Hey, unpopular opinion, apparently. But people don’t just “have pain for no reason” doctors say this all the time (especially to women and chronically ill people) and the truth is, Thats literally not possible. Even if your pains are psychosomatic (a word I hesitate to even use because of the way its used so often) there is a reason you are having those pains whether its mental illness, abuse, etc. If your doctor consistently tells you that “well some people just have pain for no reason” get a new doctor. That’s a doctor who is not going to give a shit what your actual symptoms or experiences are.
I just wanna add to clarify the psychosomatic thing.
That word DOES NOT MEAN you’re making it up. It doesn’t mean you’re imagining the symptom. What it means is that the symptom ISN’T DIRECTLY CAUSED BY ANY OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD NORMALLY CAUSE IT.
I fought to get a PCOS diagnosis for 2 and a half years. For the ENTIRE time I was fighting, I was dealing with 3 cysts that were not going away by themselves and eventually required surgery to remove. At one point close to the end of the battle, I suddenly went blind. I was visiting my parents and was standing on the veranda looking out over the tree we had planted in memory of my dog and suddenly I got one of the shooting pains that I was quite frankly used to at that point and my vision started to go dark. It was like the sun was setting while being completely hidden behind storm clouds but it was 2pm in the middle of Summer on a clear day. Within about 30 seconds I couldn’t see ANYTHING. I was 27 years old and I was screaming for my mother.
My mum raced me to her doctor (he was a 15 minute drive away as opposed to 45 minutes to the nearest hospital) and he quickly worked out that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and what had happened was totally unrelated to them. Then he said it was psychosomatic and I freaked out, yelling that I was NOT making this up and I definitely wasn’t imagining it. Very quickly he calmed me down and said he believed me and I had misunderstood. He explained that whatever was going on with my abdominal pains (he suggested PCOS which I hadn’t even heard of at that point) had been ignored for so long that my body was starting to do things other than the normal pain response to try to draw my attention to the problem. My sight going was my body basically jumping around in front of me going “HEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME HELLLOOOOOOO??????”
He gave me some prescription strength painkillers and my sight started to come back as soon as they started to kick in. About 45 minutes after it started I could see well enough to walk around without help and within a day and a half I was back to normal. On top of that I finally had a scan booked to figure out what the hell was causing all the pain.
Psychosomatic symptoms are NOT imagined or fabricated or happening for “no reason”. Experiencing them DOES NOT make you a liar. It makes you someone who has been battling with something serious for so long that your own body has started to get impatient with you.
I completely agree. Thank you for sharing this.
I didn’t know this and now that I do I am crying in relief.
Tag: medical
Physics: More pencil tricks
i.e. why when you or someone else gets stabbed or impaled, you should leave the object in the wound until medical help arrives.
Good thing Kreids is alive because I’m gonna fucking kill him.
The Last of the Iron Lungs
Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious disease that can cause paralysis
of legs, arms, and respiratory muscles. “The polio virus is a silver
bullet designed to kill specific parts of the brain,” Richard Bruno, a
clinical psychophysiologist, and director of the International Centre
for Polio Education said. “But parents today have no idea what polio was
like, so it’s hard to convince somebody that lives are at risk if they
don’t vaccinate.”When Lillard was a child, polio was every
parent’s worst nightmare. The worst polio outbreak year in US history
took place in 1952, a year before Lillard was infected. There were about
58,000 reported cases. Out of all the cases, 21,269 were paralyzed and
3,145 died. “They closed theaters, swimming pools, families would keep
their kids away from other kids because of the fear of transmission,”
Bruno said.Children under the age of five are especially susceptible. In the 1940s
and 1950s, hospitals across the country were filled with rows of iron
lungs that kept victims alive. Lillard recalls being in rooms packed
with metal tubes—especially when there were storms and all the men,
women, adults, and children would be moved to the same room so nurses
could manually operate the iron lungs if the power went out. “The period
of time that it took the nurse to get out of the chair, it seemed like
forever because you weren’t breathing,” Lillard said. “You just laid
there and you could feel your heart beating and it was just terrifying.
The only noise that you can make when you can’t breathe is clicking your
tongue. And that whole dark room just sounded like a big room full of
chickens just cluck-cluck-clucking. All the nurses were saying, ‘Just a
second, you’ll be breathing in just a second.’”
Nyquil fucks me up every time I take it and furthermore, has the audacity to make me forget what fucking happens every single time. Since taking it at about midnight last night, My day:
- Woke up at 4-6 AM and apparently did the dishes
- Fiance gets up at 8:00AM, allegedly has fully cognizant conversation with me about his plans to stay late and tutor classmates. I don’t remember even being awake.
- at 9:32 AM, my Dad called me and i had a 23-minute phone call with him that I have no recollection of, but apparently I spent most of it discussing the merits and drawbacks of the various tablets my mother is interested in. I was mad about how expensive updating storage capacity was for most of them.
- Felling way more sober than I actually am, attempt to drive to school at 10:12. and spend enough time confused why my keys aren’t working on my car that my neighbor actually comes out of his apartment to ask what I’m doing to his car. I decide to stay home.
- 10:40: Send emails to professors to tell them I’m in no shape to be in class. I think I am eloquent. Upon opening my email later I realize I’ve sent them emails with the subject line “fuckt up” and message: “sorry, love you.”
- Benefits of going to a small college: they know I’ve got exciting drug reactions already and are sick as well and reply with “I understand and hope you are feeling well soon, here is today’s lecture slides” and “lol” respectively.
- ~11- 12:30 : Get lost in neighborhood walking dog. In my defense, it’s 99% off-beige generic prefab housing on nonlinear-bordering-on-noneuclidean streets and Charlie had no interest in going home either.
- 12:30-3:00: Wall
- 3:00 : phone alarm goes off and I suddenly realize fiance was supposed to be home an hour and a half ago. Fly into immediate panic, try to find phone to call him and/or the sherrif becuase he’s obviously dead in a ditch or something. I am holding my phone the whole time.
- 3:16 : Fiance gets home, I cry like a bitch, the dog also cries, everyone has a really bad 15 minutes.
- 3:33 : Realize I haven’t actually ate or drank yet today. Immediately consume a quart of apple cider and plate of taquitos. Make pork chops and potatoes and don’t stop talking about what happens if a werewolf has sex with a dog while shifted the entire time.
- 4:00: pass out on couch to the soothing sounds of Mario Oddesy
- 1AM: Why is it thursday?
The moral of the story is that you should always write down any drug reactions and label medication you should take with a large index card that says “DO NOT TAKE THIS IT FUCKS YOU UP THEN YOU FORGET” in large, friendly letters.
Stones Have Been Popping Out of People Who Ride Roller Coasters
1. Doctor finds anecdotal evidence that people are passing kidney stones after riding on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World
2. Doctor makes 3-D model of kidney, complete with stones and urine (his own), takes it on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 60 times
3. “The stones passed 63.89 percent of the time while the kidneys were in the back of the car. When they were in the front, the passage rate was only 16.67 percent. That’s based on only 60 rides on a single coaster, and Wartinger guards his excitement in the journal article: ‘Preliminary study findings support the anecdotal evidence that a ride on a moderate-intensity roller coaster could benefit some patients with small kidney stones.’”
4. “Some rides are going to be more advantageous for some patients than other rides. So I wouldn’t say that the only ride that helps you pass stones is Big Thunder Mountain. That’s grossly inaccurate.”
5. “His advice for now: If you know you have a stone that’s smaller than five millimeters, riding a series of roller coasters could help you pass that stone before it gets to an obstructive size and either causes debilitating colic or requires a $10,000 procedure to try and break it up. And even once a stone is broken up using shock waves, tiny fragments and “dust” remain that need to be passed. The coaster could help with that, too.”
SCIENCE: IT WORKS
Update:
“In all, we used 174 kidney stones of varying shapes, sizes and weights to see if each model worked on the same ride and on two other roller coasters,” Wartinger said. “Big Thunder Mountain was the only one that worked. We tried Space Mountain and Aerosmith’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and both failed.”Wartinger went on to explain that these other rides are too fast and too violent with a G-force that pins the stone into the kidney and doesn’t allow it to pass.“The ideal coaster is rough and quick with some twists and turns, but no upside down or inverted movements,” he said.
I just love this because it’s HILARIOUS and yet also a perfect archetypal example of The Scientific Method:
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Results
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
6. GOTO 1 (the scientific method is iterative, don’t forget that part)
Stones Have Been Popping Out of People Who Ride Roller Coasters
As a transgender man who is going to be having a baby, I am so glad that by technicality my child will be able to fulfil the prophecy and defeat Macbeth.
To be on the safe side, get a C-section? Macbeth really needs defeating.
Ironically I do have to have a C-section due to a hip problem I have. So it’s double accurate.
I like how this post implies that Macbeth is still out there, most likely terrorizing people, and no one has been able to stop him
Hes orange now
When medication says “do not operate heavy machinery” they’re probably mainly referring to cars, but my mind always goes to forklift.
this is why its depressing to work in a pharmacy.
I was definitely a profit killer when I worked in a pharmacy (which honestly was my favorite job in the entire world, but it was short-lived and nowadays you can’t work at a pharmacy like that, it’s all tied in with corporate retail and no one should ever trust me with a cash register ever). It was not, however, actually a profit killer for the pharmacy, just for the drug companies, so no one cared. These days I do medical billing, which means I actually bill OUT from hospitals so I’m mostly spending my professional time taking money away from insurance companies.
I will now impart all of my profit killing resources onto you, in case you don’t know them. I think most of you know them, now. But just in case you don’t.
THIS IS US-CENTRIC. I’M SORRY.
1. GoodRx – this thing has an app now, so you can look up the best places to get your expensive medicines at the lowest possible prices without insurance on the go, and you no longer have to print coupons because you can just hand over your phone or tablet. Times have changed for the better with GoodRx. Definitely use it before trying to fill your scrip, because it will tell you the best place to go. (You can do that on the website, too.)
2. NeedyMeds – Needymeds is basically the clearinghouse of drug payment assistance. They have their own discount cards, but also connections to many patient assistance programs run by drug companies themselves. They are good assistance programs, too.
3. Ask your county – This is not a link. This is a pro tip. Most county social services will have pharmacy discount programs for people with no and/or shitty pharmaceutical coverage. You can often just find them hanging around at social services offices; you can just pick one up and walk off with it.
4. Ordering online – There are a few safe online pharmacies. I keep a little database in a text file on my computer. Most of them are courtesy of CFS forums, my mother or voidbat, so a lot of that is a hat tip to other people, but if you’re in need of a place to get a drug without a prescription … first I’ll make sure you 100% know what you’re doing for safety reasons and then I’m happy to turn over a link.
5. Healthfinder – A government resource that helps find patient assistance programs in your area. This might also point out the convenient county card thing. RxHope is something a lot of people get pointed to via Healthfinder that’s a good program.
6. Mental Health America – Keeps a list of their best PAPs for psychiatric medications, which can be some of the most expensive and a lot of pharmacy plans don’t cover them at all.
This is so important ppl.
Signal boost the shit out of it!
Booooooooooooooooooost
Good Rx Saved my family a hundred dollars a month while I was getting signed up for CHIP
seriously it’s a life savor especially for ridiculously expensive drugs like abilifyUseful info, friends! 😉
Since many of our followers are on medications, I feel like this would be an important resource.
-LunaAlso! Some drug companies have patient assistance programs where they send you the drug for FREE if you are uninsured, or if your insurance doesn’t cover that drug.
Do a Google search for “patient assistant programs” + (your med), or search the manufacturers website. Sometimes the info is online; other times you have to call.
Even some of the big name pharma companies have this. It’s certainly not all companies, or all meds, but it is worth a shot.
Before Obamacare, I lost insurance and couldn’t pay for my mood stabilizers (kiiiiinda important to have those when you’re bipolar.) I was on generic Lamictal, but I went to the official Lamictal website, filled out a form with a valid prescription, and they mailed my meds to me every month for free.
If you know anything about bipolar disease, you know that that was a literal life saver. Patient assistance programs ftw!
This is so important given the recent vote to repeal Obamacare. And the cartoon above is so on point They’re literally voting to kill people. Literally.
Some of my meds are no longer going to be partially covered by my ridiculously expensive private insurance. I just used the GoodRX website to look it up, and I can either spend $40 at Target to pay for one of them out of pocket–per month–, or I can get it at Sams Club for $4. No that is not a typo. The drug I need to take every single day to keep my allergies from spiraling out of control (yay auto-immune bullshit) is literally ten times cheaper at Sams Club. Holy shit.
Steel Phoenix Studios 