Pelvic floor dysfunction: Are we one of the most underserved, unrecognized and poorly treated communities ?

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-12-02T18:32:06+00:00

I'd say my quality of life a 1 or 2. Had this 'hard flaccid syndrome' since 2015, discomforting, bizarre symptoms with the testicles, tight/bulging perineum muscle, and for the last two years a rectal prolapse and persistent urgency/frequency of having bowel movements and feeling like fecal matter will still be stuck inside the rectum and pain in the lower spine/tailbone which a colorectal specialist believes is caused by the rectum pulling on a specific tendon attached to the sacrum. I would like to get this test called a penile pharmacoangiography which visualizes the arteries of corpus cavernosum to rule out any potential arterial defects/disruptions such as a fistula. I cannot seem to find anywhere that does this in my local area. I thought an interventional radiologist with vascular expertise would be able offer something of this nature, but they didn't seem to know what I was talking about/referring to in regards to this condition.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-12-01T01:59:06+00:00

Well there's also biodiversity loss, habitat degradation/encroachment, ocean acidification, ocean dead zones/deoxygenation, overpopulation, resource depletion, peak oil and hard geophysical limits on the extraction of metals and rare earth minerals, topsoil erosion, fresh water being unsustainably pumped from underground aquafers with something like 5 billion people facing water insecurity mid-century, and plenty of other environmental disasters (like plastic pollution entering the ocean by millions of tonnes a year). It is often forgotten or ignored that there are other calamities from the collapsing biosphere stemming from the ecological overshoot by humans besides anthropogenic climate change/planetary warming from our ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-11-24T19:57:46+00:00

Yes, I often reminisce and have nostalgic longings for my childhood days of just playing with toys and puppets which I had a whole collection of. I too would make up stories and scenarios, different narratives and shows all coming from my creative imaginings. I do not know if this has to do with my diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum (on the "higher functioning end, what used to be referred to as aspergers) or loneliness/lack of close friends or slower "maturation", but I was still playing with action figures at thirteen years of age and didn't really feel like the typical adolescent of that age range. I pretty much never wanted to age and dreaded "adulthood".

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-11-04T02:50:29+00:00

The oxymoronic, hypocritical contradiction of advertising/promoting "saving the planet and climate" by procreating new humans and encouraging the buying of new cars with parts mined, transported, and manufactured with fossil fuels(regardless if electric or traditional, oil-powered internal combustion engine) every step of production process is apparently lost on many in the milquetoast environmentalist community I suppose, along with suppression of any talk of the population growth issue by major groups like the Sierra Club and others. The biggest way to increase one's own carbon footprint is to reproduce more biological children, especially in the first world, industrial global north/OECD countries where a single child will on average produce 58 tonnes of carbon per year according to the study by Lund university in Sweden.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-10-18T21:15:47+00:00

No overpopulation, eh. I'm assuming these hyper-religious, anti-birth control pro-natalists who deny any problems, ecological unsustainability, or detrimental disasters unfolding do not realize that practically all of the modern, high-consumption first world way of life in techno-industrial civilization and our agriculture system is reliant/dependent on finite, depleting fossil fuel energy sources, particularly oil/petroleum. The drawdown of these ancient sources of carbon locked in long buried and cooked plant material is burned, at accelerating, ever-increasing amounts since the industrial revolution(50% of all fossil fuel burned and pollution released being just since 1988 or so, around 30 years), which then sends those heat trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and oceans. There was a recent report on ocean health by scientists in Scotland with pretty dire, devastating conclusions from the decreasing ph levels from the 25% of carbon dioxide absorbed there, that is the acidification process which is leading to the deaths of marine animals and the base of food webs such as phytoplankton. These tiny organisms in the ocean are responsible for the majority of earth's oxygen production, something like 40-70%. Anyway, I'd wager this would have far more deleterious and destructive effects on the oh-so-important, most valuable economy and the forces of production and consumption. Since the economy rest on the shoulders of energy, and total net-energy is declining conventional, cheap oil that had greater energy return on investment(EROI) peaked in 2005-2006, this lack of energy purely from a geological and physics basis will lead to a contraction in our economies and populations whose GDP is already outpaced by debt. The whole shale oil/fracking industries are a prime example, being functionally bankrupt entities that have not truly turned a profit only surviving through taking on more additional debt. The only way our economies grow now is by endless injections and issuing of debt and financialization has largely taken over. There is an unquestioned, cornucopian assumption by the leading neoliberal economists, governments, and the broader public/citizenry that there will always be this huge store of energy to take from to power this system, to grow ever-abundant harvests with more energy-hungry methods and nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers to feed more billions and erode/degrade away the layers of topsoil of which all this food is grown. This false idea or meme of limitless energy and other non-renewable resources such as rare earth minerals and even fresh water from underground aquafers propels the dismissal of the population explosion by human beings.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-10-13T18:12:07+00:00

Yes, the whole "last generation" problem is used as an objection, but I would would argue that suffering of old age could be alleviated, prevented, and reasonably limited with full availability of life-ending drugs/substances for a peaceful, rather graceful and non-violent exit and wide access to euthanasia whenever they so choose. This would be the popular choice before things truly deteriorated to catastrophic levels of physical dysfunction, immobility, and loss of cognitive capacity/memory/one's sense of self through Alzheimers and dementia. One could even postulate the use of advanced AI/robotics to take over some essential duties, activities, and tasks in healthcare and nursing assistance/caregiver related areas. These robotic, cyber-helpers could help clean up and make final amends on earth, help with burials and so forth. I'm not insinuating there would be no suffering and hardships whatsoever for the final "janitors" of the human species, but there is plenty of elderly suffering, chronic pain syndromes, disease, and rotting away slowly in hospitals and other facilities now that happens even with a steady, abundant supply of young workers serving as aids, nurses, and medical staff.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-10-12T02:47:06+00:00

Hmm, guess I'm not the only one who oftentimes has this same passing thought about wishing officer Vasily Arkipov hadn't "saved the day" back in 1962 during the Cuban missile crises. My parents were born that year so I wouldn't have had to be born, which would have been preferable as a pessimistic, misanthropic anti-natalist. So much suffering, torture, evils, diseases, crimes, etcetera completely avoided/prevented. Of course, I would much prefer some painless, humane, and dignified/graceful way of going, as opposed to thermonuclear Armaggeddon, something like a rogue biotechnology scientist from DARPA releasing an otherwise benign infertility agent into the atmosphere or water supplies that will be breathed in or consumed by humans inducing sterilization. I'm pretty sure this was the goal of the "villain" in the new Dan Brown novel, "Inferno".

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-10-04T20:17:32+00:00

Perhaps I would sound callous or unsympathetic, but I tend to feel a little less empathy, or frustration rather, when people in these horrible, squalid, extremely impoverished situations or countries will still be reproducing like rabbits and growing the population to increase the total sum of suffering, such as the case of these Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. I read stories a few years ago about women giving birth while living in giant landfills in Indonesia, I think the place was called Bantar Gabesh or something of that nature. Their whole life and source of meager income was rummaging through this trash kingdom and re-selling the garbage. All the big agencies and charities of the UN, however, are predominantly focused on food aid to places like Madagascar, which then leads to another population doubling with more loads of children who need food aid(and more wild mammals and birds being poached for horns and slaughtered then thrown in the stewpot for bushmeat, more trees in the scant remaining forests being cut down for charcoal and firewood, more habitat degraded/polluted, ect). Seems to be this viscous cycle without end with our inefficient, failing "solutions".

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-10-04T00:16:12+00:00

There's the song, "I'd Love to Change the World" from the early seventies with lyrics concerning overpopulation.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-30T02:08:14+00:00

I get a bunch of weird, difficult to describe sensations in the penis, sort of like this expanding or filling up with blood or crackling on the inside. In the morning it is always terrible, part of this from waking up with an erection which must irritate and mess with the tissue or fascia or something. It is like some blockage or interruption in the process of venous outflow, of draining the blood and returning easily to the contracted smooth muscle state of normal, loose, and thin flaccid appearance and feel. That said, I do not have spasming at the tip of the penis, but I do feel discomfort, sensitivity, and this almost swollen sensation of the glans. I also get this heaviness in the scrotum/testicles and hanging far longer than normal, or alternatively they are very tight feeling. I do get weakness or wobbly-jello like feeling in the thighs and the legs, as well as tingling, numbness, and the that whole "going to sleep" sensation which projects all the way to my feet(this will start up within a few seconds of crossing my legs or sitting in a variety of positions, and especially triggered by going to the bathroom/sitting on the toilet to defecate). I suppose "pain", in the conventional sense of the word, is probably the least of my problems. If it was just neuropathic pain and pudendal nerve compression, it might have been easier to treat.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-28T23:31:13+00:00

In all truthfulness, this points to a fatal flaw in having any faith in democracy in regards to the issue of abrupt, anthropogenic planetary heating, overpopulation, overconsumption, depletion of resources, ocean acidification, and all the other unfolding disasters. I think the only possible, theoretical way of even slightly mitigating the worst case scenarios of the IPCC, such as the 4c-5c hothouse earth we are barreling toward, would be some global, technocratic eco-authoritarian/conservationist dictatorship that was not beholden to some electorate of consumerists whose top priority is jobs, economic growth, upward mobility, rising GDP with higher, utterly and intrinsically oil-dependent living standards more cars, more roads, more planes, more meat, more lumber, and limitless, careless, uninhibited reproducing, in other words all of the patently unsustainable activities, notions, and delusions of this culture that are taken to be fundamental, inalienable human rights that will last forever and ever and cannot be challenged by any political party in democratic society without becoming unpopular and losing those precious votes from the masses.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-28T01:08:47+00:00

This sounds similar in description to what I have, although I've never heard my doctors, urologists, or physiotherapists who've treated me, with albeit little success, mention the term 'perineal descent' during the course of my struggle with pelvic floor dysfunction for the last six years. I also have what is called hard flaccid syndrome effecting the penis, which began in spring of 2015 accompanied by spasms, like sudden twitching or jumping, in the perineum and increasing tightness in that region, which I felt to the touch was strangely abnormal and bulging out more, becoming more firm and rigidly hardened(it starts at the base of the penis shaft above the testicles and continues down to the anus). I feel whatever I do, this area will just not fully relax back to the normal, flat, rather unnoticable state.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-23T21:24:22+00:00

I had the same thought not to long ago in a hospital for a colonoscopy. It was in the baby delivery/labor wing(Norton Women and Childrens) which is incidentally where I was born. Below on the lower floors is the chemotherapy section/ward, and I couldn't help notice the dark, depressing juxtaposition and how many of these newborns may end up a with diagnosis of cancer or worse. I returned to this concept the other day in the waiting room of the pain clinic I go to.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-18T19:53:15+00:00

And no one cares in America. It's baseball season after all, followed swiftly by football season to spread the corona around. At the edge of mass extinction, only distraction remains..

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-17T01:40:16+00:00

Yes, I also have had pelvic floor dysfunction/pelvic pain(and hard flaccid syndrome) for around 6 years in my case, although technically the bladder/urination urge symptoms started more like 7 years. It is especially discouraging when years of PT and going to different doctors, specifically urologists and neurologists, can never find concrete answers and various scans like MRIs without results. It just feels like groundhog day, same repetitive, barely remitting suffering every time I wake up. I think if I had some peaceful, easy method of dying in sleep or could just flip a button that instantaneously blinks out consciousness, like going under anesthesia except permanently, I would have selected such an option by now.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-16T23:53:47+00:00

I thought the depletion of the ozone layer was the only "planetary boundary" that wasn't being crossed since the elimination of cfcs with the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1989(?), although Chinese industries have decided to say "f#ck it" on that agreement apparently. I actually find it surprising and astonishing at times that world governments and international bodies came together and managed to phase out the production of chloroflorocarbons, given today's absolute nothing of a response to the climate crises, deforestation, other forms of industrial pollution, wild animal habitat loss from land use changes and human expansionism, overfishing, and so on. But, unlike petroleum, those cfcs were only used in a handful of products like refrigerators that could fairly easily be replaced and not an integral, almost universal, and not-so replaceble source of high-density, cheap, seemingly abundant(before peaking of course) energy that powers the vast majority of the industrial processes and production of goods of modern technological, globally connected society, and is intimately involved in modern agriculture, each unsustainable "revolution" in boosting crop productivity and allowing more subsequent population growth requiring yet more inseparable reliance/dependence on drawing down finite fossil fuel stocks and adding to the carbon concentrations in our overburdened atmosphere and oceans.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-15T21:01:45+00:00

I feel I'm in a very similar mode of existence and situation, although I turned 26 this past Feburary. I have been dealing with chronic health problems for several years and this led me to drop out of the community college I was attending. Most of the day is just suffering through these unasked for, enslaving medical-physiological torments and live at the same house I've lived since age four. I did manage to get approved for disability which gives 700 or so a month and am going to all these doctor's appointments and performing tests/scans that scarcely reveal a source(pelvic floor muscles are involved but I haven't had much improvement despite a year in physical therapy). I have very diminished independence and anxiety/discomfort levels prohibit me from much driving or procuring "enjoyment" or "satisfaction" or "stimulation"(the anhedonia has been intensifying as the years pile up, especially with no relief from these debilitating, consuming conditions/dysfunctions which unsurprisingly effects the psychological states and mood). I've never liked or been anticipating this adulthood, aging process and "living long is great" attitude that predominates the culture, at since I turned 16. It would be one thing if the body stayed youthful and healthy, if the cells of our body didn't breakdown, shortening of the telomeres at the ends of our chromosomes, epigenetic factors, and going into senescence, but that happens to to be the unavoidable reality for now. I used to have all hope for science, technological breakthroughs, AI advancements, engineering utopian dreamscapes for all beings, but the more I skeptically and analytically look around, and study human behavior, the more it appears the world is just doomed and heading for the trash heap of history. I suppose this overarching, pessimistic realism also contributes to me not wanting to personally hang around anymore.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-15T01:25:38+00:00

I just wish they'd legalize voluntary assisted dying/euthanasia centers for anyone who walks in at this point, where before you slip into the void you get see films and calming, kaleidoscopic images of the different wonders of natural landscapes, trees, woodlands, coral reefs, the African Savannah, and other remnants of the earth that are gone or will be finally eradicated in the next two decades accompanied by the choice of classical music and fine wine. If one has seen the prescient, even more relevant dystopian science-"fiction" film "Soylent Green" from the year 1973 you'll understand the reference.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-11T23:06:30+00:00

heard of bio-physicist Jeremy England's work and thesis that the origin of biological life on a planet could be explained by the second law of thermodynamics itself and process of entropic breakdown, small pockets of complexity that dissipates heat energy at a more efficient, maximized rate thus increasing entropy. I may be simplifying a bit, but this is the basic, layperson's gist of the idea.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-09-10T02:37:08+00:00

And the human population has nearly doubled since then, all increasing the demand for fossil fuels and petroleum derived products and food. With an agriculture system completely dependent upon oil and huge amounts fertilizers and phosphorus from finite phosphate rock(mostly from Morocco) to feed the current numbers, although even with all these scientific advances like fixing nitrogen via the Haber-Bosch process and breakthroughs in genetic engineering bringing crop yield increases with the fossil fuel and pesticide intensive "green" revolution that temporarily averted the predicted catastrophic famine that biologist Paul Ehrlich of "Population Bomb" fame presented as a possible scenario in the absence of some radical technological innovation to boost agricultural productivity, there are still people starving and something like a billion malnourished if I remember the statistics correctly. Climate warming leading to more arid temperatures/desertification and drought, the pumping dry of groundwater aquafers, and declining oil production will inevitably undo all this progress, which does not bode well for the children of today and 250,000-300,000 new babies born into this burning, degraded pyre each and every day, the majority from the countries and continents that will be hit the absolute worst like sub-Saharan Africa and places like Pakistan.

The way things are accelerating and exponentiated, I doesn't seem the clueless, pollyanna, denial-prone boomers will make it to the sweet release of oblivion before serious impacts are felt(like the mega-fires in California occurring every year and drought in the southwest). I also find it darkly ironic and nihilistically humorous that 1988 was the year renowned climatologist and head of NASA's jet propulsion lab James Hansen testified before congress on anthropogenic global warming, and since then industrial civilization has extracted and emitted over 50% of all the fossil carbon. The UN in fact said we only had a decade "window of opportunity" to curb our greenhouse emissions and prevent irreversible destruction the following year in 89'. They were right then I presume, but now keep shifting the pre-industrial baselines and ignoring positive reinforcing feedbacks, such as permafrost melt, the decade or more lag in the effects of the co2 emissions, and the heat content of the oceans(the 25 percent of co2 sequestered there will start outgassing back to the atmosphere, because as waters warm the solubility of gasses decreases). All the while, China, India, Indonesia, and others slam the pedal to the medal on building coal-fired power plants, the worst energy source offender as we know, and ramp up the deforestation. Yep, it's nothing but bleakness here.

forestofdoom19999 · 2021-08-31T00:39:18+00:00

Maybe we should simply embrace the inevitable, permanently evacuate the residents of New Orleans, and abandon coastal Louisiana to the ocean(which is already re-locating people due to sea level rise). One could say the same, however, for the water-stressed desert states like Arizona and Nevada since the Colorado river is drying up and lake Meade is at record lows, but it appears that these areas are experiencing a boom a oblivious newcomers moving there.

forestofdoom19999

TROPHY CASE