- America would not be happy with me when I tried to come back
- America probably thinks I am a kidnap risk
- I would possibly get arrested for espionage
- Possible lifetime airport molestation
- Would hurt husband's career/security clearance
- Also I would turn gay
eragain
"Music-thanatology is a professional field within the broader subspecialty of palliative care. It is a musical/clinical modality that unites music and medicine in end of life care. The music-thanatologist utilizes harp and voice at the bedside to lovingly serve the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people who are terminally ill or dying, and their loved ones, with the prescriptive delivery of music."
HI OLD LADY I MADE YOU A MIX TAPE. I DREW A LITTLE COFFIN ON IT. I HOPE YOU LIKE THE SMITHS.
Not many people have heard of the parathyroid glands! So I will educate you the best way, through blingee. The parathyroid glands are the four little bean-shaped things covered with vampire sparkles.
This is a view from the back of your neck. The lump thing behind the parathyroid glands is your thyroid. Despite the name, the parathyroids are not related to the thyroid, although some lucky people (like me!) have problems with both.
The thyroid gland controls your metabolism. It's the gland that people who hate fat people like to ignore, so that they can pretend that all fat people just need to eat more lettuce! This is called the just world hypothesis.
The parathryoid glands, on the other hand, control the amount of calcium in your blood. I bet you didn't know that blood calcium was so important that it needed its own gland (or four of them), did you? Well, neither did I a year ago! But actually, having the wrong level of calcium in your blood can ruin your life quicker than a face tattoo that says "YOLO"!
In real life, the four parathyroid glands are about the size of a grain of rice. Sometimes (and nobody knows why) one of the glands will decide to step out and do its own thing, and will start growing and growing until it becomes a tumor (a tumor relating to the endocrine system is also called an adenoma, which is Greek for "hahah your doctors won't believe you"). The good thing about these tumors, if tumors can have a good thing, is that they are hardly ever cancerous. The bad thing about these tumors is that the tumor-cells are still doing what the parathyroid cells do, which is producing a hormone that raises the amount of calcium in your blood. This will lead to abnormally high blood calcium, called HYPERCALCEMIA.
This is the fun part! Because, did you know that a small increase in one electrolyte in your blood can lead to a whole bunch of problems that seem completely unrelated, like depression? Well, you do now! And this means that you are now smarter than most doctors! Even the really attractive ones on TV!
Anyway, the main problem with hypercalcemia is that the main symptom is fatigue. This is a problem because most people don't believe "fatigue" exists and that you just have to exercise more and eat more blueberries, even if you f**king love blueberries. This is one of the many reasons that parathyroid tumors are underdiagnosed. Another reason is that the tumors are sometimes hard to find, because they're hiding behind the thyroid gland. But it's really important to diagnose them, because eventually you will get osteoporosis and cancer and you will die!
So, LJ readers, this is what you must take away from this: if you ever hear a friend complaining of the parathyroid-related symptoms below, you should tell them to get their calcium tested. You should also tell them to not listen to the doctor if s/he says that high calcium is normal, and to instead get themselves to an endocrinologist. The responsibility is on YOU, LJ readers, because if you've reached this far in this entry you now know more about parathyroid tumors than the average primary-care physician.
Besides fatigue, the symptoms are:
★ Anything related to fluid regulation, like extreme thirst, frequent dehydration, going to the bathroom to pee too much, etc
★ Nausea/vomiting
★ Depression
★ Bone pain/osteoporosis (this happens because your blood thinks it needs LOTS OF calcium, and SUCKS IT FROM THE BONES ew)
★ Lack of concentration/memory loss/generally acting like you have mild Alzheimer's
★ Kidney stones or pain (THIS IS WHAT EVENTUALLY HAPPENS TO THE CALCIUM THAT'S MEANT TO BE IN YOUR BONES)
Watch out for them, LJ! The future is in your hands!
This is a view from the back of your neck. The lump thing behind the parathyroid glands is your thyroid. Despite the name, the parathyroids are not related to the thyroid, although some lucky people (like me!) have problems with both.
The thyroid gland controls your metabolism. It's the gland that people who hate fat people like to ignore, so that they can pretend that all fat people just need to eat more lettuce! This is called the just world hypothesis.
The parathryoid glands, on the other hand, control the amount of calcium in your blood. I bet you didn't know that blood calcium was so important that it needed its own gland (or four of them), did you? Well, neither did I a year ago! But actually, having the wrong level of calcium in your blood can ruin your life quicker than a face tattoo that says "YOLO"!
In real life, the four parathyroid glands are about the size of a grain of rice. Sometimes (and nobody knows why) one of the glands will decide to step out and do its own thing, and will start growing and growing until it becomes a tumor (a tumor relating to the endocrine system is also called an adenoma, which is Greek for "hahah your doctors won't believe you"). The good thing about these tumors, if tumors can have a good thing, is that they are hardly ever cancerous. The bad thing about these tumors is that the tumor-cells are still doing what the parathyroid cells do, which is producing a hormone that raises the amount of calcium in your blood. This will lead to abnormally high blood calcium, called HYPERCALCEMIA.
This is the fun part! Because, did you know that a small increase in one electrolyte in your blood can lead to a whole bunch of problems that seem completely unrelated, like depression? Well, you do now! And this means that you are now smarter than most doctors! Even the really attractive ones on TV!
Anyway, the main problem with hypercalcemia is that the main symptom is fatigue. This is a problem because most people don't believe "fatigue" exists and that you just have to exercise more and eat more blueberries, even if you f**king love blueberries. This is one of the many reasons that parathyroid tumors are underdiagnosed. Another reason is that the tumors are sometimes hard to find, because they're hiding behind the thyroid gland. But it's really important to diagnose them, because eventually you will get osteoporosis and cancer and you will die!
So, LJ readers, this is what you must take away from this: if you ever hear a friend complaining of the parathyroid-related symptoms below, you should tell them to get their calcium tested. You should also tell them to not listen to the doctor if s/he says that high calcium is normal, and to instead get themselves to an endocrinologist. The responsibility is on YOU, LJ readers, because if you've reached this far in this entry you now know more about parathyroid tumors than the average primary-care physician.
Besides fatigue, the symptoms are:
★ Anything related to fluid regulation, like extreme thirst, frequent dehydration, going to the bathroom to pee too much, etc
★ Nausea/vomiting
★ Depression
★ Bone pain/osteoporosis (this happens because your blood thinks it needs LOTS OF calcium, and SUCKS IT FROM THE BONES ew)
★ Lack of concentration/memory loss/generally acting like you have mild Alzheimer's
★ Kidney stones or pain (THIS IS WHAT EVENTUALLY HAPPENS TO THE CALCIUM THAT'S MEANT TO BE IN YOUR BONES)
Watch out for them, LJ! The future is in your hands!
I was going to write all the details here but I'm not sure people actually read LJ anymore and I'm still too drugged up on Vicodin anyway, so maybe later.
"If the Pope was simply losing energy, then he could have eliminated his globe-trotting, slimmed down the unmanageable mushrooming Vatican bureaucracy (or simply ignore it), and GOVERN (which includes sending a network of loyal lieutenants to execute consequences when his directives are ignored or contradicted)."
Yes, obviously all illnesses suffered by 85-year-old men are minor and you should just buck up and carry on - I mean how hard is being the Pope, anyway?
(I have nothing to say about papal abdication, BTW. The "sickness doesn't count" reactions that I've seen are the part that is striking to me)
People are still really really cartesian when it comes to illness. Someone close to me kept telling me that I should try Antidepressant X even after I told him that the actual doctors were saying that my depression was probably being caused by the fact that I have hypercalcemia and so antidepressants were useless. After a while I figured out that he was interpreting this information as "you must be feeling really gloomy about the fact that you have hypercalcemia! And you just have to cheer up!" I had to actually sit him down in front of an OFFICIAL WEBSITE saying HYPERCALCEMIA PHYSICALLY CAUSES DEPRESSION and it TOTALLY BLEW HIS MIND.
I am not really sure how there can be this acknowledgement of like, Alzheimer's and drunkenness on the one hand, and this idea on the other hand that apart from those the mind is this snow-white realm that cannot be touched by things like illness and sleep deprivation and so forth. And that we should all just soldier on and make important decisions because anything else is for quitters.
The weirdest thing about this is it seems like lost knowledge - like, the humor theory of depression was obviously not very scientifically accurate but as a conceptual metaphor it's a lot closer than what we have today.
Yes, obviously all illnesses suffered by 85-year-old men are minor and you should just buck up and carry on - I mean how hard is being the Pope, anyway?
(I have nothing to say about papal abdication, BTW. The "sickness doesn't count" reactions that I've seen are the part that is striking to me)
People are still really really cartesian when it comes to illness. Someone close to me kept telling me that I should try Antidepressant X even after I told him that the actual doctors were saying that my depression was probably being caused by the fact that I have hypercalcemia and so antidepressants were useless. After a while I figured out that he was interpreting this information as "you must be feeling really gloomy about the fact that you have hypercalcemia! And you just have to cheer up!" I had to actually sit him down in front of an OFFICIAL WEBSITE saying HYPERCALCEMIA PHYSICALLY CAUSES DEPRESSION and it TOTALLY BLEW HIS MIND.
I am not really sure how there can be this acknowledgement of like, Alzheimer's and drunkenness on the one hand, and this idea on the other hand that apart from those the mind is this snow-white realm that cannot be touched by things like illness and sleep deprivation and so forth. And that we should all just soldier on and make important decisions because anything else is for quitters.
The weirdest thing about this is it seems like lost knowledge - like, the humor theory of depression was obviously not very scientifically accurate but as a conceptual metaphor it's a lot closer than what we have today.
SOME OF THESE ARE PRETTY OBSCURE. YOU PROBABLY HAVEN'T HEARD OF THEM.
And here's "O Come O Come Emmanuel" in Icelandic:
And here's "O Come O Come Emmanuel" in Icelandic:
Yay to the editors for not removing my Bill and Ted Joke!
anastasis: tell me what to write back to this german lady and the iranian lady who wrote to memercyorbemoaned: you could use [daughter]'s words to me just nowmercyorbemoaned: "I yuv you, you are so great and awesome"anastasis: I don't think it's the same when someone who isn't 4 says itmercyorbemoaned: for the German add "do you miss Jews?"mercyorbemoaned: for the Iranian add "tell me about your bomb shelter"anastasis: STOP ITStep 1: Select easy target from feminist blog pointing out that some women prefer not to have children.
Step 2: Select article from completely different part of the Internet in which infertile women lament that they cannot have children.
Step 3: Combine the two and imply that women from Step 1 are either secretly women from Step 2, or else will become women from Step 2 in good time after seeing the light.
Step 4: PROFIT!
Don't forget to keep three things in mind:
1. Women are interchangeable. If a bunch of women are attending a seminar on coping with childlessness, it means all childless women secretly want to attend these seminars. EVEN NUNS. Similarly, if you a mention online of women attending a seminar about dinosaur poetry, it is because all women secretly like poems about dinosaurs and don't let anyone tell you differently.
2. Infertility is caused by being a stupid, stupid feminist. If the article you quote about the seminar has a bunch of quotes from women in their 40s, it could not possibly be that they have been trying various treatments over the last 10-15 years and have now finally, FINALLY given up. No, it means that they are clearly ex-Jezebel readers who only saw the light two years ago and did a complete and utter reversal of their childfree attitudes, only to realize that it was tragically too late and give up, mourning and weeping that they did not listen to alt-right bloggers when they had the chance. God, if only they'd known! If only they had come of age before 1968, when infertility didn't exist.
3. God loves you being smug. He really, really loves it. Got children that you conceived without difficulty? Don't even think about holding back about your opinions on barren women. You clearly know everything about the subject, so don't worry about tact or anything like that, because after all anyone whose feelings might be hurt is just a dumb feminist who should have married and reproduced before her endometriosis developed when she was 11. Duh.
Yeah ok shooting fish in a barrel but come on
Step 2: Select article from completely different part of the Internet in which infertile women lament that they cannot have children.
Step 3: Combine the two and imply that women from Step 1 are either secretly women from Step 2, or else will become women from Step 2 in good time after seeing the light.
Step 4: PROFIT!
Don't forget to keep three things in mind:
1. Women are interchangeable. If a bunch of women are attending a seminar on coping with childlessness, it means all childless women secretly want to attend these seminars. EVEN NUNS. Similarly, if you a mention online of women attending a seminar about dinosaur poetry, it is because all women secretly like poems about dinosaurs and don't let anyone tell you differently.
2. Infertility is caused by being a stupid, stupid feminist. If the article you quote about the seminar has a bunch of quotes from women in their 40s, it could not possibly be that they have been trying various treatments over the last 10-15 years and have now finally, FINALLY given up. No, it means that they are clearly ex-Jezebel readers who only saw the light two years ago and did a complete and utter reversal of their childfree attitudes, only to realize that it was tragically too late and give up, mourning and weeping that they did not listen to alt-right bloggers when they had the chance. God, if only they'd known! If only they had come of age before 1968, when infertility didn't exist.
3. God loves you being smug. He really, really loves it. Got children that you conceived without difficulty? Don't even think about holding back about your opinions on barren women. You clearly know everything about the subject, so don't worry about tact or anything like that, because after all anyone whose feelings might be hurt is just a dumb feminist who should have married and reproduced before her endometriosis developed when she was 11. Duh.
Yeah ok shooting fish in a barrel but come on
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