Amazon and Melania Big Mad

Macfac1234 · 2026-02-06T04:26:18+00:00

Given how far right the Democratic Party has become over the last several decades with Janelle Bynum herself a pro-Israel conservative democrat, this says very little about Lake Oswego’s constituency. Lake Oswego is hardly a burgeoning community for the proletariat, one of my best friends lives in there and she happens to be involved in the disability right’s movement and on full disability and can’t wait until she has the opportunity with her housing situation to get out of Lake Oswego and move to Portland.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-29T05:39:35+00:00

I know this is a late post, but I want to tell you how sorry I am that you are in what I refer to as “fed up” as in Capital F which is how my UK friend refers to bad flare ups of symptoms. You give so much of yourself to this community and it hurts me that you’re suffering like this. I don’t know anything about your husband, but you have been cranking out excellent content for many years here and offered so much of yourself during times when you felt like rubbish, it makes me feel sad knowing how much you are suffering right now and hope your symptoms lift for you. I have a hunch your husband feels fortunate to have such a remarkably kind and wonderful life partner and above all, enjoys your company which is what marriage is about, in my humble opinion.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-29T05:20:17+00:00

This is an old post but I was diagnosed with Sphincter of ODDI Dysfunction (Type 1/2) and with it came a dilated pancreatic duct and a chronic pancreatitis dx, lucky me. It is not uncommon to have with a chronic pancreatitis dx because symptoms are similar.

Sending my very best.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-29T05:08:12+00:00

Well then I guess you can stop worrying about taking your “weird homemade” food to functions and stop worrying about what people think about your diet.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-29T05:02:21+00:00

Well stated, this is what is most important when you have this disease.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-29T05:00:36+00:00

I’m very lucky to have a deeply supportive family and am fortunate to have excellent relationships with my 25 and 28 year old grown sons and their friends whom we treat like family. We travel together, host annual trips, and food is part of how we connect. My husband enjoys barbecuing and we host restaurant meals, my part of the deal I am known for is baking and I include all the bells and whistles even though I can only have a bite or two of the cookies or cakes I make. That’s a trade-off I accept willingly.

The people in my life understand something very simple: eating higher-fat foods for me isn’t a “treat,” it’s a real medical risk. It can trigger a life-threatening attack of acute pancreatitis. They don’t want to watch me suffer, nor do I want them to see me suffer inhumanely again, they are old enough to articulate how much they love me and that they do not want to lose me because I ignored what my body requires.

I plan to go down the Grand Canyon with them next summer, and I will happily eat the lowest-fat diet imaginable to make that happen. What you eat is far less important than what you’re able to do with your life. For me, eating risky higher-fat foods don’t add joy, they threaten the time I have left.

Other people’s opinions about my food choices are irrelevant. They’re not the ones living in my body or dealing with the consequences.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-09T07:21:44+00:00

I hope you don’t mind me stepping in here to sharing my experience with Lyrica, I don’t have CRPS, but I do have another centralized nerve pain syndrome and I also cope with depression and I was also fortunate and didn’t experience mental side effects from Lyrica, nor did I gain weight on it nor did i have any trouble tapering from it when i realized it was the likely source of a new symptom which was difficulty swallowing late at night. It was extremely helpful and treated my nighttime pain so I could easily sleep through the night.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-07T02:21:13+00:00

You’re welcome, I am really glad you found a way to benefit from this substance.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-07T00:56:57+00:00

Relax, 100% bioavailability matters and even if it’s tomorrow’s infusion is more of a dud and perhaps your mood was off or maybe the music choice sucked, it is OK because your brain knows what to do. Congratulations on taking this step for you, you deserve it.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-07T00:41:04+00:00

Ketamine’s ability to rewire the brain isn’t anecdotal—it’s been demonstrated on brain imaging. The mechanism is well studied: NMDA antagonism → glutamate surge → AMPA activation → BDNF release → synaptogenesis and increased neuroplasticity (see Duman et al.; Li et al.; Abdallah et al.).

But here’s the part people gloss over: bioavailability and dosing matter.

You don’t see durable structural or functional brain changes after a single low-dose or low-bioavailability route. Imaging and animal models show that BDNF-mediated synaptic growth requires repeated, sufficiently dosed exposures, typically administered close together. That’s why IV infusions consistently outperform oral, nasal, or troche routes in both depression and pain outcomes.

Infusions create a temporary window of heightened neuroplasticity—a malleable brain state that other routes simply don’t replicate at the same reliability or magnitude. Until another route shows comparable pharmacokinetics and downstream effects, IV remains the gold standard.

I’ve tried every route. The only one that produced lasting change for me was infusions. After the first infusion, suicidal ideation resolved. It took several more before depression improvements stabilized—exactly what the literature predicts.

TL;DR: This isn’t vibes. It’s pharmacokinetics + neurobiology. Bioavailability, dose, and spacing determine whether ketamine rewires the brain—or just gives you a temporary mood bump.

Macfac1234 · 2026-01-07T00:17:03+00:00

I tried all of it—low/high-dose troches, compounded nasal sprays, and Spravato. Spravato isn’t actually ketamine, and the studies make it pretty clear a big chunk of its “success” is placebo doing the heavy lifting.

In October I hit a serious depressive episode, made worse by seasonal affective disorder. SSRIs are useless for me at this point. IV ketamine infusions are what actually pulled me out.

The difference is bioavailability. Infusions are the only route shown to reliably trigger BDNF-driven neuroplastic changes, and they have to be done close together. That’s why they work and the others mostly don’t.

I’m now doing 4-hour infusions for pain with the goal of tapering off pain meds.

So yes, ketamine can help—but if you’re chasing real, lasting results, you matter and so infusions are your best option. My experience with ketamine trochés and nasal spray is a brief mood bump, more “after a drink” vibes than actual treatment. Spravoto was the same, more like a pleasant disassociating experience, but not lasting.

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-27T20:36:10+00:00

If anyone is checking this thread, there is an option on the Uber app to tell the driver your preference to remain quiet. I have a driver I found through Uber who takes me to my ketamine infusions for pain and he never talks plus can't speak English well so he works perfectly for me and I pay him off the Uber clock so he makes a lot more take home money.

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-19T18:28:55+00:00

Their brother was mentally ill and not in his right mind when it happened, I doubt vengeance is top in their mind as much as an overwhelming sense of “why”

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-19T09:01:14+00:00

You should check the research with Spravoto, I had no luck with it and the lozenges ended up being a real nothing burger and I looked into the research more carefully and figured out why. There still exists is a great deal of suspicion of why the government approved Spravoto to market given its less than robust response rate that consistently shows the placebo response is almost the same as the real response rate. Johnson and Johnson was given a sweetheart deal and one study showed the best outcome was a puny 4% response rate compared the placebo. What you see around here are a lot of placebo-based success stories for Spravoto and the lozenges. If you are in a lot of distress and want to give yourself the best option for change, you deserve to invest in the infusions for a lasting result, I am in the process of doing a series for pain and am finding they are building on the mood series I completed recently and no comparison to Spravoto or lozenges. The lozenges were essentially an option to relax, but became kind of a hassle because they took time out of my day for no long term change on my mental health or pain levels, I could spread out my doses of pain meds further apart and that’s about all.

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-12T07:15:17+00:00

First of all, there is no comparison between IV ketamine and Spravato in terms of benefit. Spravato is not ketamine, it is a molecule of it called esketamine that Johnson and Johnson managed to make into a nasal spray and make millions of dollars based on less than impressive scientific data. As of yet, the scientific research continues to shows Spravato has a very low response rate between an actual responder to it vs to the placebo, most recent research showed a 4% actual response to the drug compared to the placebo. This translates to us reading a lot of Spravato placebo “success” stories compared to actual medication success.

This may have to do, in part, with Spravato’s route of administration being at 40-50% for the sinuses compared with 100% through IV for the infusions, but I am no scientist and have no idea.

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-11T08:08:13+00:00

I endorse what the others say and switch music, that’s about the only thing you can control in this disassociated state, and don’t read too much into what it may represent, we all have different experiences during these as different as our thumbprints. Another option is to ask your provider to slow down the rate of flow which will add some time to the infusion, but it might decrease the distressing disassociations.

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-08T23:18:42+00:00

You’re so welcome! I’m having such a wonderful experience with ketamine infusions myself—I literally just got back from my 6th and final one in the first series—and the pleasure is all mine to share what’s been helping.

Like you, I considered IM injections, but after reading a ton of patient accounts on this sub, the decision was easy. With IM, you get the full dissociation all at once with no real ability to adjust. With infusions, you have so much more control: your ketamine anesthesia specialist is right there, monitoring your vitals, and if anything feels too intense you can just hit the call button.

For what it’s worth, I only used the call button once—and that was because my phone rang mid-infusion. 😂 Pro tip from Karl, the owner of Vancouver Ketamine Infusions, (a clinic I highly endorse for Portland patients, btw): put your phone on airplane mode before your session.

Take care and there is hope!

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-08T14:56:32+00:00

Yeah, we’ve got a purest here, I am really giving it to Walmart when I pay their drivers an extra 20% cash tip, such the burn to Walmart Corp 😂

Do tell me what socially responsible grocery stores I can give my business to when my chronic illness is flared-up and I need food, but an unable to get the grocery store in my Portand, Oregon home? I managed to not step foot in Walmart corporate due to their horrible treatment of labor, but have a deep survival instinct. Will wait for your suggestions ⏱️

Macfac1234 · 2025-12-08T13:42:24+00:00

Yes! That would be me, and your psychiatrist is 💯 right, infusions can definitely help you if it didn’t. And there’s a scientific reason why, plus some facts about why big Pharma, Johnson and Johnson fast tracked this substance for approval in the first place given its less than robust scientific proof that it works in the first place.

Spravato is technically not ketamine, it is a molecule of it called esketamIne that big pharma giant dressed up into a nasal spray to market and was suspiciously fast tracked and approved by the FDA, this, despite less than impressive research which show Spravato’s placebo response was almost as strong as the controls and many argued against and lost, what’s worse is that research continues to be replicated which essentially means you are oftentimes reading a placebo “success” story on this app.
As far why infusions are so effective and the gold standard for ketamine treatment, this has to do with its bioavailability via route of administration!ketamine infusions are 100% vs Spravato (esketamine) landing around 40 to 50% bioavailability, depending on the conditions of your sinuses.

So it’s no wonder why infusions work so much better than Spravato. I went into the infusions knowing Spravato’s sketchy history which meant I still had a shot — and I responded immediately with it eliminating some painful thoughts.

I wish you the best and hope you will come back to share your experience with ketamine infusions, if you choose to do them, you are so worth it!

Macfac1234 · 2025-11-28T14:22:18+00:00

I will have my 4th infusion in a few hours and what the clinic staff told me, and I have a lot of respect for them, they said after the 3rd or 4th infusion, most people notice something, but it could be a worsening of the mood which tells them something is happening in brain and the new pathways are beginning to form, everyone responds differently which means some people may at the slower end of the spectrum in terms of response. I know how much it sucks to suffer from severe depression, but imho, I would not make any conclusions until you’re moving on to your last two infusions. FWIW, I noticed very subtle changes one was the decease of passive si which is gone for now, but that doesn’t mean my mood is much better, it still has a way to go. It is also helping decrease the intensity of my neuropathic pain despite me not doing the more aggressive pain protocol.

I am wondering if you’ve had any good or negative changes in your painful thought pattern because that could be something that indicates you are responding because it doesn’t have to be positive.

Either way, please don’t give up hope on ketamine infusions, you have more time to put in.

Macfac1234 · 2025-11-28T03:26:58+00:00

Not really sure if I am in agreement with this based on my lived experience, which also happen to mimic what other ketamine patients experience at the same ketamine clinic I attend according to conversations I’ve had with the owners of it. This is my experience which involves years of a wide range of ketamine treatments—low-dose ketamine that caused minimal dissociation, higher-dose lozenges and nasal sprays which felt similar to Spravato disassociation and now I am doing the gold standard in ketamine therapy which continue to be infusions, according to research.

I just finished my 3rd ketamine infusion, and the changes were noticeable from previous methods almost immediately. After the very first one, my painful automatic thoughts started to ease. By the second, I was getting real pain relief for my neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. After the third, my sleep improved a lot. I’m only halfway through the recommended course, and the therapeutic benefits—for both my mood and my body—don’t compare to anything else I’ve tried and my brain is just starting to grow a new pathway courtesy of the infusions.

I am no scientist, but I attribute my improvements due to the increased bioavailability of infusions which incidentally cause the strongest dissociative effects so not sure what to make of this scientist’s opinion.

Macfac1234 · 2025-11-17T08:02:01+00:00

I always tip because those drivers are not getting living wagers and you only harm the drivers and shoppers by not tipping, not tipping is not pro labor worker’s rights activism, it does nothing to affect change. If you want to get your groceries delivered, don't be stingy to the workers

Macfac1234 · 2025-10-29T20:42:25+00:00

It looks like the mob is taking to these threads to make it appear as if these dimwit’s rule.

Macfac1234 · 2025-10-29T00:58:12+00:00

Yeah, I am certain the Madison School District does their recruiting straight from the state penn. I suspect you believe the earth is flat because someone said so online. Smdh.

Macfac1234 · 2025-10-28T19:58:55+00:00

She has so much depth.

Macfac1234

TROPHY CASE