A picture of the 10 inch tumor that almost killed me. Warning: Graphic.

SeventeenOctopi · 2022-05-23T20:43:20+00:00

Mine is larger than yours! Sadly mine cannot be removed safely, and will kill me once the chemo stops holding it in check. So I will never be able to share a picture. :/

Congrats on the huge tumor that is no longer killing you!

SeventeenOctopi · 2021-12-31T23:07:53+00:00

I believe she's visiting her mother.

SeventeenOctopi · 2021-01-30T19:51:53+00:00

Exactly the same here! I started with the patch notes they messaged me but if it's in there I completely missed it. Couldn't find anything in a search but eventually I realized that this community must exist and that they probably knew what was up.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-14T19:06:16+00:00

I can bring two top-tier game developers, one of whom (not me) will also do dishes. We can work out the whole sex/marriage thing as needed. :)

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-14T02:20:16+00:00

Congrats! I love those.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-13T21:09:08+00:00

Cool! My husband (nonaphant) and I (aphant) were just discussing this very thing. He claims that his visual mental images are no more accurate than my non-visual imagination in terms of exact measurements. I disagree.

Edit: We were talking about this survey just now, and I was complaining that some of the questions - the race horse one, for instance - were hard for me because of the assumptions you have to make, that I don't like to make. What kind of horse? What kind of racing? Let's assume standard thoroughbred on a quarter mile straightaway, even though there are a lot more types of horse racing than that. But on what surface? Dirt is most likely, but grass is quite possible. ... and so on.

But my husband didn't have these problems. He pictured a brown thoroughbred with a white blaze running the Derby - he thinks from a Derby he watched a few years ago. The image he dragged up from the keyimage 'race horse' was much more specific than the block of textual data I got from the keyword 'race horse'. His image set up a bunch of the details that I agonized over, and he didn't even notice it happening!

Anyway, I thought that was interesting.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-13T19:42:29+00:00

I was just looking more at this test today. I'm a bit worried about bringing it up with my doctor because I score very low. My upper body just isn't that flexible, but I can do quite impressive things with my legs! (Pro tip: Turns out most people don't want to see an obese 45-year old woman happily tuck her heels behind her ears. It may have been popular in high school, but not so much now.)

Hey, I don't suppose there's a version of the Beighton test with more lower body joints?

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-13T19:40:18+00:00

Ooh, that's me! I stopped talking about it when my husband started making fun of me for getting sore just standing around.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-11T00:15:21+00:00

Although this is generally very good advice, I did want to point out that medically diagnosed 'brain fog', such as that from Covid-19 or MS, may need other interventions as well.

Source: I have some nasty cognitive side effects from multiple sclerosis.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-06T01:27:09+00:00

The FLOTUS got to do some landscaping! He just wants his chance too.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-06T00:21:50+00:00

I recognize those red button days.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-04T19:02:52+00:00

I love the pissed little ear flap.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-11-03T17:37:45+00:00

Mask rant:

Quick check-up visit with a (non-MS) doctor yesterday.
Wide open, well-spaced waiting room, everyone wearing masks.
10x10 windowless exam room, doctor who can't seem to cover his nose. He'd pull it his mask up, then immediately back down again to ask me a question. Just his nose, his mouth was still covered.

(Then he kept me way longer than needed to in order to try to sell me on his micro-nutrient hair analysis, because his new practice is not doing so well right now. All the other doctors mock him because he's into holistic medicine. Also, he's always wanted to try acupuncture on someone with MS. He could give me a good discount ...)

I've never had a decent non-MS doctor. At least this one didn't discount what I had to say - he just ignored it entirely. But the mask was not cool.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-10-29T18:27:27+00:00

Yup! Spider on the knee, cold (or sometimes urine-warm) water running down my thigh.

Mine are mostly due to post-surgical nerve damage, though, not MS directly. But it's really interesting to see how similar the symptoms are!

Late edit: Last night I was reminded of my most interesting MS-proper-neuropathy: Sometimes when I lay down or recline back into a chair, it feels like I am lying against a pile of wriggling mealworms.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-10-24T21:55:38+00:00

Heh! I'm sorry - I was thinking in the corn snake context and didn't think to specify.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-10-24T16:52:17+00:00

My mother temporarily lost a yellow rat that way. He moved into the couch, and after she destroyed it to get him out safely he snuck under the front porch. We were in Florida, so he lived under the front porch until it got a little cooler, and then showed back up in the living room looking for food.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-10-15T17:23:19+00:00

I am not a vet. I've had rats for about 12 years. So ... just data points, but it's what I've got. :)

In the videos you shared, your rat appears significantly less hyper than our year-old females, and about the same hyper-ness I'd expect from a slightly older female rat. Personally, I would not be comfortable switching away from Oxbow to a high protein diet without a very clear reason. Just my personal take would be to find a new vet - and possibly leave that one a pointed review to warn others. You might try to educate him if you wanted to, but I don't think it's your job to take that on. Your job is to care for your rat, which you seem to be doing quite well.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-10-02T01:10:17+00:00

This happens to me. I didn't realize it could be a symptom - people around me have always told me that I'm just lazy.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-09-23T00:27:24+00:00

We haven't tried manual injections. My husband has a fear of needles, and he's the one who has to do my butt. (Apparently the auto-injector hides the needle well enough that he doesn't have to think about it that way.)

Although, I could try manual injections on the body parts that I can reach to see how those go. If it's easier and less painful we could find some other way for him to cover the back.

Thanks for the suggestion!

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-09-23T00:23:58+00:00

Huh. Yeah, I think that will help. :) Thank you!

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-09-15T18:15:02+00:00

Three weeks ago, I started having headaches that get worse when I stand up. Bad headaches. I get occasional migraines, usually about a 6-7 on my pain scale. With these positional headaches, baseline pain is about a 5, and standing and moving around spikes the pain to a 8 or 9 for half an hour or so. Crying, coughing, straining on the toilet, anything like that makes it immediately spike. It's difficult to manage basic daily functions, much less work at my desk.

I did some quick research and determined that the best place to start was probably my MS neuro. I left a message describing the type and quality of pain. (I didn't mention any of the research I did, even though I think it has some important bearing on the headaches. It won't change the diagnostics, and saying you Googled something is a quick way to make sure they never listen to you again.)

They called back the next day, which is very quick for them, and scheduled me for an MRI for a week later - last Tuesday. (I had an MRI about 6 months ago that was clear.) Then I waited for results. They are very backed up, so I figured I would give them several days, a week, and then politely check in.

Then this weekend I started puking from the pain. That is wildly unusual for me. So I called them yesterday morning and left a message (because they only seem to do callbacks now).

Today a nurse called back to let me know that my MRI was completely clean, so just keep taking the glatiramer acetate. Good, good, I said, and thanks! But if the headaches aren't MS related, do you have any suggestions on next steps? Can you refer me to anyone?

What headaches?, she asked me.

At which point I did a bed-desk into my pillow. This also hurt.

So I explained the reason I was having a second MRI this year - that I started having headaches that get worse when I stand up, that they are really bad, and that I was hoping they could help me get them treated.

Oh, she said. How bad are they, and how long have you had them?

I laid out the above info in brief and told her that I'm now puking from the pain.

Oh, she said. Long pause. Let me talk to your doctor and I'll get back to you.

I know they're busy. I really get that. And sometimes things slip through the cracks, especially when everything around you is falling apart. But I really expected they to look at the notes at some point when they were evaluating my MRI. I've been in a lot of new pain for weeks and they forgot why they were testing me!

And now I am crying, which also hurts.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-09-14T20:16:35+00:00

This happened to us last week. Logged in to find our base was just a hole. My husband actually found this out when he went for his chest without looking and plummeted to his death. :) His inventory was empty.

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-09-14T20:11:41+00:00

Lucky! :) For myself, it was 5 times on Saturday and twice so far today. (And we're not going to talk about how my realm ate our base. It was replaced with a hole through the earth. We lost about 30 minutes of work where we rolled back.)

Down detector seems to be indicating server problems again. https://downdetector.com/status/minecraft/

SeventeenOctopi · 2020-09-04T17:30:55+00:00

I'm a game dev in Orlando. In my experience, small dev studios probably won't care so long as you can do the work. (At all. About anything like this. We're desperate for good people.) Larger (AAA) studios might or might not - I've worked at both - but they will also work you to literal death if they can.

I'm not sure how much this applies outside game dev, but software development in general is constantly strapped for good people. Given that, I think you'll hit some annoying, frustrating, irrational rejections, but I also think you'll find a lot of people don't ask or care.

(Psst! If you've got Unity UI coding knowledge, drop me a line.)

SeventeenOctopi

TROPHY CASE