that could possibly make me want to become a doctor more than I already do, it's this unending incompetence that I keep seeing with dad's health, all the way back to when he first started going to his GP for sore throats and swollen lymph nodes and stuff and just kept walking away with antibiotics when at the very least, the last time or two he went, you could have seen the tumor in his throat with a fucking tongue depressor.

"A vaccine was used to protect humans from a version of swine flu in the US in 1976. However, it caused serious side effects, including an estimated 500 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome. There were more deaths from the vaccine than the outbreak."
Health Q&A: What is Swine Flu

This? Why I've never gotten a flu shot. I've never seen numbers before, though, I just thought it was a mild possibility and that in my non-immunocompromised situation, sucking it up with the flu for two weeks was better than any chance at something like that. Really puts it into perspective.

Man, thank god it's nearly summer here, though. Schools will start closing for break soon, which will mitigate any danger if we decide to close them in certain places. Personally, I think that if they do start closing things, colleges should be the first to do so (and not just because I'm at one). Most of them will be done in the next few weeks anyway, but you're in even closer contact than with school-aged kids because of the dorms. You might not have as fragile an immune system (though approaching finals time, I'd bet poor nutrition + no sleep puts us all close), but if it spreads, it'd spread fast. Dining halls? They're hardly the most sanitary of places. I have no illusions that people don't pick up two forks and then put one back, things like that. We would all die lickety split.

A totally random thing because I was looking at the grocery ad online: why do they say "Advertised special" in the advertisement? Aren't they all, by definition, if they're in there, advertised specials?

Some more Swine Flu talk.

WHO to stop using term 'swine flu' to protect pigs after Egypt started slaughtering all of theirs yesterday. Seriously, guys, are you really that stupid that you wouldn't, idk, ask somebody first if the pigs were actually dangerous? Rather sad, however, is that it's a pretty blatantly racist move. Who is hurt by their mass slaughter? The farmers, yes, and the Christians. Most of Egypt doesn't eat pork. Do you think that if they did, they would have been so hasty?

But WHO? I think that ship has sailed. Influenza A just doesn't have that porcine ring to it.

They're even trying to make a big deal about some White House staffer who, along with his family, all have it. Seriously, guys, it's just a different type of flu. It's weird that it's spreading all crazy like, but unless there's something else going on with your immune system, it's just going to make you feel like dying. Last theory I heard (possibly in a practitioners' update from the NIH?) was that there was some other virus in that town in Mexico where all the deaths happened that was synergistically making them more susceptible to the flu.

O. M. F. G.

Marburg hemorrhagic fever, imported case, UNITED STATES

LOL at how they retrospectively diagnosed it, though.

Atm, I'm in the first floor of the biomedical sciences building while my gel runs upstairs because I've got a shitload of work and no time to do it. I've been getting maybe 4 hours of sleep each of the last three days, which doesn't make me happy as with my 8 and 9 am classes, I was trying to be in bed by midnight. Yeah, that worked until I got, idk, actual homework.

And now I'm swamped, between the lab and mock trial right now. The former is new and weird. Though this is only my third day working in there, so it's understandable, and I am really getting the hang of things because I know what I'm doing, just not where everything is, LOL; keeping the notebook is the hard bit--I'm not sure how much/what to write out. As there's a large continuum of detailedness in procedure, especially since it's all written out for me already as standards and I only really have to mark down changes I make (different buffers, annealing temperatures for the PCR, etc.) And I'll definitely have enough to actually write it up when I'm done, but I'm not sure how much the supervisor wants in terms of that kiddish bullshit regarding actually enumerating every item you ever even think about touching in the materials section, etc.

MT is. . . interesting. We're just prepping every witness just in case, which is what I'd been advocating forever, but now we have enough people to do it. I'm pretty much pissed at most of the people, though, as they just jumped in on Sunday so they could get to go with us to Columbia for the competition. And worried, as I've never heard any of them do anything mock trial-y. And one of them not even talk, really. I'm worried about him the most, as he's not even in Phi Alpha Delta (the pre-law fraternity that's sponsoring the MT team) and. . . doesn't really strike me as intelligent. I mean, at all. But as a result of this last-minute thing, we don't have an overall case strategy, nobody's working with each other to coordinate examinations (because sometimes you've got to make sure somebody says something earlier so you can get in what you want later), etc. So we're pretty much going to get our asses kicked, which I severely dislike. Because I'm good at this mock trial stuff, but I'm having to spend all my time just trying to get everybody (or even some of everybody) in the same room at the same time. We had both of the other lawyers and one of my two definitely-going-to-be-used witnesses not show up to the meeting on Sunday, so I can only hope that they didn't just quit on me or something. I don't understand why people here think they don't have to make any kind of comittment--it's only since the president of PAD intervened for me and started browbeating people that anybody would show up, since I've got no incentive/disincentive to enforce to ensure attendance. But seriously? Nobody seems to get that you've got to make the meeting times fit, you can't just say "oh, I've got work, can't show"--it's called asking off, seeing as how MT'll be over in a few weeks, it's not like it's going to be forever.

And I've got my microbiology test tomorrow that I'm going to fail since I still can't get the book (they're out at the bookstore; they offered to order me one, but I'll be damned if I'm paying the new price much less also the "having to ship it in" fee that I've heard they tack on)

And a psychology test that I'm going to spend all of 5 minutes looking over stuff for because I'm fairly certain I can take this class's final right now and pull at least a 97% but still adds to the stress

And chemistry lab (and thus in-lab quiz and writeup) tomorrow.

And journal entries due for Hero and Quest reflecting over material I haven't actually read all of. These being that which I was up until 1 and then from 3:30-6ish doing two weeks worth of last night (and it actually did take me that long, because of both the ADD from hell that's decided to be a bitch this semester simply because my doctor moved to Wisconsin so I've got no way of getting my meds for it reupped again), but it turns out that even though we didn't have class at all the third week, we've still got to do one.

And to add insult to injury, I was all excited about lunch today because it was some French theme and one of the counters was going to be fruit and cheese dessert. Which I thought might mean decent fruit (berries and such instead of the standard apple/orange/pear/banana/grapefruit rotating selection they've got of fresh, and nasty mushy sugary frozen/canned other fruits). With no interest in dinner (chicken strips and mashed potatoes/macaroni and cheese in both dining halls, blech--since they're for some reason killer popular, that's all it would have been at all the counters and in both places on the same day, which just seems stupid to me), that was going to be it for me for the day, but no. That dining place has a power outage.

And the chairs that I'm in in the computer lab have the most worthless backs in the history of chairs. Which would be okay if you just didn't use them, like stools; painful but doable. But no. The seat is slanted backwards so as to tip you back towards the back, which then leans so far back that I'd probably fall asleep if I stayed that way for more than a few seconds.


On a less-whiny (okay, still whiny, but different topic) note, House last night. How long after all the hoopla was that last scene supposed to have taken place? They didn't establish any kind of time passage, I think, which is fail. Because really? Not so much with the sexing after all that medical shit goes down. (Plus, erm, not really a fan of the 14.)

WOAH, SCIENCE FAIL. Tuesday's SVU--Fin suggests that the mom "stepped out", and that explains why a mom with type-A blood could give birth to a daughter with type B. And Elliot's all "Doctor Manning said that with her blood type, there's no way she gave birth to Heather." FAIL. Assuming the mom's heterozygous A, which in the US is common (also, point of interest, what my mother is), if the real father was B or AB, there's either a 50% or 25% chance that the daughter comes out type B depending on the dad's genotype.

Sex!Science time.

Multinational study on intravaginal ejaculation latency time--from initial penetration to ejaculation.

Some highlights.

A median IELT of 5.4 minutes. Out of a range from 44 minutes to 0.55. Ouch. Wouldn't you hate to be the one of 500 study participants who got their time highlighted in the write-up for only lasting 33 seconds?

But they had to throw out the Turkish men from part of the rest of the analysis. Why? Their median IELT was only 3.7 minutes. Country-wide ouch on that. If I were you, Turkey, I'd spend less time on tourism campaigns and work to reestablish the reputation of your country's manhood. Meanwhile, *crosses Turkish off of list of possible mate ethnicities*.

The best part of the study, though? The last line of the results section of the abstract. "The median IELT value was not affected by condom use." So if some jackass decides to try to pressure you (or your little sister/friend/whomever, for the chivalrous males out there), you've now got science to throw their bullshit back in their face. If you can't feel it, you're just not doing it right.

Speaking of (and this totally was a coincidence, that I happened to be posting about this study the day this happened), my opinion of one of my suitemates (I think Breanna, as Chelsea was staying in another room last weekend because she had a friend over and I'm fairly positive Kayla's not the type) just changed a great deal this afternoon. As I was taking out the trash and there was a condom wrapper stuck to the bottom of the bag. I say this: I do not judge you for having sex. In fact, I'm all for it, and mundo applause for using protection. I judge you, however, because strawberry? Seriously? Blech.

You know, I saw a Facebook group that really made me think. Still banning all men who have sex with men from donating blood is pretty darn discriminatory. Sure, there's the window of undetectability of the virus, but the window's the same in people who engage in heterosexual content.

Statistics:

MSM (men who have sex with men) account for 45% of all HIV cases as of the end of 2003. [CDC/Kaiser Report]

Blacks made up about 47% of the total HIV-positive population and more than half of new HIV cases. [The Body, from Kaiser]

Sure, there's some overlap there, naturally, but wouldn't it logically follow that perhaps banning all MSM isn't what we should be doing, especially when there's another demographic with an even higher prevelence rate? It's just another confirmation of what I've been saying--discrimination against homosexuals is the last accepted form of it. Can't ban all persons of African descent, we'd descend into race riots and screams of racism, but feel free to ban an entire group--gays can hide their sexuality, unlike skin color, so they're less likely to speak out when being oppressed. I'm not saying switch one for the other or anything like that, as the justification is there--they're banning those who admit to engaging in a specific activity, not those with a skin color they can't control, but statistically it appears to be no longer prudent. I'd like to see some figures as to the amount of blood that the Red Cross is losing out on due to the MSM ban to really crunch the numbers to weigh the exposure chance that they're allowing now with the current ban vs the slightly increased exposure chance + increased donations.