Indeed. Acidophilous milk, or live culture yogurt, orally, to prevent yeast infections is one I only learned from a nurse practitioner in grad school. Works great. Also the cranberry juice/uti thing seems to be one that circulates via word of mouth.
The Man doesn't want you to know these things.
Why does The Man like yeast infections? The Man is really kinky that way, I guess.
You send me a link to good sources of potassium w/o sugar. Could you remind me of what those sources are? This is sheer laziness on my part, and I have the email somehere, but it's so much nicer to outsource.
The Man needs to get paid, and there is no way to corner either the potassium or yogurt markets.
Laziness is bad for your heart, Labs. The easiest is low-sodium V-8.
there is no way to corner either the potassium or yogurt markets
This is probably true, but I really hope it's not. How depressing.
When you say low-sugar, are you excluding things like cantaloupe and orange juice? Almonds are very high in potassium.
I agree with 4, except I think this has little to do with bad doctors, and lots to do with how most medical research is designed and funded. 4 makes it soudns sort of bad faith, whereas it's really a systemic failure.
It's probably not as sinister as all that. Medicine treats symptoms, not underlying conditions. If you're a doctor, you've spent a hell of a lot of time learning about drugs, chemistry, interactions, and probably no time at all learning about general nutrition, mostly because it's hard to put someone's diet in a lab and study it.
are you excluding things like cantaloupe and orange juice?
Yeah, and this is really just from personal experience: the sugary sources (bananas and apricots, for example) make for a rough day of sugar highs and crashes.
I had a doctor once say "plenty of bananas and OJ," which was intended as "more potassium." But he wasn't a cardiologist, and the cardiologists haven't mentioned it. The more I think about it, the weirder this seems, because doctors have made similar sorts of recommendations, e.g., "water is the best decongestant" or "just use advil, instead of a prescription."
Afib covers almost as much ground as "autism spectrum". What's "lots of potassium" mean? One banana? Five bananas? In conjunction with lots of caffeine too? The occasional "skipped" (actually, extra) beat or hours of it?
We used to "sacrifice" dogs after experiments with an overload of K just like they do humans now, and some meds can screw-up the K balance one way or the other so clarity about what you're talking about is somewhat important.
Man, you need a maze procedure. Screw this dietary solution bullshit.
I don't think 9 and 10 contradict.
Another good potassium source: those funny tasting potassium salt substitutes. Although here's a word of caution, especially for ogged: "A word of caution .... You need normal functioning kidneys so that the excess potassium is excreted. A high potassium level in your body is as dangerous as high sodium."
I wonder if 1.67 kidneys count as "normal functioning"?
There was a survey a while back that asked first year med students about the importance of nutrition for health and then asked the same cohort again once they had graduated med school. The drop in people saying nutrition was important was over 50%.
No, I'm not going to pubmed to look that up.
I think almost no one does the maze anymore; it's catheter ablation now.
What's "lots of potassium" mean?
I think that's just the kind of thing Cala is talking about: because it can't be easily quantified and measured, doctors are reluctant to mention it (or it doesn't become something they know). But it's not complicated: try ingesting more potassium, see if it helps. The patient can take it from there.
That's good, because 10 was in response to 4.
9 and 10 don't contradict. They reinforce each other. Funding and teaching practices work together to create general prejudices. Also, the bias that comes from funding sources is typically neither conscious nor sinister. (Exception: all research funded by the Tobacco Institute.)
I wonder if 1.67 kidneys count as "normal functioning"?
Just had my kidney function checked yesterday, in fact: all is well.
The natural tendency of atrial fibrillation, however, is to become a chronic condition. Chronic AF leads to an increased risk of death.
No, fuck you, Wikipedia.
The funny thing about the docs not telling you stuff is that I've found that when *I* tell the docs stuff--like mentioning the yogurt thing in passing--they nod and say, "yes, that would work." So it's not like they don't know. It's just that they don't think to mention it?
I suspect this is really more about being trained, or else economically incentivized (!) to treat each appointment as a discrete issue--oh, you have a yeast infection, here's a prescription--rather than thinking of the whole patient.
I'm tempted to revise that paragraph to make it more lazily jargonish, but I'm feeling too lazy.
17: it is even more complicated than that. If simply ingesting potassium were enough, they could make a drug or a supplement out of it. The problem is that the effectiveness of most micronutrients is dependent on the context of the food they are in. Beta Carotene on its own doesn't do much to prevent cancer unless it is in a carrot, for some reason. (See Michael Pollan's latest in the NYT)
All of this is far to complicated to make a replicable treatment out of, so it is left out of scientific medicine.
It's alll sorts of ablataion, these days--radio spectrum, ultrasound, even laser. (That one I was surprised by when I ran in to it at a conference earlier this week.) The thing with the maze is it almost always works (efficacy in the 90-99% of cases). The downside is that it's a) open heart surgery, and b) a procedure where they cut your heart apart and sew it abck together.
So they basically only do it when they're going in for some other reason (CABG, annuloplasty) and you have AF that isn't responding to medical intervention and is so bad that your stroke risk is astronomical.
Anyway, I was kidding. But it was nice to talk about something I actually know a little about, instead of listening to all you lawyers, philosophers, etc.
But "chronic" really means "untreated," Labs, since if it really does become chronic, they'll just ablate your ass (and parts of your heart). That has a pretty high success rate. You're not in it all the time, are you?
21: Is there really such a thing as an "increased risk of death"? I thought we were all 100% certain to develop death sooner or later.
No, I'm in it quite rarely, with only one prolonged episode. And I'm fortunate in that I feel it, so it doesn't happen unawares. While in the past the whole thing was psychologically traumatic, it's become pretty fine.
I do, however, want the Maze-III performed on my ass. (Bonus: the procedure was developed by...Dr Cox.)
Also, part of the problem is the likelihood of getting a patient to listen to you. Mr. Jones is far more likely to pay for a pill to lower his cholesterol than he is to revise his eating habits and lifestyle of thirty years.
26: Statistical likelihood of dropping dead in the next year, with treatment or without, compared.
I don't think having the procedure on your ass would help.
The simplist explanation: most doctors aren't that thoughtful.
It is, however, entirely in the interest of food marketers to attach medical claims to their products. Witness, for example, the side of the quaker oatmeal box, or the recent pseudo-science-induced surge of pomegranite juice sales. I note also that the healing power of cranberry juice got an implicit endorsement in The Departed.
29: Yes. That would be "early death," then.
28: There's a difference, however, between telling someone to completely overhaul their diet and saying, "try eating more bananas."
And even that's weird. If you're generally eating badly and not taking care of yourself, a glass of pomegranate juice isn't going to work like a magic elixir.
31: Absolutely right. If half of the problem for recognizing the importance of nutrition is drug marketing, the other half is the food marketing. Again, see Pollan's latest, where he lays into "nutritionism" as the leading cause of poor nutrition.
33: People want a good diet to work like a drug. Thats why nutritional supplements exist. People say, "Oh, we have to get away from these awful pill manufacturers, who don't treat the whole person organically. What we really need is...these pills over here that aren't regulated as tightly!"
That said, I'm about to go eat some fries for lunch.
Baa is right about the thoughtfulness issue. It seems to me that lots of doctors simply fail to imagine what it's like to live with some ailment or other; thus they see the problem in the wrong light.
lots of doctors simply fail to imagine what it's like to live with some ailment or other
"It doesn't make any difference to how we'll proceed."
B, I myself think my ass would look better if secured by a network of scar tissue. Adds firmness.
The problem with good nutrition and exercise is that they are time-consuming and, for many, unpleasant. I want a pharmaceutical co to run an ad which starts "my doctor told me to try diet and exercise, but that sounded like an enormous hassle!" Stupid FDA.
I realize y'all are making a larger point, but drinking glass or two of V-8 each day is neither time-consuming nor unpleasant.
I find tomato juice pretty unpleasant, actually.
Plus it will help you walk upright, instead of at that annoying angle.
40: No, but all that good vodka can set you back
No, sure, there are some 'fixes.' But rob h-c nails it. It's just that you like your magic medicine man pretending to care about you holistically and traditionally rather than your magic medicine man writing you a prescription.
Agreed that fixes like eating a banana to avoid muscle cramp, cranberry juice for UTI, or V-8 to make your iron heart a thing of flesh are easy remedies that eveyone should be told by their doctor. Again, many doctors -- particularly specialists --just aren't thinking about this level of problem. Cardiologists think about about trainwrecks where they need to put metal mesh in your veins or prescribe combinations of seven diuretics.
I think V-8 is plenty unpleasant, but almonds are dandy.
No one has mentioned the health care provider who's educated to provide patients with counseling and teaching to manage the problems: professional nurses.
Physicians aim to diagnose and treat disease. Nurses aim to assist patients to attain, regain and maintain health and to assist in a peaceful death.
Professional nurses provide almost 95% of all healthcare services. Patients do themselves a disservice when they leave nurses out of their health picture.
How to include nurses: ask for an RN consultation at every physician's office visit, and demand that an RN care for you when hospitalized or when making a clinic/outpatient visit.
No one has mentioned the health care provider who's educated to provide patients with counseling and teaching to manage the problems: professional nurses.
Physicians aim to diagnose and treat disease. Nurses aim to assist patients to attain, regain and maintain health and to assist in a peaceful death.
Professional nurses provide almost 95% of all healthcare services. Patients do themselves a disservice when they leave nurses out of their health picture.
How to include nurses: ask for an RN consultation at every physician's office visit, and demand that an RN care for you when hospitalized or when making a clinic/outpatient visit.
Professional nursing, empowered patients. Good health.
No one has mentioned the health care provider who's educated to provide patients with counseling and teaching to manage the problems: professional nurses.
Physicians aim to diagnose and treat disease. Nurses aim to assist patients to attain, regain and maintain health and to assist in a peaceful death.
Professional nurses provide almost 95% of all healthcare services. Patients do themselves a disservice when they leave nurses out of their health picture.
How to include nurses: ask for an RN consultation at every physician's office visit, and demand that an RN care for you when hospitalized or when making a clinic/outpatient visit.
Professional nursing, empowered patients. Good health.
I really don't trust most doctors. I had to self-diagnose a pretty serious illness. Now, I know that treating oneself is dangerous business, but I had a lot of research that the condition was drastically underdiagnosed and that it took several years for most people to get the diagnosis. I found a good doctor who made the diagnosis I was expecting, but I trusted him--and would have believed him if he had said that I didn't have it. I've since participated in clinical research and teh researchers are always pretty much aghast at the poor quality of care in the community.
The thing that really gets them is how bad the drug treatment I received as an undergraduate at University Health Services was.
I second baa's point taht most doctors aren't really that thoughtful. I got very interested in nutrition at one point, but I've recently noticed how close even the relatively respectable people can get to teh charlatans. Andrew Weil once seemed kind of sensible to me. Now, not so much.
No one has mentioned the health care provider who's educated to provide patients with counseling and teaching to manage the problems: professional nurses.
Physicians aim to diagnose and treat disease. Nurses aim to assist patients to attain, regain and maintain health and to assist in a peaceful death.
Professional nurses provide almost 95% of all healthcare services. Patients do themselves a disservice when they leave nurses out of their health picture.
How to include nurses: ask for an RN consultation at every physician's office visit, and demand that an RN care for you when hospitalized or when making a clinic/outpatient visit.
Professional nursing, empowered patients. Good health.
Labs, let me have a look at your ass, and I'll let you know. It's hard to judge these things yourself, what with all the body issues and the awkward angle trying to see behind you.
There's a good recent NYer article about various cognitive heuristics and their role in misdiagnosis.
Labs, To what are you replying in 54?
Hey, are we being lobbied?
B, did I ever tell you about the times I had to pack my own ass-based cavity wound with gel and gauze? You'd be impressed by the flexibility involved.
Professional nursing, empowered patients. Good health.
This message brought to you by the American Association of Registered Nurses.
I'm not really happy with the "people are idiots" approach to talking about nutrition and health. A lot of people want food to act like a magic pill because a lot of people with money to make say that it is--and also, let's be honest, because by and large we have an incredibly high standard of health, so that we can afford to futz around with believing that vitamin water is going to give us that extra edge. But if one (doctors, nurse practitioners, reasonably intelligent laypeople) talk about this stuff as common sense, it's not all that hard to communicate. No, pomegranate juice won't make you live forever (plus, it tastes gross). But if you tend to get charlie horses all the time, drinking more water and eating a banana or drinking a v8 instead of soda at lunch will help.
56: Alas, I'm sorry to say I must have missed that story. Sounds like you might have a good head start on that scar tissue thing, though.
60: it was the one time I was sad to remove my pants and hear someone exclaim "I had no idea it'd be so big."
Pomegranite juice is delicious! But only the non-adulterated, non-sugared kind; the POM stuff is a little too market-engineered sweet for my taste.
I'm not really happy with the "people are idiots" approach to talking about nutrition and health.
Okay, they're not idiots. They just want simple solutions to complex problems, and follow advertising uncritically, don't think for themselves, and as a result develop expectations that cannot be met by a pill, but think that if they take a pill that says 'shaman-certified, kitchen-witch approved', they're sticking it to the pharmaceutical companies.
In the interests of brevity, we'll refer to them as 'idiots.'
Unsugared pomegranate juice? Wow, JM, you're a hardass.
Cala, feeling a little misanthropic today? Here, have a banana. It's probably your electrolyte balance.
66.--I do sometimes wonder what would happen to my diet if I had kids. A lot of the things I consider normal and delicious, my sisters and cousins' kids wouldn't get near. Obviously, if I had kids, they'd grow up with my food, but people with children always tut-tut whenever I express the hope that my children will not learn to demand I buy, say, Capri Sun juice-derived beverage-boxes.
feeling a little misanthropic today?
Today?!? You surely mean "as usual."
67: Sexist.
I have a migraine coming on, but it's a totally priest-induced one. When you get a fiancé visa, you must use it with six months of getting it and get married within 90 days of using it to enter the U.S. Any visa to the U.S. replaces anything else, so there's no way to come for a visit without activating it.
This makes meeting with the priest in April to get married in July impossible. Can we sign the paperwork long distance? NO NO NO, because that's the Rules of the ONE HOLY APOSTOLIC ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH and this piddly little republic ain't been around so long. Can we wait until June?
No, because the diocese is going to scrutinize his information because he is Canadian.
I give up.
65: And the other half of the idiot clan wants a complex high-tech solution for the simple stuff, delivered by high-gravitas types in white coats, and they're not happy with anything less.
I think I know who's hiding behind the Presidential pseudonym!
Seriously, "Eleanor," fuck the church wedding. Unless it's important to you (not your mom, not some lingering sense of guilt), it does not sound worth the hassle and expense.
At this point, you should ignore or violently reject any advice that does not help you, including this piece.
what would happen to my diet if I had kids
Your chicken nugget consumption would skyrocket.
Oh, I'm not hiding, really, obviously.
Yeah. I'm considering saying 'fuck it', but this pretty much would destroy my mom, because it's not like I'm going to go convert to being Protestant so I can get married and then drop out of that denomination, too, so it means basically not-even-a-church wedding, but a civil ceremony, an that destroys her illusions that I'm going to start going to church again and be all saved and go to heaven and you know, I really hate weddings and that's before we get to the froofy dress stuff.
Unsugared pomegranate juice? Wow, JM, you're a hardass.
How does this work? Pomegranates are sweet, as far as I know what makes the juice bitter is flavor from the seeds that comes out in the extraction. It seems to me that if you could just mimize the seed flavor in the juice it would be naturally sweet.
Unsweetened cranberry juice on the other hand can be tasty but only if you're in the mood for it.
pretty much would destroy my mom
Parents are surprisingly resilient. I'm a big believer in ripping the Band-Aid off all at once.
Maybe we can have a civil ceremony and get married in the church later.
77: I've done that. Of course, we're no longer married but I don't think the two are related.
JM's right. If you hate weddings, and the thing is basically impossible b/c of immigration anyway, have a civil wedding and then, in order to placate your mother, arrange a quiet, you-two-and-the-priest-plus-mom ceremony to make it real in the eyes of god.
Pomegranates are bitter b/c of the seeds, yeah. Oddly, I really like unsweetened cranberry juice, though it *does* have to be diluted with water.
69: I dunno. PK is remarkably enthused about trying new or exotic food--he always wants to try stuff he hasn't heard of before. Last night I convinced him to eat his salad by suggesting that he compare the tastes of the different types of leaf in it (yay for those mixed green salad baggies). Little kids have more sensitive tastebuds, so they're less tolerant of v. spicy or bitter foods, but ime they can be quite adventerous, adult eaters, if you feed them the same stuff you eat.
Whether this is nurture--not getting them used to candy and hotdogs--or nature--after all, they're going to inheret your tastebuds--I have no idea.
Ellie, just fake it. Rent an actor & priest outfit, add in some other props, and go from there. Lying to one's mother about stuff like that (and the top speed of one's motorcycle, etc.) is permitted by natural law.
Eleanor -- Just get a justice of the peace thing w/in 90 days and have the "real" wedding later. As long as you don't go cohabiting before the church wedding, I'm pretty sure that approach is kosher under Catholic doctrine. ;-)
True. Lying to Very Catholic mothers is a sacrament, I'm pretty sure.
Dude, "Eleanor," your mother needs to get over it. You're getting married, which is effectively a declaration of adulthood; she doesn't get to make these decisions for you anymore. If she wants to have illusions about you going back to church, she's responsible for protecting them, not you.
El -- is there any shot at blackmailing the diocese? Have you tried laying it out for the priest: "I can't meet your schedule and the immigration requirements. I want to have a church wedding, but I can't get married in church and meet your requirements. Is there any way I can make this work, or are you going to drive me out of the Church?"
"don't go cohabiting" s/b "lie through one's teeth about cohabiting" as one also has to prove to INS that one is really married, so we have to share the lease, bank accounts, etc.
Just tell your mother and the priest that you're cohabitating, but you haven't done the nasty yet because That Would Be A Sin. That's what Mr. B. told his mom when we moved in together, and surprisingly, she was willing to accept it.
The fact that it was true is neither here nor there, except as evidence of what an idiot I was to put up with it.
Oh, and interestingly, the priest made rather a point of not asking, and having us fill out forms with our address without looking at them when he took them back.
It is precisely this sort of authoritarian nonsense that drove me away from churches.
The INS, as a government ageny, doesn't move all that quickly and I don't think they rarely care if you wait for the Church ceremony before you consummate. If you're still not cohabiting by the time the INS schedules your interview, you've got biger problems.
Anyway, I suppose it's also okay to go ahead and cohabitate before the Church wedding, as long as you go to confession before the ceremony and don't go brazenly wearing white, which is reserved for those who've kept themselves pure....
85- what? You don't have to cohabitate to be married. Or does INS require this? I know married people who live in different cities.
79- unsweetened cranberry juice doesn't *have* to be diluted with water. I, for one, like it better straight. But it is pretty strong, so a lot of people prefer to dilute.
Due to this thread, especially 21, I drank a V-8 with my lunch.
I only have enough room in my life at the moment for one mindless bureaucracy, and while my eternal soul is probably important, it's also probably already fucked and the church can't deport anyone and USCIS can.
Back to the original topic, if you haven't yet read this week's Shouts & Murmurs, you really should.
90: USCIS & DoS are operating with the presumption that we have to prove that our marriage is not to secure immigration benefits. Most married couples don't have commuter marriages.
And there's also the whole annoyance of not having actually been a practicing Catholic since oh, college, so the whole 'move him here and then pretend you're not living together' really grates.
Any chance of trying a different parish? I know the amount of uptightness can vary from one to the next. My friend had to jump through a bazillion hoops in her parish. The priest at my wedding basically confirmed we weren't drug addicts or related and we were good to go. (And since this is important to mom, and you obviously have enough paperwork to muddle through with USCIS, maybe mom can do the legwork to organize this?)
Well, you brought these troubles on yourself by falling for a foreigner.
95 is not bad. Or if you're going to forgo the church wedding, maybe break it to mom as "of course we want a church wedding. But we can't figure out how to make it work with the INS regulations! Here, you figure it out, and then you'll be the hero. Otherwise we'll have no choice but to go down to the courthouse, like common heathenfolk."
Oh, indeed. I did. And maybe the stress of it all will break us up and then maybe I can look up that Nice Young Man from High School who's a doctor these days, don't you know, and make my parents really happy.
95: I'm not sure. It's supposed to be your home parish, and at this point, if the home parish where I'm supposed to get married doesn't want to help, another parish that doesn't have any obligation to help me isn't making me that hopeful.
Sorry, let's talk about something else. I need my own blog instead of hijacking the comments. But hey, it explained the misanthropy....
(And since this is important to mom, and you obviously have enough paperwork to muddle through with USCIS, maybe mom can do the legwork to organize this?)
This is brilliant -- "Mom, I'm at my wits end. The immigration requirements for marrying the Canuck are totally inflexible. The parish won't work with me -- they won't let me get married in church because I can't bend the immigration requirements to fit their schedule. Just as a backup, I'm going to go ahead with planning the ceremony [in the park, on a beach, in your living room], but please, is there any way you can find me a parish that will let us get married in church?"
Maybe the church would speed up the process if you told them your mom was the bride. She can even go through with the ceremony! Just not the civic ceremony.
"vomiting from places other than the mouth"
"vomiting from places other than the mouth"
98: We didn't go with our "home" parish, b/c they had a stupid rule that we had to have been registered with them for a year, and the priest we ended up using in a different parish didn't care.
103: Ditto. I don't even know what my home parish was when I got married. Just went to my childhood church that I hadn't been to in at least 5 years and hadn't been to "regularly" since like 5th grade. Really easy-going pastor at the time. I think he would have even made an exception if we'd answered yes to the drug-addict/relative questions....
I am so running away to the courthouse.
You know, this is an awful lot of effort to go through something that's probably going to end up in divorce anyway.
Interesting church rule: if you're only married civilly, you're not married in the eyes of the church.... unless you want to get remarried to someone else in the church, and then you have to have your first marriage annulled, even if it was to a non-Catholic.
96: Clearly she should have moved north.
92: Any relation to this guy?
I think at this point I know more about Ogged's and Labs' health issues than those of my own parents. I would say "Damn you, WASP reticence," but I'm probably happier for not having seen a full-color photo of Mom's colon anyway.
I don't think I understand 106 -- isn't it only ever when you want to get remarried to someone else in the church that you need to have your first marriage annulled?
More importantly though, I hope the first line was just some throwaway about statistical odds blah blah, and not meant to reflect your own feelings. Because if it's the latter, you may want to reconsider more than the venue.
I don't think I understand 106 -- isn't it only ever when you want to get remarried to someone else in the church that you need to have your first marriage annulled?
Point being that the marriage doesn't count as a marriage, except when you want to get remarried, when it suddenly does.
Yeah. Everyone's telling me to reconsider the whole thing. I'm just being snarkily practical. Most couples go into weddings very very happy and divorce anyway; we're going in pretty stressed out with approval from pretty much no one (church or parents or the ability to work once he immigrates), so, you do the math.
If it were someone else, I'd give them about three years, max.
110- but that's the way all annullments work, theologically.
106 is correct. My parents' marriage was a civil marriage; but when Dad got remarried ten years ago, he got an annulment so that his second marriage could be Official In The Eyes of God.
My mom, who never tires of finding reasons to be pissed off at my dad (even twenty years after the divorce, which she had been saying she wanted for ten years before that), complained that he'd officially had the church declare my sister and I illegitimate.
110- but that's the way all annullments work, theologically.
Huh, I see what you mean.
Cala, do you want to get married?
How about getting him some other kind of visa (student, work, that one you can get for paying the government vast amounts of cash... ), then working out the details of a wedding down the road when he's in the country and you're less stressed out/more optimistic? Of course, if you've already applied for the fiance one, they'd probably reject the others on the assumption you're just lying...
I don't really understand why they (INS) would be concerned about the citizenship angle with a Canadian. I mean, because as a Canadian it is easy to live in the US nearly indefinitely if you aren't working, and marginally more difficult to work here assuming some sort of minimally professional sounding job. Same goes the other way around....
Remembering how horrifically stressed out I got over getting married, based purely on family behaving like hostile nitwits, maybe backing off pressing Cala if she's really ambivalent about the whole thing would be reasonable? If she wants deep-level relationship advice, she can ask -- if she just wants to bitch about the horrors of getting married considering all of the bureacracy and family garbage to deal with, it probably makes sense not to read too much into the bitching.
But you can speak for yourself, obviously.
This is not really relevant, but I love telling this story. A well-known scientist in my field was married in the Catholic church despite being an avowed and vocal atheist. This was made possible when they had the church declare him "invincibly ignorant," which is apparently some official status for savages, scientists, and other sorts of heathens who are non-believers but still decent enough to keep around. "Invincibly ignorant" is truly one of the best expressions I've ever heard.
LB -- I didn't intend that as "deep level relationship advice," and Cala -- I apologize if it came off as such. Just remembering how stressful all that stuff was myself and throwing out ideas that I thought may or may not be useful.
[slinking quietly back to lurking... ]
di kotimy: I suspect 118 was to 115, not your 116. Could be wrong though.
Eh, I was talking to Brock more than you. I was probably frailer than Cala is, but I had plenty of moments when people were being difficult during the process where I just needed to snarl, and if someone had said "You seem really negative about this, are you sure you want to get married?" I would have wanted to bite them, painfully.
And invincibly ignorant reveals their pseudonym as false in all regards.
From my purely outsider perspective, it seems to be a stressful process even in the best case, for almost all couples. I'm not sure the level of stress and complication can be correlated at all well with outcomes.
124: sure, but it still wouldn't make a bad pseud.
116: Would be denied, with a presumptive intent to immigrate.
I just deleted an entire paragraph on immigration law. The upside is that if I get tired of philosophy, if I get a law degree, I probably would make a pretty decent practicing immigration attorney as I've managed it this far sans lawyer.
123: My mom just asked if I should reconsider. Going to call out the painful biting.
127: huh. well, that surprises me as I've never had any trouble with that but my situation(s) have been similar but different than your particulars. Sorry to hear it!
LizardBreath, is this better?
129: The devil is in the details. Meet while on a student visa, get married, apply for a green card? No problems, because when you *entered* the country, you didn't even know your spouse, so you didn't have immigrant intent. Meet, get married, then leave and file for a spousal visa? No problem. It's not a problem to come in and get married if you don't intend to stay. Meet, plan to get married, and just come in? Technically illegal, probably okay because anything immigration related is forgiven upon marriage to a USC. Meet, plan to get married, and apply for a student visa knowing that you intend to get married and stay? Probably the only unforgiveable one, lying on a visa application.
It's sort of scattershot, but better the stress now than the stress later.
Invincible ignorance, whether of the law or of the fact, is always a valid excuse and excludes sin. The evident reason is that neither this state nor the act resulting therefrom is voluntary. It is undeniable that a man cannot be invincibly ignorant of the natural law, so far as its first principles are concerned, and the inferences easily drawn therefrom. This, however, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, is not true of those remoter conclusions, which are deducible only by a process of laborious and sometimes intricate reasoning. Of these a person may be invincibly ignorant.
No, vincibly ignorant is guilty.
I like this alternative (notwithstanding w-lfs-n's coming complaint).
Yikes. I certainly wasn't trying to "press" Cala about anything. Planning a wedding is incredibly stressful, and bitching about it is certainly par for the course. And it sounds as if Cala's got it worse than most. So I definitely understand that. It was just that 106 seemed a little disconnected from the rest of the general bitching, suggestive of something troubled in the relationship rather than just "the horrors of getting married", and the follow-up at 111 wasn't exactly encouraging. She said she was just being "snarkily practical", but sounded rather more sincere. Maybe I just misinterpreted. And again, I wasn't trying to push or pester anyone. Sorry if I bothered you Cala. Feel free if we ever meet to bite me, painfully, in response. And of course, feel free to ignore everything I say. (Generally good advice.) It's just that wedding plans can gather a lot of momentum, and I've known a few good friends who've been swept along all the way to "I do" even though it was clear to most of us that the magic had worn off midway through their engagements. But they didn't really confront that until after the weddings, hoping I think that the wedding itself would somehow change things. I'm not saying this to Cala because I really think she needs to hear it -- I don't know her or anything about her relationship. I'm saying it I guess because I wish I'd said more than I did at the time to my friends. Because they all split up within a few years. And even though I've never been through one, I feel pretty comfortable saying based on observation that 9 times out of ten, getting a divorce really sucks, and is an outcome worth trying to avoid.
Again, Cala's a big girl and probably doesn't need advice from a crazy stranger on the internet. And honestly, it sounds like her wedding plans have a lot more friction than momentum, so all my concern is probably wholly misplaced. I sure hope so. And I likewise hope she's able to work everything out with her mother, and the INS, and her parish (if she decides to keep the wedding there), with minimal continued stress.
Again, didn't mean to bother or offend anyone.
Eh, she didn't say she was offended, and really, what you said wasn't that bad at all. I just wanted to throw a flag on it because that's the sort of thing that can get a lively conversation going, which under the circumstances might have been maddening.
There are no wedding plans at this point because of the stupid church and the stupid government, so no momentum to be worried about; I know the sort of situation that you're worried about, and it's where the couple has serious misgivings but bailing would mean cancelling the party and the flowers and they're not really sure if it's cold feet or nerves or they're not in love any more.
We're sure we want to be together. I'm privately worried that there's only so much stress that a couple can take, and that we may be approaching that threshold because if you were to tally up the stressors: 1) the marriage 2) the goofball calaparents 3) immigration 4) relocating 5) separation from his family 6) due to rules, inability to legally work for four-six months therefore 7) tight money situation.
132. God, I love the Catholic church.
Of course the fine hair-splitting that I love is also behind Cala's problems with DHS and the POPE. So I'll temper my love with skepticism.
Sounds stressful Cala. But I'm sure you'll navigate everything somehow. Best wishes.
And with that I think I'm done.
113: You mother's wrong; as you were the issue of a "putative" marriage, you and your sister are still legitimate [Canon Law 1137]. So you can be a bitch, but not a bastard.
I'm always amused at how easy it is to get an annulment, especially if one has money. Another hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Snugglemuffin's take on it: "moneygrubbing cocksucking pedophiles can go to hell. fuck 'em."
I like his style. Find a nice Unitarian and just get married, and tell your mother that you tried to make the church thing work.
Hey! Apropos of the original thread! On topic, even.
For the sake of brevity . . .
from a useful site for finding nutritional information, try this page if you want to figure out which foods to emphasize if you want potassium:
http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=90
Oh good, the potassium thread I've been waiting for.
I'm having trouble making sense of your link, SB.
Prunes facilitate comprehension.
Beyond never getting married at all, my standard advice to everyone, why can't you just have a civil wedding first for La Migra and then a church wedding later at the Church's convenience? Just don't tell anyone until later. Tell the priest the dog ate the paperwork.