#the Maste

[bholadasposts]

[chronicallydragons]

anyone else ever wish they could lie down harder? Like, I'm already horizontal, but I need more horizontal. I need to be absorbed by the floor. I think that would fix me

[charlesoberonn]

[isbergillustration]

Sometimes if your glasses are foggy enough you can see some strange things

[thebibliosphere]

I had a severe mast cell reaction to something last night for the first time in the longest time* and I can honestly say, hand on heart, I have no idea how I lived like that 24/7 for years.

I have no idea how I dealt with that nightly as a child, only to be yelled at and told to stop attention seeking, while last night my partner held me while I shook and prepared to stick me with an epi pen.

Thankfully he didn’t have to. Thankfully my airways cleared after my body purged itself of everything I’d eaten yesterday** and my heart rate began to climb down. But Jesus Christ, I am wrecked this morning.

* no idea why, only thing I can think of is hormones + sugar which can sometimes raise histamine levels

** everyone thinks anaphylactic reactions start with visible swelling and airway constriction, but for me it’s always been the much slower reaction of severe gastric symptoms which progresses to rapid elevated heartbeat, followed by agonizing acid reflux that burns through my whole chest and then if it doesn’t stop, my airways start to close while I simultaneously start to “fall asleep” (that’s the shock.)

Very rarely do I get visible swelling or hives unless whatever triggered the reaction was from skin contact or injected into my veins. So, just so you know, anaphylaxis doesn’t always look the way it does in the movies. I tell you this only in case it saves a life one day.

[shanks]

Elias

[the-most-sublime-fool]

Then, too, at sea—to use a homely but expressive phrase—you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take up the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

—a sailor's diary entry, on losing a shipmate, ca. 1834 (from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr.)

[huariqueje]

The Mistery IV   -    Francis Di Fronzo , 2020.

American, b.1969-

Oil, watercolor and gouache on panel , 15 1/4 x 19 1/2 in.

[avakkins-alter]

Mast: Romantic Maid | TEDDY

[barnowlive]

I found something while exploring the mast in rain meadow

[mysharona1987]

Honestly I doubt he’s the only one in congress that feels like this, he’s just the only one dumb/arrogant enough to say it

[ltwilliammowett]

Masts, Sails and rigs of the Götheborg of Sweden

[thebibliosphere]

did you get hpv vaccines? theres /some/ evidence that it can be the trigger for pots in some (obv very few) people, i think it might have been for me so i have mixed feelings about it

I did not, but I want to get it done and will be doing so once I get my other more pressing vaccines out of the way because the benefit of preventing cervical cancer are worth it to me as someone with a family history of that cancer.

I’m going to say something that will likely get a lot of people’s backs up: but I do believe people when they say vaccines cause them to develop health issues like dysautonomia or MCAS.

How can I not when every time I get a vaccine it has to be done under strict observation with an epi pen at the ready?

But:

I also believe, based on my own research, talking to countless people with similar issues online and discussions with my own specialists, that those individuals were pre-disposed to such issues and if it hadn’t been the vaccine that got them, then it would have been something else that eventually caused the symptoms to develop.

There is an under-explored genetic factor to mast cell dysfunction and mast cells can play a role in autonomic failure conditions, like POTS, regardless of whether the person suffers the classic allergic reactions more commonly associated with mast cell dysfunction.

Sometimes, something triggers the immune system the wrong way and that’s the catalyst.

It could be a vaccine, or an otc medication safe enough to give to infants. Sometimes it’s a virus or a bacterial infection. Sometimes you’ll just be chugging along and your genetics decide to hit you with a steel chair. It’s unfortunately just your luck of the draw.

And I understand people get validly frustrated and angry when vaccines do this to them, because they’re doing the right thing to protect themselves. It’s just deeply unfortunate that they had this type of immune response that is poorly understood and unpredictable. My hope is that as mast cell research grows, solutions will be found to help prevent it or at least mediate it.

Personally, in the meantime, I’ll take the risk of the vaccine over what the virus might do to me, but that’s because I’ve seen what “mild” viruses can do to people when their immune system is already primed to self-destruct.

I’ve got friends who caught common colds and haven’t left their beds in years because it caused them to develop ME/CFS so severe they never bounced back. It’s wild all the ways the human body can break without killing us.

If the vaccine was the cause of your POTS, I’m sorry that happened to you. It’s shit when it happens. Hopefully it’s some small solace knowing you’re better protected from HPV and the complications that can arise from it, though I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not there yet. Grieving a chronic and lifelong condition like POTS is a shitty, difficult thing. I wish none of us had to go through it.

[shanks]

面倒くさい

[bigcatbulges]

Source - Komboochie (CursedMark)

(Artist's Patreon and Telegram for art)

[chaosmagetwin]

Y'all, I keep seeing HDG posts pop up on my feed, and I can feel it calling me like a fucking siren. I know if I read it, it'll be fucking OVER for me, because I can feel it. I'm not going to be normal about it. I already know I'd be a floret, and I already know I'd enjoy the fucking space lesbian aliens who treat you nice and domme you and everything.

The problem! The fucking! PROBLEM!!! is that I know! It's going to hurt me! I know! It's going to fucking make me yearn my goddamn heart out, and then it's going to be over, and I'll be inside HDG with no way out.

Someone called it info-hazardous material for transfolk, and I can feel the radioactivity from here, read the many warning signs left by past transfolk going "Ah shit, they weren't lying, them broccoli women do be fascinating, now I yearn for the domestication mines", hear the loud buzzing from my geiger counter.

I give myself a week before I give in and read it.