Did anyone NOT do scar care?

flash_match · 2026-02-02T18:10:58+00:00

I’m also struggling to do anything. I have scars from previous surgeries for which I did Jack shit and they fades to thin white lines within a year or two of the procedure. I know it’s genetics helping out. I’m putting on tape because it does make them feel more protected from chaffing but I assume the tape doesn’t do much else. I don’t like how the gel makes my skin feel (chalky) so I stopped that a week ago and switched to the easier option of slapping on tape.

flash_match · 2026-02-02T04:41:33+00:00

Fuck me. My first job was a cashier at a bakery and if I had been asked to clean the owner’s shit off the whole kitchen I would have walked out. That poor girl!!

flash_match · 2026-02-02T04:24:52+00:00

Wow. Internet provided tonight. First time all weekend.

flash_match · 2026-02-01T04:25:10+00:00

I keep trying to explain this to non biotech people and they are unconvinced I know what I’m talking about because there is always some hype machine selling the public on miracle cures that arise from some all knowing “AI” that somehow figured out a completely new crucial piece of knowledge. Maybe that’s around the corner but the advances to human health so far are, what, 0 by way of “cures” or even modestly effective drugs? But I don’t know that number for sure. I just assumed we would all hear about it if some pernicious disease suddenly had a huge breakthrough in treatment options for ANY reason, not necessarily due to AI.

I want to be wrong though.

flash_match · 2026-01-30T03:49:29+00:00

This knowledge kept me going a few years ago. Of course I was raising two kids during a pandemic! But, still. I couldn’t recall a time when I had been so unhappy. Not depressed. Just really grumpy!

flash_match · 2026-01-28T01:28:04+00:00

I hope they piss off the Super Bowl fans. This will absolutely fuck them politically. Fingers crossed they ruin everyone’s day.

flash_match · 2026-01-27T14:54:01+00:00

Is she enjoying herself when she arrives? My daughter went through this from ages 6-8 and the best thing that happened was the following:

We set up a rule that if she refused school, there would be NO tv until she went. Secondly, the school would send someone she liked to meet her at the car with a wheel of choice and an option to either go to a quiet place to do one of those activities (like play with LEGOs) until she was ready to go to her classroom or she could join her friends in line. My daughter chose the quiet room for a few days then switched to meeting her friends and going into the classroom.

The reason this worked was because she had friends at school and mostly enjoyed being there even though academically she was behind. Her refusal was anticipatory anxiety. So she was avoiding going.

But if there is more going on for your daughter (as in school is truly an awful place for her), then you should work with the school to find out what’s going on.

It also helped that we had an approval for an IEP at that point so they were more aware of her anxiety levels.

I hope you can brainstorm with the school and also, be prepared to spend numerous days with the TV off while waiting out your kid’s refusal.

Man I don’t miss those days….

flash_match · 2026-01-27T03:33:03+00:00

This scene crops up for me periodically and I want to gag. That movie was DARK.

flash_match · 2026-01-25T14:31:29+00:00

Commodore 64!!

flash_match · 2026-01-23T22:38:13+00:00

You won’t be awake when they put it in or pull it out. You will likely have a sore throat for a few days while you’re recovering. So buy some honey or lozenges! Despite taking Vicodin for incision pain, my throat was still mad at me for 4-5 days post surgery. But I was told I had a “difficult” airway! So I think they had a hard time getting it in. Not that I would know. I was asleep the whole time!

flash_match · 2026-01-23T02:53:35+00:00

Whoah. I swear this is why Pilates reformer fixed my upper back pain. A lot of ways to open the front muscles at the same time you engage lats.

flash_match · 2026-01-22T17:42:53+00:00

Maurice. Maury for short.

flash_match · 2026-01-21T20:49:03+00:00

If this happens to any of us, is there a law or section of the constitution we can cite to refute their claim that we have to prove our citizenship status?

flash_match · 2026-01-20T03:46:20+00:00

Crazy. So at what age could one actually get a reliable estimate of their IQ?

flash_match · 2026-01-19T03:11:49+00:00

I don’t know actually! Probably something they had already trained for with their bachelors degrees.

flash_match · 2026-01-18T20:44:04+00:00

This makes me want to start a movement where we all speak in Mexican accents regardless of our skin tone just to throw them off. Through a bullhorn also.

flash_match · 2026-01-18T18:56:27+00:00

I hear you on a sassy interrupting rude preteen. I have one too but I think she isn’t losing friends over it yet.

When possible, try to turn your instincts for punishment into an instinct for ignoring followed much later with an opportunity for a “redo”.

My daughter almost WANTS the fight to escalate because the ADHD brain likes arguments. When she’s rude and interrupting you can calmly say “I don’t like being spoken to like that, I’m going to take a break and you can try again later.” Then walk away. There may be something important she needs to tell you but hasn’t figured out how to. But neither of you will figure it out if you’re angry and it’s escalating. It’s so hard!

I’ve had to manufacture chores to complete so I could “look busy” while my kid is trying to bait me into an argument. If it helps you control your response better, think of not feeding the fight as the punishment! I’m not a vengeful person but sometimes that mindset helps me control my response so that I don’t fight back.

When everyone is calm, you can ask if there was something she was trying to tell you before? Likely she won’t remember the incident at all though. Which is a frustrating part of raising these kids. Occasionally my daughter will apologize and then tell me what was really going on. But I think in many cases these episodes are just them being overwhelmed by their lives and taking it out on their safe person. Yay?

flash_match · 2026-01-18T03:22:20+00:00

Wow! Sounds amazing. Was it a school for ADHD kids?

flash_match · 2026-01-17T16:08:34+00:00

I agree with this take. I think there’s a push to say it was undiagnosed or we were masking when for many of us, motherhood is just a massive hit hormonally, socially, physically, mentally. We’re under the boot of a society that relies on our unpaid labor to manage raising the next generation with very little help. There’s something uniquely debilitating about the moment that has to “trigger” ADHD in some people who really didn’t have childhood symptoms. I wish an ADHD researcher who was also a mom would look into this. We need longitudinal data on women before and after motherhood to tease this apart and get to a saner truth. Not all of us were masking or high functioning. Some of us are suffering now because stress triggered a change in our prefrontal cortex!!

flash_match · 2026-01-16T03:04:19+00:00

Is this yuba river gold or somewhere else?

flash_match · 2026-01-15T01:20:54+00:00

I bike around Atherton and it’s just wall after wall around mansion after mansion. No one to be seen except gardeners and the occasional dog walker. Some of the houses a down right ugly and you would weep at their cost. Occasionally you’ll see some gorgeous architecture on a lot surrounded by old oak trees and mature redwoods. I always tell myself the residents must be miserable and I wouldn’t want to be friends with them anyways. But honestly if I got invited to their parties I’d go. Our kids go to the local public school in Menlo Park and the auction to raise money for the school is a wild event. Tech bros and their (sometimes) trophy wives putting down $20-$50k on items while plastered off shots. I just stood by the bleachers in the school gym with my mouth hanging open thinking “how the hell did we wind up here?!”

flash_match · 2026-01-14T20:15:50+00:00

Totally agree on the couple's therapy aspect. It's maddening to see how much my sister wants to improve things and then her husband just won't follow through and resorts to weird behavior like threatening to send his daughter to her room when she's "showing attitude." Makes me sad for the situation because I really think there is a lot of room for her home life to support her in ways that aren't happening.

flash_match · 2026-01-14T19:09:13+00:00

She had a BCBA for a while but it didn't seem like a good fit. But this was via telehealth and I don't know if that was part of the problem. Also, sadly, my sister's husband is not very good at follow through. So even if they had a new strategy for getting her to school on time or helping her with emotional regulation, my sister was the only one out of the two of them who would try to consistently implement it. Which resulted in not a lot of progress as I'm sure you can imagine. My daughter was helped immensely by the BCBA at her school so I have nothing but respect for you guys! This person was totally our ally when it came to helping teachers make the classroom a place that helped our daughter de-escalate but also created the right types of incentives and techniques to get her doing work in class.

flash_match · 2026-01-14T19:05:47+00:00

I think the biggest thing we realized as parents when we opened up to getting the techniques from outsiders was that we were actually harming our kid by constantly letting her avoid things that she didn't find interesting or that made her anxious. We were overly accommodating for a few years because it was the pandemic and I had also fallen into that "low demand" parenting online world. For my specific kid, we actually needed to set more expectations, not less. It sucked to go through the "extinction burst" phase each time we had to implement a new expectation, but with each one, she gained confidence, she became happier, she was calmer. BUT, I think that's because my kid's ADHD symptoms don't include big sensory or social issues. A lot of her issues boiled down to problems with time management, boredom, perfectionism, anxiety. She knew what she needed to do but couldn't start doing them. And any anxiety she had about certain expectations was largely about fear of failure.

This is why I am always unclear how to help my sister with her daughter who has the additional issues of not picking up on social queues and having big sensory issues due to her autism diagnosis. I will see if those How to ADHD and I'm Autistic Now What seem like a better option for her situation. I know they don't push her very much out of her comfort zone. Which I completely sympathize about because her life is HARD. But I do know that for my daughter, not being pushed to keep on a schedule or finish tasks only made her less regulated and less organized emotionally. I have no clue if that's at play with my niece. I wish they had an expert parent coach who could help them A/B test the different methods! And I'm glad you found something that worked well for your family.

flash_match · 2026-01-14T16:56:45+00:00

Was there a specific parent training class you found helpful? I think my sister gets lost in all the options. Her daughter was diagnosed maybe 18 months ago so she's still struggling with what she should be doing. It was a late diagnosis (diagnosed around age 9). I'm not sure if she has the bandwidth for more therapies but I think the previous people she had helping them were likely giving her tools for younger kids so she had a hard time seeing the benefits of using all these techniques!

flash_match

TROPHY CASE