#and only a few have of the obvious symptoms like paralysis

[thisisntanaddiction]

Poliomyelitis

Description: From the looks of it, they were just a very eccentric kid. In the playground, you can always blend into the game room of children and children without any problems. But as time goes by, children will leave due to symptoms such as fever and nausea, and even be unable to run again due to limb paralysis. . . . . .

Description (Traditional Chinese): 作看之下，他只是個特別古靈精怪的孩子。在遊樂場上總是能毫無地融入大小朋友的遊戲間但隨時間過去，孩子們卻會因為發燒，噁心等��狀離開甚至因肢體麻痺而無法再次跑兆。。。。。。

Character: Poliomyelitis

Release: October 2022

Artist: Say HANa

Nickname: Hui Hui, Polio

Gender: Unknown

Height: 141cm

Weight: 39kg

Birth Date: 10/24 (Scorpio)

Personality: A villain who unknowingly joins children in play. Likes to play pranks, and leaves gray handprints on the body when the other party is not paying attention. Most people are unconscious, but occasionally some people seem to be caught in their hands and feet, gradually unable to move, and eventually even unable to breathe on their own. . . .

Likes: Crowds, Hide-and-Seek, Travel

Dislikes: Vaccines, Handwashing, Empty Playgrounds

Links: CDC, MayoClinic

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[joannechocolat]

On Power, and on Powering Through, and Why They’re Really Not the Same

I don’t pay much attention to personal attacks in reviews. It comes as the flipside of success; an attempt by the critic to puncture what they see as too much success. But I still remember one review, just after the film of Chocolat, when two of my novels happened to be in the Top 5 at the same time, in which a (male) newspaper critic referred to me dismissively as a premenopausal woman writer. I was a little taken aback. Clearly, it was meant to disparage, but I was only 35, ten years away from the perimenopause. What exactly did he mean? It wasn’t a comment about the book (which I doubt he had even read). The obvious misogyny aside, it seemed to express resentment, not of my books, but of me, myself, my right to take up space in his world. That word – premenopausal – was at the same time a comment on my age, my looks, my value, and a strong suggestion that someone like me shouldn’t be this successful, shouldn’t be writing bestsellers, shouldn’t be so – visible.

I don’t recall the name of the man, or the paper for which he was writing. He was far from being the only journalist who felt I didn’t deserve success. I shrugged off the unpleasant comment, but he’d meant it to hurt, and it did. I still wonder why he – and his editor - thought that was appropriate. I also wonder why, 20 years on, women are still dealing with this kind of thing. It’s still not enough for a woman to be successful in her chosen field. Whatever her achievements, you can be pretty sure that at some point, some man in his 50s or 60s – maybe an Oxbridge graduate, author of an unpublished novel or two - will offer his opinion on her desirability, either in the national Press, or most likely nowadays, by means of social media. The subtext is clear: women who don’t conform to societal values of what a woman should be are asking for this kind of treatment; especially those who dare to achieve more than their detractors.

10 years after that nasty review, I finally began the journey into perimenopause. No-one told me it was happening. No-one in the media was talking about it at the time. Even my doctor never thought to mention that my symptoms – the insomnia, headaches, mood swings, anxiety, depression, sleep paralysis, hair loss, brown patches on my skin – might have a single origin. I began to feel I was losing my mind: as if I were starting to disappear. I started to doubt my own senses. I blamed it all on the stress from my job. My mother had powered through menopause – or so she led me to believe – and made no secret of her contempt for modern women who complained, or treated the symptoms as anything more than a minor inconvenience.

And so I did the same. I powered through; and when at last I began to experience the classic symptoms of menopause - irregular bleeding, hot flushes, exhaustion, night sweats so bad that I would awake in sheets that were wringing wet – it did not occur to me to seek help. After over a year of this, I finally went to my doctor, who took a few tests, cheerfully announced I was menopausal, and when I inquired after HRT, advised me to power through – that phrase again - and let Mother Nature take her course. The internet was slightly more helpful. I took up running, lost weight, cut down on alcohol, downed supplements and sleeping pills and vitamin D, and felt a little better. Then, breast cancer came to call, and by the time my treatment was done, the symptoms had more or less disappeared, or at least had been superseded by the symptoms of chemo. I congratulated myself at having powered through cancer as well as surviving menopause.

But two years later, I feel old. I look that way, too. I’ve aged ten years. Some of that’s the cancer, of course. I was quite open about my treatment when I was powering through it – partly in order to pre-empt any questions about my hair loss or any of the all-too visible effects of three courses of chemo. Not that it stopped the comments, though. Even at my lowest ebb, a sector of social media made it clear that my only concern should be to look young and feminine to anonymous men on Twitter.

Right now, I don’t feel either. My hair has gone grey and very thin. My skin, too, seems thinner; both physically and mentally. At a recent publishing event, several acquaintances failed to recognize me; others just looked through me as if I had become invisible. Invisibility would be a relief; I find myself dressing for camouflage. I tend to wear baggy black outfits. I got my OBE last week. Photographs in the Press show me talking to Prince William. I’m wearing a boxy black trouser suit, flat shoes and a red fedora. I think I look nice. Not glamorous, but comfortable; quirky; unpretentious.

On a thread of largely supportive messages, one Twitter user pops up to say: Jesus, who’d accept an honour looking like that middle-aged disaster? @Joannechocolat thought she’d make an impact? She needs a stylist. If you look in the dictionary for the definition of “dowdy”, it features this photo.

It’s not the same man who belittled me over 20 years ago. But the sentiment hasn’t changed. Regardless of your achievements, as a woman, you’ll always be judged on your age and fuckability. I ought to be used to this by now. But somehow, that comment got to me. Going through menopause isn’t just a series of physical symptoms. It’s how other people make you feel; old, unattractive, and strangely ashamed.

I think of the Glass Delusion, a mental disorder common between the 14th and 17th centuries, characterized by the belief that the sufferer was made of glass. King Charles VI of France famously suffered from this delusion, and so did Princess Alexandra Amélie, daughter of Ludwig 1st of Bavaria. The condition affected mostly high-profile individuals; writers, royals, intellectuals. The physician to Philip II of Spain writes of an unnamed royal who believed he was a glass vase, which made him terribly fragile, and able to disappear at will. It seems to have been a reaction to feelings of social anxiety, fear of change and the unknown, a feeling both of vulnerability and invisibility.

I can relate. Since the menopause, I’ve felt increasingly broken. I don’t believe I’m a glass vase, and yet I know what it feels like to want to be wrapped in a protective duvet all day. I’ve started buying cushions. I feel both transparent, and under the lens, as if the light might consume me. On social media, I’ve learnt to block the people who make mean comments. To make myself invisible. To hide myself in plain sight. I power through, but sometimes I think: why do women power through? And who told them that powering through meant suffering in silence?

Fortunately, some things have changed since I went through the menopause. Over the past few years, we’ve seen more people talking about their experiences. Menopause is likely to affect half the population. We should be talking about it. If men experienced half these symptoms, you bet they’d be discussing it. Because power isn’t silence. You’d think that, as writer, I would have worked that out sooner. Words are power. Sharing is strength. Communication breaks down barriers. And sometimes, power means speaking up for those less able to speak for themselves.

I look at myself in the mirror. I see my mother’s mouth; my father’s eyes. I see the woman I used to be; the woman I will one day become. I see the woman my husband loves, a woman he still finds attractive. A woman with a grown-up child who makes her proud every single day. A menopausal woman. A cancer survivor. A woman who writes books that make other people sit up and think. A woman who doesn’t need the approval of some man she’s never met to be happy. She can be happy now. I can. And finally, I understand.  Powering through isn’t about learning to be invisible. It isn’t about acceptance, or shame, or letting Nature take its course, or lying about feeling broken. It’s looking beyond your reflection. It’s seeing yourself, not through the lens of other people’s expectations, but as yourself. The sum of everything you’ve been; of everyone who loves you. Of claiming your right to be more than glass, or your reflection in it. The right to be valued. The right to shine, regardless of age or reproductive status. Men seldom question their own right to these things. But women have to fight for them. That’s why it’s so exhausting.

This morning, instead of putting on my usual baggy black sweatshirt, I chose a bright yellow pullover. I looked at myself in the mirror. It’s not a great colour on me now, but it feels like dressing in sunshine. My husband came into the bathroom. You look –

My husband rarely gives compliments. I can’t remember the last time he commented on how I was dressed. I wondered what he was going to say. Dowdy, perhaps? Inappropriate? Like a menopausal woman in dire need of a stylist?

At last, he said: When you smile like that, you look like a friendly assassin.

A friendly assassin. I’ll take that.  

Shining like the sun. That’s me.

[dressuprat]

hemlock poisoning can be detected in autopsies via toxicological testing (mid-1900s) among other ways, but toxicological testing is the earliest documented way that had been found to definitely detect it in autopsies. Depending on when exactly whitepine is set this could be possible.

Also, important note: Not all species of hemlock are poisonous. She could eat hemlock and be fine so long as it was a non poisonous species.

The main poison present in poisonous hemlock is coniine. It's main symptom is paralysis, which starts around 30 minutes after ingestion. However, it is a flaccid paralysis instead of a stiff paralysis which means it won't be as obvious postmortem, especially if the autopsy was done within 2 or so hours after death (2 hours is the average time taken for rigor mortis to occur).

Coniine kills via disruption of the nervous system and paralysis of lungs, but it is an ascending paralysis so the falling down would make sense.

But also. Pyro having a somehow slow acting coniine poisoning (most often death occurs within 6-8 hours without medical intervention) could make since. Vomiting can be a symptom, and respiratory failure could cause coughing, also restlessness and confusion & sweating, all of these could easily look like tuberculosis which is common in period dramas and Pyro was clearly already trying to hide any unwellness, so there is the potential for other symptoms he could be hiding. I've seen that quite a few people seem pretty sure about Pyro having tb but just throwing this in anyways

Hemlock also requires very small amounts to kill, but if someone wanted to, they COULD do a small enough amount that it wouldn't be fatal. Perhaps someone wants peoples guards to be down for Pyros death, and so is using tiny amounts of hemlock to make it be overlooked as oh, Pyro was ill, he died of his illness

Mysti could have been killed because she was getting too suspicious and/or the killer saw Pyro offer her some of his food, and if she only got ill after eating food that was made for Pyro, despite having spent plenty of time with Pyro before... That would certainly raise alarms.

I’ve seen a few whitepine theories by now, and the ones that have stuck with me the most were two specifically:

1) the thing that killed Mysti was “the monster” that lives in the forest. The person who had this theory went on to explain that the one true moment where we feel fear in the first episode was when ivory was looking at the forest. Right after that scene, we have a shot of the stairs (where Mysti was found). Foreshadowing goes harddd

2) someone on this app (I forgot your username, sorry!) said that we weren’t looking for a killer, but more specifically for the plant hemlock. It is also explained that said plant can kill someone with painful skin marks, etc. The person stated that when Ivory is being introduced to the maids and butlers, there’s a shot of Mysti eating (she could be eating a hemlock plant, and that was what caused her death)

I honestly think the story could go in many directions, but it’s hard for me to believe we’re looking for a specific person to be the killer. What do we think???

[samtheflamingomain]

new diagnosis, who dis?

Well boys, she was a good temporary label, CFS was, but the science has finally caught up to my galaxy brain.

And that galaxy is uncharted territory.

I've got "idiopathic hypersomnia" (IH). I love when they say what they mean. Translated literally from Latin, it means "too tired (hyper+somnia) without explanation (idio+pathic)". Because it's shorter to say, will require less explanation, and the two are almost the exact same disease, I'll be referring to it at narcolepsy type 2.

There's no cure, no treatments, and few studies. The few that have been done show absolutely no improvements, and all end with "inconclusive". Long story short, nobody gets better once they get sick, usually around age 21, just like me, and it's all downhill from there.

Let's just quickly describe it for clarity. Narcolepsy 1 causes tiredness and sudden muscle paralysis or "sleep attacks" and traces back to a gene mutation that's treatable. N2 is characterized by having extreme tiredness but no paralysis, and no association with that N1 gene. You have to be sleeping an average of 10h/night (check) and have a normal-looking sleep study (check). The reason my doctor changed me from CFS to N2 is because a) he only just learned of it and b) I don't have a lot of symptoms of CFS, pretty much just the tiredness.

Practically, nothing has changed. I'm still fucking tired. But now I know there's a near-0 chance that I will ever feel awake again.

CFS patients are about 50/50 when it comes to successfully managing fatigue with medication and making life mostly "normal". A lot like depression, it can become a matter of throwing a dart at a board of drugs to try and hoping one's a bullseye eventually. Now there's no board.

So... not the best news. In fact, this is probably the worst news I've ever received. In one 45-minute phone call, any hope I had of getting better was completely obliterated.

My psychiatrist has been working with me for about 6 years. I've tried every drug under the sun for every goddamn mental illness, but there's one (1) symptom that has never, ever changed: my level of exhaustion.

While tiredness is a common feature of mental illness, every single time my psychiatrist asks what my biggest concern is, it's that I'm still tired. 10/10. I'm currently on the highest dose of Adderall and I don't have ADHD. I should be tripping on meth, but instead I'm nodding away as I type. It's a good thing I've never given into the obvious temptation of doing cocaine, because even cocaine would not make me wake up.

I've never had jet lag, but other people who have N2 find it helpful to explain that it feels like you're always living with jet lag. For me, it's like living with an anchor around my brain weighing it down. The kind of tired that just absolutely knocks you on your ass.

And it never. Ever. Ever. Goes. Away.

In many ways, I'm grateful to have found my forever diagnosis (hopefully). I scored a perfect 50/50 on the diagnostic test, and alongside what appears to be a completely normal sleep study, I'm pretty sure they've finally gotten it right. It's common enough that it's being studied, but rare enough that there's not much money in making drugs for it. So I'm extremely, extremely depressed and hopeless.

I thought one day I'd be better. I really did. I'm a pretty jaded person, but today I realized just how much holding onto that sliver of hope that I'd one day "wake up again" was keeping me together. I've always wanted to travel the world. That's out. Same with holding down a full-time job. CFS, like depression, can be hard to treat - but it's almost never impossible. Now the opposite is true. Chances are 99/100 that I won't live long enough to ever wake up rested ever again in my entire life.

If I'm not living to hopefully one day get better, what am I living for at all? I always say I can't imagine living another week/month/year of this, but I always do, because there was always that chance that the right medication was just around the corner, and my life would "begin" again.

But now, the "right drug" isn't "just around the corner" - it's stuck in traffic on the DVP West at rush hour. From the day a disease gets recognized to the day it's cured is not going to be any less than 15-20 years.

I'm seeing my family doctor (GP) in a week. At that appointment, I will be requesting a MAID evaluation. One cannot obtain legal euthenasia in Canada when you only have a mental illness, or an illness where recovery is possible. Now, I have an incurable neurological disorder with 0 quality of life.

I'm not waiting another 7 years. I'm not waiting another month. I did my time. If I'd known it was never going to change from day one, I wouldn't have bothered slogging through it. So why keep going now?

Maybe I'll stick it out a bit longer, try and experience a few things on my bucket list, but 90% of that list involved me one day being awake.

This is it. The last straw. The final card in the shitty hand I was dealt in life. Deal me out.

[selkiesbittybonanza]

Okay so, i have a few questions about Blue Ribbon's crashes, feel free to answer whenever youre free!

1. How do you know when a Blue Ribbon crashes or about to crash? What are the signs?

2. Is it safe to touch them to move them to a different location for them to calm down when they crash or should we just leave them be and wait?

3. Does crashes hurt them? What should we do when they come outta one?

4. When in one, are they able to hear or see their surroundings?

Thank you for interest in my special boys! 🏎 🎀🐍

1. The easiest way to check if a Ribbon is crashing is to watch their posture, they’ll get very rigid like every muscle is taught. Next check their eye-lights -crashing causes them to disappear, lastly their glitches flicker at least twice as often when a crash may occur.

2. I think the best thing is to wait for them to come to on their own so they aren’t also confused about where they are. But if there’s immediate danger moving a Ribbon may be your only option and won’t hurt them physically.

3. Crashes don’t physically hurt them unless they fall or crash into something through residual momentum. They’re usually confused and embarrassed when they come to. There’s some shame when it comes to their crashes, they know that they didn’t do it before being trapped in the antivoid and it’s an obvious symptom of their change. I recommend letting them know where they are and that no one is angry with them. Don’t initiate touch until they’re ready for it. Don’t yell or be angry if your Ribbon crashes otherwise you could traumatize him.

4. Yes, but it’s dulled due to interference. It’s like when you are about to pass out or have a panic attack and you get tunnel vision and you can hear your pulse in your ears and they ring. They also have paralysis during a crash, which as someone who has sleep paralysis knows - can be terrifying in the short term.

[scripttorture]

So, I've got a character who I need to keep from walking. The torturer has a decent knowledge of anatomy and surgical procedures, but no actual surgical tools. I was thinking something like hamstringing. Which muscles or tendons would need to be severed? What are the odds of recovery? Would that fully cripple someone or just severely inhibit their ability to walk?

I’d strongly suggest that you don’t give the torturer uncommon knowledge of surgery or anatomy. Torture is not skilled and it is not clever. Torturers will often claim that it is and that they have extra special abilities, but that’s not borne out by studies of their behaviour.

 I don’t think we should feed into their delusions.

 That said generally this seems like a pretty solid scenario and the kinds of things you want the torturer to do don’t require special knowledge. Look at this way: you (presumably not a qualified surgeon but my apologies if you are) instantly jumped to hamstringing as a possible solution, no extra knowledge required.

 There are a few options open to you. Most of them would allow the victim character to walk again with modern medical treatments. There’s also… a bit of a range in terms of how much they inhibit walking.

 A few years ago I would have said that hamstringing would completely inhibit anyone’s ability to walk. Then a dear friend of mine managed to essentially hamstring himself. He had a muscle/ligament tear which (through a combination of not getting time off work and bad medical care and going along to take part in pro-wrestling anyway) grew into a grade three tear.

 That essentially means that the muscles and ligaments in one leg detached.

 He was still walking. However this problem grew worse over a period of months-years, he was in chronic pain and he essentially deformed his legs/back as other muscles compensated for his bad leg.

 He had surgery to reattach his muscles recently. With several months recovery (I think it was about a month and a half of virtually no walking) and strengthening exercises he is walking again. His stamina is not what it was and (his words) he’ll never be an athlete.

 But he’s mobile and no longer in constant pain.

 I suspect that a lot of people in my friend’s position would not have been able to walk with those injuries. He apparently has a very high pain threshold for this sort of pain. It’s also significant that the injury was only in one leg; the body can adjust and compensate for quite a lot.

 So for muscular and ligament damage I’d suggest the kind of physical recovery my friend went through: surgery with at least a month of no walking, followed by several months of strength exercises and gradually building up ability again.

 To completely prevent walking the injuries would probably have to be in both legs.

 Severing the achilles tendon (the one that runs down the back of the calf to the ankle) would probably be the most obvious and common way to do this. It’s hamstringing.

 I think a similar effect could be achieved by attacking the tendons and muscles at the back of the knees. It should still be possible to do this without damaging the major veins and arteries in the legs. It would be more difficult. There’s also a chance of severing one of the major nerves in the leg and that would cause damage that couldn’t be repaired.

 There’s- basically a lot more stuff around the knee then around the achilles tendon. And in order to produce the same kind of injury at the knee more tendons and muscles would need to be severed or damaged. I think (remember I am not a medic) that the muscles and tendons targetted in that area would be the biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus.

 This would be a much more protracted attack and more complicated to… do in a way that produces the results the torturer wants.

 The reason I’m suggesting it is that I think recovery would be longer and more complex. And I get the impression that’s something you might want for your story.

 With more muscles and tendons damaged (possibly to different degrees) and the chance of nerve damage, surgery would probably be more complicated. It might involve several procedures (again, not a medic). Strengthening exercises would also be more complicated because they’d need to account for damage in more areas.

 I think this would lead to a longer recovery time, years rather then months and a higher chance of needing mobility aids like canes or walkers.

 Because there’s a chance of nerve damage there’s also an opening for you to decide the character doesn’t recover some of that mobility at all.

 Both of these muscle-and-ligament based attacks would effect how far the character could walk without pain, even when they’ve made a full physical recovery.

 The other major thing I can think of is complex breaks. A brute force attack on the ankles or knees, causing multiple breaks and fractures. Especially if we’re talking about a character who is held for long enough that bones healing badly could be a factor.

 Historically these sorts of injuries led to lifelong problems walking or being unable to walk.

 I can’t tell you as much about the recovery process here because I don’t know. I’m not a medic and this isn’t how torture is typically conducted now. My guess would be orthopaedic surgery, followed by a lot of physio and strengthening exercises. Double check that by looking for information on complex breaks in the joints.

 You can probably find it by looking up injuries from extreme sports and motor accidents.

 In terms of the torturer doing it- it’s basically hitting the knees and/or ankle repeatedly with something heavy. The aim is to cause several breaks and fractures at the joint itself resulting in something that physically can not support the victim’s weight.

 If you want the character to be unable to walk permanently that’s trickier. Modern medical procedures are pretty good at restoring function. Most of the time it would be a case of walking shorter distances and walking with mobility aids, rather then being unable to walk at all.

 Damage to the spinal cord could result in complete paralysis of the legs. I don’t think it would be easy for your character to deliberately do that and if they tried I think they’d be likely to kill the victim. But it would be possible as an unintended injury from a prolonged beating or even a bad fall.

 You could also have injuries from torture becoming infected and eventually leading to amputation. But again, this would not necessarily prevent the character from walking; plenty of amputees, even double amputees, walk with prosthetics. I also think this approach wouldn’t be the best fit with what you’ve laid out. It’s a possible option though and I’d rather you had more choice.

 All of these are scarring tortures, which means that they’re not common practice any more. There’s a post here that gives some context on ‘clean’ (ie non-scarring) and scarring tortures if you’re interested. If you haven’t checked it out already there’s a post on long term psychological symptoms here and one on memory problems specifically here.

 I hope that helps. :)

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[lettersfromn0where]

Zutara Week 2020, Day 1: “Reunions”

IT’S ZUTARA WEEK BABEY *smoke nostrils emojis*! Here’s my contribution for Day 1 :) @zutaraweek

Title: the most beautiful thing (that I have never seen) 

Summary: This should be no sweat. After all, Katara's had the entire duration of Zuko's trip to the Earth Kingdom to work herself up to task of giving him news that'll rock his world. That doesn't make said news any easier to get out, though.

A/N: I couldn't be more excited about my first Zutara week! I kinda went back to my roots for this with all of my favorite tropes: clueless Zuko! Affectionate Zuko! Protective/Worried Zuko! Kidfic! Fire Lady Katara! Domestic fluff! Screw Canon They've Been Happily Married For Decades! ...okay, Sarah, that's enough exclamation points *takes the box of exclamation points out of my hands*. Anyway. To kick off Zutara week, this one is just pure fun and fluff, and I hope it brings you joy - because that's the entire reason this exists.

Zuko has a feeling something is up when he steps onto the dock and he’s nearly knocked into the harbor by a blur of…something…flinging itself full-force at him. For a moment he remembers to be worried that this is some sort of improbable and incredibly strange assassination attempt but when the blur settles and he realizes that he’s feeling arms around his waist, holding on for dear life, he lets down his guard.

“I missed you,” the blur that Zuko now recognizes as his wife mumbles into his shoulder. He’s a little shell-shocked – he wasn’t expecting her to meet him – but he smiles softly, moving his arms from their startled paralysis at his sides to encircle her waist. Katara nuzzles against his neck. “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you-“

“I was only gone for a week,” he chuckles, privately wondering what’s going on here but too happy to see her to question it. “But I missed you, too. I’m glad to see you feeling better.”

(Even though it had been a short trip, one she’d been meant to accompany him on but had chosen not to when she’d come down with something the week before, he truly had. He could’ve used her assistance, and her conversation, and the pillow he had to cuddle with as he fell asleep in her absence – because, though he’d never admit it, he’d grown so used to falling asleep with her in his arms that he could no longer drift off easily without something there – was a rather poor substitute.)

“I��m still not feeling fantastic, but I’m doing better.” She leans back a little to look him in the eyes, and her smile is radiant and he almost falls into the harbor for the second time in five minutes. “How was Omashu?”

He groans, and that’s all the detail she needs. Linking her arm through his, the Fire Lady laughs and drags her husband (followed by a retinue of guards whose prying eyes she doesn’t seem to notice) to her waiting palanquin.

To Zuko’s surprise, Katara isn’t very chatty on the ride back to the palace. She’s clearly happy – to see him, probably, but he can’t shake the feeling that the smile on her face isn’t just for him – but a little nervous, too, wringing her hands in her lap. He takes one of them in his, both to still her and to feel her skin against his (something he never gets sick of after several years of touch starvation), and massages circles on the back of her hand. “Are you all right?” he asks, flipping her hand to trace the lines of her palm.

Her breath hitches and for a moment, when he glances up in surprise at the sound, she looks suspiciously close to teary-eyed. “Of course I am,” she says shakily, holding out her arms to him in a gesture for please hug me, NOW, or I believe I might cry. And as a wide-eyed and incredibly confused Zuko takes folds her into his arms, he finds himself at a total loss.

“Are you…” he’s almost afraid to ask. Something’s definitely going on here. What am I not understanding? “Is this about whatever you came down with last week?”

“I’m okay,” she says with a watery smile, sniffling. “It’s nothing bad. Don’t worry, I didn’t get sicker.”

He’s too relieved to notice that she doesn’t outright deny it. “Good.” He lets her snuggle up against him and his heart would be melting right now if Katara wasn’t crying for some unspecified reason of which he remains completely unaware.

(It still is, a little bit, but…this can’t be good.)

-----

Zuko is starting to be very worried about this.

Usually, he’s the earlier riser. He’s up at sunrise nearly every day, so he’s a little taken-aback when he opens his eyes to find Katara’s side of the bed empty, gone with no evidence that she was ever there but a person-shaped impression in the satin of their sheets. “Katara?” he calls groggily, rubbing at his eyes. “Where’d you go?”

She pads back down the corridor from their washroom when she hears Zuko’s voice. “Here,” she calls back softly; though there’s no one but him to wake up in this wing of the palace, it feels wrong to raise her voice in the quiet hours of the early dawn. She tries to smile reassuringly as she slides back under the covers and snuggles up to her husband, sleepily clinging to his neck, but he can’t help but notice that her expression is a little pinched. The relief on her face when she finally lays down is obvious, even though she’s nearly asleep.

“Are you still not feeling well?” Zuko asks, pushing a tendril of hair that escaped her braid overnight behind her ear. “Do we need to call-“

“No,” she mumbles sleepily. “’m fine.”

She drifts off after that, and even a few hours later when they have to wake up, she won’t get out of bed. It’s not like her to sleep in – she’s normally so industrious – but her eyes are heavy, and she looks miserable at the idea of starting her day. Zuko can’t bring himself to protest that she has meetings to attend (she does) or that there are documents to review (there are), but it worries him all day. She’s clearly not over her illness and the fact that it isn’t gone makes his stomach twist.

When he returns to their rooms that evening after an exhausting workday to find her passed out in the same clothes she wore to bed last night, he wonders if she’s moved an inch all day.

Zuko shakes his head. There’s definitely something she’s not telling me, he thinks as she sheds his robes and gets ready to join her in sleep (if he even can). It’s a thought that only feels like a dagger to the heart when she unconsciously presses herself closer to him, so trusting she’s drawn to him even as she sleeps.

He can’t let anything happen to her.

--------

It has been four days of this now, and Zuko is definitely worried - infinitely moreso because Katara won’t let him call in a doctor. One minute she’s burrowed in his arms like her life depends on it and the next she’s yelling at him, and he’s really on the verge of a nervous breakdown now-

“For the last time, I’m fine!” Katara snaps, turning her back to him. She’s been acting out-of-character lately, but this sheer, unadulterated rage is new. “You do not need to call the doctor, I’m not dying, and you’re not helping by worrying about me all the time!”

“How could you possibly expect me not to worry?” he yelps. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been” – he starts to tick off her symptoms on his fingers – “crying, sleeping badly, getting mad at nothing, sometimes not waking up at all, running off without telling me why, looking sick, eating almost nothing and then going and eating weird things at weird times – Katara, you’re not fine. And I can’t just sit here and watch you get sicker anymore.”

She hangs her head. “There’s a reason I’ve been running off,” she says quietly, seated at the end of their bed and looking…defeated. It’s not a look she wears often and Zuko’s already-frazzled brain has yet another item to add to its list of Things to Worry About now. “I’m…getting nauseous a lot.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Zuko’s face blanches. “You’re sick and you didn’t tell me?”

“This is exactly why!” she protests, throwing up her hands. “It was only ever going to freak you out, and I was waiting for the right time, and honestly, I kind of hoped you’d put two and two together but clearly you’re too dense to-“

“You’re really sick, aren’t you?” Zuko feels like the room is spinning. “Something’s-”

Katara crosses her arms, her defeated expression turning to one of…amusement? Zuko is rather confused – in an instant. “No, Zuko, I’m not sick,” she says, and he’s pretty sure she’s laughing at his expense. “I mean, yes, I am. I mean, feeling sick. But I’m not gonna die.”

“Then why won’t you tell me what’s actually wrong with you?” Between the information he’s just received and her latest sudden mood swing, Zuko is at wit’s end.

“You really haven’t figured it out yet?” she smirks, and, crawling to the other side of the bed where he stands, she sits up on her knees to stand at his eye level and loops her arms around his neck. “I’m not dying, Zuko. I’m pregnant.”

“You’re-“

Oh.

Oh.

Zuko blinks a few times to make sure he’s not dreaming (or…hallucinating – it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’s ever experienced), and when he opens his eyes again, Katara’s still there, her blue eyes huge and level with his, waiting expectantly for a response.

(Expectantly. Zuko almost laughs at the fact that he’s so addled he’s making accidental puns now.)

“That makes so much more sense,” he says, breathing a long sigh of relief. Now he really is laughing, partly out of the delight that’s managed to seep through the cracks of ‘I need to process this’ and partly out of sheer relief, because she’s okay, and this is good. “So you’re okay?”

Katara rolls her eyes and pushes her nose against his. “Yes, idiot husband, I’m fine.” She leans in to steal a fleeting kiss. “But check back with me in seven months and I probably won’t have the same answer.”

Then it hits him like a ton of bricks, and his eyes are moist and he’s laughing and crying all at once and all he can think to do is reach down to lift her legs, scooping her off the bed and into his arms and pulling her closer than close. He doesn’t spin her (because he will not be a walking cliché…or, realistically, because his arms are trembling and he’s terrified he’ll drop her even though he does this often), but she gives a delighted little yelp of surprise as he cradles her to his chest, pressing kisses to every exposed surface of her face.

“Someone’s happy,” she teases, and he just kisses her.

“I am,” he says after they finally break apart. “Katara, I…” the lump in his throat won’t let words pass by. “I can’t…I’m sorry, this…I love you.”

He sets her back on the bed and she flops against the comforter, pulling him down with her. They’re laying parallel on the comforter on their backs but Zuko flips on his side to get a better look at her. (An awed smile overtakes his face, and he concludes that whoever it was that decided pregnant women glow was really onto something.) Katara notices, and reaches out to ruffle his hair.

“Aww,” she mutters, moving closer. “You’re cute when you’re speechless.”

They’re silent for a moment, lying there to let themselves take it all in, and then Katara takes his hands and sets them against her still-flat stomach. Zuko feels like he should say something, at first, but the thousand emotions running through his mind won’t let him. And that might be for the better, he realizes.

Words aren’t enough for this moment.

[thequirkdetective]

Investigation 5 (26/6/2020): Frog – Tsuyu Asui

This time, I’m going to be looking at Tsuyu Asui’s quirk ‘Frog’. This quirk is different from others I have covered, since it doesn’t have a specific effect, but is more a summation of many different effects, namely abnormalities in Asui’s body that mimic a frog’s anatomy. I will therefore be looking at exactly how many frog traits Tsuyu possesses, and how they affect her body.

The first ability to look at is Tsuyu’s super move, aptly named ‘Camouflage’, which allows her to match the colour and heat of her surroundings in order to avoid detection[1]. Sadly, although many frog species exhibit camouflage, few are so-called ‘active’; where the appearance of an animal changes based on surroundings, and none to the extent seen in the show. However, some frogs can change colour, going from light to dark and even changing shades from brown to green to black. This behaviour is mainly to regulate body temperature or display the mood of the frog (a practice shared with chameleons who, despite common knowledge, never change colour to blend into their surroundings), but can sometimes be used for camouflage. The drawback is that the resultant colour change is never as accurate, varied, or substantial as Tsuyu’s. However, when first shown using the move, she says “I’ve finally reached a new level of control”, most likely meaning she used to only be able to colour change simply, like frogs, but has now learned to accurately control it for camouflage.

Almost all frogs who can change colour are tree frogs, and so we can assume that Tsuyu’s abilities are related to the biology and anatomy of this group. Rather fittingly, tree frogs don’t actually belong to any one species, genus or even family, but instead all share similar traits. It is these traits, as well as the fact tree frogs spend most of their time in trees, that make a frog a tree frog.

Using this information, we can now evaluate all of Asui’s canon abilities in relation to tree frogs. The first thing to examine is her ability to leap like a frog[2], which simply calls for slightly more developed leg muscles (Tsuyu has the canonically thiccest thighs) since she leaps rather than running. Another slight change to her anatomy is webbed feet to aid swimming. This webbing does not extend to her hands, which are mostly human-like, save another ability: climbing.

Tree frogs climb through two means: the active grasping of thin branches, and the suction on smooth surfaces caused by their fluid filled toe pads, known as gripping and adhesion, respectively. Tsuyu is seen climbing up a rock face[3] with the use of both her fingers and tongue (which we’ll cover later), the sheerness of the rock meaning she is not gripping, and so must have a frog’s toe pads to gain adhesion. The sticky-ness of these pads is caused by channels in their surface that flow with mucous, which both cleans the surface of dust and dirt to increase adhesion, and makes the toe sticky. Therefore, Tsuyu’s fingers have channels, either the channels of her fingerprints or a frog-like hexagonal lattice of grooves, that fill with sticky mucous and allow her to climb surfaces.

The final ability shown in the anime is Tsuyu’s tongue, which differs slightly from a frog’s. Frog tongues are used to capture prey by their rapid extension, made possible with two different groups of muscles. The muscles in the tongue contract and stiffen, and muscles in the base of the tongue force the tongue out of the mouth like a spring. Tsuyu’s tongue can extend quickly, but can also be controlled whilst extended, presumably by developed muscles in the tongue’s structure. These unique muscles are extraordinarily strong, and can be used to lift the weight of a person. This isn’t entirely unfeasible since some frogs can lift 3 times their weight with their tongue. But since Tsuyu isn’t the size of a tree frog, how large, and how heavy, is her tongue?

An answers.com user states the mass of the average human tongue is 70g (2.5oz) for men and 60g (2.1oz) for women. I’m unsure of the accuracy and legality of this information, but it seems good for a rough estimate. Tsuyu’s frog tongue is 20m (65.6ft) long[2] , and an average human tongue is 8.5cm (3.3in). This means Tsuyu’s tongue is 23.5x longer than a human’s tongue, and thus is ~23.5x as massive, coming in at an astounding 1.5kg (53oz), and that assuming it has a normal tongue with. The strain on Tsuyu’s jaw to even bear the weight of such a tongue would be significant, and the force in its extension could easily dislocate it, especially since frogs’ tongues are positioned at the front of the mouth. This injury has not yet occurred in the anime, and so it is likely Tsuyu has substantially strong jaw muscles and tendons. The position of the tongue is also noteworthy, being mounted to the front of the bottom jaw and curled backwards into the mouth. This would make standard speech nearly impossible, leading to a significant speech impediment, as heard in the anime. Tsuyu’s speech also has a nasal quality in the anime, most likely due to a frog’s inability to breathe through its mouth.

When Tsuyu explains her quirk, there are two abilities she mentions offhandedly, as they are seemingly unimportant to the situation her, Midoriya and Mineta were in. These are being able to regurgitate her stomach “so [she] can clean it”, and secreting a toxic mucous that “just stings a bit”.

As a quick YouTube search will confirm, some frogs do regurgitate their stomachs in a truly ghastly display, for urgent expulsion of anything they should have thought twice about before ingesting, usually poisonous things like certain insects. To examine how a human would perform such an action, we must compare this with human vomiting. Fair warning, the following section is not for anyone with a weak stomach.

Humans vomit by closing the sphincters to and from the stomach, before contracting the diaphragm and stomach muscles to build up pressure. The oesophageal sphincter is then opened, releasing the pressure, and expelling the stomach’s contents. The mechanism of so-called ‘full gastric eversion’ is not as well understood, but it is believed that similar pressures created by the diaphragm (or vocal sac, as we will see later) eject the stomach, which is retracted by essentially ‘sucking’ it back in. The main structure that prevents full eversion in humans is the oesophagus, which is made out of hard cartilage. Frogs have a soft oesophagus to allow eversion, and thus Tsuyu must have a slightly different internal structure to account for this. Her stomach must sit where the lungs and heart usually are to limit the length of oesophagus that must be everted, meaning the other organs move downwards. The liver also would most likely sit normally in respect to the stomach, and lie above it. This means Tsuyu’s duodenum and the first section of her small intestine proper lie behind the lungs, flat to the spine. It is possible her internal organs near fully resemble those of a frog, with a large vertical liver and stomach squeezed to the left of the chest. The internal organ structure of a frog is something that will be explored in full later on

Finally, her last ability that is mentioned is a toxic mucous, that apparently only causes a mild stinging sensation. The mucous has not yet been used in the main anime series (neither has the full gastric eversion, for rather obvious reasons), but I am told it has some use in both the anime and one of the movies, but we will not look at those here, mainly because I haven’t seen them.

Most poisonous frogs secrete Batrachotoxin, from the Greek ‘bátrachos’ meaning frog (the chemical also goes by the catchy name ‘3α,9α-epoxy-14β,18-(2′-oxyethyl-N-methylamino)-5β-pregna-7,16-diene-3β,11α,20α-triol 20α-2,4-dimethylpyrrole-3-carboxylate’, because biochemists seem to be incapable of naming things well). This is a compound that binds to and opens the sodium channels of nerve cells leading to permanent paralysis, seizures, and death; a symptom far from that of Tsuyu’s mucous. Some species secrete toxins other than Batrachotoxin, but all secrete some kind of lipophilic alkaloid, which all have the same effect on the nervous system to varying degrees. Almost all frogs gain these toxins from their diet, the only exception being the Corroboree Frog, which produces its own alkaloid, pseudo-phrynamine, without ingesting anything toxic.

The toxin Tsuyu secretes is therefore most likely some kind of sodium channel opener. These have some use as painkiller in low doses, but the therapeutic dose is dangerously near the lethal dose, and the dose given via contact with skin is not accurately controllable. There is no dose of any known lipophilic alkaloid that “just stings a bit”, so Tsuyu was either wrong about the symptoms, or lying. She could not be able to produce toxin at all, or can produce an incredibly potent neurotoxin, but the significance of her misinforming Deku about such a toxin is left to the reader’s discretion.

One last canonical effect of Tsuyu’s quirk is hibernation due to cold[4]. In Episode 55, Tsuyu is wrapped in a blanket created by Yaoyorozu in order to keep her warm, but this is in fact not necessary. The hibernation response lowers a frog’s metabolism, allowing it to survive sub-zero temperatures whilst using only the food stores present in the frog’s body. This means that in her hibernating state, Tsuyu could survive nearly indefinitely in temperatures that would kill the other class members, and so Tsuyu is the last one who would need that blanket. In fact, it may even be detrimental, since hibernating frogs ‘breathe’ through their skin, in a process known as cutaneous respiration. Hibernation can get so drastic as to stop the frog’s lung and heart, appearing entirely dead, and using only simple gas exchange and glucose stores to retain a semblance of life. At these temperatures, parts of the frog such as the extremities, skin, bladder, and body cavity freeze, but a sort of biological antifreeze keeps the vital organs free of ice. When the temperature rises again, the frozen body parts thaw, and the frog comes out of hibernation completely unfazed.

If hibernation is possible, then its hot weather counterpart, called aestivation, is also viable. The process involves an animal shedding a few layers of live skin to create a waterproof seal around itself and prevent water loss. The only body parts left exposed are the nostrils, which are used to breathe, since the skin is sealed up. Tsuyu hasn’t yet been exposed to an extended period of drought, but if it were ever to happen she may be able to bury herself underground and create a protective seal of her own skin around herself.

A rather prominent aspect of frog anatomy to be covered is the vocal sac. This is the bag of skin and muscle on a frog’s chin and neck that allows a frog to croak, but it is mainly used as a diaphragm. In fact, frogs don’t have an internal diaphragm, and mechanically breathe by expanding their vocal sac to pull air out of their lungs, contracting it to push that air into the environment, before expanding again to take a new breath through their nose, and contracting to push it into their lung. However, in most circumstances frogs breathe through their skin and mouth lining via simple gas exchange, which can even be done under water. A frog’s relatively low metabolism allows this to be sustainable for indefinite periods of time.

Here we get back to the question of Tsuyu’s internal organs. If they were identical to a frog’s, she wouldn’t be able to talk until adulthood, and even then, only via croaking. Her ability to talk (as well as her lack of any notable vocal sac) means she must at least have some sort of internal diaphragm to inflate and deflate her lungs. If her respiratory system is more human, then she would have two large lungs, but if it were more frog-like she would have two small, inefficient lungs, and mainly breathe through her skin. Her digestive system may be of varying levels of complexity, from the simple single-intestine system of a frog to the multi-intestine system of a human, and a frog’s respiratory system mixes oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, and thus is less efficient, but more easily allows cutaneous respiration. Interestingly, frog and human skeletons are remarkably similar, so Tsuyu’s bones wouldn’t be significantly different whether they mimicked frog or human anatomy.

Of course, this is all rather binary, and there are plenty of areas to mix human and frog traits, or even have body parts that are some mix of human and frog, for example a slightly larger liver or shorter large intestine.

To conclude, Tsuyu’s anatomy is a mix of human and frog, with her most prominent frog-like traits being her larger legs, webbed toes, sticky mucous for climbing, enlarged, frog-like tongue, and secretion of potently toxic mucous. She also goes into hibernation in response to cold, and therefore likely undergoes aestivation in hot and dry conditions. She breathes like a human, using an internal muscular diaphragm, with the possibility of addition cutaneous respiration being available to allow her to breathe underwater.

[1] Season 3 Episode 59: What’s the Big Idea?

[2] Season 1 Episode 10: Encounter with the Unknown

[3] Season 3 Episode 41: Kota

[4] Season 3 Episode 55: Class 1-A

If you liked this investigation and want to have a say in the next one, then make sure to send a recommendation for which quirk I should investigate!

[mojoflower]

My child with CIDP (a chronic neurologic illness)

Thank you for asking, @sunshinemeansmylove.  I’m always happy to share our story -- it’s cathartic.  And also, *I find it interesting, so I assume others do, too ;)

Almost ten years ago, when Phoenix had just turned 5, he started walking oddly.  We didn’t think much of it for a day or two, because he didn’t complain of anything hurting.  It got bad enough that one of his preschool teachers asked about it, so we took him in for x-rays and whatnot.  But they found nothing.  They put him in a boot for possible Kholer Disease, just in case (I don’t even know what that doctor was thinking), and with the boot, he essentially stopped walking altogether, and kept saying he didn’t want to go to preschool anymore:  so I took him out.

Within a week he’d stopped playing as much.  He appeared quite content just watching everyone else play.  He’d only stand on sidewalks instead of going on the grass.  (You need to know that he already had a long history of medical shit, because he didn’t walk until after 2, and didn’t talk until late, and was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Delay and “symptoms relating to autism” and had had 3 years of intensive therapies and Early Intervention by this point.  So I figured the grass thing was sensory, instead of balance.)

He started doing stairs on his bottom, instead of walking, and one day he fell down them.  (We’d moved into a new house... with stairs... only 4 months earlier.  Of course.)  The next day, he was on the living room floor, playing with his matchbox cars, and couldn’t get up.  That was the last time he stood for weeks.

All this time, he remained sweet-natured and amenable and never said that anything hurt.  But now he couldn’t walk and couldn’t stand.  We rushed him to the Children’s Hospital (which in Atlanta is very reputable, thankfuckinggod).  They ran tests.  Oh, god, they ran tests.  He didn’t have reflexes at all, and couldn’t feel his hands and feet.  This is hands-down the most terrifying period of my life, ever.

Finally, with a spinal tap and a horrifically invasive and ghastly and painful EMG test (wherein they jab a pin into your thigh muscle, poke another further down the leg and run an electrical current between the two to measure degree of  blockage in the transmission).  Phoenix had complete nerve conduction blockage (100% paralysis of his legs... it was moderately better in his arms and hands).

He cried and screamed and begged me and Daddy to help him while the doctor was doing this (it took something like half an hour).  But they couldn’t give him pain killers or tranquilizers of just knock him out, b/c that would have messed with their results, so we had to hold him down.  It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and to this day I won’t go to the hospital without a bottle of xanax in my purse, because the doctors can’t prescribe it for the parents, even though EVERYONE NEEDS IT, because you have to be calm for your kid.  Fuck, I’m crying just thinking about it.

We brought him everywhere in a little red wagon, which CHOA uses instead of wheelchairs, all nestled up with blankets and his lambie.

(One utterly thoughtless fucker -- not his neurologist -- said if his nerves didn’t work and it was progressive, it’d eventually move up his arms and legs until it reached his heart and lungs and suppressed breathing and then he’d die.  Which is factually true, but jesus christ.)

We thought he was going to die.  Over less than 20 days he’d gone from normal(-ish) healthy kid to a lump in a hospital bed who couldn’t move his legs at all and couldn’t wrap his hands around anything, couldn’t hold you back when you held him.

CIDP in children is incredibly rare.  It’s a super-rare condition regardless, but usually people get it as adults (average age 50).  It’s something like .000005% of the population.  Like, maybe there are 20 kids in the entirety of metro Atlanta who have it.  CIDP is a neuropathy in which the person’s immune system begins attacking the insulating sheath (myelin) around nerve cells, starting at the peripheral nervous system (hands/feet, legs/arms).  Without this fatty sheath, electrical signals from the brain simply don’t transmit to the muscles.  In many cases, there’s intense, phantom pain associated with it, but thankfully, Phoenix has only ever been numb, and I pray with my whole atheist heart and soul that it never changes.

But we lucked out, and the neurologist we got at CHOA identified CIDP fairly quickly (within a week, during which we never left the hospital, of course) and started him on IVIg.  IVIg is intravenous immunoglobulin -- essentially strained human plasma -- to remove all but the specific antibody Ig.

(SO PLEASE:  GO DONATE OR SELL YOUR PLASMA, it’s keeping kids like mine out of wheelchairs.  It costs more than gold, it cannot be synthesized or taken from animals.  They don’t know the exact mechanism by which it works (they call it a “black box”) but it does, and it’s fucking miraculous.)

With sufficient IVIg, the myelin sheath is repaired fairly rapidly.  At first, he needed infusions every three days.  (Generally, specialists told me, kids his age will go into remission after a year or two.  Phoenix, bless, is special and never has, even though I kept waiting and waiting.  Almost ten years later, and he’s steady like clockwork, remission never on the horizon.)  Over the years, we’ve managed to stretch the intervals to 15 weeks.  Which is great, because insurance HATES US:  the pharmacy cost alone is easily $100k+ a year, not to mention hospital stays and clinics.  Annually, we have to defend his need to go at whatever interval it is at the time, they’re always pushing us to stretch it further.

So he’s been on maintenance for many years.  There are some visual cues if he begins to decline, like his feet slapping when he walks, or using the bannister with two hands when he goes upstairs, but it’s not always that obvious.  This week, I asked him if it was the CIDP when he tried to get out of band practice for the third time, and he said yes, but I don’t see those other cues (although he’s been laying on the sofa for a few weeks and has stopped hanging out with his friends and is sleeping longer) so I don’t know if I just handed him a really good excuse to stay home and play computer games.

He’s been low-key complaining for about a week, and our next IVIg appointment isn’t until Oct. 1st.  You have to schedule months in advance so rescheduling for earlier isn’t possible, not to mention insurance will gleefully not pay if it’s earlier than 15 weeks (which means $9-$17k out of pocket, depending on the whimsy/voodoo of the hospital billing department).

So.  Yeah.  This is what it’s like to have a child with a chronic illness.  (CIDP is Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, btw.  It’s essentially the lifelong version of Guillain-Barré, that thing you see warning signs about when you go get your flu shot.  It can only be maintained, not cured.)  This is a good example of why it’s so vital for laws to prevent insurance companies from turning people down due to preexisting conditions.

It’s hard, as a parent.  He could be a typical teen who’d rather not spend all day in school... or his nervous system could very literally be slowly deteriorating.  I have to make judgement calls all the time, and sometimes I’m wrong.  It’s kind of terrifying.

[pipermca]

Demon Lover

Ok ok ok ok I know if I don’t dump this somewhere it’s going to fester and bother me and interfere with the other stuff I’m working on so here: FIC BUNNY I AM RELEASING INTO THE WILD if you write it please let me know so I can read it.

Anyway. This is related to @doomspoon888‘s post/ask reply about Cyberverse season 2 and episode 8 and Starscream’s children and ghost writing and... You know how your brain takes a bunch of unrelated things and gloms them all together and makes connections that no sane person would ever make? Let’s just say that this post blessed me with such a connection.

All right. Let’s get down to business. First I need to talk about demon lovers. ...Then I’ll talk about Starscream and Megatron. 😈

Incubi and Succubi

From Wikipedia: an incubus is a demon in a male form, while a succubus is a demon in a female form. I’m sure everyone’s quite aware of how these demons seek out sex with humans and impregnate women with a child. (This was an explanation for how an otherwise chaste nun might suddenly “fall pregnant.”)

What I didn’t know until I was attacked by this bunny was that since demons aren’t supposed to have souls, a male demon can’t impregate a woman on its own. (Because, ya know, only men can pass on souls cue the eye rolling.) So the theory was that a succubus would have sex with a man, transfer the sperm to an incubus, and the incubus would have sex with a woman and impregnate her with the sperm. (The child was sometimes called a cambion, and exhibited symptoms of its demonic origin such as being very heavy, unable to be drowned, or malformed in some way... Or was occasionally perfect but in an unnatural way.)

But another theory was that incubi and succubi were actually the same demon. 

Plot Bunny

And here is what my muse handed me when I gave it all of those data points I just explained. Either enjoy this half outline/half fic, or feel free to expand on it yourself, or run away screaming.

I just needed to get it out of my head! XD

Setting: G1ish, prewar maybe. Before Megatron met Starscream, anyway.

Warnings: Dub-con to enthusiastic con, sleep paralysis, demonic sex, mech preg 

Plot: Megatron is a high-value gladiator, and his handlers frequently purchase buymechs for his use. Megatron doesn’t really want them, though. Usually he just ignores them and waits for them to leave. No matter how many times he insists he doesn’t want them, he will still return to his rooms after a match to find some shiny racer or aerial draped over his berth.

It’s a bother, really.

One night he returns to his rooms and there’s no one there. It’s a relief, really, because he was tired and wanted to recharge right away without having to wait for the buymech to leave. He falls asleep, but wakes a few hours later to find himself unable to move... And there’s a mech on top of him, grinding against him. All he can see is a wing at first, and then the mech’s face... It’s a Seeker, his optics glowing an unnaturally bright red, and his mouth is turned up in an impish grin... 

Primus, he’s gorgeous.

Megatron’s battle systems are trying to come online (he’s still freaked out that he can’t move and is getting molested by this strange mech) but nothing works, and the other mech’s motions finally build up enough charge so that his modesty panels slide aside on their own and his spike pressurizes, and suddenly the strange mech is on him, riding him like a wild zap pony, and it’s the best fucking sex he’s has in a while, and it’s not long before he overloads and slides into reboot.

When he wakes up, he’s alone.

He chews out his handler for sending a buymech into his rooms while he’s asleep, but his handler insists that he did nothing of the sort. He even shows Megatron the security tapes that show no one entering his rooms after Megatron goes in. There was also no evidence on him that he’d interfaced with anyone...

Maybe it was a dream.

Except a few nights later it happens again. Megatron wakes up to find the same mech on top of him, and his body remembers what it did before and it’s just a few minutes before the mech is riding him again, moaning and touching Megatron in just the right places and waggling his wings in the most alluring way, and Megatron overloads again.

Megatron manages to stay online this time, and the Seeker slides off of his spike with a low groan. His wings flutter as he reaches down at brushes his fingers against Megatron’s valve - oh hey, when did that panel open? - and Megatron can feel that he’s slick already...

And then the mech slides into him and starts pounding away. [yada yada, fill in sex details here]

Right when the Seeker overloads inside him, he leans forward and kisses Megatron in the most passionate way he’s ever been kissed. Megatron has his second overload of the night and that one sends him into reboot.

He wakes up alone again.

There’s no signs of interfacing, though. No paint transfers, no transfluid stains on the sheets, nothing in his valve...

...A dream. Yeah, definitely a dream.

This goes on and on, for weeks. It’s the same thing every night: Megatron wakes to find the Seeker on top of him. He always takes Megatron’s spike first, and then spikes Megatron in turn. It’s always in that order. There is never any sign of the strange mech in the morning, but...

A dream? Megatron decides he needs to find out.

Finally, one night, Megatron tries to stay awake. He puts himself in an attentive but meditative state (which is part of his gladiator training) - it slows his ventilations and mimics recharge - and about an hour later he senses movement in his room.

Megatron’s hand darts out, and he grabs the Seeker by the wrist before it can immobilize him.

“Who are you?” Megatron growls.

The Seeker smiles at him like he always did, and leans forward to kiss him. Megatron can feel his systems seizing, sliding into the paralysis that he’s always in when he wakes. As their lips part, the Seeker says, “My name is Starscream.” His voice sounds like glass scraping on concrete, and Megatron is sure that no mortal mech has ever sounded like that.

He wakes up alone again.

...

The next time Megatron has his maintenance check, the doctor frowns at something in the readings he’s getting. “I don’t understand this. Your inhibitor is still activated, and you shouldn’t...”

“Spit it out,” growls Megatron.

“You’re sparked,” says the doctor, turning the monitor around. It shows a clear image of Megatron’s spark with another circling it.

No wonder he’d been feeling tired.

Megatron keeps fighting until the swelling in his abdomen becomes too obvious, and the referees pull him from the ring. It’s irritating but... Megatron is more angry/worried/sad that his mystery lover has vanished. The sparkling is obviously his, but searches of records for a Seeker named ‘Starscream’ turn up nothing. 

It’s infuriating.

When the sparkling finally emerges, it’s grey and silver and blue and red, and has little wings and unnaturally red optics. When it cries, its voice sounds like glass scraping on concrete. And the sparkling is the most wonderful, adorable, precious thing that Megatron has ever seen.

But the strangest thing is after its emergence, Megatron’s handler insists on having the sparkling’s CNA tested. He’s positive that Megatron got knocked up by one of the other gladiators (since all buymechs have working inhibitors by law), and he wants to go after that other mech’s handler for his monetary losses while Megatron was sidelined.

However, when the results of the test come back, it’s the strangest thing... The little winged sparkling’s CNA is identical to Megatron’s.

That night, in his bed at the medical centre, Megatron drifts into a light recharge while feeding the little mech... But he opens his optics again when he feels a weight on the bed.

Starscream is sitting beside him, smiling at the sparkling in his arms.

[writingwithnarcolepsy]

Narcolepsy: Who? What? When? How?

The most important part of this post is explaining exactly what Narcolepsy is. We’ll cover the basics, but know that I can only personally speak from my experience with my own diagnosis. So this post will cover the generalized symptoms and ins and outs of the diagnosis. Other posts, later on, will cover my experience with narcolepsy. 

What is Narcolepsy?

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder that affects the brain’s ability to control sleep-wake cycles.  People with narcolepsy usually feel rested after waking, but then feel very sleepy throughout much of the day.  Many individuals with narcolepsy also experience uneven and interrupted sleep that can involve waking up frequently during the night.    

Narcolepsy can greatly affect daily activities.  People may unwillingly fall asleep even if they are in the middle of an activity like driving, eating, or talking.  Other symptoms may include sudden muscle weakness while awake that makes a person go limp or unable to move (cataplexy), vivid dream-like images or hallucinations, and total paralysis just before falling asleep or just after waking up (sleep paralysis).  

In a normal sleep cycle, a person enters rapid eye movement (REM) sleep after about 60 to 90 minutes.  Dreams occur during REM sleep, and the brain keeps muscles limp during this sleep stage, which prevents people from acting out their dreams.  People with narcolepsy frequently enter REM sleep rapidly, within 15 minutes of falling asleep.  Also, the muscle weakness or dream activity of REM sleep can occur during wakefulness or be absent during sleep.  This helps explain some symptoms of narcolepsy. (Information is taken from the Narcolepsy Fact Sheet) 

Who has Narcolepsy?

It’s estimated that 135,000 to 200,000 people live with Narcolepsy in the United States. Most are diagnosed between the ages of 7-25. I personally received my diagnosis at the age of 17. The numbers are fairly split among men and women, with no favor either way. Many people have narcolepsy that is undiagnosed and is instead misdiagnosed as sleep apnea, mental health issues, or other sleep disorders. 

What causes Narcolepsy? 

Narcolepsy may have several causes.  Nearly all people with narcolepsy who have cataplexy have extremely low levels of the naturally occurring chemical hypocretin, which promotes wakefulness and regulates REM sleep.  Hypocretin levels are usually normal in people who have narcolepsy without cataplexy.

Although the cause of narcolepsy is not completely understood, current research suggests that narcolepsy may be the result of a combination of factors working together to cause a lack of hypocretin. These factors include:

Autoimmune disorders.  When cataplexy is present, the cause is most often the loss of brain cells that produce hypocretin.  Although the reason for this cell loss is unknown, it appears to be linked to abnormalities in the immune system.  Autoimmune disorders occur when the body's immune system turns against itself and mistakenly attacks healthy cells or tissue.  Researchers believe that in individuals with narcolepsy, the body’s immune system selectively attacks the hypocretin-containing brain cells because of a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Family history.  Most cases of narcolepsy are sporadic, meaning the disorder occurs in individuals with no known family history.  However, clusters in families sometimes occur—up to 10 percent of individuals diagnosed with narcolepsy with cataplexy report having a close relative with similar symptoms.

Brain injuries.  Rarely, narcolepsy results from traumatic injury to parts of the brain that regulate wakefulness and REM sleep or from tumors and other diseases in the same regions.

Symptoms: The How of Living with Narcolepsy

EDS or excessive daytime sleepiness is the most obvious symptom of narcolepsy. EDS is described as persistent sleepiness, regardless of the individual's previous sleep or the activity the person is in. Described sometimes as a "sleep attack" the sudden onset of sleepiness is quick and sometimes impossible to ignore. In between these times, individuals can maintain focus and alertness at a normal level.

Cataplexy tends to be the most well-known symptom of Narcolepsy, the "joke" that people assume when they hear the word. However, cataplexy is the sudden muscle tone when a person is awake and their loss of voluntary muscle control. This can often be triggered by sudden, strong emotions, such as laughter, fear, anger, stress, or excitement. Which is why I find it difficult when people find the disorder funny. Sometimes mistaken for a seizure disorder, a person with Type 1 Narcolepsy or Narcolepsy with Cataplexy may only experience one or two attacks in their lifetime or can experience ten in a single day. People with cataplexy tend to remain fully conscious and do not fall faint. And in the most severe attacks, a total body collapse happens where individuals are unable to move, speak, or keep their eyes open. Cataplexy is not dangerous if the individual can find a safe place to collapse, otherwise, the loss of muscle control can lead to injury.

Sleep paralysis is the temporary inability to move or speak when falling asleep or waking up. Lasting only seconds or minutes, it can resemble cataplexy but only occurs at the edges of sleep. Just as with cataplexy individuals are fully conscious, and even with severe cataplexy or sleep paralysis, this does mean permanent dysfunction. When the episode is over, individuals rapidly recover the ability to move and speak.

Hallucinations are common among individuals and can become worse or better depending on the medication used to treat Narcolepsy. They tend to be very vivid and sometimes frightening and just like sleep paralysis they occur when they are falling asleep or waking up. Tending to only be visual they can occasionally involve other symptoms.

Fragmented sleep and insomnia are also possible in individuals with Narcolepsy. This may seem odd, but moving through REM cycles rapidly can cause sleep that is broken up. Also resulting in sleep that isn't as restorative as other's sleep.

Automatic behaviors are commonly misunderstood and hard to isolate, usually lasting only a few seconds at a time. This symptom is when a person with Narcolepsy falls asleep during an activity, like eating or talking, and automatically continues the activity for a few seconds or minutes without conscious awareness of what they are doing. This can happen most often when people are engaged in habitual activities such as driving or typing. During these episodes, they cannot recall their actions, and their performance is almost always impaired. Handwriting may change into an illegible scrawl or if it occurs while driving the individual may get lost or have an accident. After these episodes, the individual might awaken feeling refreshed.

How is Narcolepsy Diagnosed? 

A clinical examination and detailed medical history are essential for diagnosis and treatment of narcolepsy.  Individuals may be asked by their doctor to keep a sleep journal noting the times of sleep and symptoms over a one- to two-week period.  Although none of the major symptoms are exclusive to narcolepsy, cataplexy is the most specific symptom and occurs in almost no other diseases.

A physical exam can rule out or identify other neurological conditions that may be causing the symptoms.  Two specialized tests, which can be performed in a sleep disorders clinic, are required to establish a diagnosis of narcolepsy:

Polysomnogram (PSG or sleep study).  The PSG is an overnight recording of brain and muscle activity, breathing, and eye movements.  A PSG can help reveal whether REM sleep occurs early in the sleep cycle and if an individual's symptoms result from another condition such as sleep apnea.

Multiple sleep latency test (MSLT).  The MSLT assesses daytime sleepiness by measuring how quickly a person falls asleep and whether they enter REM sleep.  On the day after the PSG, an individual is asked to take five short naps separated by two hours over the course of a day.  If an individual falls asleep in less than 8 minutes on average over the five naps, this indicates excessive daytime sleepiness.  However, individuals with narcolepsy also have REM sleep start abnormally quickly.  If REM sleep happens within 15 minutes at least two times out of the five naps and the sleep study the night before, this is likely an abnormality caused by narcolepsy.

Occasionally, it may be helpful to measure the level of hypocretin in the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord.  To perform this test, a doctor will withdraw a sample of the cerebrospinal fluid using a lumbar puncture (also called a spinal tap) and measure the level of hypocretin-1.  In the absence of other serious medical conditions, low hypocretin-1 levels almost certainly indicate type 1 narcolepsy.

Treatment for Narcolepsy

The approach to Narcolepsy, will, of course, vary from person to person. 

Medication, a variety of medications can be prescribed including stimulants to maintain daytime awakeness, sleeping medications to help with fragmented sleep at night, antidepressants and other medications to help with cataplexy. 

Frequent naps, hard for individuals who must work, which is why Narcolepsy is on the disabled list for Social Security, frequent naps tend to help those with narcolepsy deal with EDS

Maintaining a regular sleep and wake cycle. 

[chiseler]

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

While it must be admitted that no country on earth can top India when it comes to mass hysteria—I mean, the Indians really, really know how to panic over silly nonsense—the United States comes in a very close second. Despite sneering American press coverage of, say, the Monkey Man hysteria in north central India in the late Nineties, it seems we aren’t nearly so rational and sophisticated a population as we’d like to believe. Whether confined to small rural communities or spread nationwide, delightfully stupid instances of mass hysteria are sprinkled liberally throughout our history. Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast was small potatoes compared to some of the seriously dumb crap stalwart Americans have panicked about. From the Winsted Wild Man, to the Great Airship of 1897, to both Red Scares, to the child-raping Satanic cult hysteria of the Eighties, to the post-9/11 fear of, well, pretty much everything, to the Ninja Burglar who terrorized the residents of Staten Island for nearly a decade, Americans are just as primed and ready to start flapping their arms and trampling one another, as Rod Serling pointed out in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (1960), whenever the lights blink. Today, as fed by media both legitimate and less so, America as a whole seems to be one ugly, sloppy, rolling ball of mass hysterias. We are a gullible, susceptible people.

Although a few sillyassed contemporary revisionists are attempting to rewrite history, claiming the incidents that took place in Mattoon, Illinois in the Fall of 1944 really were the work of a shadowy and diabolical madman, their efforts are about as worthwhile as those of the hundreds of researchers who’ve claimed they’ve discovered the true identity of the (equally fictional) Jack the Ripper. As things stand, The Mad Gasser of Mattoon remains a perfect textbook example of American mass hysteria at its finest.

Mattoon was a small, quiet community in central Illinois, home to a few factories but far from the bustle of Chicago, Springfield or Champagne-Urbana. In 1944 it was even quieter than usual, considering most of the able-bodied men in town had been shipped off to the war.

Although the invasion of Normandy two months earlier seemed to bode well, as with the rest of the country there was still a palpable paranoia in the air that infiltrated most of the women, children and elderly residents who had been left stateside. They worried not only about the young locals in Europe and the South Pacific, but also about what those sinister Germans and Japs might have up their dirty sleeves. And those were only the big things to worry about. There was plenty else, too, all the day-to-day small town fears, especially those harbored by lonely middle-aged women.

On the night of August 31st, Urban Raef and his wife were awakened by a strange smell in their bedroom. The smell sickened both of them. Convinced there was a gas leak, Mrs. Raef attempted to get out of bed to check the stove’s pilot light, but found she couldn’t move her legs.

That same night, a young mother in the same neighborhood woke up when she heard her daughter coughing in another room. As with Mrs. Raef, when she tried to get out of bed to check on the girl, she found her legs seemed to be paralyzed. In both cases the symptoms passed relatively quickly, and the incidents never made it into the papers. Not until later, anyway.

Around 11PM the following night, Bert Kearney, a local cab driver, still had an hour and a half left on his shift. Back home, his wife was awakened by what she described as a sweet odor permeating the room. As the smell grew stronger. Her legs began to feel weak, so she called her sister, who was living with them at the time. When the sister entered the room, she not only smelled the sweet odor, but pointed out it was coming through the open window. As there happened to be a lot of cash in the house that night—stacks of it, in fact, which the sisters had been counting at the kitchen table earlier in the evening—the pair jumped to the conclusion this strange odor must be the work of a prowler who planned to rob them. They called the cops, who could not find any evidence of anything. No odor, no gas, no footprints or fingerprints, no sign of attempted entry. But when Bert returned home after his shift, he claims to have spotted a tall, thin man wearing dark close and a tight cap crouching near the house. Although he gave chase, he soon lost the man in the darkness. The creeping paralysis soon passed, though for the next few days his wife did complain about a burning sensation in her mouth and throat, obvious side effects of the strange gas the tall thin stranger had pumped into the bedroom.

The Kearney’s story made the papers, and that was the end of it. With the details of their harrowing evening now made public, they provided the other residents of Mattoon with the only blueprint they needed.

In the three days following the publication of the Kearney’s story, six other people called the cops to report eerily similar gas attacks with all the same trademarks: a weird smell, partial paralysis of the legs, and a burning sensation in the mouth and throat. One elderly woman claimed the tall, dark-clad Mad Gasser, as he was quickly coming to be known, crawled in through her bedroom window and, um, “attempted to gas her.” A middle aged couple, Carl and Beulah Cordes, returned home on the night of September 5th and discovered a white handkerchief on the back porch. When Beulah picked up the handkerchief and took a big whiff, she said, she began vomiting violently, and from that the pair concluded it must have been left by the Mad Gasser to knock out their dog so he could break into the house. An older woman living with her adult daughter claimed they were in the kitchen when a tall man dressed all in black began rattling the knob of the back door. Finding it locked, he used a syringe to inject the mysterious gas through the keyhole. Both women passed out, waking up several hours later with that telltale burning in their mouth and throats.

Even those who could not claim to be victims of the Mad Gasser themselves spotted him all over Mattoon, sometimes carrying the kind of canister and hose farmers use to spray pesticides. In every instance, the eyewitness descriptions matched perfectly the description Kearney had given the newspapers.

For all their investigating, cops could find no evidence of anything. There was no lasting physical damage to the victims. They could detect no evidence of any strange gas. Although robbery was the presumed motive, no property had been stolen. Even that handkerchief the Cordes’ had found, upon careful analysis, revealed no chemical residue.

The FBI was called in, but likewise found no evidence of anything untoward.

Frustrated by this, as is usually the case, the townsfolk formed roving bands of well-armed angry mobs to patrol the streets at night, determined to capture this Mad Gasser themselves. As official requests that the vigilante groups disband went unheeded, the chief of police was forced to issue a warning begging citizens not to loiter too long on the street for fear they might be mistaken for the Mad Gasser and shot. The town council also issued a plea begging citizens to be real, real careful with those guns.

Roughly two weeks after the Kearney’s story hit the papers, as the number of reported gas attacks in Mattoon approached thirty, the cops stopped caring. Nearly every report could either be explained away quite simply as a reaction to fumes from the local factories, or simply dismissed as false alarms. Considering no evidence was found of anything (save for that evidence created by the supposed victims themselves), this Mad Gasser nonsense was simply a waste of the department’s time, resources, and patience. They had plenty of real local crimes and misdemeanors to deal with as it was.

Not long afterward, and pretty well fed up themselves, town officials came out and told the citizenry to just calm the hell down and stop being stupid. There was no Mad Gasser, and never had been.

After two weeks of public madness and shrill, fear-mongering newspaper headlines, that’s pretty much all it took to bring things to an end. Although it doesn’t seem to work anymore, there was a time, amazingly enough, when all it took was to have someone say, “Oh, just calm the fuck down and go home. You’re all being a bunch of stupid little pansies.”

Seventy-five years after the events in Mattoon, as noted above, a number of revisionists have claimed they’ve identified the mysterious gas that was used, or better still the demented chemist who was behind the attacks, while others note that an eerily similar string of gas attacks took place in Virginia in 1933. It strikes me these people are desperate to sidestep the simple, undeniable reality that people—Americans in particular—are for the most part a stupid, frantic lot eager to not only believe whatever crazy nonsense they’re fed, but run with it as hard as they can.

by Jim Knipfel

[carvedbones]

about the outsider’s mental state.

HIS MENTAL ILLNESS.

the outsider, ever since he were a child, has endured grave abuse of all natures   -----   from his parents,  from the children in the street,  from those whom he loved and lovers alike. as a result, he had developed a few mental illnesses that will come to haunt him throughout the years and have already tormented him for so very long. 

!! warnings for:   abuse,    sexual assault,  self harm.

01.  PTSD. the obvious one.  this is the first one that developed, his trauma forming ever since the first time his father hit him and left bruises on his skin. when he was much, much younger, around the age of 6,  his father first struck him for making the mistake of being a clumsy child.  resentment over having his wife’s attention taken away,  the outsider was punished for every little reason   ---   and sometimes even without one. he became a burden to the family,  cowering each time the sound of a man raising his voice was heard,  curling in on himself as if he were terrified;  whatever would take away the inevitable hurt,  he would attempt to use.  to compromise.  but it never worked.  he was his father’s stress relief,  something to act out on whenever things got hard.  he was supposed to be an obedient, happy daughter;  not some rebellious short-haired ugly creature.  the outsider was unfit to be a bride,  to give away to a rich man to secure their family’s financial future. it only worsened the abuse.

outside of his home were a specific group of boys.  always teasing him,  bullying him,  testing his limits,  touching him wherever he hated it most.  they never showed any respect for him and made it abundantly clear they didn’t care for formalities.  what a freak,  what an ugly kid,   with his messy hair and dark circles under his eyes.  they punished him too    ------  ripping his clothes,  leaving him disgusted at his own body and the way it responded to his new sexual trauma.  he cried for days,  until the salt pricked his sensitive skin,  until his face was swollen from his sorrow.

he never recovered properly.  if he attempts to sleep, nightmares will consume his rest. if anyone touches him without him initiating,  he will pull away.  

›  symptoms.    ---------     nightmares;  fear-induced paralysis;  prone to shaking and crying when slightly upset;  anger fueled by sorrow;  trust issues;  memory gaps;  body detachment;  hypersexuality;  cynicism;  hypervigilance.

02. SOCIAL ANXIETY.

paired with his trauma surrounding social interaction with his peers,  he is quite terrible at speaking to people in an environment he did not shape himself.  the sole reason the outsider is capable of having conversations with people without his insecurities interfering him in-game is because each of these conversations are within a controlled environment,  where most of the responses are easy to anticipate.   outside of that?  he’s very silent,  a quiet person.  does not initiate contact with people he does not know and becomes incredibly nervous when forced to interact with people he does not know.

›  symptoms.    ---------     avoidance of interaction with strangers he doesn’t know;  avoidance of becoming the center of attention;  extreme fear of being awkward or inappropriate;  shaking;  fast heartbeat;  nausea.

03.  BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER.

following the many,  many times wherein the outsider was hurt or abused,  it left him scarred and caused his development to be problematic and stunted in various ways.  as a result,  his ability to process emotions properly and act with great precision is somewhat messed up;  although this is mostly regulated now,  sometimes his emotions get the better of him and he becomes cold or sad depending on the circumstances,  for seemingly no reason to the people around him.  it’s also why he either praises or scolds his marked;  either they appease him or defy his wishes,  and depending on that his reaction is either subtly leaning towards positive or negative   -----   his responses always less overt.

this also causes him to struggle in interpersonal relationships where most people do not ---- his past has bred a sense of underlying paranoia that is difficult to soothe and control,  where the person he cares about can appear affectionate and the outsider will regard any sort of change as a sign of dislike towards him. more often than not, he can manage these feelings and dismiss them;  but if he doesn’t know someone well,  this makes it extremely easy for him to feel rejected.  as a result,  he can sometimes spontaneously stop speaking to someone,  stop appearing before them unless they wish for him to in an explicit manner.  with those he knows better or even loves... he is oddly honest.  he confronts people with his insecurities if he trusts them thoroughly and cannot make these emotions go away,  cannot force rationality upon the situation.  it will be extremely difficult to do  (hence why he barely gets close to anyone),  but it is vital to a relationship.

when he cannot make these feelings go away or cannot pinpoint the source of his dread,  he tends to chase whatever makes him feel better.  to most borderline people it’s drugs,  but to outsider’s it’s sex. sex with strangers he isn’t even attracted to.  hearing them call him “beautiful” even once is enough for his self esteem to soar,  thus he seeks it over and over and over.  no matter how dangerous and questionable it becomes,  if his suicidal tendencies are back, he’ll disguise himself as a human and find a man who marvels at his allure,  allowing them to feel in control over him for as long as he likes. 

if he cannot have access to that, he tends to scratch his skin in frustration instead.  no one ever sees this side of him  ---  where he digs his nails into his arms as they are crossed until the bleed and turn to wounds. luckily, he can no longer scar like this;  but he always remembers,  always will feel it.  

›  symptoms.    ---------     mood swings;  paranoia;  extreme fear of abandonment;  self destructive tendencies;  chronic feeling of emptiness;  impulsiveness;  unclear self image.

04.  PSYCHOSIS.

this one is a bit more complicated;  whenever the outsider’s sorrow becomes overwhelming,  it more often than not triggers mild auditory and visual hallucinations at night.  they are often minor but manage to scare him plenty regardless.  there are the visions that come to him naturally, however.

the void also induces his psychosis up to a certain point.  by planting sequences of horror in his head, giving graphic details of horrific possible events that few would be able to handle  --- not even himself.  sometimes it leaves him quiet, uncomfortable,  chaotic in his mind. he’s never certain how to handle it as there’s no one he can tell of this in a manner that would express how traumatic it is, as these are not dreams.  they’re a sequence of events that might be genuine,  every sensation within it more explicit than even his own memory.

›  symptoms.    ---------     hallucinations (auditory,  visual);  paranoia;  easily startled.

[severalrodentsdrinkingtea]

An Experience: How I Accidentally Poisoned Myself

Buckle up my dudes we going for a ride.

SO I’m a college student and this year I am in a new housing complex, so I needed a new route to my school. Before the semester started, I went on a walk to find the best way to my first class, when I happened to stumble on a quaint bike path! It was by a babbling stream and overhung with all kinds of trees and i thought to myself, jackpot! I love myself some trees, so when school started I familiarized myself with this path and all its curiosities. 

One day I had some time on my hands as I was walking home, so I began to examine the trees above me (as one does). At one point I came across a curious tree with strange spiny fruit. On the ground below it were numerous brown husks that, upon closer examination, looked to be chestnuts! O joy! As a person who remembers nostalgically when Man foraged to survive, I was greatly intrigued by this tree and began to research ways to roast chestnuts in preparation for when the nuts would ripen. 

And so they did.

I gathered probably 40 or 50 chestnuts over the space of a few days, and the evening came when I had nothing else to be doing with my time but experimenting with food I found on the ground. Thus, I fired up my toaster and set to roasting. For 25 long, hungry minutes, I watched my little castane sizzle and brown. At last! The glorious ding of the toaster sounded and I retrieved the nuggets. Once they had cooled, I pried open a nut and helped myself.

the following is an approximation of my expression:

Something, dear readers, is amiss.

I had eaten chestnuts once before, and I didn’t remember them tasting quite so. Horrendous. It was somewhere between kale and bleach (don’t ask me how I know what bleach tastes like. It’s an instinct) and, needless to say, I didn’t like it. Alarm bells *should* have been going off in my head, bitterness being a common natural sign of toxicity (kind of like my ex lolololollll) and yet, I continued to eat. Why? Because I am trying to be healthy, goldarnit, and lots of healthy things taste like the sweat of Satan! 

I manage to eat nearly an entire nut when my Monkey Brain finally shut down my Health Brain and I had the sense to google whether there are chestnut lookalikes that are poisonous.

Ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary friends? These are horse chestnuts:

These are REAL chestnuts:

They look similar, yes? I agree. They look so similar, in fact, that they might be eaten by some idiot college student trying to be the next Bear Grylls. When one is educated in the subject, however, it is obvious that these two are not the same plant. Real chestnuts have a pointed tip at the top of the glossy brown shell--a tuft, if you will. Horse chestnuts are mostly rounded, perhaps ovally. In any case, they have no tuft. There is also an obvious difference in the fruit. As one can see from the pictures, real chestnut fruit are hedgehog-esque, covered in numerous prickles that make them nearly impossible to grab. Horse chestnut fruit, however, are merely lumpy and channel a similar energy to Shrek. Eating too many horse chestnuts (including all animals except deer, because they’re b.a. like that) can cause nausea, paralysis, and death. 

Yes, my friends, in an effort to be more wholistic and natural in my diet, I had poisoned myself. Thankfully my only symptoms were an itchy/burning throat and a touch of nausea--nothing a glass of milk and a slice of banana bread couldn’t solve. It will definitely be a long time, though, before I venture again into the dangerous waters of foraging.

tl-dr: I was trying to be a forest sprite and poisoned myself with chestnut lookalikes

[homestestforsyphilis-blog]

At Home Syphilis Test

The instant you believe syphilis there certainly must be urgent exposure to your medical care expert. Syphilis are also kept in mind to be associated with male-male sexual activity. Go to your medical professional immediately if you observe any sort of indicators of syphilis, however harmless. There might be actually one or even many such chancres seeming on one-of-a-kind elements of the human body, specifically if syphilis is in mixture along with HIV. Healing syphilis is straightforward in the begin. Tertiary syphilis could possibly cause blindness, psychological problems, deafness, paralysis, heart failure, and in some cases even fatality.

Free Home Syphilis Test

The package is helpful as it's basic to use as well as gives 99% accuracy in a quick period of 15 minutes. Usually, it has all the required compartments and resources for sample extraction. Every person may purchase an STD test set on the internet or in your area. It's possible for you to use an STD test kit to identify your standing in your home. It will definitely be actually beneficial to recognize an STD property test kit might considerably vary coming from an additional due to easy reality that STDs are actually caused by an assortment of brokers. Based upon the standing of the person, there are numerous STD testing packages which could be located on the market.

Numerous kind of tests can be used to find out a Chlamydia infection, as well as a lot of all of them are incredibly identical to gonorrhea tests. Essentially, in some circumstances, Chlamydia tests and also gonorrhea tests may be worked on an identical sample. The alternating technique demands an urine sample that may be effectively collected with no exterior help unlike the blood sample. The tests must be actually purchased directly on-line as the procedure is less costly and also quicker. Wherever you choose to decide on the test, are sure to observe along with the paths adequately. Locating a syphilis test is actually ever before therefore simpler nowadays as well as there are a variety of techniques to have it performed. There's a specialty laboratory test which not simply assesses the degree of the hormonal agent, but on top of that the accurate per-cent and also degree of increase or reduce.

If you recognize someone that's positive for an STD as well as is actually single, be certain you find out all the achievable self-destruction indication, so you will definitely manage to prevent the person from eliminating on their own. It is actually essential for everyone that thinks they might possess an STD to become checked as a method to guard their health and wellness along with the health of their partners. Unique STDs originate from different microorganisms that have numerous systems. A lot of STDs are actually asymptomatic in their first stages, consequently it's critical that you screen on your own to stay away from extra complications. Even one thing as quick and easy as genital STD yearning can easily boost the danger of a self-destruction. You can easily safeguard yourself from STDs by working with a condom with spermicidal yet the greatest security is sex-related sobriety. STDs brought on through parasites like lice attack as well as trichomoniasis are most definitely the absolute most obvious amongst the 3 teams.

Do Home Syphilis Tests Work

The signs are grouped based on the parts of the body that are had an effect on. Indicators of syphilis are based on the phase of the disease. To avoid obtaining in more issue, you should certainly get tested the second you experience any of the syphilis signs, especially throughout the main stage.

The set is user-friendly as well as products you along with as long as 98% accuracy in only a fourth an hour. Every person can get an STD test kit on the internet or regionally. The world wide web std test set might be actually the greatest selection for the majority of people, as you won't get in a situation to define why you would like to obtain evaluated.

Each kind of Syphilis test possesses its conveniences and also drawbacks. Locating a syphilis test is actually ever before thus much easier nowadays and there are several approaches to have it carried out. It is essential to get a syphilis test as a means to create the sure appropriate diagnosis.

When looking at STD test in your home choices, it's essential to ensure any sort of test you acquire is FDA Approved. Or, it is actually possible to directly select the test by taking advantage of any site that supplies Syphilis screening. There are great deals of treponemal tests currently on call, as well as a number of the best usually used treponemal tests are actually given listed below.

All our tests are conveniently available to acquire online. After you buy your test from our team, you can easily make a decision to receive a phone conversation or e-mail along with your outcomes. Blood test Blood test is most certainly the absolute most trusted test for HIV.

You obtain whatever you could ever must perform the tests in the house. Wherever you opt for to pick the test, ensure to observe alongside the directions properly. It's feasible when you conduct all the tests in 1 go. Adhering to that, opt for the test that you would like to take. Butat-home tests are actually commonly less accurate than a community medical clinic or even an internet STD test support. An added test will definitely be done in order to examine whether the RPR was actually shown to become a false-positive, or even in the unlikely event you possess Syphilis. Additionally, if you test positive using an at-home test, you could have to buy an indirect test to confirm the end outcome.

Free Syphilis Home Test Kit

There're 3 distinct tactics to receive your STD screening performed. Also be actually specific to go for STD testing to observe whether you've acquired other sexually broadcast contaminations that may enhance your odds of receiving HIV infection. If you're taking into consideration to get STD screening due to the fact that you're not exactly sure of a potential STI, it certain is actually the very best factor to carry out. Absolutely free STD screening isn't undisclosed considering that the testing agencies must report the end result of your test.

Syphilis tests There are actually lots of procedures to test for syphilis. Syphilis could be treated therefore you have to behave just before it is actually late! Eventually, it can easily become rather harmful. It is called the fantastic copy cat as it can easily replicate a few other ailments and also create identical symptoms which may puzzle certainly not just an average individual, but a lot of professional physicians also.

You'll discover whether syphilis is sensed. Seized early, syphilis is actually easily alleviated. Or even discovered, it may continue to be in the body for a long time.

The 3rd illustration is actually syphilis is due to bacteria. The particular initial indicators of syphilis may certainly not be viewed quickly. You find, syphilis is actually merely some of many treatable STIs. Syphilis, such as various other STDs, can easily generate terrible effect on the physical body when reveals its own signs and symptoms.

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Clear-Cut Keeping Food Safe Secrets - Top Insights For 2021

Is it possible to get sick from contaminated food? That's a common question. The answer to this question varies widely, depending on the kind of food you eat. It is usually not a serious illness but can cause severe digestive problems. The symptoms usually appear in a few days, but can last up to a week. The symptoms of food poisoning may not be immediately apparent.

Food containing bacteria can cause diarrhea and vomiting. It may also contain pesticides or chemicals. In the case of raw produce, there's a good chance that the contamination is not visible, but bacteria or fungi may linger on the surface for several days before you get sick. It is important to properly store food that is hot or cold. This will prevent the spread of infection. Always wash your hands when preparing and serving food.

Infection from contaminated food can be caused by different organisms. The chicken reproductive organs can be contaminated, as well as the flesh of fish. Vegetables irrigated with contaminated water may have contaminated soil. Pesticides and other chemicals can also be introduced to food. One recent outbreak of foodborne illness occurred due to contaminated cantaloupe. Another example is peanut butter, which was made in a contaminated facility.

Foodborne illnesses can be dangerous. These illnesses usually appear 36 hours after eating contaminated food. However, symptoms may not manifest for days or even weeks. The most common type of foodborne illness is botulism, which can cause paralysis and even death. Clostridium botulinum is the organism that causes botulism. It produces a nerve poison that can cause paralysis and even death. You can avoid this dangerous disease by eating a healthy diet.

Is it okay to eat contaminated foods? Yes. It can be dangerous for your health. There is a high chance of contracting a parasite if you eat raw vegetables. The organism could cause severe symptoms and even death if you inhale it. Fortunately, if you're eating shellfish, it's not likely to be contaminated, you can avoid the symptoms of this disease.

Other than contaminating foods, contamination can also lead to other health problems. Salmonella is one example of a variety bacteria that can cause infection. This bacteria causes fever, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. The symptoms of Salmonella infection are generally mild and may last anywhere from four to seven days. Although it is not difficult to get, serious illness can result. If you are consuming contaminated food, you should keep your refrigerator temperature at the lowest possible level.

How does food get contaminated? The obvious answer is that bacteria can multiply on the food's surface. This can lead to food becoming highly infectious. Bacteria thrive in moist, warm environments. This makes it hard for people to recognize when they have eaten contaminated food. Proper refrigeration is essential to prevent bacterial growth. Also, high levels of salt, sugar, and acid prevent the bacteria from multiplying.

Consumers can be affected by food contamination in many ways. It can affect their health, as well as the reputation of a business. Although most people think only about three types of contamination, there is actually four. Here are some examples. Here are some examples. Biological contamination can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Heavy metals may also cause cancer or neurological disorders. Foreign material can also pose a danger to your dental health, and can lacerate your mouth and throat.

Certain foods are more susceptible to contamination than others. Some of these foods are processed or improperly stored, and others may be contaminated due to a variety of pathogens. In the United States, Salmonella bacteria is the most common cause of food poisoning. It is responsible for approximately one million cases of food poisoning and 450 deaths per year. It is commonly found in raw dairy products, eggs, and meat.

Food preparation can be done in a restaurant, home kitchen or at home. It is the process of making food available for consumption. This could be following a complex recipe or simply heating and serving food. However, in some cases food can be contaminated by a dirty deli or grocery store. Likewise, a dirty truck can contaminate nearby foods, including those of the same type.

Incorrect cooking is the leading cause of food poisoning. Even though food is properly cooked, bacteria and other harmful organisms can still infect it. This can happen when the food is not properly cooked or left at room temperature. If the food is not properly stored, it can be contaminated by bacteria on its surface. If the temperature is too high, it can be contaminated by bacteria.

There are many bacteria and parasites that can cause food to be contaminated. While some of these bacteria can cause illness in humans, there are also other forms of contamination. When a food is contaminated, it can be a major source of food poisoning. A contaminated meat may be an indicator of a serious health problem, so it is important to properly clean a deli before preparing the meat.

Foodborne illnesses are very common and can be life-threatening. They usually affect young children and pregnant women. Most of the time, the illness is preventable and can be prevented by washing hands frequently and properly. But not all outbreaks are avoidable. Below are some common causes of foodborne illnesses. These common causes can be avoided and you and your family will be protected from them. Read on to learn more about the different types of foodborne illnesses and how to prevent them.

Salmonella is one of the most common foodborne illnesses, but the symptoms of salmonella are not as serious. The reason is that vaccination can prevent the spread of salmonella. This infection is spread through contaminated water and food. The illness is usually gone within one week. However, it can cause severe symptoms such as fever and yellowing of your eyes. In some cases, the disease can lead to a complication with joints, which can make eating hard and painful.

Bacteria are responsible for many foodborne diseases. They are commonly found in poultry and raw meat. Salmonella is the most common. This is a difficult-to-define bacterium that is found in animal products. Produce that has been in direct contact with the disease can be contaminated. The symptoms of this illness may be nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and fever. You might also feel tired or shakey.

Salmonella symptoms are not as serious as those of other foodborne illnesses. Vaccination can prevent the disease. These symptoms can be caused by eating contaminated food. The infection is spread by water or through contaminated food. Most people who get salmonella within one week are cured. You may also experience stomach cramps, diarrhea, or fever. You may experience different symptoms depending on which type of salmonella infection you have. If you experience any of these symptoms, see a doctor immediately.

While salmonella symptoms are not as severe as other foodborne illnesses, they should be taken seriously. While salmonella is easily spread by contaminated water and is not life-threatening, it is still an important food safety risk. Moreover, it is possible for people to contract this disease by consuming contaminated food. Foodborne illness symptoms are usually not as severe as other forms of foodborne diseases.

Foodborne illnesses can be caused by physical and biological hazards. These are non-edible food contaminants that can cause injury, damage, or even death. It is possible to avoid these diseases and keep them from affecting you health. However, it is important to avoid eating contaminated food or drink. If you experience symptoms of these foodborne illnesses, it is best to seek medical attention. To avoid complications, it is important to seek medical attention immediately if you are at risk of developing any of these diseases.