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Corraleno

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Everything posted by Corraleno

  1. I hope things greatly improve in all five areas ASAP! (((hugs)))
  2. There's such a huge variation in colonoscopy prep recommendations and a lot of it is simply not evidence-based. For example, this study of 400 patients compared the minimal prep of 1-day clear liquids to a prep that included 2 additional days of a low fiber diet plus 1 day of clear liquids, and they found no difference in the success of the prep (in fact, the shorter prep had a slightly better outcome, 95% vs 92%, possibly because those on the longer prep ended up cheating, but the difference was not statistically significant). And this study of 276 patients found that one day of a low fiber diet instead of clear liquids was even more effective than a day of clear liquids (96% vs 89%). So even requiring clear liquids instead of just a day of normal low-fiber foods seems unnecessary, and two days of low fiber plus a day of clear liquids is total overkill. I don't eat meat, eggs, or dairy, and the recommended low fiber diet is literally the polar opposite of the way I eat, so when the prep instructions for my most recent colonoscopy included a "low fiber diet," I just made smoothies and pureed soups out of my usual fruits and veg, with soy milk and some protein powder for extra protein. My colonoscopy went perfectly — but so did my previous one with just 1 day of clear liquids. Other than avoiding nuts and seeds, I'm not going to do the low fiber thing next time, because it seems at best unnecessary and at worst counter-productive.
  3. I joined almost exactly 15 years ago (March 2009), but I first started reading the boards the previous year when I was debating pulling DS out of public school. He's in grad school now, but I still hang out here because it's such a unique online space, filled with really smart, well-educated women, from so many different places and backgrounds, who are almost unfailingly kind, supportive, and helpful. It's really rare to find a large online group with so little snark, trolling, and spam (thank you Mods!).
  4. Post menopause there's been a pretty dramatic reduction in body hair, from my eyebrows to my legs and everything in between — plus body hair goes gray just like the hair on your head, which makes even the hair that's left increasingly invisible. The hair on my head is also thinner, but I originally had very very thick hair, so thankfully that isn't as noticeable.
  5. He did tell them, but frankly they were pretty lousy parents — interesting people in their own right, but they probably should not have had kids. By the time he was 10 or 11, his older brother was at university and I think they were just done with the whole parenting thing and decided to ship him off to boarding school and enjoy a childfree life.
  6. (Please don't quote, I'll delete this later.) ....
  7. Plus Novavax doesn't seem to have the harsh side effects of the mRNA vaccines — I purposely sought out Novavax for the fall booster (XBB) for myself and my kids, and none of us even had a slightly sore arm, whereas Moderna absolutely kicked my butt for a few days each time.
  8. I think the primary function of victim blaming (which this is a version of) is to reinforce people's beliefs that such-&-such would never happen to them, because they would always make better choices. And it's grossly, disproportionately used against women: If you didn't want to be sexually assaulted why did you choose to wear that dress/go to that party/accept that drink/date that guy? If you don't like being sexually harassed at work, why don't you just choose to accept it as a compliment/learn to take a joke/find a different job? If your partner physically/verbally/financially abuses you, you must have ignored all the red flags (that would have been obvious to me) when you chose that guy, so what did you expect? (Or why did you choose to behave in a way that made him mad?) If you didn't want to be relentlessly stalked, harassed, lied about, have every detail of your body and behavior dissected and criticized, and have your privacy invaded in every possible way, then why didn't you dump the college classmate you fell in love with and marry a nice middle class school teacher instead? When bad things happen to other people, some seem to find comfort in telling themselves that those people deserved it (or at least should have expected it) because of the choices they made, therefore those things could never happen to me because I would make better choices. And in my experience, the people who are usually the quickest to blame other people's misfortunes on their own choices are equally adamant that when bad things happen to them, it's just really bad luck, totally unfair, they've done nothing to deserve it....
  9. Fun little rabbit trail: not only is saying "yeah" (in a specific way) an actual Irish thing, there's even a formal linguistic term for it: the Inhaled Affirmative Yeah. "Several languages include an affirmative "yeah", "yah", "yuh", or "yes" that is made with inhaled breath.... That is an example of a pulmonic ingressive and is found [in] dialects of English spoken in Ireland (Hiberno-English) and the Scottish Highlands (Highland English), typically used to express agreement and show attentiveness." The inhaled affirmative yeah is also found in Faroese, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Estonian, and a few other languages.
  10. To me, "yeah" and "yay" are pronounced and spelled differently. "Yay" is an exclamation of excitement or happiness — "Yay, we won the championship!" or "Yay, I got a promotion!" "Yeah" is a shortened, less emphatic form of yes, like "Yeah, ok, I'll go do the dishes now" or "Yeah, I'm not happy about the increased prices either." It's pronounced like the Beatles' song "I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah..." I would pronounce "yeeaaah" like in the Beatles song — one syllable but more drawn out, not two syllables like "yee-aaah."
  11. But 100-150 years ago few children went beyond 8th grade, if that, and many of the poorest (i.e. the ones most likely to be breathing coal smoke 24/7) had little to no schooling, instead going to work in factories, mines, etc., for pennies a day to help support their families. Even as recently as 1940, less that 30% of American adults had a HS diploma, so comparing the cognitive and academic capabilities of the average child 100-150 years ago to children in 2024 makes no sense. And if your argument is that breathing heavily polluted air 24/7 didn't cause any cognitive issues in the past, I don't even know what to say to that. When I was a kid in the 60s & 70s, we had recess before school (buses dropped kids at school well before classes started so we could run around on the playground for a bit, which not only helped "get the wiggles out" physically, it made sure our brains were well oxygenated and ready for work), plus we had a solid half hour of outdoor recess after lunch, and in the youngest grades we also had short breaks mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Windows were always open when it was warm, and even in the winter they were often cracked open to keep the room from getting too warm and making kids sleepy. After school we would play outside for a couple of hours until dinner, then do homework (with books and paper), then maybe watch a couple of TV shows if we finished all our homework. Most weekends we were outside all day every day, in all weather except pouring rain. Now so many kids are just stuck indoors all day, focused on screens in school, after school, at night, and on weekends. When you add together the factors of high CO2 due to poor indoor air quality, plus lack of sunlight and physical activity, plus 24/7 interaction with screens that present information in shallow, bite-sized pieces with little opportunity for deeper engagement and analysis, plus an all-pervasive angertainment industry selling doom and gloom 24/7, I don't see how that combination could do anything but damage developing brains.
  12. Kate's "responsibility to the public" is to perform the duties that are customarily assigned to the Princess of Wales, which generally focus on charity work, visiting hospitals, goodwill tours abroad, etc. Her responsibilities do not include catering to the public's prurient interest in knowing exactly how fat her face is, whether she currently poops in a bag, or any other private medical information. The fact that anyone feels like they are owed that information is absolutely wild to me.
  13. Martin Kulldorf, one of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, still claims that being infected with covid provides lifelong immunity that is superior to vaccination, and he opposes vaccination for anyone but the elderly and high risk. He also claims that the mRNA vaccines are dangerous and should never be used, preferring the J&J and AZ vaccines — despite lower efficacy rates and serious issues with blood clots. He was just fired from Harvard Med School a few days ago and posted a long diatribe claiming he is being censored and silenced for telling The Truth the government doesn't want you to know. And of course 99% of the comments on that post are a crazy train of antivax, anti-government conspiracy theories (with a side of antisemitism), while the 1% who try to cite actual scientific studies are attacked as "shills for Big Pharma," accused of being Fauci using a false name, etc.
  14. So, since she knew what the press had done to her husband and his family (including literally hounding his mother to death), it's her choice to be relentlessly hounded and bullied by the tabloid press, and have ZERO right to privacy even for very personal medical matters, for the rest of her life? William didn't have a choice, does he deserve it too? What the press is doing to Kate is absolutely vile. What they did to Diana, and continue to do to Harry and Meghan, and now William and Kate, and which they will surely do to George and Charlotte and Louis in the future, is predatory verging on psychopathic. No one deserves that, and there is no amount of money that can compensate for the impact of relentless bullying, personal attacks, and invasion of privacy on the mental health of a fellow human being.
  15. I do, but I'm not sure it's necessary since they switched to a pump. I just got used to keeping it in the fridge when they sold it in dropper bottles, because that would go bad pretty quickly from air exposure.
  16. One of the HCA sites recently profiled a guy whose social media was full of all the usual antivax, anti-Fauci, "it's just a cold, wake up sheeple" stuff, who ended up in the ICU for many months before being sent home hooked to an oxygen tank with less than 30% lung function. Was in and out of the hospital over the following 18 months as he caught multiple new respiratory infections one after the other, until he finally passed away, but he never once blamed covid or thought that maybe getting vaccinated would have been a good idea. Right up to the end he was blaming remdesivir, intubation, and the hospital's refusal to give him ivermectin ("which has been proven effective"), even claiming that his doctors said they had never seen covid "do so much damage to a healthy guy like me." Because of course covid is usually totally benign in overweight men in their 50s, so no one could possibly have predicted that it would severely damage his heart and lungs. I've also seen social media posts from antivaxers with symptoms of long covid who blame the vaccine even though they never had it — it's all those vaxed mudbloods walking around shedding viruses (including HIV???) who are causing the problems!
  17. This. When I was in HS we had to buy our own locks and I can remember standing in the store in front of a box of locks (back when locks were just loose in a box instead of encased in thick plastic), and I'd go through the whole box looking for the easiest to remember combinations (which were on a tag with each lock) and then trying different locks to see which were easiest to open. There was a significant, objective difference in how easy vs "fussy" the locks were — some you really had to get absolutely perfect on every number and if you under- or over-shot the number by a millimeter you had to start over. One year I ended up with a fussy lock and it was such a PITA, sometimes I'd have to do the whole routine 2-3 times to get it perfect enough to open, and who has time for that when you're rushing to class? And that's probably a much more common issue with built-in locks in old school lockers. I can totally understand a kid who gets assigned to a locker with a temperamental PITA lock deciding that it's just not worth the hassle and it's easier to just carry stuff around.
  18. Same! I think it's hilarious that we all got a recommendation for the same obscure group at around the same time — do they think we're dull because we're on a homeschool board? Did we all google something last week that triggered it? (ETA: The group, both men and women, post about things that are generally more esoteric/nerdy than dull. It's mostly tongue in cheek, and some of the folks (especially the Brits) are very funny. It's not actually a group for dull men looking for dates, lol)
  19. The process of "figuring things out" often requires multiple steps, and even knowing how to break down the task into those steps may not be intuitive for a lot of people, or may be overwhelming for reasons outside their control (LDs, cognitive issues, mental health, etc.) Even people who may normally be pretty good at figuring things out for themselves may simply not have the time, energy, or bandwidth to do so when under pressure. I've always been a figure-it-out-myself person, both by nature and necessity (abusive neglectful parents), but I have a kid with ADHD and anxiety who is great at some kinds of figuring-it-out and completely overwhelmed by other kinds (although at least he's good about asking for help when overwhelmed). And then I have another kid who thinks she's great at figuring things out and rarely asks for help, but unfortunately she often "figures things out" in an incorrect or incomplete way because her solutions are based on stuff-she-already-knows, without understanding that some of the information she needs is stuff she doesn't know yet! It's easy to say "kids need to be taught how to figure stuff out," but I think that's actually harder to implement than it sounds. It involves teaching them how to figure out what the actual problem is to begin with, break down the task of finding a solution into multiple steps, find the information they need to complete those steps (including figuring out what they need to know that they don't know), and then implement those steps, plus knowing how to reorganize and redirect if something changes or isn't working. And honestly I think a lot of that is just inborn personality and innate skill. Some people just intuitively know how to analyze problems and find solutions in a logical way, so they take for granted that everyone should be able to do that, but not everyone is wired that way. And that's also what makes it a difficult skill set to teach, because most of the people who are good at it are intuitively good at it, and it's not easy to teach something that "just comes naturally" to people for whom it's not natural at all.
  20. As someone who previously worked really crazy long hours in a very high stress job, I know too well the incredible toll that takes on your mind and body — and you really don't realize how bad it is until you're out of it. Stress not only shortens your life, it drains all the joy out of the time that you do get, so I would choose the option that gives you the most flexibility and the least stress. If you ask people on their deathbed what they would have done differently, not many are going to say that they wish they'd worked longer hours at a more stressful job, but many will likely say they wish they spent more time with their kids when they were little. If your signature is accurate, you've got less than a decade before all your kids are grown and flown, so I would make the most of the time you have with them, because it's going to be gone in the blink of an eye.
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