Octopus Overlords

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 1:23 am No, just a mental eye wash station.

Punisher wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 1:49 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 1:23 am No, just a mental eye wash station.

I mean we can always revive the metalhead? Poo story....

Punisher wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 12:10 am I'm assuming you are both referring to the mental kind and not the physical kind.
If so have you looked into remote therapy?
I've been doing that for different things since December. Still had a bit of a wait but it's much more convenient.

Jaymon wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 4:56 pm "Go to therapy"

man that is some shit advice. going to therapy is hard. I don't mean being in therapy.
I mean, the actual act of finding a therapist and getting into therapy is hard work.

I don't know how people manage it. its a right royal pain. I am struggling with it.
not in network, no availability for clients, way too different a belief system.


And I am dreading whats going to happen later. They are gonna ask questions. I really don't want to have to try and justify myself.
I am a strangled knot of stress, depression, withdrawn emotions, and anxiety. What do I want to work on?

I want to wake up in the morning without feeling like this is just another day of torture until the blessed release of death, which may never come becasue of how many people rely on me for every little aspect of their lives.

So yeah, I am trying to "go to therapy" but today it just feels like another stone I am pushing up this fucking hill.

Scuzz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 1:17 pm So my colonoscopy went okay. I live 5 minutes from the hospital so that was easy. The doctor did find 4 polyps which he said he thought were benign, but because of that I will have another colonoscopy in 3 years.

While the first part of the prepping wasn’t too bad the magnesium citrate at 5am was terrible. Awful stuff, like drinking lemon flavored sea water.

naednek wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 8:32 pm

Scuzz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 1:17 pm So my colonoscopy went okay. I live 5 minutes from the hospital so that was easy. The doctor did find 4 polyps which he said he thought were benign, but because of that I will have another colonoscopy in 3 years.

While the first part of the prepping wasn’t too bad the magnesium citrate at 5am was terrible. Awful stuff, like drinking lemon flavored sea water.

my son prefers that over the milk of magnesia. Due to him having cystic fibrosis, he gets backed up a few times a year. He gets to take 2 bottles of that in a 4 hour period (I think)

Scuzz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 11:41 pm

naednek wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 8:32 pm

Scuzz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 1:17 pm So my colonoscopy went okay. I live 5 minutes from the hospital so that was easy. The doctor did find 4 polyps which he said he thought were benign, but because of that I will have another colonoscopy in 3 years.

While the first part of the prepping wasn’t too bad the magnesium citrate at 5am was terrible. Awful stuff, like drinking lemon flavored sea water.

my son prefers that over the milk of magnesia. Due to him having cystic fibrosis, he gets backed up a few times a year. He gets to take 2 bottles of that in a 4 hour period (I think)

That would clear you out. But two bottles,

Jaymon wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 4:56 pm I want to wake up in the morning without feeling like this is just another day of torture until the blessed release of death, which may never come because of how many people rely on me for every little aspect of their lives.

Jaymon wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 4:56 pm "Go to therapy"

man that is some shit advice. going to therapy is hard. I don't mean being in therapy.
I mean, the actual act of finding a therapist and getting into therapy is hard work.

I don't know how people manage it. its a right royal pain. I am struggling with it.
not in network, no availability for clients, way too different a belief system.

And I am dreading whats going to happen later. They are gonna ask questions. I really don't want to have to try and justify myself.
I am a strangled knot of stress, depression, withdrawn emotions, and anxiety. What do I want to work on?

I want to wake up in the morning without feeling like this is just another day of torture until the blessed release of death, which may never come becasue of how many people rely on me for every little aspect of their lives.

So yeah, I am trying to "go to therapy" but today it just feels like another stone I am pushing up this fucking hill.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 3:40 pm I used to have people that needed me. Now its just my dog. If not for him I wouldn't care if I woke up again. I want to go when he goes as then theres zero left here but pain. Used to want to live forever.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:01 pm

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2024 9:35 pm My on again/off again groin pain resurfaced significantly over the past 6 months. Some days it would be tolerable, other days I could barely move without massive pain.

Given my family history with cancer, we had tried pretty much every test to rule out that possibility and figure out what was causing it. Ultrasounds, blood tests, colonoscopy, CT scan, I saw a urologist several times, etc, etc. Everything came back perfectly clear and my doctor seemed stumped. I had just sort of resigned myself to trying to tough it out.

At my physical last week, I mentioned that it had flared up again. My doc said the last thing he could think to do was an MRI to check for structural damage. Had that today and sure enough, I have a “significant” anterior hip labral tear. He said I can still run as long as I can tolerate the pain, but other activities that involve quick movements or change of direction (football or basketball with the kids, for example) need to stop.

He referred me to a surgical consult so I’ll find out in a couple weeks what I have to do next. Bah.

Well...shit. Looks like I have to get my hip replaced.

There is a repair surgery for a torn labrum in the hip, but if you're over 40 (I'm 49) there's a sub-50% chance it'll actually work. Since blood flow naturally decreases in that area with age, it prevents the surgery from healing. She said that more often than not, people over 40 who had that repair surgery were coming back within 1-2 years and having to get their hips replaced anyways, so they are now just recommending replacement as the starting point.

The other option is to do cortisone shote every 6-8 weeks, or to just continue to tolerate the pain until it gets to the point I can't anymore...then do the hip replacement at that point.

Never having had surgery before, I'll admit this all kinda freaks me out. Seems like a very drastic step, but what the doctor said made total sense to me.

Also, just a general WTF man. HIP REPLACEMENT IS FOR OLD PEOPLE!!

This sucks.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:25 pm About four years ago I was put on Vyvanse for what, at the time, was diagnosed as ADHD. It turned me into a productivity god for about six months, and then, once I got used to it, was just sort of there. It's one of those medications that you have to wean yourself off of slowly...

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:25 pm About four years ago I was put on Vyvanse for what, at the time, was diagnosed as ADHD. It turned me into a productivity god for about six months, and then, once I got used to it, was just sort of there. It's one of those medications that you have to wean yourself off of slowly.

About a year ago there was a shortage, and it took forever to find a pharmacy that actually had it in stock, to the point that I was cutting the ones I had in half. A few months later there was an issue getting a refill from the doctor (she was out of the office for a week, and nobody else was willing to write one. That came down to the last minute, too. And a few months ago my insurance refused to pay for it (it's many hundreds of dollars.) It turns out that the doctor's office had called it in with the wrong diagnosis code - they used the one for narcolepsy, which I don't have. That one took several days and it wasn't until I called and made it very clear that it was a mistake on their part that caused the problem that they were willing to fix it. Again, it happened when the doctor was out of the office, and none of the other doctors was willing to send a corrected version in.

It doesn't help that it's a controlled substance, which means that I can't try to fill it - and the pharmacy can't try to run it - until three days before I'm out. That means that if there is a problem, I have very little time in which to fix it. And as my doctor isn't in on Fridays or the weekend, if my 'due date' falls on a Friday, I get zero days to solve the problem.

This time it's a shortage again. Every pharmacy in town, and every one in every adjacent town, is out. None would give me an ETA. It wasn't until one told me that the manufacturers had them all backordered that I realized this wasn't going to be solved. I've had enough of this hassle. It helps, but it's not worth it anymore.

Had the refill restrictions not been so absurd, or had either the pharmacist or doctor warned me this could happen (research shows it's been expected for months), then I'd have been able to break up the last couple of weeks worth to wean myself down. But they didn't, so I was left with nothing to work with.

Cold turkey for me. Yay.

I'm on day four now. I'm barely awake half of the time, I have headaches, I can't think clearly, I'm irritable, and my moods are all over the hell (mostly bouncing between anger, anxiety, and depression.)

This is other-than-fun, and every bit of it is avoidable. This is caused by Federal laws designed to counter drug dealers, and it is caused by manufacturers trying to pad their profit margins. The fact that human beings suffer the fallout of it matters exactly zero to any of them.

My patience for the corporate profits-over-people has passed zero and is well into the negative numbers.

Default wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2024 5:26 pm What I understood to be the case, is generally, the amount the drug companies can make, is based on last year's demand. We are probably at the end of the quarter, so they have possibly made all they were allowed to. Cap that off with the components they use to make the meds are also controlled substances, and it's misery.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2024 9:07 pm FWIW, I am biased. I have become very jaded, and very bitter about corporate profit-at-all-costs culture. As someone who can't work, and, as a result don't have much money, it's been rubbed into my face time and again that my value to the world is limited to how I can be best exploited by the rich. The constant manipulation, advertising, tracking, 'shrinkflation', elimination of services that aren't profitable enough, getting shoved into the back row because I can't afford premium medical insurance, and just constantly being 'used' has finally gotten me to the point where I don't exactly have a great deal of patience when it comes to that sort of thing.

I've very much entered the pitchforks-and-torches frame of mind. I don't particularly like it, but I'm helpless to do anything else about it. I can take the abuse and be exploited, or I can go off and quietly die off to make room for someone who will.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:11 pm The government should invalidate their patents, then.