onemillionspiders

[onemillionspiders]

I reblogged a comic the other day about a doctor watching House, MD and diagnosing toxoplasmosis, tagging it with "you're more likely to get toxoplasmosis from a salad than a cat". There's a story behind that.

I used to work in the kennel at a vet clinic. One day one of the vet techs came into the kennel in a tearing hurry, handed me two cat carriers, and said, "Find a cage for these two. Don't know how long, but you can put them together." And then she left.

This was not how that was supposed to happen. I had no cage cards--no names, no feeding instructions, no health information--they weren't on the schedule, and techs didn't usually intake boarders. Medical cases had a separate kennel, so a tech shouldn't be bringing me an animal in during office visit hours. But I had a cage in the cat room, so I tucked them in--two adult females, very friendly, apparently healthy.

Half an hour later the tech came back--with cage cards--and said, "It's okay, they're staying overnight and going home tomorrow." She slumped against the kennel wall and told the cats' story.

They had been brought to the clinic to be euthanized, to die.

These healthy, friendly, beloved cats had been brought in to be killed, because a woman's doctor, her obstetrician, had told her that they had killed her unborn baby. He told her if she ever wanted a child she had to get rid of the cats. He told her they should be euthanized before they killed any other woman's unborn child.

He said, with no evidence, that they had toxoplasmosis. He said that toxoplasmosis caused her miscarriage.

The woman was distraught. She had just lost her baby, she was dealing with the hormonal changes of the pregnancy loss, and now she had to euthanize her beloved cats. Fortunately no vet I've ever worked for will euthanize healthy animals brought in by a sobbing client without asking why!

The vet spent almost an hour talking to the woman, educating her on toxoplasmosis, telling her all the reasons her doctor was wrong.

Not all cats have toxoplasmosis, and even when they do they only shed the oocytes in their feces--they're only infectious--for the first few weeks. Most cats are infected as kittens and are no longer infectious as adults. According to Wikipedia, "Numerous studies have shown living in a household with a cat is not a significant risk factor for T. gondii infection,[61][63][64] though living with several kittens has some significance.[65]"

Most people get toxoplasmosis from raw vegetables, especially salad greens that grow close to the soil and are hard to clean. Raw or rare meat, raw seafood, and unpasteurized milk are also a risk.

Toxoplasmosis can be a soil-borne disease from feces in the soil. Gardening is a greater risk than cat cohabitation.

Toxoplasmosis infection is dangerous to the fetus in pregnancy, yes, causing birth defects and miscarriages. But only the first time the person is infected. If this this woman had lost her first pregnancy to toxoplasmosis--and the vet said it really didn't fit the symptoms--she would be at low risk in a subsequent pregnancy.

So basically the vet told the woman that 1) her miscarriage probably wasn't toxoplasmosis, 2) even if it was, she probably didn't get it from her cats, 3) even if her cats had given her toxoplasmosis, they weren't infectious anymore.

The woman kept her cats and got a new obstetrician.

Human doctors get a few lectures on zoonotic diseases--diseases transmitted from animals to humans or vice versa. Veterinarians get semesters. If a doctor ever tells you your animals have given you a disease, get a second opinion from your vet!

[onemillionspiders]

Where you the person behind the bear and cop show scam?

[onemillionspiders]

scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

[onemillionspiders]

I was walking out of the Walmart today, and a car passed me, and I got this incredibly vivid impression. It wasn't really in words, but if I had to put it into words, the two key points would be

a). I needed to watch that car and

b). That I needed to be careful, because the driver of the car was a massive bitch.

It kind of took me by surprise, because I really had no reason to be beefing with that car, and I also hadn't really had an impression like that since I was religious, which was in my teen years. Right? It'd been a decade since I had a little voice whisper in my ear, and I'd basically written it off as nonsense.

Anyway, I watched the car, because The Spirits or whatever were very insistent that I did. Car drove fine, went into the parking spot, inched forward, and right when it should've just stopped, the driver gunned it for some reason and it ran into the curb and cracked its bumper.

So, the driver got out, and she went to the front of the car to check that yes, she had cracked her bumper, and then she turned to look at me. The parking lot wasn't empty, but we were the only two people standing in that row, and I'd probably been staring at her for tenish seconds now.

She demanded very angrily to know why I hadn't warned her of the curb. And I could have said I didn't know you were about to gun it or is it my job to help every stranger park, or even could you have even heard me, inside your car?

And all of those would have been fine, but I was really, really busy digesting that I had somehow communed with Mormon Jesus again for the first time in fifteen years, and that the communion had mostly been there to let me watch someone park badly (?), so what I responded with was:

"Because it was foretold."

And I can't tell which would be funnier, if she went silent because there's not much to be said to that, or if she went silent because in Utah, she might actually believe me, but we parted ways without more words.

I'm still kind of digesting this myself, actually.

[onemillionspiders]

reposting a favorite reddit moment of mine since god knows if ill ever see it again

[onemillionspiders]

"WOOD!!! WOOD BEEEATS WATER!" H...how???? How does wood beat water??? How did you beat the water just now?? You chopped one tree into it. What is it you think happened to the water because of this. I'm asking the water guy too. The fish guy. Why do you believe this defeated you. your water is still there man it just moved around.

[onemillionspiders]

spouses/roommates being able to redecorate the house in stardew valley is a cute feature in concept but in reality it feels like

[onemillionspiders]

so ur at the party right and there’s this girl in the corner with another girl on a leash with the puppy ears on standard stuff and u start talking to her and she introduces the girl on the leash and says “this is my little puppy, Emily. say hi Emily” and the leash girl does a little bark at u and u say “oh that’s nice” and ur looking for a way to avoid the awkward silence during a 4 second period that feels like a half hour so u ask “does she know any tricks?” so the girl says “come on girl, show ‘em” and the puppy girl gets up pulls out a skateboard and starts doing the sickest kick flips u ever saw

[onemillionspiders]

you know how it is with snow days

[onemillionspiders]

😾

[onemillionspiders]

shut up

[onemillionspiders]

Half Goblin, half Hobbit.

Goblit.

[onemillionspiders]

[onemillionspiders]

Another dream comic. Had a dream where I was tied to a chair in a dark room and some hooded figures killed me after I begged for my life—but then I got caught in a time loop and so I kept trying to figure out what I could say to get them to not shoot me but they killed me no matter what I said. Started just shouting random stuff eventually.

[onemillionspiders]

found a baby turtle in my sewer and used AI aging techniques to work out what it would look like as an adult and used google reverse image search to find images of its parents who were in a nature documentary in 2017 and used harsh economic sanctions to encourage them not to lose their baby in the sewer again

[onemillionspiders]

Weird when you first start paying attention to animal noises and realize they don't actually sound like the words we use