My MIL had Covid the week or 2 before Christmas. The virus is so random- she is mid 70s, has a multitude of comorbidities- some quite serious- blood pressure issues, asthma, diabetes, and a recent cancer diagnosis! Fortunately she had not started chemo yet. She claims she was asymptomatic, but we feel she had mild symptoms. Before the diagnosis (routine test) she was complaining that she had never felt more exhausted, nauseous, or generally just bad, ever. She blamed it on the weather (and cancer, of course), but she'd had cancer undetected for a while and the weather has been variable forever. She had no classic symptoms like loss of smell, cough, or breathing difficulties, and they cleared her to begin chemo 10 days after her positive test! She felt bad (due to weather, of course) for about 7-10 days. It's so strange how sometimes young, healthy people have such hard times while those who you'd expect to be most likely to get seriously ill can have mild cases or be asymptomatic. I hope everyone here is doing better! We live several states from MIL so had no exposure. It's no surprise she caught it, however. Her church had an outbreak and many of her caretakers and visitors ended up catching it.

We have the instant pot air fryer attachment and use it for veggies, but the best use is for tofu. I know a lot of people hate tofu, but it's actually good in the air fryer. I've tried baking, broiling, and frying tofu and usually it just comes out acceptable or less than gross, but all the tofu eaters in our family think it's good when cooked in the air fryer. I just saw a recipe for shrimp in the air fryer that I'm going to try next.

Sounds perfectly normal to me. I don't think it's unusual for kids in the high percentiles to come down to more average heights and weights as they get older. FWIW, she's about the size of my 13yr old. And nobody is concerned that she's overly small. She's always been small, but she's actually on the growth charts now, or at least was the last time we checked.

I hate it too, but we have no choice but to keep it until we move. It wouldn't be bad (maybe) in a large kitchen, but it hogs too much counter space. It gets the corner, PLUS too much space on the sides for dishwashing work.

Our designer wanted to put the dishwasher right next to the sink and I vetoed it. We have to have a corner sink- it's the only place it can go without spending way more money than it's worth. When he put the dishwasher next to the sink in the design, I tried it out by putting a yard stick out where it'd be to represent the door opening and it intruded upon my space to stand at the sink. It probably would have been workable but I'd rather have the dishwasher separated by a 9in pull out to give a little room to stand. If it intruded upon my space, it definitely would be a problem for Dh or anyone bigger than me. The most important thing I've learned now that we're in the middle of finalizing our contract is to make the budget king! I have so many wants, and there's so many things that really, really would be better, more useful, more environmentally friendly, more attractive, and all that, but it would get out of control quickly. I was just looking at slabs today and I have to accept that good enough is ok.

My DS has severe tinnitus. It's common with hearing loss so I'd definitely get that checked out. His is helped with good quality hearing aids. The cheap or average ones won't cut it and only make it worse. His hearing aids have a tinnitus feature but he doesn't really like it and feels just having the hearing aids in helps enough for now. There's also some youtube tinnitus support videos that he plays when he's having an especially rough day. They sound super annoying but he says that while they're on the tinnitus goes away. We saw a new doctor yesterday and he suggested nicotinamide riboside supplements. We haven't tried it but I ordered some.

I was on low dose progesterone only BC pills as a teen for period issues. I had no trouble with mood but it made me really nauseous. I never got used to it. It was like morning sickness lite- I'd be sick in the morning for an hour or so. I eventually quit because of it and have refused to go back on BC pills ever sense. If it were my daughter, I'd have no problems with her trying it for a month or 2 to see if it helped.

I keep seeing people say that no, immunity really does last, but I've reached a point where I am skeptical. I don't believe it- I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but we're less than a year into this, it's only now spreading rapidly everywhere, and already so many people seem to have had it more than once. It feels like disinformation to prevent panic. Or maybe that is the damage that the leadership of this admin has done- now nobody believes anything even when we should. Would it make sense that the entire family of 4 were an unlucky outliers? The husband and wife don't share genetics. Coronaviruses aren't known for their lasting immunity either.

My DH’s cousin just posted that her family has covid again- positive tests both now and in the spring. Her DH is much sicker this time. He went to the hospital yesterday but was sent home. It’s pretty scary- herd immunity isn’t going to work. Does anyone know if vaccine induced immunity should last longer? My parents are older and we want to see them but they won’t stop socializing!

My daughter had this after some surgeries and we had to do desensitization exercises. It helped a whole lot. She still has impaired sensation, but no longer has the pins and needles. We used gabapentin to help make the desensitization tolerable until she no longer needed it. At first she couldn't stand to have anything touch her and the doctor said the pain and sensitivity would not go away if we ignored them and waited. I'm not sure if it would work the same way for any cause, but you'd start by using something soft, like silk, on the problem area and just rub it for 5-10 minutes several times a day. You'd increase the coarseness of the stimuli as tolerance increased over several months until you could rub a bristle brush or other scratchy thing over the area without pain. https://drmingkao.com/2019/07/19/desensitization-for-neuropathic-pain/

I didn't get the microscopes that had the attachment ability. I should have, but they are 13-19 so I thought they should learn to use it themselves and it was more expensive.

My kids cannot see a single image in the binocular microscope. Are there any surefire tips? Their faces are not too small. They are all about my size or larger and I can see the image clearly. We've tried and tried and they are getting frustrated. They say it gives them headaches just to try. I'm not sure what I did to make myself see the images correctly. The first few times I couldn't do it either, but then I persevered, figured it out, and it's like riding a bike. It's ok to use only one eye and one objective when we are using a lower magnification, but on the higher one the image is too small unless you can use both eyes. Google says to try stepping back, looking at it from outside the objectives, and then moving up, but it's not helping. I've tried to show them to blur the objectives by using 2 fingers and seeing if they can turn it to 3 fingers by relaxing, but they can't even do that! I had planned a lot of microscope time (to get my money's worth!) and this is frustrating.

I don't know. With organs and medical procedures it's coercive and we have a history of taking advantage of people. Medical procedures have an inherent power imbalance even among people who would normally be equals. The other issues are also legitimate and I have no answer, but I don't think the answer would be to expand the coercive opportunities.

I don't feel it is ethical. If the vaccine has side effects, and they all do, then who will be disproportionately affected? You have to have free, voluntary, informed consent. It's like paying for organs, IMO.

Have you contacted the instructor and told her that everyone thinks she's wrong? 😁

Any chance it was a test sentence that isn't graded for points but is used to test sentences for future tests? It's a terrible sentence that doesn't even make sense, IMO. Distressing? What is that? Maybe they meant destressing? Is that even a word either? I hope it was a test sentence that will be tossed.

This is hard. In our area we say it like the a in “awwwww” what a sweet kitten. Or if Americans are confused about something, and then you get it and say the first a in “ah hah!” Or the ba in Obama? But honestly, sometimes British people will say there’s a difference in the way they say 2 words or sounds and I don’t hear the distinction. It sounds the same to me and I don’t think I’m unusual. We don’t hear the vowel differences that you hear. When I hear you (or whoever) say paw it’s almost how I expect it to sound, but you’d need to draw that last vowel out a couple more seconds to match me.

How about the a in the falalalalas in Deck the Halls? Or when your dentist says open your mouth and say ah? Or do you all open your mouths and say ah but it still sounds like the a in cat? Hall? Y’all? I say Nevada with an ah sound.

Nevada= Ne-Va-Da=Ne (short e sort of cross between e in Ned and uh as in “nuh- uh”) Va (rhymes with paw) Da (duh) Accent on “Va” That’s how we say it in the mid south with city inflection

Get a bigger cat breed- a nice sturdy maine coon or something like that. It should work fine if you're dog is well trained, and I believe he is. We've gotten several kittens and my high prey dogs did fine once they were introduced carefully. He has to think the kitten or cat is family and clearly under your protection. One thing we had to watch was if our cat gets outside (very rare!) my dog gets confused for a minute and will chase him. I'm pretty sure she'd figure out who it was but we always called her back quickly.

Ok. They had the “China ban” but actually allowed thousands of citizens and residents to continue to come in from China with almost no restrictions. Were there any? Maybe they had a temperature check but they weren’t forced into hotels for 2 weeks. My relatives live overseas and have been back and forth at least twice from Central Asia. They came first when travel was going to be banned and were stuck in a nightmare of long lines as everyone was funneled to a few airports. They had free travel when entering and no screening. Ever. Going back to their less wealthy country is harder and restrictions are tighter. My physician traveled internationally in March, passed through at least 1 of the busiest airports in the country and had no screening. USPS was going to send masks to everyone but decided not to. States were told they were on their own. Fauci stated in Jan that it was airborne and had asymptomatic spread. Gvmt officials minimizing risks We had a whole plan from the simulation “crimson contagion” that said what the government actually did wasn’t going to work and they didn’t follow the recommendations that had been developed. We may not have been able to avoid pain but we should have been able to avoid this reality. It’s obvious. Look back on this board in Feb! Even the average news watchers on here were getting nervous. Why was nobody doing anything?! The admin saw the tsunami sucking water out, told people it was a fine day to go to the beach, and then acted like it was a surprise when the wave hit.

The EU and UK have a population of about 100 million more than the USA. 331 million in USA vs 447 in EU plus UK. Their recorded deaths are still lower. Are they doing well? Probably not. Better? Hard to tell since they are so different and can't really be compared to states of one nation. It varies. On the whole, I'd say their stats still look better. I think we could clearly have done better had we cared enough.

I had a fabulous experience with them. I kept trying to turn them down once they got my name (referred by HS counselor) but they persisted and talked me and my parents into it. I still feel a little guilty for how much help I received but it was a positive experience. The caseworker was responsive and went above and beyond.

This is really concerning. I fear that we don't know enough yet how reinfections work for most people to tell if a previous exposure is protective or a new risk factor. What about long covid....twice? I wonder if the vaccines will eventually be like RSV where at risk people have to go back every month for a new shot. I know RSV is not technically a vaccine, but the timing of having to go every month or every few months could be similar.

I hope they will be ok! How scary.