Our fridge died, so I ended up spring cleaning the floor and walls behind it through no ambition of my own. The dust and grease were just too gross to ignore! Now I'm alternating between getting urgent stuff done (like taxes, oy) and lying prostrate on the couch with my mini-poodle. Heading over to the cocktail thread sounds brilliant....

Yes, thank you, that's the doc he's going to message again to ask about meds. He sent one message already, and her office just gave him the general cardiology scheduling number and said she wouldn't prescribe anticoagulants because she agreed with ER assessment. Hopefully she'll change her mind with more info on family history. His former cardiologist retired, and since he hadn't had issues in 15 years he doesn't currently have a specialist. That meant a longer wait for a new patient appointment. If anyone is in the same boat, definitely get established as a new cardiology patient before you have urgent need! Cardiology is absolutely swamped with Covid, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Thanks so much, everyone! With this advice I think pushing for anticoagulants is the way to go. That would set him up for his cardiologist appt in 11 days and addresses clotting risk until then. As much as I wish they tried to cardiovert him earlier it seems that may be a bridge too far at this point.

He was the perfect candidate when he went to the ER because it had been just a couple hours. I'm so mad they didn't try. They said they were going to, but then decided not to because they couldn't be sure when his heart went out of rhythm. He is sure--as an athlete with a history of AFib he's very tuned in, and literally felt it change while he was eating dinner. He's about 46 hours out and we're hesitant to risk Covid etc in the ER again. Last time he was there for 5 hours. Wondering what are the chances they'd try, since the first doc didn't and he's nearing the end of the window.

This is helpful to hear, thank you.

Thanks so much. Second guessing myself given two docs not prescribing and appreciate your clarity.

Dh has had AFib before, last episode about 15 years ago. In the ER Thursday night they were initially going to discharge him on metoprolol and anticoagulants, and refer him to cardiology for follow up within 5 days. But then they consulted the algorithm that says he's low risk for stroke, and decided last minute no anticoagulants. Really wish we'd pushed for it then, but we were both exhausted and not thinking straight. Cardiology has no openings for 11 days. He's still in AFib. He was on anticoagulants while out of rhythm years ago, and my understanding is if he remains in AFib cardiology would put him on anticoagulants before attempting cardioversion anyway. ER did not attempt cardioversion. There's clotting history in his family--his dad had a stroke secondary to AFib and has not completely recovered cognitive function. His mom also has AFib and has had multiple PEs and DVTs. Both our daughters had Covid toes, which docs said is micro clots settled in lower extremities. Primary care declined to add anticoagulants when he requested on MyChart, saying they agree with ER assessment. We need to write back and emphasize family history of clotting, stroke, PE, DVT, right? And that ER doc emphasized to us he should see cardiology within 5 days, but 11 day delay may change the assessment? He's 53, not a fall risk, suspending intense workouts until he sees cardiologist.

I should've said among them is my college-age daughter, a 3-season athlete who can no longer run, much less compete. She's been willing to share her experience (which many with Long Covid understandably aren't) and worked this fall with her college to develop a panel featuring students with LC, faculty research, and info on symptoms and prevention. But she heard last week that higher-ups in the administration have nixed the panel. They don't want Long Covid visible on campus. She might be able to form a student support group instead, a dean said, but best not to reference Long Covid. How about post-viral illness, which is broad enough to include many other things? This is a highly competitive college in Northeast, known for considering character and kindness in applicants, and for saying that the diversity of student experience increases the awareness and intelligence of all. @Corraleno, you're a board member I deeply respect, and I have no beef with you. But our government and public health response has sold out our children's long term health to corporate interests, and that I cannot forgive. I don't see a subtle shift toward a slightly lower percentage of cases making a difference. The pinnacle of human achievement isn't getting and spending. And sweeping things under the rug is not the most evolved human response. I shudder to think how my generation will answer when our adult children ask why didn't you tell me? And why didn't you protect me? Yale and Wash U have robust faculty research on Long Covid that they feature in alumni publications. We can be smart, and emotionally aware and still look at this.

I apologize, I haven't read this. But is it good news if the percentage is lower, but most people are getting Omicron variants multiple times? Does it translate to fewer new folks with LC, or a smaller percentage but more people affected? I'm not seeing good news in our circles. We know a dozen young athletes who can no longer run or play sports, another dozen young people who have asthma or other breathing issues, and two teens with kidney damage post-Covid. About 3/4 of this appeared after Omicron.

No idea if there's an unattended bag stunt going around in her circles, but I also don't think there needs to be. That sort of response is the same genre that gets pulled out for all sorts of occasions.

I hope I'm not being a pain because you have so much to deal with and you're doing phenomenally with all of it. I'll quit after this in case my posts are only adding to the hassles for you. I just think it's not about the landscaper's willingness to work it out. OF COURSE they want to work it out with you, with no legal representation on your side, because they will end up paying less. If they didn't follow their own safety protocols and also didn't follow manufacturer recommendations on the appropriate amount to spray both are actually huge deals, and important info to give your own lawyer. I live in Ohio and the fact that the railroad responsible for the train derailment and toxic spill was involved in testing etc makes me livid. No wonder they found zero issues with the air and water! I'm paraphrasing here and open to correction if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that railroad personnel actually identified issues a few miles before the derailment. But they did not stop the train for repairs because it wasn't legally required, and it wasn't required because railroads had successfully lobbied for decreased regulations. We just have to hold accountable the corporations, manufacturers and small businesses who are contaminating our soil, air and waterways--not to mention our and our children's bodies. When polluters control testing, remediation and compensation, it is entirely in their interest to minimize and deny, and not to do right by the human beings and environments impacted by their negligence. Another landscaping company said they've seen this happen multiple times before? What the heck is going on? Landscapers in your area are casually and repeatedly broadcast spraying chemicals like this on random properties? And other families, who I'm certain have far less expertise than you, have had to deal with figuring out what to do about pesticides they didn't ask for killing their plants and contaminating their entire yards? Before my accident I felt like being litigious was always a bad thing, and that being agreeable and not getting litigious was more virtuous or something. Now I think that calling in appropriate legal support helps not only the individual, but really can prevent others from experiencing similar harm. The company who did this--and probably other companies in your area since this is not an isolated incident--need to feel consequences to their bottom line serious enough to make them put genuine safeguards in place and stick to them every time. ETA: A consult that costs a few hundred bucks probably would be worth it because it may give you a better idea of appropriate compensation and good strategies, even if you just use the advice to handle things yourself. And sometimes just a letter from a lawyer threatening action is enough to shift things dramatically.

Do they have a legal team you could talk with, to ask about next steps and important considerations for you as you proceed? Or I wonder if lawyers in this area of law offer free consults, the way many do for personal injury and family law. @Quill, do you know anything about this? After a car accident I initially thought that I could handle things myself, and that would mean more settlement funds with no payment to a lawyer. But what I learned was that lawyers have the expertise to know what is a fair settlement, and how to communicate with the other side both to maximize the settlement and minimize the opposing lawyers' ability to find reasons not to compensate you properly. Basically if you have a good case and a good lawyer, you end up with much better compensation than going it alone. There are crappy lawyers who exploit people, but by checking reviews and asking local friends for a recommendation you should be able to find someone who will give you an expert advice on whether you need a lawyer and how to proceed. I mean, when will new plants start fruiting? How do you calculate what may be years of lost food for your family and income?

I'm so sorry this happened. Have you contacted your homeowner's insurance or a lawyer? Homeowner's might be an easy place to start. The landscaping company certainly has access to lawyers through their insurance, and their sole purpose is to minimize compensation to you. I have no experience in this area but wonder if compensation should be in the tens of thousands, not thousands. Consulting a lawyer is really the only way to know what compensation should look like. The time and stress it takes matter, in addition to materials and labor. And if you run into any complications with growing plants in the new soil or any question of health issues it would be a mistake to settle too early, and for too little. A lawyer can help you understand the timeframe and steps to protect yourself, and either advise you or take over communication with the landscaping co.

Mulling over this dynamic, I think that with a relationship like this it's not possible to get to a better place in terms of trust, mutual support, or emotional reliability. It's great she chose the supportive thing when it mattered. It shows she has an occasional healthy impulse and that it's worth it to make a little effort to keep the peace. But when you are the container or projection screen for someone else's insecurity and uncomfortable emotion, that can rear its head anytime. It's like emotional whiplash when it occurs again, after an interval that felt more supportive or drama-free. Strategies to avoid triggering her issues like decreasing contact, not making waves and reducing the emotional drain for yourself can give you some relief. But I just don't see potential for real growth in the relationship. Triggered by stress or emotional discomfort I think SIL will just revert to jealousy and scapegoating again.

I just want to say you seem very clear-eyed about who you can count on in a tough situation, and why having some contact is in your and your chldren's best interest. So I wonder if the question is less how you respond to SIL, and more how to minimize the emotional drain for yourself. Some of the answers may be the same, but shifting the focus might lead in slightly different directions.

And some of those kids may eventually make observations about family interactions that seem a little off to them, or that confuse or hurt or turn them off in some way. They may place their own boundaries and emotional limits on their relationships with some family members. It's wild to see young adults developing more emotional maturity and insight, and better adult communication skills, than their elders in a family.

I think you said above you wish you'd just told FIL you could take toddler, and not contacted SIL? That may help, to really and truly minimize personal interactions with her. There's no way to have a mutually supportive or respectful relationship with someone like that. You went above and beyond. There's nothing else you should be doing. That relationship is an open drain down which your kindness, concern and energy could flow forever. Sometimes I play around with disarming people like this by removing what they bitch about. Not because I should, and not because I think it will solve anything. Just to see what happens. You don't need to do this, but I kind of love the suggestion to serve peas at every effing gathering. There is nothing in your power that will transform this into a healthy relationship. But maybe a combination of reducing contact and removing a weapon here and there could reduce the amount of crap she's able to send your way? Just enough to give you a little break, or limit some of the damage? ETA: I'm writing this to myself, about an IL that has similar energy and has occupied too much of my emotional energy since Christmas. I'm imagining a little gravesite for this relationship. It's sad that it couldn't be a real and living thing. I feel some loss and grief about what might have been. But it's really, truly not possible with this person.

But we move up and down all the time, relative to our individual thresholds. Someone who has a life-altering reaction to something when they're tired, allergic and not eating well might have no issues when they're well-rested, well-nourished, and taking supplements or medication that reduce mast cell activation and support their overall health. Self-care, medical care and health status on the day of vaccination all can make a difference. Below are recommendations by Nancy Klimas, MD, earlier in the pandemic, to mitigate risk for people with ME/CFS who wanted to get vaccinated but weren't sure they'd tolerate the vaccine. I've talked with people who had issues with one shot, then used some of the recommendations here and did fine with the next. There are no guarantees, of course, but knowing ways to mitigate risk helps weigh the individual risks and benefits of vaccination. And it's probably worthwhile for everyone to consider health status at the time of vaccination. https://www.nova.edu/nim/To-Vaccinate-or-Not-with-MECFS.html You can mitigate the risk in a number of ways - just the way you do when you feel a relapse coming on. Before the vaccine, make sure you are taking enough antioxidants, particularly NAC or glutathione and CoQ10. The big mediator of post vaccination relapse and immediate reactions is mast cell activation. If it happens immediately, that is anaphylaxis, but if it happens slowly and low grade over days the mediators mast cells release can drive a classic ME/CFS relapse. So, take an antihistamine before and for several days after the vaccine – the strongest one you can tolerate. (Benadryl is one of the strongest, Zyrtec is another good choice). There are many mast cell stabilizers; watch Dr. Maitland's excellent lecture from out recent CME Workshop: Managing the Syndrome Soup: POTS, EDS, MCAS & ME/CFS, if you want to know more: http://bit.ly/NovaDysCME There are natural supplements that act to block or clear histamine and stabilize mast cells such as alpha lipoic acid, ascorbic acid, B6, diamine oxidase enzymes (DAO), luteolin, N-acetylcysteine (NAC), Omega-3's, riboflavin, SAMe, quercetin, and natural sources of theophylline like green and black teas. If you have been diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome, it would make sense that your risk of an immediate reaction to any vaccine should be higher, though the data on the risk to people with mast cell activation syndrome or prior vaccine allergic reactions is not yet known with the COVID-19 vaccines. I suspect we will know fairly quickly, with millions of doses already administered.

I thought she knew you were living apart before--is that right? If yes, she already knows that's been part of your process, so I don't get why it would be a huge revelation if you have another period of the same thing. At least in my relationships there's a lot of circling back around the same issues and attempts to deal with them, and no one else needs to know the blow-by-blow. Sorry if I misunderstood and she wasn't aware when you were apart before. In any case it does sound like she's giving you really consistent signals on what she can and can't handle now.

I don't know if risk from Covid vaccines is different than other vaccines--that's a great question. There's more data on Covid vaccines than anything else, I imagine. With family history of environmental illness and ME/CFS, I wouldn't say that people who have reactions to vaccines or anything else are ticking time bombs, necessarily. Instead, I think environmental exposures and everyday health practices are more impactful in people with genetic predispositions, and there's a narrower range of circumstances that support their health. So it may not be that the person is fated to a certain condition, but that the threshold of environmental and other factors that can trigger it is much lower for them. I have no doubt there's a canary-in-the-coal-mine phenomenon, too, where if we paid more attention to studying chronic illness we'd learn a lot about human health in general. Totally agree with your husband that most people underestimate the long term impact of many infectious diseases. I've been fascinated by recent research on past infections as contributing factors to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Also read recently the health and longevity of older people in Japan may be partly because masking during cold season reduces lifetime exposure to respiratory infections that contribute to what we call the diseases of aging. Blew my mind!

To me the lack of transparency on Covid risks really opened the door to conspiracy theories. When public health messaging leads people to believe Covid is a cold or flu, but they start to see more deaths, heart issues and organ damage in real life, what could explain it? Even as anti-vaccine propaganda fills the gap, public health is still failing to alert the public to the Covid complications we are seeing in real time now. That said, there are people who have cardiac issues, organ damage and Long-Covid-type sequelae from the vaccines--but it's a way smaller percentage than people who have complications from Covid. I think the fact that public health downplayed the existence of vaccine injury for decades was a precursor to downplaying Covid risks. Too much focus on calming public opinion, and not enough on preventing disease--including raising the alert on health risks when appropriate. What if, instead of denying that vaccine injury exists, we had done serious research on which populations are more likely to develop vaccine injury? What if, after identifying health or genetic conditions in more vulnerable populations, we researched how to reduce risk for those populations, not just those with egg allergy? Sharing more accurate information on the risk/benefit ratio of vaccines could have built public trust in this essential public health tool. I really wish, like you, that actual evidence mattered more in health policy and in people's assessment of relative risks of disease and vaccination. PS--I'm afraid my post might prompt a response that vaccines are 100% safe, and it's anti-science to say otherwise. I mean, if an Advil can have negative side effects, so can a vaccine. But we've failed spectacularly to communicate to the public that Covid is MUCH more dangerous to the the vast majority of people than the vaccines.

Oh my goodness, what pretty little babies! They are absolutely precious 💜 Congrats to all, especially your badass dd. She must've learned that somewhere, right?! 🙂 Sending prayers and all good energy that everyone is thriving and ready to come home soon.

Twice your sister has shut down or indicated she can't deal with hearing about challenges in your marriage. At this point I'd honor that by not volunteering more. But I also wouldn't lie if she asks, or if something comes up that makes non-disclosure super awkward or potentially deceptive. In that case, I'd keep it short and sweet. I just don't think it's deceptive to honor the clear indications she's given that hearing this stuff is too much for her right now. Has she ever asked for more info, or said she felt deceived by not hearing more? An emotionally safe family isn't one without conflict or difficulty, so I kind of hope you can let go of feeing responsible for that. What matters is if people are seen and heard, and if family members make an effort to show respect for each other while handling disagreement or difficulty. And when that fails, as it invariably will, whether people make a sincere effort to try to repair the relationship by owning their own mistakes or misjudgments, acknowledging the impact on others, and apologizing without caveat or qualification. If your sister gives you a different message later, and says she actually does want to hear more or feels deceived, you can always say you weren't sure what was best, but that you tried to hear and honor the discomfort she voiced before. And you're really sorry that the choice you made ended up not feeling right to her, and having a negative impact after all. Based on what you said here, that just doesn't seem like the signal she's giving now.

Would love to hear what your ND recommended if you're up for sharing. If not, no need to reply and I'm sending all good wishes to you and yours 💜

Good point, and it's inspiring to hear of your dad's outdoor adventures in midlife and beyond!