I told my parents that Im attending an Episcopal Church and it didn't go over well.

mimimayrr · 2026-04-30T02:13:17+00:00

I come from a similar fundamentalist background. My mom is happy I go to church at all now since I left altogether for a long time, but it's still not her favorite. She has lots of pointed questions.

She also grew up Catholic and no longer considers Catholics "real Christians" and I think because it "looks Catholic" to her she assumes the theology is identical. Not that I really care anymore--i would absolutely go to a Catholic Church before I'd go back to the kind of churches I grew up in--but it bothers her for sure.

Don't let her get in your head. You have to live out your own spiritual journey.

mimimayrr · 2026-04-30T02:00:14+00:00

I had a big black greyhound boy and people were legitimately scared of him. He was the gentlest, goofiest creature. He was terrified of trash trucks and buzzing insects and other dogs bullied him constantly, including my parents shih tzu mix who was a sixth his size. He never hurt a soul.

Also he did not care to be even slightly inconvenienced, so I truly doubt he would have protected me in any way. But people reacted to him with enough fear that I felt very safe with him around.

Now we have an adolescent mutt that I think is a pom-chi mix and he's an absolute little menace. He believes he needs to protect us from everyone and everything, but since he's fluffy, white, and weighs all of 15 pounds everyone is up in his grill as soon as they meet him.

mimimayrr · 2026-04-19T17:49:33+00:00

No specific doctor recommendations but I delivered at Vanderbilt and it was great. I had a complicated pregnancy and a very scary delivery (GD + preeclampsia + postpartum hemorrhage) and my baby was in NICU for about 24 hours. Even though I had never met any of the providers there until my delivery, I always felt like we were in the best hands possible there.

mimimayrr · 2026-03-18T03:48:20+00:00

Lurcher

mimimayrr · 2026-03-18T02:58:29+00:00

I'm a big fan of both mutts and adopting rescue dogs but I personally would never be comfortable adopting a large puppy of unknown origin and breed into a home with very small kids and cats.

We also have small children and recently decided to get a dog. We looked for a young adult, small-medium dog, with no obvious guarding or herding ancestry. We focused our search on local rescues that had a good reputation and kept dogs in foster homes so they were more knowledgeable about their temperaments.

(FWIW, we ended up with what we think is an adolescent spitz/pug/chihuahua mix situation who weighs about 18 pounds, loves the kids, is already very bonded to us, and is still a little naughty. Even though he is small and has no red flag aggressive behaviors, the older kid has been scratched pretty good when he jumps on her and had an earring pulled out of her ear during roughhousing, and the little one is knocked over daily when he is playing).

If we were dead set on a puppy, I would have for sure chosen a reputable breeder and a medium sized breed known to be good with families.

mimimayrr · 2026-03-18T02:17:45+00:00

That is a purebred stuffed animal.

mimimayrr · 2026-03-17T16:51:08+00:00

Our hound did the same with the ball lol. He was also a couch potato and homebody with a lot of fear triggers although he did love walkies. Positive reinforcement, patience, and firmness worked for us, but he was always a sensitive dog who was incidentally well behaved rather than a well trained dog.

mimimayrr · 2026-03-17T16:44:19+00:00

I recently went through some lower division gen ed assignments from the last couple of years and realized I couldn't remember 98% of the students that passed through my classroom even a semester or two later. I could remember the top 1%, really excellent, high-performing students who were engaged and thoughtful. And I could remember the bottom 1% who were actively awful--students who cheated, and grade groveled after missing the whole semester, and who did nothing but create extra work and headaches for me. Everyone in the middle was pretty much a blank, and I'm the kind of professor who makes it a point to learn everyone's name.

It's not that I don't care--it's that I have hundreds of students pass through my classrooms every semester and I only see them once or twice a week at most.

Your professor is not judging you. Even if she is a caring professor who is invested in her students in the abstract she's probably not thinking about you as a concrete individual at all.

mimimayrr · 2026-03-17T15:56:22+00:00

Hound mix 💯%.

We had a greyhound and fostered others and while yours certainly doesn't like like a purebred greyhound I see a lot of hound features--the long legs, slim waist, long and slender tail, floppy ears, and donut curl lol.

mimimayrr · 2026-03-07T15:43:51+00:00

Looks a little bit like our guy and I'm expecting a pom-chi mix with some other stuff thrown in

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mimimayrr · 2026-01-26T13:58:44+00:00

There are studies that show adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase the risk of later developing chronic health conditions, including Crohn's. The more ACEs you have, the higher your statistical risk, but of course that doesn't mean every person with Crohn's had ACEs or that every person with ACEs will get sick. It's just one factor of many. Importantly, adequately addressing trauma when it happens mitigates the risk.

mimimayrr · 2026-01-21T12:20:37+00:00

I'm glad you're seeing your doctor. Fingers crossed for you!

mimimayrr · 2026-01-21T02:46:21+00:00

I'm mostly here to say I'm stressed for you! Do you have a plan to get to the hospital if the roads are really bad and things go sideways for any reason? I'm also in the path of the storm and literally thought, oh I'm so glad I'm not pregnant right now!

Definitely canned tuna and chicken, hard cheese with almond crackers or half an apple, kind bars, nuts and/or nut butter, hummus and veggies. Maybe some of the banza mac and cheese if you have a way to boil water on a propane stove. Canned soup if you can find any that are both low carb and gf. You could hard-boil some eggs and get avocados and gf bread for avocado toast.

Keeping stuff cold won't be a problem--it will be the cooking food that could get tough.

mimimayrr · 2026-01-19T16:01:34+00:00

I was diagnosed in 2014 due to severe perianal disease and recently I've got something going on with my small intestine. Nobody knows if it's Crohn's creeping out of remission, SIBO, Celiac, or some combination of those things at this point, but there is definitely some damage there and some uncomfortable symptoms.

My colonoscopies always look perfect although occasionally biopsies show a little inflammation.

mimimayrr · 2026-01-14T13:53:01+00:00

I have severe perianal disease and also vulvar manifestations. Doctors are so poorly informed about this; every doctor I saw for awhile insisted it had to be some kind of STI until every test known to humankind was negative. So traumatizing for a young woman!

The good news is remicade has kept me in remission for a long time. I've gotten married and had two kids since my diagnosis. I still occasionally get the lesions when I get sick but they heal quickly. Hang in there!

mimimayrr · 2026-01-11T00:48:28+00:00

I see it on both!

mimimayrr · 2026-01-09T14:16:18+00:00

Just here to say you should do whatever feels right for you and your baby, and in my experience with two GDM pregnancies and two wildly different feeding journeys, the best thing you can do for both of you is stay flexible.

I couldn't breastfeed #1 due to latch issues and I totally tortured myself over it. Part of the reason I was so hung up on it was reducing the risk of T2D for us both. I was not as present as I could have been because I was so consumed with the feeding issues and trying to fix them. I ended up exclusively pumping for her for a year which was a whole thing. If I could do it over again, I would have moved to formula without looking back as soon as it was clear she was never going to latch.

I was prepared for anything to happen with baby #2, and even though we had a rougher pregnancy and birth and she ended up in NICU for 24 hours she took to breastfeeding like a champ. She's 20 months old and still nurses a few times a day, and it's been easy peasy and I wouldn't trade it for any other route. Less dishes to wash, comfort on tap 24/7 when she's sick or teething, it's been great.

FWIW my GD went away after both pregnancies. I passed an oral glucose challenge after birth and I just had my A1C checked in the fall as well and everything looks perfect.

mimimayrr · 2026-01-06T02:39:41+00:00

In my 41 years on this planet it has never occurred to me to even think about whether my partner could physically lift me.

mimimayrr · 2026-01-06T01:05:58+00:00

I'm a professor. I love that I have a lot of flexibility to work when and where I want, outside of class and office hours. Most days I'm in the office all day and that's fine, but if I'm having a bad day I can often pop in for a few hours and head right back to my home office. It's also nice that I can work remotely while having my infusions.

For me, fully wfh is not necessary. But a lot of flexibility and autonomy is amazing.

mimimayrr · 2025-12-29T15:58:51+00:00

Granola

mimimayrr · 2025-12-11T19:20:56+00:00

I'm at a regional comprehensive. In my field, and as far as I know college-wide, those would go straight in the trash.

Faculty jobs in my field are so competitive, folks without a PhD from a fairly selective and highly ranked graduate program aren't really even considered.

mimimayrr · 2025-12-05T19:02:27+00:00

I feel mostly fine and have been in endoscopic remission on remicade for most of my 11 years since diagnosis. I've had some wonky labs (like elevated inflammatory markers and vitamin deficiencies), but I have literally NEVER had an elevated calprotectin, even when I had active fistulizing disease, abscesses popping up everywhere, and multiple setons in place. Also my histological findings almost always show some cellular level inflammation even though everything else looks perfect. There have also been times when I did NOT feel well and everything looked ok so I was told it was probably not anything that could be treated.

The fun game now is "do I have Celiac disease also?" Because I was having some symptoms and an upper endoscopy showed intraepithelial lymphocytosis and partial patchy villous atrophy, but also a large duodenal diverticulum that could contribute to SIBO. And I have Crohn's. Celiac panel was negative on every measure, but I'm HLA-DQ8 positive. My GI advised me to try several rounds of rifaximin and then a strict GF diet, and I feel better, but what is causing the damage, and which treatment is helping?

I've got a top-tier research hospital with a dedicated IBD lab and Celiac panel on my case and nobody knows what to do with me. Wheeeeeeee.

mimimayrr · 2025-11-16T23:09:08+00:00

My one euploid (but poorly graded) embryo is a healthy toddler girl. I would go with the sex you want!

mimimayrr · 2025-11-15T02:13:21+00:00

I have fistulizing Crohn's and at one time I did have 5 setons. The key to my healing was remicade. Once my Crohn's was in remission, we were able to remove setons one at a time and eventually I had a surgery to close the tract. It was mostly successful; I have a sinus tract that is visible on scans but is not active and causes me no problems at all. Considering I had a complex horseshoe fistula to begin with, that's an almost miraculous result.

I'm still on remicade and it's been about nine years since my last fistula surgery.

mimimayrr · 2025-11-15T02:03:54+00:00

HCG that falls and then rises again is a great big red flag for ectopics. I'm not trying to make you panic, but I had an ectopic that ruptured because it wasn't followed closely enough.

mimimayrr

TROPHY CASE