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As someone who works w animals “animals are not mindless automatons, they actually do have feelings and individuality and are capable of feeling acute physical and emotional pain and of forming deep attachments with other animals and people” and “animals are not human infants and have a limited capacity to communicate with humans so you have to familiarize yourself with their boundaries bc if they feel threatened or overstimulated they will fall back on their basic instincts and if you fuck around you are going to find out” are statements that can and should coexist

When I was 17 my appendix ruptured because I thought I was just having period cramps and didn’t go to the hospital so don’t tell me PMS symptoms are no big deal

this actually happened to me during my math final and i didn’t think anything of it and when i was later admitted to the hospital my math prof was asking me ‘you didn’t have to take the final! why didn’t you tell me it hurt?!?!’ and i told him i’ve had cramps worse.

he gave me 100

This is actually an extremely common occurrence simply because in sex ed they don’t teach you how to tell the difference between menstrual cramps and other more serious pains. The way to tell the difference between cramps and appendicitis is that while menstrual cramps are generalized toward the middle of the stomach below the belly button, pain from a swollen or burst appendix will start in the middle of the stomach and relocate to only the lower right side, even lower than menstrual cramps, and is a very localized pain. It also comes on extremely suddenly and will worsen over time or when you make a sudden movement, like a cough or a sneeze.

Basically, if you’re feeling any sort of pain, even if it’s menstrual cramps, don’t hesitate to tell the school nurse or a parent, or if you’re out of school and home even make a doctor’s appointment. Chances are if your cramps are that bad there’s something they can do to improve that as well.

I am boosting the shit out of that reply, because I am twenty-fucking-five years old and did not know how to tell the two pains apart

Adding another diagnostic tool! This is something we use in the ER called the rebound test. Basically, appendicitis and cramps react differently to certain things. If you’re still not sure if you have cramps or appendicitis, take two fingers and press them into your abdomen where the pain is (try repeating this on the lower right quadrant of the abdomen just to be sure.)

When you press in firmly, it will probably hurt. Here’s the test: LET GO. Does it get better or get worse? Appendicitis will immediately hurt worse when you let go. Cramps will not. Go to the ER if the rebound test makes it worse!

THE REBOUND TEST IS REALLY IMPORTANT.

My husband got sent home from the ER with a rupturing appendix. When he came back and was rushed into surgery, the surgeon was super angry – “Why didn’t anyone do the rebound test?!”

All great info, but there is another lesson to be learned here: if you’re in major pain, it’s probably important - so don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. There is a documented pattern of women who go to the ER with complaints of pain being dismissed as overreacting…when in reality women have an incredibly high tolerance for pain, to the point that some don’t even realize exactly how serious their condition is. These stories only serve to illustrate this point.

Reblog to literally save a life.

Every time I see this..

^the women have a high pain tolerance thing…my orthopedic surgeon, the first day I met him laid me down and messed with my shoulder. At this point I had been told by doctors and another orthopedic surgeon I was overreacting and making my pain up…for months. There were days I missed class because I couldn’t get dressed. Anyways, he laid me down and messed with my shoulder. When he was done he helped me sit up, and went and sat down across the room from me. He looked me dead in the eye and said “I just dislocated your shoulder, put it back in, and you didn’t flinch. You needed surgery four months ago.” He was pissed. Seriously, don’t take major pains lightly, in the abdomen or otherwise.

I hate that no one talks about just how distressing memory loss from adhd actually is. I always see memes that are like “haha I forgot my phone, I don’t remember where my laptop is, etc”, but no one seems to talk about how it can really fuck you up long term to just, not remember things that are completely mundane to non-adhd’ers. The memory loss is, however, so frustrating to us. I cannot physically count how many meltdowns I have had over the sheer mental frustration and torture of not being able to remember seemingly simple things

in addition to the frustration and shame of the actual forgetting, there's this constant background dread, because you know for a damn FACT you are forgetting something important at any given moment. racking your brain may or may not bring it to mind, but you can't be dwelling on that 24/7 or you'd never do anything else, plus it quite often doesn't even work. so you just. live with it. every second of every day.

you have forgotten something that is going to bite you on the ass at some random future moment. water is wet. this is your life.

I have a new key ring for my keys. Last time I saw it, I made SURE to put it somewhere so I could find it. I cannot remember where that place is.

I have a dissociative disorder 🤝 ADHD, right? When I was like, in highschool, I thought I was cursed, partly because I thought my memories were being eaten away and I couldn't understand it, I didn't have previous memory problems (I did), and I I was so concerned what this meant.

Memory problems deserve to be talked about more, especially for young people. Because you only hear about it for old people. Kids will think some supernatural bullshit happened to them, when it's just a general recollection issue that they have.

Memory loss should be discussed more.

My biggest example is something so small and stupid but it makes me so upset. I love tea, I drink a lot of it, and I constantly pour in the water and then move away for a bit to let it steep, as you should. More often than not I will remember it around an hour or more later and walk back to find it black as hell and stone cold and it just upsets me in a way I can’t explain. My dad teases me for it whenever he finds a cold mug of black tea on the counter and I don’t say anything but god, it’s so fucking frustrating!

Like it isn’t this kind of “oh lmao I did it again, whoopsie :P” it’s “for fuck sake, why the fuck can’t I remember a single cup of tea, why the fuck do I keep doing this, how many times am I gonna have to reboil the fucking water, how long before I learn to remember?” And it’s fucking upsetting! It’s not some funny little quirk! Some “oops I’m so forgetful lol”, it’s genuinely distressing because it’s constant! It’s a constant inconvenience that you can’t help and it just fucks up a little bit of your day at a time, and I’ve tried to help it! I’ve put a post it note on my desk to remind me to check if I’ve made a cup of tea, I’ve tried to keep setting reminders on my phone and regularly forget to set them, I’ve tried just getting used to remembering, and thus far it hasn’t worked. I still forget the cups of tea, I still walk back to the counter to find them bitter as shit and stone cold, and all I can do is sigh and make another one.

Memory issues are a fucking problem. This is one small but regular example that really gets to me personally, imagine how many other things could be so much worse. Forgetting keys, dates, names, faces, things that occurred not to long ago, instructions just fucking said to you, where you put something ten minutes ago, to make food, thoughts mere seconds ago. It’s fucking frustrating, it’s distressing, it’s enough to really throw shit out of whack and ruin a solid portion of your day if it’s big enough. Sometimes it’s the last step needed to cry, sometimes you can sigh and shrug it off.

Memory problems aren’t some quirky joke.

They’re serious and should be talked about, they don’t mean you’re stupid, they don’t mean you’re forgetful and dumb. They need to be talked about more.

me_irl

I am looking neither respectfully nor disrespectfully. I gaze without recognition of your form, and without understanding.

Me without my glasses

Me, dissociating

Me in general

i have thought a lot about censorship and what is “appropriate”. not a lot of people know this, but lolita was written to show what we allow on our bookshelves: there being no swear words in it meant it was free from censorship. a book about child molestation was allowed because it didn’t explicitly use the word “fuck”. he wrote it to show we don’t really care about protecting children, and it ended up being seen as a romance.

someone once told me - actually, many people have - that lgbt content isn’t appropriate for children. any content. not just kissing. i’m drowned in questions: “won’t the parents have to explain it?” “kids shouldn’t be thinking about sex at this age, or do you think differently?” “what will the kids think?”

at six i saw disney movies. people kiss and get married. i didn’t ask “what does that mean.” i didn’t ask “are those people going to have sex?” i didn’t ask anything, because i was six, and no six year old thinks twice about these things. nobody ever “explained” being straight to me, it was a fact, and it existed, and i was fine with that. why would being gay require a thesis, i wonder.

someone once told me that the one of the reasons people hate lgbt individuals is because they can’t see us as anything but sexual. we’re not people, so much as sinners. that they don’t see love, they see sex. just sex. it’s perversion, not a matter of the heart. only of the body.

i think i was in my early twenties before i saw someone like me. 

how old were you, though, before you saw violence? before you saw sexual assault on tv? i think something like that is only pg-13, and if it’s implied, they can get away with anything. i remember watching things and learning about blood, but knowing sex - sex was what was really wrong. sex was always rated r. sex was always kind of a bad word. i was told a lot that i wasn’t ready.

i had a dream last night that i made a site where people could ask any question they wanted about sex and get answered by a professional. it was shut down in moments because 15 year olds wanted to know if it should hurt, if “double-bagging” was a real thing, if this, if that. we shudder. don’t let the children know about that! 

but at thirteen i had seen enough violence it no longer struck me. i couldn’t say “fuck” but i knew that if you break your femur, you can bleed out internally in under half an hour. in school i wasn’t allowed to write about loving girls because what would the administration think - but i could write about wanting to kill myself and people would say how lovely, how blistering.

i have thought a lot about censorship. sometimes people on this site try it with me: don’t write this, don’t be so nasty. some of it is intrinsic. we know as people with a uterus not to complain about “that time of the month”, we know better than to talk about sexual assault (how shameful), we know that talking about a vagina is somehow scandalous. i can say “dick” and nobody questions me. some people only refer to the bottom half of me by “pussy”. they won’t wrap a mouth around “vagina” like it’s poison to them. even discussing this, that the language halts, that there’s an intrinsic desire to say “girls” instead of “women” - feels naughty, illicit. not for children.

the other day someone suggested i make my blog 18+. i said, okay, it deals a lot with depression and other problems that might be for a mature audience. oh no, they said, that’s not it, i think that’s helpful. i said, okay. so what is it then. well, you’re gay. you write about loving women. and i said, i don’t write about sex often and they said. it’s not about the sex. but wlw isn’t for a general audience. teenagers aren’t ready.

oh.

lolita is recommended for high school and up. i think about that a lot. i know girls who love it, who say it speaks to them on a deep level. it’s beautiful prose, after all. that was the whole point of the novel. something that looked like a rose but was intrinsically awful. i think about how if i was a model they’d want me to look young, thin, prepubescent. how my body would be sold and how through the mall i walk by images of barely-clothed women while mothers cannot breastfeed in public without fear of retribution. 

i think about how i can write a novel about violence and it will be pg-13 but if my characters say “fuck” twice it’s inappropriate. i said fuck three times so far in this post, which makes it only appropriate for adults. 

i think about that, and how my identity is something that people suggest lines up with a swear word. that people shouldn’t talk about it. that it’s a vulgarity. bad for children, harsh, confusing.

fuck. i love women. which one makes this only for those over eighteen.

This is such a powerful post. Read it fully, and spread it around.

Reblog if you also have an absolute awful memory. Just fucking trash. Forget an idea in literally 3 seconds. Not an exaggeration. Fuck you brain. Reblog for better memory.