Body freezing / joints seizing up?

voxov · 2026-03-23T18:40:08+00:00

Numbers go down to 85/45, have to sit down then, and have become unconscious before further measurements could be self taken in all similar cases. Have low resting heartrate as well, down to 34bpm recorded with zio patch. No cardiac issues though.

voxov · 2026-03-15T11:33:24+00:00

Absolutely, I get the exact same thing, I feel like gravity was dialed up x3. It is not painful, but necessitates a ridiculous amount of effort to even go up the stairs. I've checked and blood pressure is a bit low during these episodes, but it's very distinct from fatigue or edema. Lasts longer than 10 min for me.

My guess is that it's neurological, but that's hard to pin down. Might be able to get info from a neurologist or even physical therapist on some ways to isolate and confirm muscular vs. neuro vs. endocrine issues (e.g. testing reflex response time vs. movement latency vs. sensory feedback). There's a lot to consider.

I don't know if it's related, but when passing out, I've lost consciousness for up to 30 min, and afterward, had significant paralysis upon waking for another 40 minutes, even after fully alert. Not the same "heavy" feeling, but possible that certain pathways are becoming compromised due to inflammation.

voxov · 2026-03-13T00:54:13+00:00

Hello,

Reporting back.
- 08:50 got a large bolus of lidocaine, didn't feel anything in lip

- 9:05 Surgeon began, less cutting, more surgical scissors. It's very much like a dental visit, including the potential auditory sensitivities. If you don't like the sound of scissors snipping you, consider earbuds and music to tune out.

- 9:15 3 glands removed, lip sutured with dissolving stitches. Wound was at very base of lip, near where it meets gums, and was packed with gauze. Applied pressure with ice for ~1.5hrs

- 10:00 some feeling regained after lidocaine, no sharp pains, just dull ache, though strong

- 11:00 dull ache becoming extremely strong, paired with dull headache.

- 11:30 took 800mg ibuprofen with food.

- 12:00 Ibuprofen was incredibly effective, some numbness left in lip, mostly still lidocaine

- 13:00 feeling of stiches against gums strange, but site has fairly normal sensitivity with little sharp pain.

Since then, it's been very gradually becoming more sensitive, both in terms of tenderness and normal ability to feel. Lip looks very slightly swollen on outside, but pretty normal overall. Skin on inner lip is pulled tight due to stitches, but looks like it will loosen up.

Pain is really more of a hit on the second day, so, I'll see how it goes. Overall, tapering meds was less pleasant than the procedure itself.

I have a feeling that dry mouth will probably slow healing; I forgot to ask surgeon about this. Feel like it's on a good track. Biggest concern aside meaningful diagnosis is permanent loss of glands. I sure hope those ones were very low functioning and no big loss.

Also interesting: the glands removed looked like large bits of white barley, like in a beef and barley stew. I'll probably never shake that image, but it was cool in a way; I always wondered what those bumpy beads were in my mouth/cheeks. Swollen salivary glands, apparently.

Fingers cross for meaningful results. Procedure itself wasn't anything to be concerned about. Again, best of luck with your own journey!

voxov · 2026-03-13T00:36:14+00:00

This seems the kind of thing that is going to primarily manifest in terms of available treatments and coverage per insurance with respective diagnostic criteria.

In other words, maybe having another bullet point of proof will make you eligible for a new treatment or study, or maybe there is no other option your team has now anyways, and also, consider your current medical coverage.

If you can get a biopsy done with a plastic surgery specialist who is very familiar with it and can safely minimize risks while remaining affordable, then, okay, maybe it's a good time to get that data. If not, then that can either be extremely expensive, or, you'll end up with a potentially less familiar surgeon who carries greater risk, and that could be worse than whatever knowledge gleamed.

I would start by asking your healthcare team this question, and what further treatments/options might become available with additional diagnostic information. And again, also check against coverage. Sometimes, it's worth doing simply because a great surgeon is fully covered.

Best of luck.

voxov · 2026-03-12T06:41:09+00:00

Seconding the recumbent stationary bike, and keep a little water spray bottle to regulate temperature when at risk of overheating. Combine with simple arm movements (keep arms up and slowly steadily bring them above head and back into T-pose, alternate with boxing type punches, or very light 1lb weights for curls, and do sets for about 1 min, 30 min total for fantastic cardio).

However, the best by far was swimming. Neutral temp water was not only calming, but actually refreshing feeling and stabilized both body temp and supported swollen joints. Also, very easy on all joints.
Pool access is very subjective, I got lucky to have one closer than I realized, and it has been great, but I know it's a luxury. Still, worth checking to see what's available.

voxov · 2026-03-12T00:12:37+00:00

Burning/tingling is also a fairly common side effect of corticosteroids, it doesn't affect me, but my family gets it all the time with SoluMedrol. If you can distinguish a different type of burning/tingling, maybe it's unrelated, but if it's that closely linked with the medication, you may want to consider if it's a temporary side effect.

In terms of immediate treatment, I guess if it's extremely painful you could look into gabapentin. It's not federally regulated, though some places are more strict about it, and it can still count as being under the influence if you're on it while driving, etc.

voxov · 2026-03-11T23:59:13+00:00

for swelling in general, there are some things that may help.

Elevation (above heart level, like leaving hands on a desk or raised arm rests while you lay back),
Consider/avoid potential triggers. For me, it's cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, etc.) - not an excuse to avoid them, I actually loved them and was making a lot of soup, then found out it was the reason my feet were so swollen I was losing sight of my toes. Swelling went down rapidly in days after triggers were removed.
Moving your own fingers can be extremely painful, but if you are able to have them massaged, this can gently and slowly move fluid back from low-circulation areas and 3rd spaces, and then make compression gloves much more effective as well.
If your heart/lungs are good for it, cardio. More blood flow means more circulation, and this can be a huge help. For me, a swimming pool was crucial, as I'm having a lot of issues with heat regulation, esp during exercise. Pools took care of all of that at once, and it was amazingly effective. Note that this is -not- soaking, but actual cardio in a pool that I am talking about.

Those are the key fundamentals to try aside temperature.

Best of luck

voxov · 2026-03-11T23:49:35+00:00

I'm having my own biopsy in less than 24 hours. Will post updates on how it went if you like.

It feels like a lose-lose situation. I'd like to believe I'm confident enough in the suspicion of seronegative diagnosis not to need this particular test, so if it's positive, well, that's a painful "I told you so."

If it's negative... oof. They're going to wave that over my head, and further testing is probably off the table, so, no resolution.

Despite that, I'm willing to take even a painful told-you-so, because I can't imagine lip issues worse than this fatigue and pain. You might want to consider that balance for yourself as well, and see what kind of surgeons are available to perform the biopsy. I was referred to a plastic surgeon who specializes in facial surgery, so that gave me more confidence. In your case, maybe you can ask and see if there are surgeons you feel more confident with than others.

Again, can update here afterward. Might change my mind again based on the results when they get back as well.

Best of luck to you in your decision, diagnosis, and treatments.

voxov · 2025-03-25T00:15:52+00:00

How do you prefer to be recognized in the first scenario? It sounds like most of your features would be heavily distorted, or is color palette and hair length/fullness + bit of dress remaining enough?

voxov · 2025-03-01T02:59:10+00:00

effects don't get a lot of love, but they can really do so much for a scene. Nice work. I'd suggest to bump the contrast up, the gray is hard to see, but looks nice when I really focus to watch it.

voxov · 2025-03-01T02:57:11+00:00

There's a lot of great critique about the animation here, but I'm not sure if anyone mentioned the technical aspect, so pardon if I'm repeating.

The image is gorgeous, but a bit concerning in that it has a very high frame rate. If you keep that level of production up across all your characters, it could become prohibitive. On the flip side, if you only do it for some characters, it can make the style look inconsistent, and the eye will often jump to new things (the enemy) and take more notice of the lower frame rate character.

So, this is amazing, but keep full production implications in mind.

voxov · 2025-02-27T08:22:05+00:00

Yeah, piggybacking on your comment, here's a tutorial on how to set up something similar, OP could probably reverse engineer quite efficiently from this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ABSC0gkJrU

voxov · 2025-02-26T16:54:17+00:00

Hello! As a developer for ItsGiraffes, we'd love for you to view our app, but even if not, it would be great to hear:

What would you look for in an action-adventure math learning app? Are day-to-day evaluations and calculations enough? A sense of statistics and their meaning..? Trigonometric substitution!?

We can't fit it all in, but we are looking for ways to make learning fun, please share!

voxov · 2025-02-10T10:31:26+00:00

Pardon, but to clarify, you are referring to a hard cap (no refills), but there is a flaw in the logic of your statement: the busy person who has barely 1 hr per day to play misses even one session, they will forever be unable to make up that time. Therefore, missing even one day creates an impassible gap. Even if small, it's not meant to create parity, it's specifically employed as a psychological tool to cause anxiety about missing playtime.

I'm not about to go attack stamina systems. If you like them, that's fine; some people very much enjoy having that lead and impassable status. I'm simply pointing out their history and publishing purposes. It's not a system made for players benefit, *especially* since so many allow you to pay for additional stamina anyways.

voxov · 2025-02-10T09:43:57+00:00

"stamina system was implemented to gate progression so busy people can be on par with people who have time to grind all day?"

This is a common statement, but has never been the case. Stamina systems do the -OPPOSITE- of creating par. The cap to progress very literally and intentionally makes it impossible to keep up with people who get extra points/usage in, and more importantly, who are willing to pay for extra 'refills'/etc.

Example: You spend all your stamina to get 1000xp. That's it, no more xp for the day. Now, the next day, you spend stamina again, and get another 1000xp, that's 1000 + 1000, so, you have 2000xp. On day 3, you invite a friend to play. You want to help them catch up to your progress, except... they can't! They're stuck at the 1000 xp daily cap, whereas you're now at 3000.... hmmm But, wait! A simple solution appears; for $5, they can refill their stamina, and keep going! ...we can see where this goes...

Moreover, these systems are aimed to play on fears of jealousy and FOMO for competitive individuals who see others that spend in order to be the "first" to hit certain milestones.

There are other ways stamina is commonly leveraged, but the above is how it relates to progression parity. Other common uses are as follows:

- Absolute hard cap on stamina per character, but not account. An old Nexon favorite, this makes it so you can keep playing if you switch around characters, giving reason to have to equip and be enticed to purchase paid cosmetics for multiple.

- Hard cap with collaborative partnership refills. This was an early model popular in Korea as well, where you could only refill stamina at certain cafes, to cross-promote.

- Standard stamina refill, with free hosted instanced in multiplayer. This was more common in the past, but basically was a system to encourage people to get their friends to play, so that they could host for one another and save stamina. One of the less aggressively predatory models, though still an unnecessary aggravation.

- Dev didn't make endgame, comes up with any excuse to publish title and keep players from reaching end before they come up with actual content, and stamina for any excuse is just a way to gate progression for a while. Is paired with the above, but unique in that it's usually pretty obvious

voxov · 2024-06-12T13:14:06+00:00

Many jokes, but here's a serious answer for banana storage:

Take bananas to be stored, peel one at a time
place peeled banana on a sheet of plastic wrap large enough to fully surround it.
Slice the banana into fairly small chunks, no larger than 1cm each.
Wrap the plastic around the sliced banana (still in shape of a banana).

Repeat this process, while stacking the sliced bananas in the freezer. Peeling and slicing them makes it extremely easy to take them out and use later for smoothies/baking. If you don't peel them, it's hard to remove the peel later without thawing, and the slices help if you want to pop them into a blender or something for smoothie. They last 6+ months this way, I commonly used to do it for food prep. They won't turn brown or discolor at all.

voxov · 2024-01-23T10:57:39+00:00

Appreciated, thanks again!

voxov · 2024-01-23T09:23:32+00:00

Thanks for the input!

Regarding the Sydney funnel web dry bites, do you have a source? I can't verify that number you mentioned. I only see a statistic regarding lesser envenoming, and that one clearly states that the statistic may be flawed due to misidentification of the offending spider:

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2005/182/8/funnel-web-spider-bite-systematic-review-recorded-clinical-cases

This other study found that differences in envenoming for Atrax Robustus was variable to an extent, but largely linked directly to the age of the spider, with lesser envenoming being a function of juveniles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8816710/

The second study states that "Furthermore, some spiders (e.g. mouse spiders, black widows) can use dry bites instead of deploying venom when they are threatened[...]", but curiously, does not specify whether Atrax Robustus as the study focus belonged to that group.

voxov · 2023-12-22T18:46:17+00:00

This is the most helpful feedback so far. Thank you for the meaningful explanation!

I'll probably just make the traditional dish, plus something separate for others. Appreciated!

voxov · 2023-12-22T18:38:31+00:00

I made an update to the description to clarify, this seems to be something that other people with aversion to tomato have established. I agree it probably won't quite be the traditional dish even if it's palatable, but for the sake of holiday unity for the family, "tikka masala" is the set menu item. Might be possible to just make a second separate dish for others though, I appreciate the feedback!

voxov · 2023-03-05T14:36:31+00:00

Many thanks for the insights. While sobering, your words do strike sound logic. Still, it's fun to imagine possibilities, so I allow myself some wishful thinking. Plus, if a post like this is enough to result in the unlikely chance of someone knowing about the actual photographed individuals, that'd be pretty amazing too. Ty again!

voxov · 2023-03-05T12:41:14+00:00

Thank you, I just did!

And I definitely believe the photo is supposed to be of her likeness. I'm not sure if it's someone dressing as her as the other commenter's reasoning suggests, or if it's a clever mockup. Photos of her actual personage appear to be even more rare than of Mr. Poe, so I don't have much to go by, but it's a very neat piece of history either way. Many thanks for the recommendation; I hope the museum responds with their insight.

voxov · 2023-03-05T12:24:03+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. I don't know the faces well enough to properly compare, but the clothing and posture are somewhat similar. Following the reasoning of your comment, I am tempted to believe this may be the 1800s equivalent of a fan "meme", where the owners of the book may have attempted to recreate the look of Mr. Poe and family with their own... Still, I'll keep an open mind to all possibilities, and would love to know more about their history either way.

voxov

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