I have a bleg! In a few weeks, we're celebrating my dad's 80th birthday. Some people will be in person and some over zoom.
I'd like it to be a good experience for the zoomers, which I imagine means having a microphone for the in-person people, both so that they're audible and to enforce one-person-talking-at-a-time. Can anyone recommend a microphone? I don't mind investing in quality if it's the kind of item where spending a little extra will pay off.
You can enforce the one person talking rule with a paintball gun.
Anyway, we had like a professional conference something or other set up sound so zoom participants could hear our meeting and it still wasn't great according to them.
Maybe the throwable microphone in a sponge thing? Then taking turns could be a game of passing the mic around.
Fingers crossed for an actual link that goes to a microphone that one of you has good experiences with.
The useful people are probably not going to be around until Monday.
I only see two: an expensive one, and a crazy expensive one.
The Blue Yeti seems to be the modern default kinda-professional computer microphone. We just bought one for my nephew who is really into YouTube vlogging.
They really should paint it white if they are going to call it a Yeti. Or blue if calling it "Blue Yeti."
I guess they do if you scroll down. But they don't lead with them.
Yeah, my son has had that Blue Yeti for his YouTube vlogging for years now. Its a nice piece of equipment.
I have one of these:
which does have a multi-person mode. It has four mic capsules, so it can turn them all on and capture 360 around the mic. I find the sound quality is pretty good, but, in my domestic environment, there's a bit too much background noise to consistently use it for work. It's basically the same idea as the Blue Yeti.
We have these in the auditorium at work, is this what 4 is referring to?
Holy crap I had no idea they were so expensive. Corporate America I guess.
It's because of the minimum wage.
is this what 4 is referring to?
Yup. There's a cheaper alternative. I guess I don't understand the requirements. Is this supposed to be a nice desktop mic, or something you can pass around without holding your breath that someone might drop it?
A mike to pass around, but mostly calm adults. My #1 priority is that old folks on zoom can hear what's going on.
I have a Blue Snowball that I use for recording virtual lectures and it's very good.
Suppose someone sends you a doodle poll with your availability for a meeting. What's the statute of limitations on your availability? Do you have an obligation to keep those times unscheduled for a bit, to give them a chance to schedule things?
My specific example is egregious, so I'm not actually concerned that I committed a faux pas. They picked one million time slots two weeks out, and then didn't act on it for a full week. And also I think the premise of the meeting is dumb.
In general, it seems polite to wait just a bit though, to give them a chance to book something. I guess it depends on how many time slots they are monopolizing.
I coincidentally saw a long Twitter thread the other day phrased as a poignant plaint for people to stop using Blue Yeti and "USB" microphones in general. But I only saw it because so many people were dunking - it built up to some very expensive recommendations of multiple components each with an Amazon affiliate link, so I guess this is what viral marketing looks like now. The dunks were mostly along the lines of "Why are you exhorting people to bankrupt themselves when they're just getting started and when basic equipment is perfectly fine at that stage?"
(Oh, and it was a Twitter Blue subscriber.)
"someone sends you a doodle poll"
Those breeds have just taken over everything.
In my world it seems like there's a general understanding that people sending doodle polls should pick a time and notify everyone very soon after the poll closes. This doesn't come up very much in my life though so I don't know how typical it is.
Surely it's the same social principle as if you had sent an email asking people to choose between a list of options. It's gauche to reply available and then immediately schedule over that time, but you still haven't received the invitation or confirmed it, so the window is narrow.
What I've since learned is the county jail, I used to think was a dorm with weirdly narrow windows.
Lots of mental illness in my family. Everyone is suffering and making each other suffer. Or a cluster of them are. The others are mainly suffering and trying to stop the continual catastrophes.
I feel sad and guilty.
Lots of mental illness in my family. Everyone is suffering and making each other suffer. Or a cluster of them are. The others are mainly suffering and trying to stop the continual catastrophes.
I feel sad and guilty.
Lots of mental illness in my family. Everyone is suffering and making each other suffer. Or a cluster of them are. The others are mainly suffering and trying to stop the continual catastrophes.
I feel sad and guilty.
Lots of mental illness in my family. Everyone is suffering and making each other suffer. Or a cluster of them are. The others are mainly suffering and trying to stop the continual catastrophes.
I feel sad and guilty.
A truck just pulled past a line of traffic by driving in the turn lane, forced a VW to brake hard on ice to let them back into the right lane, and immediately got pulled over by the CMU police. Really cheered me.
Sorry to hear about your troubles I forgot. I hope they ease.
Still here. Not much to say. Seasonal affective disorder, being in a rut at my job (e.g. the annoying parts of the job are overwhelming the parts I like), being poorly adapted to working from home (e.g. no dedicated office space), not getting enough exercise, and other stuff (e.g. the cat is sick, and we're planning home renovations) are all getting to me.
When I put it like that it's a wonder I'm not a wreck. I'm not. I'm basically OK most of the time. But when I'm not, well, no need to treat it like a mystery or pathologize it.
35: Sympathies.. most of those are tough to tackle, but a I found increasing exercise to help a lot and not be too hard.
Also, just don't let your cat get sick.
36: Thanks. Re: exercise, today I'm pretty sure I won't find the time. Not that I'm literally overwhelmed, but I have higher priorities. In general you're right that it's easy to get a little more exercise, just by walking on various errands instead of driving, and I've been trying to do so. But getting a lot more exercise would require lifestyle changes. I'm not saying I'm not willing to do it, but it's a little more complicated.
38: like getting up earlier and going for brisk walks for 45 minutes helped me tremendously.
I am having a really shitty day right now and want to cry, because I look flaky. I scheduled an informational interview in my company over Teams for 2pm. My computer crashed froze when I was out of the room. Therefor I misremembered my calendar and thought that it was for 2:30. The person had sent a message over Teams asking if I still wanted to meet.
I actually have a job interview invitation in that department with a manager reporting to a different person. I sent an e-mail apologizing, but I hate myself for being a flake. I've been anxious about this all day.
I was hoping for positive feedback to get back to the hiring manager. Now, I'm hoping for the opposite.
27-30: I'm sorry. That sounds really hard. I have a lot of guilt around the unhappiness of people I love, and sometimes I need to remind myself that there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
I think I've said this here before, but I've tried psychotherapy on several occasions (for varying periods of time, the longest being almost a year) and I've never found it useful or helpful. I don't know if I'm not picking right, or if I'm just bad at therapy. Anyway for a variety of reasons I've been wanting to try again, but as usual the process of finding a therapist has been so daunting and dispiriting. A friend of mine suggested that I see a psychic healer instead. I guess maybe? It would also be a waste of money, but it would at least be a lot faster.
Also, it's the end of Dry January! Yay.
39: That sounds like a terrible and familiar kind of issue. Fortunately, most people are somewhat willing to understand tech hiccups, so your inviter is likely to chalk it up to that, and even if they do pass a critique along, it'll likely be discounted since we've all had tech issues, and too much of our lives get run by reminders.
35: That also sucks. A lack of dedicated office space affects so much. I see it in my wife, when she tries to get some work done at home - even when she's got the right computer, the table height is a little wrong and the outlet inconvenient, or the couch has the TV too available for distractions.
I feel flaky. I blame it on going back to work after maternity leave (baby is 4 months):
I chair a committee and we have about 1.5 hours of work we have to do twice a semester. I'm responsible for collecting feedback and writing a report. Of course the initial email with the deadline slipped out of my brain and I just realized the report is due tomorrow. I just had to stay up writing the report so I can send a basically finished report to the rest of the committee as I can't ask them to do so much last minute work.
I also have to review a book proposal by Friday, I also forgot about it until just right now.
Also I have an internal research grant that I keep getting extensions on spending the money, except they assign arbitrary deadlines without communicating them to me. Then when I pass the deadline without spending all the money they tell me the funds are expired next time I inquire about something wrt spending the funds. I freak out for a day and then ask for and immediately get an extension. It's sort of an unpleasant experience. I'd rather they just tell me when they want me to spend the funds by or if it really is flexible then to not randomly tell me the funds have expired.
42 last: That's weird behavior on the part of the grantor!
42 rest: Totally normal for parents of a newborn. Frustrating when totally normal happens to oneself, but yeah, what you describe is very within the range of what parents go through. Interrupted sleep patterns particularly, and if you've been nursing your body has been very with that and less attentive to the physical processes humans need for memory and cognition.
re: 40
Confession: I am a therapist and I have never found therapy super helpful. Sometimes it's been good just for unloading while giving friends a break but it's never been transformational in any way. I like to think and hope my clients have found it helpful. Part of the problem is that any therapist who *can* forego insurance does forego insurance, for the most part, so (painting this overly broadly) to get a good therapist, you have to 1) have a ton of discretionary income to pay them out of pocket and 2) find them, possibly without the default search option of Psychology Today because again if they're at a certain point in their career, that may not be where they get referrals.
It was super helpful for me to attend in situations where I didn't yet know all the therapist-speak and was really stuck in solvable situations. This happened twice: once in my twenties, where I really was a stooge of the patriarchy and it was causing a lot of self-loathing, and once when Pokey was going off the rails and hadn't yet gotten his ADHD diagnosis. Other times it really hasn't been helpful.
I'm actually paying through the nose right now, experimentally, for an ADHD coach to help me deal with clutter in the house, which is why it's showing up as a topic on the blog more recently. It's much more practical than therapy and so progress is more concrete. I find the coach mildly irrirtating as a person, but I can't deny that I'm making progress in ways that otherwise definitely would not have happened. Having a coach is less effective than meds, but more effective than nothing. And I gave up on meds ultimately due to headaches.
I haven't posted about having a coach because I haven't mentioned it to Jammies, because I was kind of curious if he'd notice a change organically or not.
Ah fuck. Ace's ear swallowed their newish earring and we can't get it out.
Ask a Millennial for help. They have fingers that stayed dexterous and slim even as they aged.
45 It's distressing in a way to hear that a coach is what's been helpful. They don't, at least last time I knew about it, have to do anything more than hang out a shingle so we who spent years and tens of thousands of dollars to get credentialed resent them some. But if it works, it works.
Can't you do like the nursing school in Florida?
48: I doubt that's broadly applicable, though. Or rather, lots of people need coaching, lots of people need therapy, lots of people need both. I don't think they're interchangeable, although probably lots of people need so much help that either would be a big improvement.
An interesting thing to ponder is the delta between any therapy and good (for you) therapy. Like I say, IMO plenty of people are struggling so much that any outside help from a decently smart/empathetic person will be helpful. But many/most people need more than that. Many people say "I think everyone should go to therapy" (at least for a little while), but clearly not everyone needs the same things from therapy. I guess what I'm getting at is: if you're young, or your problems are obvious/straightforward, you probably don't need a great therapist to make a big difference. But if you have your shit together, or you're self-aware, or you have really smart friends (maybe ones who've done therapy), you probably already get all the stuff a mediocre therapist has to offer, but presumably a great therapist can get into the deep shit.
Personally, I wish I'd done anger management therapy before the kids were born. I've always had a temper, but it flashes hot then passes, and I'm not stubborn about apologizing (and it's rarely lashing out--I don't typically say mean stuff when I'm angry), so in adult life it's not a big issue.
But it's been a struggle with the kids, especially Kai, who is insanely stubborn, especially about apologizing, which just sets me off. Obviously it's never too late to improve, but I feel like the damage is done, and I'm less prone to non-Kai anger these days, so it feels like a horse-out-of-the-barn situation.
I'm also sure I have lingering shit from my mom's accident/early death, but it really only manifests in getting weepy at pretty shallow TVs/movies, so I'm not sure that's worth therapy.
I think in general credentialing does a good job of setting a good floor, but that experience and ability play a huge role and so you'd expect in a lot of circumstances a good uncredentialed person is better than an average credentialed person. An example that comes to mind where I certainly believe that is high school math teaching.
One of my oldest friends who I kind of relied on in high school and college for what I now realize should have been going to therapy, worked as an academic coach for high school kids (usually with ADHD) for a while before she got a degree that let her teach. And I'm sure she was very very good as a coach. I had a very good experience with therapy (for around a year, maybe five years ago) and I thought my therapist was good at what she does (and has a PhD!) but I don't think she's better at it than my friend was when she was working as a coach.
(This is a bit of an orthogonal question to whether training helps, you could both have a great coach being better than an average therapist and also have that person get even better if they had better training.)
48: I know. The whole concept is irritating. And my coach is too. But so far (3 sessions) each one has yielded progress and insight. It's literally just paying a smart person to put all their attention on an extremely dull problem and be relentlessly persistent the way a friend never would be.
48: I know. The whole concept is irritating. And my coach is too. But so far (3 sessions) each one has yielded progress and insight. It's literally just paying a smart person to put all their attention on an extremely dull problem and be relentlessly persistent the way a friend never would be.
Houses are so deeply infuriating. I hate everything about having a house, and I even more hate everything about trying to improve the situation. I just don't want to do stuff myself, but it's just so much work to try to find someone who's willing to be paid to do stuff.
re: 51
Yes, I have the same sort of personality traits. I'm quick to accept when I'm wrong,* and quick to apologise, and I'm not mean, even when I'm angry. I generally bottle it up, but every now and again, I get the hot flash of anger.
Mellow mellow mellow WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS THIS SHIT! mellow mellow, etc
I think having some slightly better coping strategies--especially when I really genuinely have a reason to be angry, because other people* are being arseholes--would help.
* I've sometimes been told "you always think you are right" which is a total misperception. If I'm wrong, I just say so and move on. I do the same at work. One of the advantages of generally being quite secure, about my own abilities and/or lack thereof, is that it's not a threat to my self-image to just admit I'm wrong. So, if I'm digging my heels in, I really have to be very sure of my ground.
** immediate members of my family
I've had the same therapist for fifteen years now. Some sessions I just think of him as my "unreasonably expensive rent-a-friend", though I'm short on friends who I can really talk to, or as regularly, so that's not nothing. But every now and then (like yesterday) we have a really good talk and hit on some insights. Like, noticing that my discomfort with going back and revisiting conversations with my wife (with her) is a kind of self-critical perfectionism.
My wife could probably also use a good therapist, but she's intensely critical of the "value" and is likely to bug out if it doesn't seem immediately and actionably helpful. And this is exacerbated by, as mentioned, all of the good ones being outside insurance.
My extended break (strike?) from therapy may need to end soon. All evidence suggests that I'm in a pretty bad place. It's just so much talking, though.
I joked with lourdes that I mistrusted any therapist who didn't have a way of saying "you're the asshole," i.e. who would reflexively validate anyone's feelings and perspective. One of the big outstanding questions for me right now is whether I'm the asshole or not, so to speak. I'm also concerned that I might be the asshole, but not for the reasons that concern me most currently, and I need to beat myself up in a different way.
56.* is very much me. I'm very happy to admit that I'm wrong and quick to apologize, but I think (especially when younger, but probably still) people have a similar impression of me that I always think I'm right. My first inclination is respond "well, of course I think I'm right, if I thought I was wrong I would change my mind!" I think it's more that I'm not anxious about being wrong (I'm anxious about whether people like me, I'm anxious about my house falling apart, but I'm not anxious about being wrong), and that's maybe more what people are getting at.
I struggled a bit with 59.last. Where I ended up was "A therapist isn't there to make you a *better* person, they're there to make you a *healthier* person." Of course it's easier to behave better when you're in a healthier place, so it's not totally irrelevant, but still they're separate things.
Though thinking back, even though I struggled with 59/62, my therapist was willing to call me out to some extent now and then. It wasn't all validation all the time, but of course it also wasn't her saying "you're being an asshole." She would probably say that I should treat myself with more kindness and compassion and then I'd be less bothered by someone else treating me that way.
I've been on antidepressants and I don't think they were worth it for me. I think regular sessions with a therapist helped more (a little cognitive behavioral stuff but mostly just talking about my problems), but some general lifestyle changes helped more than either one. I've been on ADHD medication but, again, I think some coaching sessions (relatively quick phone sessions focused on fairly concrete stuff like how I use to-do lists and my calendar) helped more.
I wouldn't want to generalize from my experiences to anyone else's because it's all so complicated. If someone says therapy or medication works for them, more power to them.
55: I know! Last night as I was just about to go upstairs and get ready for bed, I opened the door to let the cat in and the door handle came off in my hand. At first I thought the screws or whatever had simply come loose but I found that somehow the metal had actually broken. What the hell? Because of how the door works, it's easy to ignore, and we'll probably do that until it happens to the kid or a guest or something.
I wouldn't go as far as "hate everything" when I consider the alternatives to having a house, but I'm definitely glad I have exactly one house, unlike several of my friends (by contrast I'm thinking of a condo owner and a couple who own three houses and rent two of them out), and glad it's small, unlike basically everyone I know in person who doesn't live within 10 miles of me.
64 (at the moment) is the longest spam I've seen here.
Cyrus isn't spam or even particularly wordy.
(I cleaned it up but it was immense.)
My MRI from my skiing injury shows that I completely tore the ACL/MCL/LCL, and damaged nearly everything else that connects to the knee. Carve carefully, children!
The cartilage is surprisingly fine. My conclusion is that I don't know how anatomy works, because while I'm mildly sore I'm also walking, taking stairs, biking on my trainer a little and I would think that I'd need ligaments for some of them?
68 Oh no! that sounds terrible! I'm glad you can walk? Walking seems important. IANAOrthopedist but my wife's torn knee ligaments as a teenager led over long periods of time to damage from the instability. You are at least in a better place in that you're not going to wait 20 years for diagnosis and care.
Ligaments are mostly there to just stabilize things, right? As long as you're not doing something athletic they probably don't come into play much? But the joint can kinda move the wrong ways without them. But I don't actually know any anatomy.
Ace's earring is out of her ear now, one med clinic/offsite ER thing later. That was not fun.
I joked with lourdes that I mistrusted any therapist who didn't have a way of saying "you're the asshole," i.e. who would reflexively validate anyone's feelings and perspective.
I mean this is a whole question. I hear people say "my therapist calls me OUT on my SHIT" and I'm like um is that your therapist or your sassy coworker from a sitcom? In a real sense, your therapist does not always know if you're the asshole unless maybe it's group therapy and they're watching you interact. Otherwise they're getting your version of things. I'm trying to think if I've ever done some equivalent of saying at least "it sounds like you're the problem in this situation" and I don't think I have. On the other hand, I've only been at it a couple of years. Anyway I get where you're coming from. I had a therapist who was an adherent of Kohut/"Self Psychology" which is a LOT of things that sound like affirmation and I one time had the genuine impulse to say "stop agreeing with me." So it's a whole question and the answer as usual is people want different things out of therapy/Latin Ameirca is a land of contrasts.
People who study knees fight about this all the time. But if you can walk without pain, that's a good sign.
74: Weidly, no! Just pulled into the interior of the flesh while she was sleeping. And not a tiny stud, either - it was the standard Claire's cubic zirconium thing. Not small.
That's why diamond earrings are necessary for safety.
I have a friend who's a therapist and the strangest part of it all is that she's always in Therapist Mode even when no one is paying her for it. I'll meet up with her for ramen and it feels more like therapy than going to see my actual therapist, and when I come home lurid asks, "So, did she try to get inside your head again?" I find it all fascinating but I don't quit know what she's getting out of it.
76 thank you for clarifying. I had imagined it falling somehow into the ear canal, not a victim of internal fleshy suction. Oh, and glad that it's recovered!
75: there's some pain but I'd describe it as achiness.
To be clear, I'm not a doctor or even a medical school drop out. I've just seen enough of the research to know that the relationship between what you see on an MRI and what the patient experiences isn't as strong as you might expect.
A bridge that I've crossed at least twice in the past week was just closed for emergency repairs.
Apparently, you are still allowed to bike or walk over it and under it.
But only if you don't have a heavy backpack.
68 ouch, sorry to hear that Cala. Are you doing physiotherapy?
I'm still going to PT three times a week and making good progress. I started walking without a crutch about a week ago but my knee does feel like it's on a universal joint or something.
44: I found a really good couples therapist via a referral, but they only take a couple of insurances. It think she's mostly cash pay. Found her via a recommendation from another mental health provider. Quite experienced and mostly cash practice. I think it's "giving back" in a way to take a couple of insurance plans.
You'd want to take cash for couples therapy. You get tipped by whichever person you decide was right.
Coaches aren't credentialed, but there's a wide range. ADHD coaches are a thing but there are also people who help with career changes. A therapist friend of mine recommended one highly. I do think that there are some that are unlicensed but have some training and sign on to a code of ethics. There's also coaching for health behavior change. Those are often para professionals in health systems.
I found out about this article via Kie / ran He / aly on Twitter.
"The Paradox of Self-Help Expertise: How Unemployed Workers Become Professional Career Coaches"
A wide range of self-styled experts have emerged in recent years to sell professional self-improvement advice in fields as diverse as employment, health, and finances. Despite lacking traditional markers of expertise, these minor experts are gaining credibility and clientele, often at the expense of official experts in their field. Why do people turn to these experts? How do they build credibility? This article analyzes the paradoxical case of career coaches, many of whom were themselves long-term unemployed, to advance a theory of credibility construction among self-improvement experts. Drawing on qualitative data, the author finds that self-improvement experts build their credibility through strategic interactions and relational work with clients rather than through the institutional affiliations and credentials normally associated with expertise. The author identifies three complementary techniques--(1) constructing a shared moral order, (2) building affective trust relationships, and (3) sharing personal testimonials of transformation--and argues that this bundle of tactics represents an alternative and growing pathway for building expert credibility
91 acting coaches in Hollywood have been doing that for decades
So, the guy who lives in a van down by the river?
91: Yes, you have to be super careful. The one my friend worked with was about 70 with a husband in his 90's. She lived in Cambridge and seemed to have a tremendous network. She even had a sliding scale fee structure. Tim met with her once but then decided not to switch careers, but she said she was quite busy for a while helping doctors transition into careers outside of medicine. I think that's an area where a coach, operating outside of the medical system, is more useful than a therapist. Her materials tried to highlight the differences, because she didn't want to try to offer coaching services to someone needing a therapist.
My sister, after getting fired from a big-shot university administrative job, did the career coaching thing for a bit before getting her next big-shot university administrative job.
I can offer a personal testimonial: During that period, I was considering changing jobs, and got some tremendous advice from her -- probably 15-20% better pay than I would have gotten if I had been left to my own devices. I figure one of these days I'll buy her a beer and call it square.
Was her advice "Ask them to pay you 15-20% more"?
96: No! That's what I wanted to do. The first offer I got was a lowball offer -- but more than I was making, in a location where I'd prefer to live, and for a job that I knew I'd like better.
I wanted to counter with a fair offer with an eye toward getting a lower offer I could accept cheerfully. (I really might have accepted the lowball offer. I was in a tough spot with my then-employer.)
My sister quizzed my about the market value of the job, and about how confident I felt about my judgment on that matter. Then she told me to go as high as my future employer had gone low. And we settled at par. I would never have done that without her guidance.
I guess that's why I couldn't get a raise at a university.
78: Huh, I read people on therapist forums saying "do you have trouble turning OFF therapist mode when you're with your friends?!" and I"m always like no, are you fucking kidding? I feel like I'd be the most annoying person on earth and it would also be tiring and not fun.
88: I found a really lousy cash-only couples therapist by googling and all I got is this lousy t-shirt which is now packed because I'm moving out in a few days.
81: oh, sure. It's just surprising. The initial exam implied an intact ACL and PCL and while I had enough swelling to expect a tear I didn't think I'd obliterated it.
87: no PT yet. I have a doctor's appointment in a week but I might call tomorrow as the plan had been based on thinking I had a simple if severe sprain.
101: Best wishes to you in what's probably not a good time.
I'm sure couples therapy has saved some relationships but, in my experience and observation, it mostly just helps to end relationships more calmly.
And what Moby said. Even the best negotiated and consensual splits still suck.
Yeah, I'm still kind of mad that Tim refused to go to counseling in the period between when there was something clearly wrong and when he told me he was screwing, and leaving me for, his business partner, but I have no illusions that it would have changed anything. I just kind of would have liked the opportunity to hash things out in a controlled environment rather than having it dumped on me without any processing.
Ending things calmly seems like a pretty big win, though.
Oh, it is. Enormous. But I think it's pretty common that only one person (or nobody) is going in with that as a goal.
Yeah. It's probably much harder to keep screwing your business partner without losing your wife if you go into therapy.
103: Thank you. It's not the most fun I've ever had.
According to the decal on the back window of a pick-up cap that I saw a picture of on the internet, sperm from the unvaccinated is worth $3,500 a "load." Which might be an option now that you're single.
The $3,500 might be more of an opening bid than the sale price.
Sympathies, Abe. You've probably heard, but for most people things get much better after the rough transition.
You'd want to take cash for couples therapy. You get tipped by whichever person you decide was right.
Anyone else seen "Ozark"? It's pretty good - especially the performances from the leads.
I got another 'C' on my covid test.
I haven't seen Ozark, one of the leads was in The Americans so I always yell "Kimmy!" when she wins awards.
I had a Video Swallow Study yesterday that was high up on my list of weird medical exams. They do some sort of live-action x-rays from the side while you eat barium snacks of different textures. Looking at the results is like watching a Halloween movie of a skeleton eating stuff.
It turns out my esophagus is sporadically pushing up instead of down, which is why it is sometimes very difficult and painful to swallow.
Today I saw my cardiologist to look at results from a 2-week heart monitor in December. It confirmed that my heart rate is completely out of control, spiking to 180 and dropping to 40 for no reason. So now I have another monitor on for another 2 weeks.
Whee!
Holy shit. I don't think I could hit either of those numbers. I hope you can get get that taken care of.
I remember the swallow study my dad took. They said he should drink thicker stuff and gave him a thickener for water. Which was something I did not know could exist.
117: Yipes! Sending good vibes for your health.
Aw, Messily, that sounds rough. Sympathies and I hope the monitoring helps them help you.
Sounds awful, but also kind of interesting. I once did some kind of "eat stuff and then get x-rayed" for gut stuff, but they certainly didn't let me look at the pictures. Hope it helps them find something to help you.
spiking to 180 and dropping to 40
Sure, but the average is like perfect.
Actually, I guess that's still pretty high. Maybe you should take some more measurements to increase the denominator.
That's probably west the cardiologist was thinking.
I have another 2 week monitor on! I'll try to do more meditation and ice baths.
Oh wait. Increase the denominator?
It turns out my esophagus is sporadically pushing up instead of down, which is why it is sometimes very difficult and painful to swallow.
Try standing on your head to eat. That'll confuse the blighter.
Good luck with the monitoring E.Messily, and hopefully they find a root cause. Have they done an echocardiogram, or an in-patient ECG, etc? At least there's enough on the initial monitoring to get them to investigate further.
It can be hard to pin down cardiac problems, especially intermittent ones. I get periodic issues (SVTs and extended periods of ectopic beats) but have never had much luck with monitoring, as it's very intermittent, and when I do get monitored, there tend to just be sporadic brief episodes. That said, they did do a full echocardiogram, ECG, blood-tests, etc. and everything was fine so dismissed as "benign".
I had a bunch of heart testing done 10 years ago but nothing recent. Nobody thinks the problem is really my heart, though- it seems pretty clear that it's just more autonomic dysfunction. Post-stroke safety check, just in case.
I always stand on my head to eat. What do you do, you heathen?
Oh I guess they did do an echo in the ICU. Which was normal.