Aching pain in my shoulder

I will always love you I will always miss you it’s been forty days and forty nights of loneliness pain since you left and my heart aches it’s been two weeks since our Blondie passed away, my heart breaks so many times. I am so alone. I go to church, I volunteer, I pray, I read my bible, I still keep faith and hope in us, I still believe in forgiveness. I still believe in seeing the best of people. Seven years together, and you decide it’s time to go. I hope you come back. Everyday I grow closer to ending my life

tl:dr I think I have MS and I haven’t asked my doctor about it because he redirects me and thinks a lot of my symptoms have to do with trauma and wants me to work on therapy. I have previously passed the neurological test in office that they do, so they aren’t even considering a more thorough exam. How did you get diagnosed?
I have really been having a rough couple years. The past six months have been severely out of control. I have been in the hospital nearly 20 times since January of this year. Not to mention about 15 times in Urgent Care.
I have this crushing feeling in the middle of my chest. It never goes away. It burns, constricts, squeezes, pain, and unbearable pressure sometimes. Have had all the work up and my heart is fine besides super mild valve regurgitation. I have GERD but GI can’t find anything. I just learned of the “ms hug” and it sounds exactly like what I am feeling.
Numbness and tingling in hands, feet, thighs, weird vision abnormalities, unsteady, loss of balance and falling, tremors, painful eye movements, muscles contracting or spasming waking me out of my sleep and it is so painful. Then the memory issues, scaring me the most. I can’t find words, stop mid sentence and completely forget what was being talked about, literally too much work to remember stuff so I give up.
The real cherry on top for me that makes me convinced is I had an MRI of the spine due to intense back and shoulder pain and I have hemangioma tumors all down my thoracic spinal column. MS apparently is known to do this.
I have not brought up my concerns of MS yet. Recently diagnosed with POTS. My doctor thinks a lot of my issues have to do with trauma and wants me to try IFS. I have a lot of mental health issues like BPD, cPTSD, ADHD, and agree I need therapy but I don’t want to wait if it could be MS.

Hi! This is my first time posting here, and I rarely use reddit, so I hope I'm doing this right.
I'm mostly just looking for advice, if anyone has some, for what I've been dealing with. I'm a woman in my early twenties, and I've had chronic lower back pain since I was 10, along with recurring periods of knee, ankle, wrist and shoulder pain. Sometimes it got so bad I had to use a cane to walk around, and the chronicness of it would worsen my pre-existing depression. I spent all of my teen years in and out of doctor's offices trying to find the source of my pain and doing every test in the book, and missing school day after school day because I would just be fatigued and sick all the time.
When I got older, the fatigue got better but the pain kept worsening. Eventually I researched and found out about fibromyalgia and about a year and a half ago I brought it up to my doctor, who said that it was a possibility. She suggested taking amitriptyline for it to see where it went, and after a few months it actually helped greatly. i still hurt sometimes, and doing archaeology in the summers i would have some major pains (including waking up unable to move, with my legs completely numb). but overall ive been doing okay on the medicine.
I've got some friends who deal with other disabilities (EDS and arthritis mostly) and they seem to think fibromyaglia is just a diagnosis you get when the doctors give up and theyve been getting into my head saying its not a real condition (key point being that there is no test for it, its just whats left over when everything else is ruled out). it doesnt help that last time i went to the doctor, she seemed to have forgotten why she put me on amitriptyline, but when i reminded her she did recall the conversation.
i know the medicine i was put on is also an anti-anxiety, and ive just got it in my head that my doctor just put me on it cause she somehow clocked me subconsciously faking it for some reason? but i know my pain is real, and i know it made me majorly miserable, even though its gotten so much better. ive been on other anti-anxiety meds throughout my life, and this is the first one that even had any sort of effect on the pain.
i just dont have any other answers for whats wrong with me. ive TRULY done it all, believe me, as far as testing for other conditions go. fibromyalgia is my only possible answer right now. but i feel i cant tell people i have it. i just feel like a complete fraud all the time, and my diagnosis doesnt feel very official, because of how my doctor treated it. i especially feel like i dont have the right to call myself disabled, because i can do a lot of things my other disabled friends cant, and things i feel i shouldnt be able to do if i actually have fibromyalgia. for example, archaeological digging, or long distance walks. but even though i can do these things, i do always severely pay for it in pain the days/weeks following.
i guess this ended up being more of a vent post. has anyone gone through this before? is there anything i can do? how do i explain to people that even though i dont seem disabled, my grumpy mood is rooted in constant pain and thats why i sometimes dont want to do things?
thank you to anyone with an advice <3

Now that I discovered this community I am pretty confident what is happening to me is all tied back to this lovely little jaw muscle. I see my GP Monday 8am . Hoping for any advice - better details - corrections on my wrong assumptions or statements and ultimately a little reassurance and validation from yall , That what is happening to me right now is all connected and I am not crazy.
10 months ago I had my last 2 upper molars pulled the "ol fashioned" way with the wiggling and the tugging and the ripping and the "Okay now you're going to feel a bit of pressure" followed by the feeling that your jaw is in fact being ripped out of your mouth.
Things started mild 6 months ago intensified around the 3 month mark and now these last 3 weeks I can barely function. I feel the definition of "Malaise" hits perfect. I'm afraid to leave my house the head pain / brain fog has me feeling like I could blackout any second, And the whoosh / vertigo / world spins has me terrified of driving.
So here is what I'm feeling in order of how they hit , everything is on the left side if that matters
Shoulder Blade - Everything is felt along the bottom of the blade.
Jolt of fire and burning on the skin -- A tearing and ripping under the skin on the muscle - Starts to vibrate a tingling fire sensation outward in a semi circle
When I put my tens unit on there the flexing caused pain on the top of shoulder and collarbone.
Always strongest when I lift or carry, random bursts when I'm sitting doing nothing and now even the weight of my phone sends it to 11
Muscles Weakness and Tremors
When the blade pain is bad, I can barely grip anything with my hand, Hands tremble and different arm muscles randomly will twitch and flex.
My jaw is now (2 weeks) shivering / chittering (IDK wtf it is) as if im cold. Digging my fingers into the facial knots will stop it. Always hits when I first get out of bed, then a few times during the day no pattern in the trigger
Eyes/Ears
Couldn't keep my contacts in more than half day , left only felt cloudy hazy blurry - They are brand new lenses and Ive been use the good "eye juice" with no changes. Tried yesterday had to take em out within an hour.
Sharp twinge zap inside the ear - cold trickling sensation down the canal - ends with a punch of pain behind ear on the thick neck tendon
The Whoosh (Is this brain fog? Something else?) Zap / Jolt of electricity on top of my brain but under my skull - The whoosh when i see everything spin a 360 for a second - And ends with me "off kilter' for minutes to hours, As if there is a delay between what my eye sees to when my brain processes. During the spell ill feel "wonky" "Out of body" "tunnelly vision"
The Exploding Head
Its a constant feeling / sensation that my head is filling with sludge.
Forehead & eye have waves of intense dull aches, This part is killing so bad right now, even with NSAIDS it never stops having pressure just relieves it slightly. When it kicks hard and throbs my eyes go really fuzzy and that im going to blackout feeling hits. I have not actually passed or blacked out thank god - my cats would eat me alive in a day -
Jaw/ cheek & gums are twitchy with tightness/fullness and pointy pain shockwaves. The M in the TMJ is a ball of rubberbands and it is so very tender. My face does not appear to have anything swelling outwards from here but poking around in there i find tons of lumps I can break up.. Opening and closing i have full range I think and right now no popping or pains when i do. The area by my ear where the bones connect is so tender, but I dont feel lumps much here. I feel such relief when I hit here with my point tool.
Side of my Neck has small mushy lumps just under the skin and some big daddies deeper in and these ones get stabbyy pains that pulse with my heart.
Back of my neck the bottom half is gravel I can break up pretty easy but I think 3 more come back in their place.
Base of skull I have golf balls burried deep,. They dont throb but when I rub them it is painful but in the best way because I feel such release everywhere else but then they hurt for days. When I rub them to hard and deep oh man sore for days.
All this ends at my upper back and this area is awful. It burns on the surface level 24/7. Icy hot tricks my brain for about and hour. I did some scraping massage here and it sounded like rice krispies and I think hese are adhesions vs knots. .Deeper is full of thick knots, I have the trigger point hook to dig in there and sometimes magic happens and the ache everywhere else gets better for a bit.
The floating bone
It was mild discomfort, odd feelings of tightness inside my actual throat, tingles and a dry feel. It started wiggling around on its own pretty often and when I felt that first water balloon pop inside yikes I was scared AF. Now it just moves whenever it wants. I barely touch it and it "shoots" to the other side. Massaging in here hurts so GOOD! Looking all the way up and feeling from chin towards throat I have many bumps all different sizes. And lastly when I move my head certain ways it feels as if there is a leak happening and almost mucus-y like I could cough but usually dont need to
If you are still with me many apologies this got longer than I thought it would. Today has been my worst day so far, all the pains I mentioned are now hitting at once. Today I was sitting here sobbing in pain it because I was at 13 / 10 and wouldn't ease no matter what I pressed on . 3 Naproxen with 3 ibuprofen gives me about 3 hours of refief right now. I know posture is a part of my pain levels and ive aready ordered some tools so I can correct.

My family member had breast cancer some 6-7 years ago and has been in remission(cured?) since treatment back then. However, they began to experience a lot of aches and pains in their back and hips around 2022. It eventually got so bad they did a scan on her and discovered 'holes' had developed in her spine, hips, skull, ribs and leg bones. They did a biopsy and found it's the same breast cancer from 7 years again but in her bones. None of it is in her breast this time around. Thankfully, they don't believe it is in any organs or the brain.
I really want to understand what is happening better and I'd hate to bother her with questions while she is already dealing with so much stress with everything that is happening. Especially since I think my questions are kinda dumb.
I keep reading articles to try to understand better but needless to say what I read just fills me with deep sorrow. Some articles say people who have this may only live 5 years at most, is this true? How could it have spread if it had been cured? Can this be cured if it is in the bones? Would this be classed as a stage 4 breast cancer? Stupid question: Are their supplements that can repaistrengthen bones? They are experiencing weakness/pain and risk bone fractures so I want to help them any way I can.
If this is the wrong place for these questions, please let me know. Thank you.

32F, mother of two diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroid disease in 2000, Levothyroxine 120 mcg, I have been chronically ill since October of last year. All started with the worst episode of thryoiditis I’ve ever had. I couldn’t speak or eat. Swollen lymph nodes appeared all throughout my neck and collar bone area. I lost 30 lbs between October and December. I’m suffering from body aches, chronic fatigue, bruising, hair loss. In February chest pains and heart palpitations began. Holter monitor confirms palpitations, echocardiogram confirmed no abnormalities. By March, 4 lymph nodes did not go down so a neck CT was ordered. Thyroid is heterogenous (we knew that, it always has been) with sub centimeter nodules and multiple borderline prominent cervical lymph nodes, “short interval follow up needed”. Referred to an ENT for Thyroidectomy evaluation. ENT was not convinced my symptoms are stemming from the thyroid, yet the thyroid and everything else is symptomatic of something else. In April, all the blood tests were ran, only labs out of range were MPV and ACE. Both levels were high. ENT then told me my MPV levels were high back in November too when my PCP Ran blood work but it was never disclosed to me. I also went to the gynecologist in April because I was experiencing abnormal bleeding. I had been bleeding for over 20 days by the time I had my appointment (currently I’ve been bleeding for 53 with only 8 days of none bleeding). During the breast exam she felt multiple lumps in both breasts. Sono/mammo were ordered as well as a pelvic ultrasound. Pelvic ultrasound and Pap smear came back clear. I just received my results back from the mammogram and all I was told was that “abnormalities were found, there is an area in your breast that needs to be looked at again in six months”. I also received a phone call and the woman said I’ll need to get more imaging done every size months for the next two years because after they compared my imaging from a previous mammogram from 2019, the density in the problem breast has changed from dense to even more dense. My ENT called and said he’s referring me to a pulmonologist for the elevated ACE level. I asked him why, what does that mean and he said “though we don’t know exactly what is going on, all we can do is follow the bread crumbs, the ACE level was our next clue and it could possibly mean sarcoidosis”. Then he said if I need a referral for a rheumatologist after the pulmonologist then he’ll do that too. Could anyone please tell me if my care team seem to be on the right track? With $6k in medical debt, I’d love nothing more that to spot seeing specialist after specialist if what I have is another chronic condition that I’ll be stuck with suffering from for the rest of my life. I’ve already been chronically ill since I was very young with thyroid disease so even though this has made it worse, it is nothing new to me. I just don’t want to drown in debt AND still feel like shit. And TBH, I’m more concerned about the blood work than the breast but I’m not sure if I should be considering I have to now get 4 mammograms during the next two years. I didn’t even notice the lumps until she had pointed them out to me. Opinions?

"You gotta know that there's an art to it, Ezra," Hitch said, cutting another piece of duct tape.
The sleeves of his weather-beaten coat were shoved all the way up his arms, to stop the fabric from falling over his knuckles while he was working, and goosebumps lined his skin. He was strapping a rubber chicken to the back of his truck, over the lens of the shattered backup camera, with the legs pointing down so that they hung a couple inches above the ground. There were dents in the hood from the crash last week, and scratches along the door from scraping into a curb. The chicken, hopefully, would keep him from breaking anything else.
"You can't go cheap," Hitch said. "The cheap rubber chickens only make noise when pressure lets go. That's no good. As soon as I back up into something, I want this chicken to be screaming like it’s in the depths of hell."
“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone, leaning against the side of the truck.
There were scrambled electronic parts piled in the back of the truck, the innards of a radio, a broken computer, tangled wires, a couple loose pairs of earbuds. He found the parts in alleyways or bummed them off his friends for a couple bucks or stole them from the vacation homes that were left empty for most of the year. Then he sold them for a profit at the scrapyard. Hitch had bounced between minimum-wage jobs for a while after high school, spending a couple months as a bagger at the grocery store or as a seasonal worker at the farm two hours down the highway. He'd never stuck with it. At the very least, the scrapyard got him enough money to eat and occasionally spend a night in a motel when he got tired of sleeping in his car.
Hitch pressed the last piece of tape in place and grinned up at me. "I've got something for you, duck."
The nickname came from when I’d broken my leg as a child and waddled around in a cast until it was healed. I hated it with a burning passion, and I glared at Hitch with the ease of twenty-one years of practice. He had a duck tattoo at the base of his thumb that he’d gotten in a back-alley shop as a teenager. He said that he’d gotten it to remind him of me, and the fact that I hated the nickname was just a bonus. It was shaky-lined, with an uneven face, but he loved it anyway.
The handle stuck when Hitch tried to open the door, a consequence of the rust collecting in the crevices of the car and running down the sides like blood from a cut. The car groaned when the door finally popped open, a metal against metal screech that had me flinching away. Hitch dug through the cluttered fast food containers in the passenger-side footwell, eventually coming up with a crinkly paper bag. He waved away the flies buzzing around the opening of the bag and held it out to me.
The last time Hitch had brought me food, I’d gotten food poisoning because he’d left it out in the midday sun for two days. The donut was squished slightly, and the icing was stuck to the bag. I still ate it, grimacing at the harsh citrus flavor. Taking Hitch’s food was an instinct engraved from the days when Dad had given us a can of kidney beans for dinner and Hitch had drank the juice, leaving the beans for me.
I rarely went hungry anymore, three mostly square meals a day and granola in my pockets just in case, but habits didn’t die easy.
These days, Hitch only brought me food when he wanted my help, like when he saw a place he wanted to hit but was worried about doing it alone.
I got in the car, like I always did.
We drove past the cluster of seafood-themed restaurants with chipped paint decks, the beachfront park where there were always shifty-eyed men sitting under the slide, the single room library where all the books had been water damaged in the flood last year. The change was quick as we drove across Main Street, heading closer to the beach. The roads were freshly paved, the concrete a smooth black except where the sun had already started to pick away at it. The three-story homes lining the sides of the street were crouched on elegant stilts, with space underneath for a car or three. Most of the garages were empty, with the lights off and curtains drawn in the house. Come summer, the streets would be swarming with tourists and vacationers, but until then, most of the buildings nearest to the beach were unoccupied.
Hitch stopped as the sun started to go down at a house that was leaning precariously out towards the beach, tilted ever so slightly, the edge of its foundation buried in the shifting sand of the beach. It certainly looked deserted, with an overgrown yard and blue paint peeling off the door in sheets.
Hitch took his hammer out of the backseat, hoisting it over his shoulder. It was two feet of solid metal with rags wrapped around the head to muffle the sound of the hits. Hitch squared up, bending his knees and holding the hammer like a baseball bat. Before he could swing, though, the door creaked open on its own, the hinges squeaking. The house beyond was dark enough that I could only make out general shapes, glimpsing the curve of a sofa to the left, what was maybe the shimmer of a chandelier on the other side.
Hitch lowered his hammer, looking vaguely disappointed that he didn’t get to use it. “That’s…weird as hell.”
“Maybe the deadbolt broke, maybe they forgot to lock it, it doesn’t matter,” I hissed, checking our surroundings for other people again. “Just hurry up and get inside before someone calls the cops.”
Hitch flicked the lightswitch on the wall, and the lights flickered on. They were dim, buzzing audibly and blinking off occasionally. The walls were plastered with contrasting swatches of wallpaper and splattered with random colors. There was neon orange behind the dining table, a galaxy swirl in the kitchen, and on the ceiling there was a repeating floral pattern covered in nametag stickers. Each of the stickers was filled out with The Erlking. Chandeliers hung in every room, three or four for each, and rubber ducks sat on every table. A miniature carousel sat in the corner along with a towering model rocket.
Sand was heaped on every surface, at least a couple inches everywhere. It was piled in the corners and stuck to the walls, and it covered the floor in a thick blanket. Our hesitant steps into the house left footprints clearly outlined in the sand.
Hitch took a cursory look around and headed immediately for the TV mounted on the wall. “Look out the windows and tell me if anyone is coming.”
I shook the sand out of the blinds and pulled them open, then had to brush sand off of the window before I could see anything.
Hitch was quick, practiced at finding and appropriating the things that were worth taking. He came back to me with an armful of electronics and chandeliers, dumping it at my feet before turning to head deeper into the house again.
There was a thump, somewhere upstairs, and then footsteps, slow and deliberate. Hitch froze at the threshold of the room, then ran for the door with me just ahead of him, sand flying out from under our feet.
My hand was almost brushing the doorknob, close enough that I could see the light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the cracks in the door. My fingers touched the wood and it gave under my touch, becoming malleable and warm. I yelped, stumbling backwards, and the door started to melt. The paint ran down in thick drops, pooling at the bottom of the door, and the wood warped like metal being welded. The soft edges of the door ran into the walls until there was no sign of an exit ever being there.
“Well, well, well,” said a cultured voice with just an edge of snooty elitism. “What do we have here?”
The man was well over eight feet tall, with long black hair covering his eyes. He was wearing a yellow raincoat with holes cut out of the hood to accommodate the deer antlers jutting upwards from his head. There was sand settled on his shoulders and hovering around his head like a halo.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hitch said, inching towards a window.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his teeth shone in the dim light. “I am the Erlking.”
Hitch nodded, and seemed about to respond. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the window. I could feel sand in the wind roaring against my back as the Erlking growled in anger, the grains scraping harshly against my cheeks.
We were almost to the window when Hitch was ripped away from me, and I came to a startled halt. The sand had formed long grasping arms that pressed Hitch against the floral wallpaper. His wrists were held tight, and as I watched, a sandy hand wrapped around his mouth and forced its way between his teeth. He gagged, and sand trickled out of the corners of his mouth.
The Erlking strolled towards him, not seeming to be in any sort of rush. “You know, I’m not very fond of your yapping.”
He made an idle gesture and the sand wrapped around my ankles, tethering me in place.
“I yap all the time,” Hitch said. “Three-time olympic yapper, that’s me. Best to just let me go now and save yourself some trouble.”
The Erlking tapped a manicured nail against Hitch’s mouth, hard enough to hurt, judging by the way he flinched away. “But why would I ever let you go when I’ve gone to this much trouble to catch you and your sister? It’s so hard, these days, to find people that no one will miss.”
Hitch struggled against the sand, trying to escape and failing. “What do you want with us, then? You just said it, we’re nobody.”
“I’m fae, dear one,” the Erlking said. “I get my power from my followers. And I think that you two will make lovely additions to my flock.”

He flicked Hitch's nose and Hitch gasped. Feathers started to form on his arms, popping out from under his skin in a spray of blood.
Hitch pushed off the wall, using his bound hands as a fulcrum, and his knees crashed into the Erlking’s stomach. The Erlking fell backwards, wheezing, and the sand around my ankles loosened.
Hitch made desperate eye contact with me as feathers shot up his neck and jerked his head towards the window. The message was obvious. Run.
The last thing I saw before crashing out the window and into freedom was Hitch’s body twisting, his arms wrenching into wings and feathers covering every inch of his skin. By the time I landed on the concrete outside, he was a small black bird, held tightly in the Erlking’s hands. The whole building was sinking into the ground, burnished-gold sand piling up over top and streaming from the windows.
Thirty years later, I saw Sam’s Supernatural Consultation and Neutralization written in neat, looping handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the door. The tape was peeling at the corners and the paper was yellowed with age, but there was obviously care put into the sign, in its perfectly centered text and looping floral designs drawn over the edges in gold marker.
I knocked, hesitantly, drawing my woolen coat closer around my shoulders. I’d bought it as a fiftieth birthday gift for myself, and I took comfort in the heavy weight of it over my shoulders.
“Coming!” someone called from within the depths of the office.
There were a couple crashes, and the sound of paper shuffling. Eventually, the door was opened by a young woman with ketchup stains on her shirt and pencils stuck through her hair.
“Hi, I’m Sam, I specialize in supernatural consultation and hunting, how may I help you today?” Sam said, customer-service pep in her voice. She stood in the doorway, solidly blocking entry into the office.
“My name is Ezra, I’m for a consultation. I emailed you but you didn’t respond?” I shifted in place, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Oh! Yeah, I lost the password for the email ages ago. Sorry for the bad welcome, I get lots of people thinking I’m crazy or pulling a prank and harassing me.”
She ushered me into the office, clearing papers off one of the chairs to make room for me to sit down. There was a collection of swords along one wall, all of them polished to perfection, several with deep knicks in the metal which indicated that they’d been used heavily.
“So what can I help you with?” Sam asked again, more sincere this time.
“Thirty years ago, my brother was turned into a bird,” I started. I’d told this story so many times that it barely felt ridiculous to say anymore. I was used to the disbelieving looks, the careful pity. But Sam just nodded along, face open and welcoming.
“I’ve almost given up on finding him, at this point,” I said. “But I saw your ad in the newspaper, and…here I am, I suppose.”
“Here you are,” Sam echoed, smiling. She pulled one of the pencils out of her hair and took a bit of paperwork off of one of her stacks, turning it over so that the blank side sat neatly in front of her. “Tell me everything.”
I told Sam everything, and she wrote it all down, pencil scratching along the paper.
The last part of the story was always the hardest to tell. “I left him there. I ran and I didn’t look back.”
I had been to dozens of detectives and investigators over the years, once the police had dropped Hitch’s case. I’d been to professional offices with smartly-dressed secretaries and met scraggly men in coffee shops. All of them had given me the same look, pity and annoyance all mixed up into a humor-the-crazy-lady soup. Sam, though, just seemed thoughtful.
Sam leaned forward and put a hand over mine, carefully, like she thought that I would pull away. “Sometimes you have to leave people behind.”
I tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and drew it towards me, like I could make Sam listen if only I squeezed tight enough. “But that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to leave him behind.”
“Okay then. I’ll do my best to help you.” Sam agreed, finally. Then she paused, and said softly, “You know…I think I met your brother once. He might have saved my life. He’s certainly why I started in this business.”
“Really? What happened?” I asked.
This is the story that Sam told me, related to the best of my abilities:
It was a new moon, so the only illumination came from the stars gazing idly down and distant porch lights shining across the scraggly brush of the dunes. Sam’s neighbors were decent people who cared about baby turtles, so the lights were a low, unobtrusive red, and the ocean sloshed like blood. Sam walked on the beach almost every night, drawing back the gauzy pink curtains and clambering out her bedroom window. She didn’t often bother to be quiet; her mama worked the late shift and came home exhausted. As long as Sam got home before the sun, her mama would never find out that she paced the shoreline and dreamed of inhaling sand until her lungs became their own beach.
The sky was lightening. The sun would come up soon, and that meant Sam’s time on the beach was over. She needed to get back to her real life, go to her fifth grade class and stop that nonsense, as her mother would say. Her mother loved to say things like that, pushing Sam into her proper place by implication alone.
“She’s a good kid, of course, but she’s a bit…” Her mother would trail off there, usually getting a commiserating expression from whoever she was talking to. Sam always wondered how that sentence would have finished. She’s a bit strange, maybe. She’s a bit intense. She’s a bit abrasive. She’s quiet enough but when Jason tried to steal her pencil in math class, she stabbed him in the hand so hard that the lead tattooed him.
Her mother was better, for the most part. The days of her stocking up the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the counter, and leaving for days at a time were gone. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen tile where her mother had collapsed and caved her head in, even though the bloodstains had been replaced with new tile.
“Your auntie got an abortion, you know,” her mother had said from her place on the couch, slurring her words. “Pill in the mail and then bam, no more baby.”
She had clapped her hands together to illustrate her point. Her mother jerked forward and grabbed Sam by the wrist, then, staring up at her until Sam met her eyes.
“I love you, you know? But sometimes I wonder…” She settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. I wonder.”
She’d gotten up, then, back to the kitchen. She’d been stumbling, a shambling zombie of a woman. The ground in the entryway of the kitchen was raised, ever so slightly, and her mother went down hard. Her head cracked against the tile, chin first, and she didn’t move.
Sam had been the one to call the ambulance. She had stared at the scattering of loose teeth on the ground while she waited, and considered what her life would be like with a dead mom. Not so bad, she thought, and immediately felt guilty for it.
Her mom was better, now, for the most part. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed. There was still a matchbox hidden under her bed with the gleaming shine of her mother’s lost teeth, two canines and a molar. It was nice, having a piece of her mom to keep. Even if she left again, Sam would still have part of her.
Sam sighed, and turned away from the ocean. As she faced towards the low dunes further up the beach, she saw a sandcastle sitting nestled among them. It was such a strange sight that her eyes skipped over it at first, almost automatically, disregarding it because it was so out of place.
Sam found sandcastles out on the beach sometimes, usually half-collapsed and on the verge of being washed away by the waves, but she had never seen anything like the sandcastle in front of her. It was life-sized, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Scottish highlands, with spires shooting up above her head and carefully etched out bricks lining each side. The front wall was dominated by an arched set of double doors, twice her height, with a portcullis nestled at the top, ready to be dropped. All of it was lovingly detailed, down to the rust on the tips of the towers and the wood grain of the door. It was made out of wet, densely-packed sand, held together impossibly. It had not been there two hours ago, when she had come to the beach.
There was a bird sitting on the overhang of the door, small and black.
As soon as she took a step towards the sandcastle, the bird shook out its feathers and swooped down towards Sam, landing at her feet with a little stumble.
“Hey, kid, get out of here,” said the bird.
Sam closed her eyes, very deliberately. When she opened them, the bird was still there. Sam considered herself a very reasonable person, so she immediately drew the most logical conclusion. The bird was, she was almost certain, a demon.
“Trust me, you don’t want to run into Mr. Salty, the queen bitch himself,” the bird said.
“Mr. Salty?” Sam inquired, polite as she knew how to be. She edged to the side, trying to get a good angle to kick the bird like a soccer ball.
The bird did something similar to a wince, all its feathers fluffing up then settling back down. “Ah, don’t call him that. He’d turn you into a toad.”
The bird gestured with its head, towards the looming sand structure. “That’s his castle. He’s in there, probably scuttling along the ceiling or some shit because that’s the sort of weirdo he is.”
Sam nodded, encouraging. She pulled back her foot and lined up her shot, the way she’d seen athletes do on TV. She aimed right for its sharp beak and let loose. The bird saw it coming, its beady eyes widening, and it cawed in distress. It flapped away, avoiding her kick only to fall backward into the sand in a scramble of wings.
“What’s your fucking problem?” it squawked. “I was trying to help you!”
“I don’t need the help of a demon,” Sam yelled, trying to remember the exorcism that her mama had taught her once, because her mama believed in being prepared for anything.
“I’m not a demon,” the bird said indignantly.
It was at about that moment that Sam gave up and just decided to roll with it.
“What are you, then?” Sam asked.
The bird shuffled its clawed feet, looking about as awkward as it could, given that it didn’t really have recognizable facial expressions. “Technically I’m a familiar of the Erlking, prince of the fae, but I prefer to be called Hitch.”
“You can’t blame me for assuming, though,” Sam said. “Ravens do tend to be associated with murder.”
“Hey, excuse you,” Hitch said. “I’m a rook, not a raven. Ravens are way bigger.”
“Sure,” Sam said, not really paying attention. Her eyes had caught on the details of the sandcastle, and she was transfixed by the slow spirals of the sand, the strange beauty of it. She found herself stepping towards the great doors, lifting a hand to knock, and as she did, the sand warped in front of her eyes, heaving itself towards her with bulging slowness. The door creaked open before her, revealing a vast, empty room. Just before she stepped inside, she felt a piercing pain in her foot, and she yelped, leaping backwards.
Hitch pecked her again, really digging his beak in. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Sam glared at him, rubbing her foot. About to retort, she finally really took in the room inside the sandcastle, and her words died in her throat.
There was a body just past the threshold of the door, face down and limbs hanging limp at its sides. Long hair splayed out in a halo around its head.
“Don’t,” Hitch warned, suddenly serious. “Just leave, kid, I mean it. I’ve seen too many people go down this road and you don’t want to be one of them.”
Sam ignored him. She made her way across the beach, slipping with every step. The sand felt deeper, piling up around her feet in silent drifts. She picked up the nearest stick and poked the body with it through the door, ready to leap back if anything went wrong, staying firmly outside of the sandcastle.
This close, Sam could tell that it used to be a woman. Her head wasn’t attached to her body. It hadn’t been a clean amputation, either. Her upper body was bruised, with chunks taken out of it, and the bones in her neck hung mangled, not connected to anything.
“Well, I warned you,” Hitch said, defeated. “I did warn you.”
Sam nudged the head with the end of the stick, nudging it over so that she could see the face. Her mother stared back at her, torn to pieces, breath still wheezing from her lungs. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing forward with glazed eyes. Sweat dripped down from her hairline.
Sam screamed and dropped the stick, tripping over herself in her haste to get away.
Her mother’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she was mouthing desperate words at Sam. Her vocal cords were broken to bits, and the only sound that came out was a strained groan.
The head rolled, inching closer to Sam like a grotesque caterpillar.
Her mother gasped for air, torn lips fluttering. Finally, comprehensible words came out. “Help. Help me, daughter.”
“That’s not your mother,” Hitch said, quiet.
Sam knew that. Her mother was sleeping back at home, and anyways her mom had never asked for her help. She had an aversion to accepting charity, as she put it.
“Okay,” Sam said, shaking all over. “Okay.”
She backed away from the sandcastle, not looking away.
“Failure,” her mother hissed as she stepped away. “I never wanted a daughter like you.”
The sun came up over the horizon. The sandcastle, Hitch, and her mom all disintegrated into sand as the light hit them.
The beach, the next night, was almost exactly how I remembered it. The beams of our flashlights sent light bouncing across the dunes, illuminating the waves, and I imagined faces in the foam of the waves.
“I’ve been back here a hundred times. There’s nothing left,” I said.
Sam took the car key out of her purse and pointed it at the sand, adjusting the sword slung over her shoulder in order to do it. The key had belonged to Hitch; Sam had requested an item of his, and it was the only thing I had left. She rested the key on the sand and drew a circle around it, inscribing symbols around the borders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m…I guess you could say that I’m knocking.”
The key laid inert on the sand for long enough that I was just about to give up and go home, admit to myself that Hitch was dead and that I was a fool to believe that Sam could actually help me. Then a building started to take shape, flickering in and out like it was struggling to get away. With a pop of displaced air, the sandcastle settled into existence.
Sam banged on the entryway. Nothing happened. She did it again, harder, and scowled when the door still didn’t open.
“We demand entrance, under your honor,” Sam yelled. There was a hard rush of wind, and I gripped Sam’s arm to keep my balance, but the doors cracked open reluctantly.
The inside of the sandcastle consisted of one enormous hall, the roof arching up out of sight. Rafters crisscrossed from wall to wall, and a cobbled path led further into the building, but other than that, it was completely empty, except for the birds. There were thousands of them, perched on the rafters or hopping along the ground. They parted in front of Sam and I, and reformed behind us, leaving us in a small pocket of open space. They were all black-feathered, with sharp beaks and beady eyes.
The Erlking sat on a throne at the end of the hall, lounging across it with his feet up on the armrest. He watched them as they came forward, the soft caw of the birds the only sound.
“I am here to bargain for the life of my brother,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, before the Erlking could say anything.
The Erlking ignored her, tilting his head to look at Sam. “I remember you. I almost got you, once.”

Sam glared at him but didn’t respond.
“You want your brother,” The Erlking said to me, and he almost sounded amused. “Then go get him.”
As if by some sort of silent signal, every bird in the room took flight at once, and their cawing made me think of screams. I covered my head against the flapping of their wings, and my vision was quickly obscured by the chaotic movement of them. I found myself on my knees, just trying to escape them.
A hand met my shoulder. Sam urged me to my feet, and together we ran for the edge of the room, where the swarm was the thinnest. We pressed ourselves into the corner and the swarm spiraled tighter and tighter at the center of the room. It went on until there seemed to be no differentiation between the birds, all of them fused together into one creature.
When the chaos died down, the birds had become one mass, with wings and eyes and talons sticking out of its flesh, thrashing and chirping. Human body parts stuck out of it, bulging out from the feathers. It was hands, mostly, with a couple knees or staring eyes. The bird amalgamation had no recognizable facial features, but there was one long beak extending from the front of its head. Most of the body parts were concentrated around the beak, and they peeked out from where the beak connected with muscle, or grew from the tongue, nestled between the two crushing halves of the beak.
It turned its beak down and crawled forward, using the hands to balance. The fingers scrambled over the ground. I was afraid of centipedes as a child, and I felt that same crawling dread when it started moving.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, which was rather disappointing, because I had been hoping that at least one of us knew what to do.
The creature turned, a lurching movement that crushed some of the hands underneath it, and started heaving itself slowly towards our corner.
“Better hurry up!” the Erlking called from his throne.
It was blocking the exit, by then. The shifting body of it had moved to block us off. It ambled towards us and I tried to sink further into the corner.
As it approached, getting close enough that I could smell the stink of it, I saw a flash of a tattoo on one of the hands. I leaned in, trying to find it again, like looking for dolphins surfacing in the ocean. And again, I caught a glimpse of a duck tattoo, the tattoo that Hitch had gotten on his hand as a teenager.
I ripped away from Sam’s death grip and ran for the monster.
I fell to my knees in front of it, wincing as I impacted the ground, and reached into the nest of hands. I could feel them tearing at my forearms and ripping into me with their sharp nails, but I kept going. I pressed further in, up to my shoulder in a writhing mass of limbs, aiming for the spot where I had last seen that tattoo.
The hands were tugging at me, wrapping around my back and hair. They were pulling together, trying to draw me completely into the mass of them. I was aware of Sam at my side, anchoring me in place and bashing any hand that got too close with her sword or the sparks that leapt from her hands with muttered words. But I didn’t think it would be enough. They were too strong, and there were too many of them.
I was up to my waist in the hands when something grabbed my palm. I felt the way it clung to me, and the calluses on its palm, and I knew that I had found my brother.
I flung herself back. The hands didn’t want to let me go, and they fought the whole way, but slowly, I made progress. I kept hold of Hitch’s hand in mine the whole time, gripping it as hard as I could. I finally broke free, Hitch with me, and Sam was immediately charging the creature, able to use her sword with much greater strength without being worried about injuring Hitch. She swung it forward, and it sliced through the wrist of one of the hands. It fell without a sound, red sand flowing out of it. It deflated until it looked like dirty laundry, just a piece of limp flesh. The creature shrieked, scuttling away enough that the door was finally accessible. The three of us ran for it, Sam and I supporting Hitch between us.
I looked back as I left and found the Erlking staring right at me.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice carrying impossibly across the vast space between us.
The sandcastle collapsed behind us, the great walls falling in on themselves. We were out in the morning sun, the sandcastle disappearing as we watched. Hitch was on the ground in front of me, as young as he’d been thirty years ago, when he was captured. He started laughing, feathers puffing out of his mouth. He laughed until he cried and I hugged him in the way that he’d held me when I was young, in the times when my life had been defined by hunger and fear.
Hitch left, afterwards. He scratched at the pinhole scars covering his body, where feathers burst through his skin, and pulled his long sleeves down around his wrists. He didn’t know where he was going but he told me that he needed time
I had spent thirty years worth of time without him. I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and beg him to stay. But he flinched when I hugged him goodbye and he refused to go near sand and he stared distrustfully at the birds chirping in the trees. Hitch needed to go away and I loved him too much to stop him.
I sat out on the beach every morning. I felt the sun on my face and I waited for Hitch to come home.

Hi, this is gonna be a bit long, but let me explain the entire situation so far: Going back about a year or so, I started noticing an elevated heart rate above what I usually would have. I have an apple watch that allows me to check my heart rate, and around this time I started to get notifications that my heart rate was above average (in the 120s to 130s range while resting as opposed to my normal 60-80 range). This happened a few times along with some very minor chest pain / tightness, however after laying down for a few hours / going to bed it would usually return to normal. Around the same time I got diagnosed with anxiety and ADHD and placed on an SSRI to help my anxiety after trying ADHD meds and not liking them. I never really had any incidents with high heart rate after that, so I had assumed it was just anxiety causing it (and that may still be the case). A few months went by and I ended up starting college and got myself a girlfriend. As I ended up finding out, SSRIs, while great, have the unfortunate side effect of erectile dysfunction, so I weaned off my meds so I could prioritize my love life. There were a few incidents after this where my heart rate was above average, but again I just chalked this up to anxiety, as it would usually go away on its own. At one point I went into my on campus doctor's office just to verify my heart was okay after an elevated heart rate the night before, and they gave me an EKG which came up clear. Months go by, and things are fine, besides a slight uptick in anxiety. Unfortunately however, my relationship began to crumble and my anxiety skyrocketed, and we eventually broke up, which led me to talking to my doctor and getting placed back on anxiety medication. However, I really didn't like how SSRI's impacted my libido, so after trying a few more SSRI's I was placed on Buspirone. I love Buspirone, and it's made a noticeable difference on my confidence / reducing anxiety. When I take my full dose at once (30 mg), I tend to get a bit dizzy / nauseous, however when split up into 10 mg taken at breakfast lunch and dinner I have no noticeable side effects. I will say (and I don't know if this is in any way important but I'm just naming everything possible), I have noticed that since stopping the SSRIs and starting Buspirone I tend to ejaculate VERY fast which is abnormal for me, and although I would like to fix that it is not my main concern. Moving on though, after about a month or two after being placed on Buspirone, we get to where my heart problems start. As someone who had never used any substances my entire life, leaving home and going to college gave me the freedom to try new things, and although I know it's not great, on weekends me and my friends will get together and drink or occasionally smoke weed / take an edible. I was worried at first about interactions with my medication, but after some research all anything online could tell me was that I may get drunk faster / more nauseous and dizzy, which wasn't too big of a deal for me. I had tried weed earlier in college and didn't like the way it made me feel, however after being placed on Buspirone I decided to try it again and actually enjoyed the feeling, so I started doing it more on the weekends as opposed to just drinking, which leads us to the incident. Me and some friends had just sat down to watch a movie, and all taken an edible. Time passed, and I started to notice that my heart rate was extremely elevated, way more than I was usually used to. I checked my heart rate, and found that my watch was displaying an average of 160 bpm. At first I thought I was just having a bad high and tried to calm myself. I laid on the floor and put some ice on my forehead, but nothing was helping. I checked my heart rate again and saw that my watch was displaying 190, which really freaked me out as that was way higher than I had ever seen before. I had my sober friend call Public Safety for me, and they came to my dorm room and did a basic check up on me. They said that I had a fever, and when they took my heart rate they got something in the 160s range. Their explanation was that my anxiety, when combined with being high and likely being sick made my heart rate elevated, which made sense at the time. I went into my college's health services to follow up the next day since my heart rate was still elevated (in the 120s-130s range), however they again told me it was probably just anxiety. A few days went by and my heart rate was STILL above average, so I decided to double check with my real doctor off campus. About a day before this I had also stopped taking my medication to see if it could be the cause for my elevated heart rate. The doctors took my vitals and immediately noticed that had very high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate, to the point where they sent in a second doctor to recheck my vitals and make sure it was correct. After talking to me and having me give a run down of my symptoms, they had me schedule an appointment with a cardiologist and told me that if I ever experience chest pain and a heart rate above 100 bpm that wouldn't go down to go to the hospital. I had also told them about how I stopped taking my medication and they told me that that was fine and to tell the cardiologist about it. About a week passes, and I have my cardiologist appointment in a few days. I had been up the night before working on my final exams, so I hadn't gotten much sleep, and besides a breakfast sandwich that I had for lunch I hadn't eaten much either. I had been experiencing chest pain all day, but I assumed it was being caused by my lack of sleep, so after classes I went and took a nap. After a few hours I woke up, and immediately noticed that I still had chest pain. I checked my apple watch, and my heart rate was displaying roughly 90-110 bpm while laying down, which on top of the chest pain made me worried since my doctor had told me that that was cause to go to the hospital. I called my parents to tell them about it, and they drove to the school and had me sit in the car and eat some food they had made to see if it would help at all. However, even after this, my heart rate was still above 100 bpm and I still had chest pain, so my mom made the call to bring me to the hospital. While on the way to the hospital, out of nowhere my heart rate increased to about 170-180 bpm, which freaked me out. We arrived at the hospital, and they immediately gave me an EKG to make sure I wasn't going to drop dead. During this time, I also was shaking a lot and couldn't make myself stop. Eventually they took me into a room and decided to run some tests on me. The tests they did are as follows: BASIC METABOLIC PANEL, CBC WITH DIFF, TROPONIN NH, D DIMER DEEP VEIN THROMB LEVEL, TSH REFLEX, X-RAY CHEST PA AND LATERAL, and ECG-12 LEAD. While I'm not a doctor, from what they told me and from what I can see, everything turned up pretty normal. My potassium was a smidge low, as well as my MCV and MPV, and my Monocyte (absolute) was a tad high, but generally nothing to worry about. The website where I'm viewing my test results display my ECG as abnormal and an attached document says I have left atrial enlargement as well as sinus tachycardia, but they only mentioned sinus tachycardia in the hospital so I assume that it was just the machine reading my test results and giving its own diagnosis. Long story short though, I left the hospital a few hours later, and although I still had a slightly elevated heart rate they said I was fine to go about life normally and to follow up with my cardiologist. Cut to the present, and I just met with my cardiologist a couple days ago. I gave him the general rundown of the above story (but didn't mention the edible as a precursor to the 190 bpm heartrate as my mom was in the next room over and the door was wide open), and after checking my vitals he told me that although I did have an elevated heart rate and high blood pressure, my chest pain probably wasn't a huge concern and that he wasn't too worried it was anything life threatening. He told me I could resume taking my meds (which I had temporarily replaced with ashwagandha supplements while I waited for the appointment and have since stopped taking), and had me wear a little device that monitored my heart rate for 24 hours, which I'm set to return in a couple days. He also told me that when I returned it he would check my results and give me an echocardiogram and go from there. So, with any luck, he should be able to figure things out then. However, I wanted to post this to see if anyone could help me get any ideas on what it could be that I could run by him to help speed things up. I also have a recent theory of my own that I want to hear advice on. I was doing research and discovered that Buspirone, when taken with other medication that increases serotonin, can cause serotonin syndrome. After another google search, I found out that weed can increase serotonin levels. The only hole in that theory is that I stopped taking Buspirone after the initial spike in heart rate / blood pressure but had no noticeable changes. Oh and one last thing, if you can't think of anything in regards to what could be causing my elevated heart rate, I actually would like to know why I'm ejaculating so fast so I can fix it because its gotten to the point where I can't even enjoy masturbating because of how fast I cum.
In case I missed anything, here's a list of my symptoms (although I have no idea if they're all correlated):

• High heart rate (anywhere from 90-190 bpm)
• High blood pressure
• Chest pain / tightness on my left side and does not hurt more when I breath in / out (every now and then pain extends to my neck and shoulder)
• Frequently tired
• Insomnia (could be correlated with the above symptom lol)
• Get out of breath faster than usual
• Anxiety (already had this though)
• Mild depression (probably from my breakup)
• Lack of motivation (probably from my ADHD)
• Very rare and random spasms in my neck
• About 10 pounds weight loss in the past few months
• Sweat a lot
• Headaches (could be from the meds)
• Probably something minor that I'm forgetting but if I can't think of it it probably isn't important (will update this list if new symptoms arise)

TLDR: I have a high heart rate and blood pressure and can't figure out why

The shuttle rocked in the rain as it approached the surface. The last bastion. The place where she awaited
You heard stories. Hell, youd been present for some, seen things that would have broken any mortals mind as it had done so many others. And while you were just a mere mortal you endured for one reason.
Love.
How ironic that they decided it must be you to take her life
"Entered through the atmosphere, we seem to be undetected" the pilot lies, you know your night and know that she probably saw you enter the system "ETA 1 hour to drop point" you don't dignify him with a response, you've barely talked to anyone sense the order
Your wargear clatters as the shuttle shakes in the wind. Special gear, that of an elite assassin, second probably only to hers in stealth and lethality. Dozens of blades and poisons so toxic you were told to leave any of the adamantite shells after an hour on the planet. Your every move planned and thought out for weeks
None of it would matter. She told you herself how this would end. Your blade, her body. How there would be no fight even if she wanted to
You recall that day, it was in all honesty the most stable you had seen her ever. It was twilight, she refused to go out in the day, the two of you were sitting on a balcony. The two of you were sewing
Purple cloth lay in your lap. Golden thread hanging from your needle. You looked over at a curse, seeing her struggle to thread her needle
"Here, let me help" you gently rech over and guide her ever shakey hands through the eye. A brief smile, almost resembling a predator baring their teeth "thank you" she whispers "what would I do without you" she leans onto your shoulder, hands working on her project
"It doesn't matter love" you wrap your arm around her, surprisingly she accepts. "I'm not going anywhere, no matter what you see"
"I saw you leaving so many times" she starts to tremble as tears form in the corners of her eyes "so many have turned away from me. Even my sisters" she grabs tightly to your arm as she quietly sobs
You hold reach over and pat her back as she sobs into you "Sanguinia doesn't. Remember when she took you out to try that wine?" You reminder her
"I didn't like any of them, I finished the tasting in minutes and ruined the whole thing" the words come in between the sobs
"And then she took you around untill she sound something you liked, remember what it was?" You reach into your bag and produce a flask, uncorking it and waving it around the sobbing slows as she looks up through her fallen hair
You gently move your arm and she pushes into you. Taking the flask you hold it to her lips "what did you find out that day?" You hold the flask away, waiting for her answer
"That I liked hot chocolate" she mumbles as you reward her with the sugary treat, you feel her start to relax as you keep giving her sips
"That's right. And your sister found that out, one that didn't leave you" you say. Getting only a unidentifiable mumble in response "and ill always have some ready for you, I promise" feeling her tense up at your words
"Did I ever tell you about promises on my home world?" You cut off whatever she was about to say "back home they used to say that there were spirits that lived on promises. And that when you made one you made them happy, and as long as you kept their promise they'd help you in little ways." Between the chocolate and story she remains quiet
"And they'd say the bigger promise you made that the more they'd help you. Maybe only once, but you would know that they did" finishing your story "and I promise to you. I will be there for you. And I will have some ready for you" she sighs and takes the flask from your hands. Turning away from you she drinks it at her own pace.
Knowing she needs to process you return to your work. Finishing the last few stitches before turning "Kassandra" seeing her turn, drawing her needle with her teeth "I've got this for you" you hold up a simple scarf, made for someone of her size
She let's you wrap it around her neck, as you explain "I know it's cold sometimes when you go out in the night. And I know you get cold often so I figured I'd make this to keep you warm" taking the end of the scarf in her hands she sees a small golden heart with your initials in it "and that's so you remember who's waiting at home for you" you say with a kiss on her check
She doesn't move for a few minutes, before offering a simple shirt, one made of cloth and not flesh. "I made this after the last one" she mumbles out, her hair hiding most of her face "I know you didn't like it much"
Brushing the hair out of her glowing purple eyes you accept the shirt lovingly, before swapping your shirt out for it, it fits perfectly "I love it dear" you look into her eyes as she ducks her head
A faint smile visible
"DROP IN 10 SECONDS" the pilots voice snaps you out of your memories as you check and make sure everything is in place
"GO FOR DROP" the voice roars our over the engines as you jump from the shuttle. Grav shoot kicking in as you aproch the ground, landing in the courtyard. Looking back as the shuttle flys off, you steel yourself and approach the doors
They open as you approach, leading you into the hall where she sits at the end. "I knew they'd send you" her voice comes with a tone of a dead woman walking "the only one I couldn't bring myself to hurt" you see angry red lines all over her body as you approach
"Did they tell you what I did? How I ripped apart Regalia? How mich flesh I flensed from her?" Her voice rises in anger st the memory
You reach her as she looks up at you. A woman with nothing left "do it" she spits, directed at the ones who sent you here "kill me and be done with it" she looks down, not able to meet your eyes "please just make it quick" you faintly make out
Your heart weaps as your dagger raises, you look down upon your love. She doesn't move, resigned to her fate. Her hair flowing down covering her face "im sorry" you whisper as your arm falls forward...
You catch a flash of purple and gold between strands of her hair
Your dagger plunges into your chest. Right through the camera that you wore, a scream comes from Kassandra as she rushes to catch your falling body "no, no, no ,No" she repeats over and over, "I was the one to die not you" she starts desperately trying to stop the bleeding but has no knowledge
"You did die here" no pain in your voice, forced back for her sake "that's what they'll belive" you cough, blood splattering on your chest, your armor pried off by her hands to reveal the shirt she made for you and...
"Is that..." a sob breaks her sentence. Seeing the flask you always wore steaming in the cool air "I made a promise didn't I?" You grin turning into a wince as pain shoots through you "you know how promises are" you take the flask reach up, determind to have her drink
Only for your limbs to disobey you, the flask falling to the floor
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I’ve been out of work on WC for four weeks due to an injury to my arm/shouldehand that is from repeated use. They did X rays that showed no fracture, and had me on PT 3x a week and I see the doctor weekly for an update. I also started acupuncture this week (2 sessions a week). A MRI is pending and has been pending since week 2. There has been no improvement, only worsening of the pain that is now almost constant and unbearable. I cannot do a movement without pain. Going to PT this past week has been a huge struggle as well, as each exercise has been strenuous, unable to finish any of them, and exhausted for hours afterwards and the day after. My other arm now feels it has no strength from compensating and it’s starting to hurt too. I have mentioned this to the PT who said maybe I need to really push through the pain more. I feel like my injury is worse already. I have told the doctor and she hasn’t changed the treatment plan, but changed my limitations from “ok to go back to work, 10lbs weight restrictions for right arm” back to 5lbs, and said I should wear my sling.
Work and WC came up with an alternative job at a volunteer store for 20 hours a week (4x5hrs). My usual shift at my real job is about the same amount of hours but is a totally different job. However when I’m healthy and working, I am not exhausted like this, and I don’t have 6-7 medical appointments a week that take 2 hours each time along with extra driving. This schedule I know will kill me. I already feel like I am just a shell of myself, with the pain and inability to do anything, can’t even cook or drive. My spirit is now gone, just enduring the constant pain and fear for the sharper pain that comes with movements.
I went to the first day at the job on Friday and they were very lovely and laid back, they had me sit on a couch attaching tags to items . They told me I can come whenever I want and leave whenever I want and whichever day I wish. I appreciated sitting down and work on this one task but it also hurt my neck a lot. I was physically and emotionally exhausted after a little more than 2 hours (that included a lunch break), and I went home. I haven’t recovered yet. I emailed the liaison at work about it but since it’s the weekend I have not heard back. I don’t know what to do, there is nowhere in the store for me to lay down and rest. I can do the job for about 2 hours, maybe 3 hours max. Also, the job wasn’t updated about the change from 10lbs to 5lbs, and was surprised (but very compassionate) to see the sling and learn I can only use one arm. I can’t do more than this amount of time, especially sandwiched between medical appointments. I feel like I’m about to collapse, I even considered going to urgent care tomorrow because I can’t live like this. Ibuprofen does absolutely nothing to ease the pain.
I don’t understand this treatment plan… am I just supposed to continue going to PT and move my arms and work a job that will inevitably make my condition worse, and that’s it? How am I supposed to get better if we don’t even know yet what the injury is? Shouldn’t the MRI have been one of the first things to get done?

hi everyone, just had a couple questions regarding my spinal fusion. i had mine in 2016, almost 8 years ago now. i was 14 at the time, got the surgery as a last option kinda deal only because i HAD to ( parents didn’t really care that much). to make a point here, i only had a 1 year post-op checkup on it and then was never taken to a doctor to check up on it since. now im 22, still have not seen a doctor due to financial problems as well as health insurance. im not sure if anyone has the same experience as me, but i am constantly sore and in pain every single day of my life. it’s not unbearable pain, but its in my shoulders, back, and as well as my ribs. it definitely hurts and it’s just plain annoying that i have to deal with it. i guess im on here asking more if anyone still has that soreness and pain 8+ years later. is it something i should be worried and see a doctor about ? or is it just a normal outcome of having said surgery. i’ve never really met anyone with the same experience so im hoping to get a few recommendations/suggestions on how to help relieve the pain or just tell me to stfu and deal with it LOL

Good morning everyone. I have a question regarding some issues I am going to bring up at my local vso as part of a claim process and was wondering how hard it will be to prove things or claim them. I will start with the simple ones.. Tinnitus - crew chief Knee pain which includes locking and pain if bent beyond 90 degrees. Back Pain, both lower and upper from lifting odd object like motors, pulleys, rails, tires, etc.. Shoulder pain from the same, can't raise my arms above shoulder height without pain. Shin splints, idek about this one. Tendinitis of the hand, this is one of the only two things properly documented. Vasovagal syncope - started/caused from hitting my head inside dry bays and on other various acft surfaces while working in tight spaces.. this one caused me to pass out during a pt test. Anxiety - this is tied with MST, and is almost crippling sometimes. MST, which I don't want to delve into but sexual assault and harassment. This has affected me in numerous ways bit the biggest is probably my sexuality. Ever since the events I've felt less of a man, always been small sized, but it's had negative effects on things I don't want to go into here.. Migraines, which go with the head trauma. Congestion and frequent bloody noses which only started after my deployment to the sandbox.
So.. is this worth pursuing or do I stand no chance to prove any of this?. And if so what are my likely percentages that I might expect to see?

Ik it's very long but please give it a read
I've had persistent nausea since last year....it all started with abdominal cramps dull aching pain on left side lasting a week...had an endoscopy which showed gastritis Cut to Oct 2023 had violent coughing which would make me vomit...then it evolved into nausea! Tried omeprazole plus domperidon combo and it went away...it hit me again in Jan 2024 so went for another endoscopy which suggested mild reflux esophagitis And gastroduodenitis...doc just upped my dose of ppi Found temporary relief but flared up again so this time i changed doc...he ordered for a poop test for h pylori and it came back negative!!!!!now he just put me on amitryptaline and a prokinetic Although my symptoms have reduced but i still have no answers at all. I'm freaking out what if it is gastroparesis? I hope its not....my follow up is after 2 months Please help me calm my anxiety Edit: i wasn't on any ppi On prokinetic and amitryptaline I've been experiencing loose semi formed stools and sometimes watery with undigested vegetable skins

i’m a 20F and i got my tonsillectomy the morning of may 10th. today is day 9. recovery was super easy days 3/4, and then it went downhill as expected. i spit up a blood clot about the size of a dollar coin and had a clot about the same size on my left tonsil, which i eventually swallowed (ew). however, since day 5ish, my right tonsil has healed like a champ and i have had genuinely 0/10 pain. my left tonsil however is so painful it is actually driving me crazy, and not in a metaphorical way. my ear has been aching for almost an entire week straight, and it feels like someone is pushing a rusty needle through my eardrum. to accompany it, my left side is in excruciating pain in ONE specific spot; and the rest is just sore. it feels like someone is burning my wounds with a lighter constantly. nothing i do helps except laying still on my ride side with a weighted ice pack. i have been in agony for 9 days. i’m not a wimp either, im aware how awful this recovery is. i have broken so many bones and had so many sprains and i have been in a lot of pain before but nothing like this. i have ehlers danlos hypermobility syndrome, im a redhead, i have endometriosis, i have a HIGH PAIN TOLERANCE. this is killing me. i feel like im going insane because of this, and like i am trapped in my body as a prison. my mind is a prison. i am in endless pain. i can’t eat or drink water and i don’t know what to do. i need any help or suggestions i can get. i’m extremely worried for my mental health. i can’t continue like this much longer. please i need advice and help. please

I am 22 and male, and I am always in so much pain. I have arthritis, asthma, autism, and my body always aches. I tried numerous doctor visits, but they just bounce me around and are useless but is so frustrating. I just want to be normal

I first started noticing that something was wrong around 3 months ago. At the time, I was working from home and would usually light a scented candle while I worked, which usually helped me relax and stay focused on my work. I would usually burn through a candle a week, but over time, the candles started to take less time to fully burn up. At first, I thought that this was because of a change in ingredients the company that made the candles used, but the problem persisted after I switched candle brands, which I once again blamed on the candle manufacturers.
I kept this belief for another week until the first incident. While getting up from my computer desk, which faces away from the candle, to take a quick bathroom break, I caught a glimpse of the lit candle. A two-inch layer of molten wax rested on another three-inch layer of solid wax, the wicks rising out at first and being somewhat visible through the molten layer, finally breaking the surface and being slowly burned away. The flames flickered as I swung the door open and walked out of the room. When I returned 10 minutes later, the molten layer was gone, and the wicks had been shortened so that the flames rested right above the solid layer of the wax. At first, I thought that the glass jar that contained the candle was leaking, but after a short inspection, I was only able to find two small drops of candle wax that had solidified right next to the candle on the bedside table. I still had 2 hours of work left to do, but I was too lost in thought and was unable to do any work for the rest of the day.
Every night before I go to sleep, I like to read for at least 30 minutes, and while reading, I usually light a candle. Around 4 days later, I had mostly forgotten about the incident and went back to using candles. Due to my naivety, it returned.
I fell asleep while reading with a candle lit on my bedside table. I woke up to loud slurping noises. As I opened my eyes, the brightness of the light I had not turned off almost blinded me. As my eyes tried to readjust to the light and focus on what was in front of me, I saw a somewhat humanoid dark gray to light blue blur that contrasted with the white paint on the walls behind it. Another gray line stretched from the shape's head to the candle on my bedside table. I could feel my heart skip five consecutive beats. I opened my mouth and tried to force out a scream for help, but the pressure I applied to my throat was way beyond what it was able to handle, leading me to only produce a light wheezing sound. I tried to sit up or to at least prop myself up, but my muscles failed me. Trying to push myself up with my arms felt impossible. As I stared at the figure that had suddenly appeared in my room, my eyes finally managed to focus, making it possible for me to see the intruder who was now staring at me. The figure was a man at least 7 feet tall, fully naked; he looked bloated; his eyes were bloodshot and looked like they would pop out of their sockets; at any point, his skin was a grayish light blue.
HIS LIPS
His lips extended from his mouth like an elephant's trunk, which had been split in half. The lips extended from the man's face to the candle; the flames had been put out. He was using his lips as a makeshift straw, slowly sucking up all the molten wax from the candle, which had fully liquified while I was asleep. I laid in bed, unable to move, unable to scream for help, staring until he emptied the jar. His lips retracted back to his face, the molten wax solidifying on their tips and cracking, flakes of wax falling off the man's lips and falling to the floor. The man grinned, staring at me. The ridges and gaps between the teeth were filled in with wax, making it impossible to make out where one tooth ended and the next one began. The man opened the door he was standing next to, but instead of walking out of the room, he stepped behind it. His face peered at me from above the door, and then once again, like he had done to drink the wax, the man puckered his lips, which stretched from his mouth and floated to me. I shook and tried to roll over away from him. I wanted to get up and run, but my fear had taken over my body. Tears flowed from my eyes. He kissed me on the cheek, leaving flakes of wax and light moisture. He retracted his lips and lowered his head behind the door.
I don't remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, I saw the empty glass jar, which at one point contained the candle. Even though I had hoped that what had happened was a dream, it wasn't. I still had flakes of wax on my cheek, and on my bedroom floor, the wax in the jar had disappeared. I called the police, but they were unable to find anyone in my apartment; they also could not find any evidence of a break-in.
After the break-in, I started looking for a new apartment to move to, thinking that the man was tied to the building I was in, but even though I had thrown out all of my candles, I could not stomach spending another hour in my apartment, constantly looking over my shoulder or walking around with my back pressed up against the wall to not allow it to creep up on me. Thankfully, my friend Emma was able to let me stay over at her apartment while I looked for a new one for myself.
Me and Emma have been friends since we were 8, and we've been there to support each other when times get rough. This isn’t the first time I've had to stay over at her house for an extended amount of time; in fact, I have had to stay over at Emma’s as many times as she has had to stay over at my apartment, whether it was because of evictions after losing a job, breakups, or a candle wax drinking squatter. I didn't even know if it was human. I mean, sure, it looked like one, but human lips are not supposed to do what his did, and somehow it didn't have a reaction to molten wax being poured down its esophagus. I didn't tell Emma about what happened—the details at least—I just told her that a man had broken into my house and was watching me sleep. The only people I told the truth to were my therapist and the cops, and all of them disregarded what I told them as my mind making things up after a traumatic event.
For a while, I believed what they said—I mean, why wouldn’t I?—but then I started seeing him again. For a few days, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me again like it had done during the night of the incident. For split seconds out of the corner of my eye, I would see the outline of a tall, bloated figure. At first, they were hours apart, but after a while, it became constant. He was standing in each room I passed, in every single dark corner I glanced past, and then he spoke.
“FeeD MeEeee”
It stood in the kitchen, peering over from a small gap between the fridge and the sink, where the trash can that had been knocked over onto its side usually stood. His voice was raspy, and every word that came out of his mouth was distorted as if he were gargling water, but still, I could somehow clearly make out each word he said from over 15 feet away.
“Please just leave me alone I… why are you following me?”
I shouted at the figure, the same fear that had taken over my body during the night I saw him for the first time paralyzing me, making it impossible for me to move anything other than my eyes, eyelids, and mouth.
“i’M sTarviNg, I nEEd You To FeEd ME”
It replied again. Now, stepping out from behind the fridge, he stepped directly onto a rotten banana. Its mushy brown content’s seeping out of the peel under the pressure of his decomposing foot, which was covered in scabs, and took up the same grayish light blue color as the rest of his body. He mostly looked the same; his bloodshot eyes bulged from their sockets, but now his tongue was swollen. It peeked out from between his bloated, cracked gray lips; it stared at me, waiting for an answer.
“Ok, I’ll.. I’ll feed you, but please just... leave me alone.”
I replied, the tone of my voice shifting into high-pitched squeals with every quick breath I took. He looked satisfied by my response. He somehow squeezed his bloated body back into the gap that was at least four times smaller than him. After peering over at me from above the fridge, he bent over backwards, his spine releasing a series of sickening cracks until he was fully obscured by the fridge, and then he vanished.
Still barely in control of my body, I limped over to the couch tucked away in the back corner of the living room, it took me at least 10 minutes to steady my breathing and 20 more to fully regain control of my body again but as soon as I did I ran out the house and to the nearest store, during the 15-minute walk he stared at me through dark windows and the backs of cars, peered out at me from gaps between leaves in the trees and bushes, he even followed me into the store staring at me from the middle of deserted isles before disappearing right before my eyes were able to fully catch him, once I finally got the candles I randomly picked four off of the shelves and rushed to the self checkout.
When I arrived home, I had 2 hours before Emma got off work. I didn't want to feed it while she was home, and I didn't want her to see it. I pulled out two of the candles from the black plastic bag and placed them on the kitchen table, the first a light blue candle named “Garden Rain” and the second a red candle named “Juicy Watermelon." I pulled out a lighter from one of the drawers Emma used after her stove stopped lighting on its own and lit each of the 6 wicks on the candles. As soon as I started seeing the wax melt under the heat of the burning wicks, I dropped the lighter onto the table next to the candles and ran out of the room. I could not stomach seeing that thing again; even just thinking about it made me shudder and hyperventilate. The paralyzing fear that seeing him caused me made me want to vomit.
At least 30 minutes later I started to hear it drink even though the living room and kitchen were separated by a wall, even though I had closed the door I could still hear what at first started as slurping sounds which were followed up by loud gulps, then it stopped, and once again 30 minutes later it started drinking, as the slurping started once again I heard the door to the apartment crack open, it was Emma, as she stepped through the door I saw her carrying two large brown paper bags of groceries in her hands, she was headed to the kitchen.
“Hey let me grab those for you”
I said running over to her, my voice shaking.
“Oh, thanks. Are you… okay, you look scared?”
My eyes shot wide open in a mixture of fear and surprise. I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Yeah just umm… I didn't expect you to come home so early and I got a bit spooked”
“shit sorry, I know I should have called you, work let me off early today,”
I started to turn away from her walking to the kitchen.
Trying to keep her away from the kitchen I told her to wait for me in the living room because I wanted to talk to her about something. I didn't know what I would talk to her about but that was a problem for future me to resolve, somehow it worked.
“What's that sound?”
She called out to me while walking towards the living room couch. It took me a few seconds to come up with an excuse.
“I think it’s the sink, or the pipes at least”
I opened the door to the kitchen with my eyes closed at first hesitant to look knowing what would be greeting me. slowly prying my eyes open I started to see its outline, my muscles started to lose strength as the details of the man came into my view, I felt the grocery bags start to slip from my arms, my knees buckled, face first I fell onto the kitchen floor scattering the groceries all over the floor, I mixture of a light scream and a yelp escaped from my mouth as my body made contact with the floor, Emma concerned for my safety ran into the kitchen, she didn't scream, using all of the strength and mobility I had left in my muscles I rolled over expecting to see her face drenched in terror, her body frozen still unable to move just like my body had done the first time that I saw him, but Emma looked concerned, the man was gone, she crouched down beside me.
“Oh my god are you ok? What happened?”
I looked around observing my surroundings.
“I um… I… I tripped on the little thing at the bottom of the doorframe”
I finally managed to blurt out another excuse, not being able to remember what the name of a door sill was. I started to sit up using a part of the energy that had returned to my body, pain pulsed through my chest and arms, Emma looked at me with a concerned face.
“You've been acting really weird since I got home, are you sure you're ok?”
“Yeah… I think I’m just having one of those days you know”
The confusion on Emma’s face said that she didn’t know and to be honest I didn't either, I guess my luck of pulling random excuses out of my ass ran out, Emma thought that she triggered some sort of PTSD response after barging into the house unannounced at first apologizing then trying to change the subject to stop my trembling which I was still unsuccessfully trying to hide from her.
“Did you buy candles?”
Emma asked picking the groceries apart from the garbage that spilled out the can that the man had knocked over, placing them on the table next to the now half-empty glass jars, the flames flickered above the inch or so of molten wax the man was unable to finish drinking.
“Yeah I’ve been struggling with work lately, they usually help me focus”
“Huh Interesting combination you’ve got going on here”
She looked at me and smiled slightly, I smiled back and chuckled to seem normal.
“Yeah even I don't know what I was trying to accomplish here, to be honest”
I tried to help Emma clean up the spilled groceries but she did not let me, she told me that I needed to recover like I had been in a car crash instead of having taken a little tumble. After a few seconds of silence, Emma spoke again.
“Anyway, what did you want to talk to me about earlier?”
A quick jolt of stress shot through my body, in a jumbled mess of lies and fear I had forgotten what I had told Emma, I sat there in silence for a few seconds unable to come up with an excuse
“I…umm… I don’t remember, it wasn't anything serious though”
“Damn did you hit your head too?”
She said once again proudly smiling at her joke.
At this point Emma picked up the last bag of potato chips from the floor and placed it on the table, then she opened the fridge and started loading the groceries into it.
“Anyway I gotta go get back to work’’
I blurted out after a few more seconds of awkward silence.
“Alright well good luck”
I walked over into the living room and sat down in front of my workstation, which now consisted of a laptop sitting on a small foldable TV tray that had just barely enough room left on it to fit a small USB mouse.
The last thing I remember, before I fell asleep, was me mindlessly scrolling through apartment listings while Emma watched a random 90’s horror movie I’m positive only had a budget of $500.
I woke up with a light stinging pain shooting through my dry throat, and a dim hissing sound caused by thousands of water drops striking the ground outside filled the room. I pressed the spacebar on my laptop, the brightness of the screen blinding me temporarily, after taking a few seconds to let my eyes readjust I managed to make out the time, 3:45 AM. A strong smell I was unable to make out the origin of assaulted my nostrils. Lavender.
The smell hitting my nose had the same effect on me that I would expect smelling salts would have on a weightlifter right before they set a world record. Before I knew it my legs were moving on their own at an almost uncontrollable pace, fighting back against my mind which was telling them to slow down after years of being used to navigating both mine and Emma’s apartment as steadily as possible to not bother the neighbors.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity I stood before Emma’s bedroom door, a faint, yellow, pulsating light radiated from a lamp and snuck out of a small gap between the door and the doorframe, reluctantly I pushed my left hand up against the door, my right hand grasping onto the door frame for a sense of stability, once the door was fully agape I scanned the inside of the room my heart skipping a beat for every humanoid shadow cast up onto the wall by the lights from the wicks which were set ablaze and were being slowly burnt away.
I walked into Emma’s room and made my way over to her bedside table to put out the candle, as I stepped closer towards her, her face became more defined, I could finally make out her features, she was awake, but no she could not have been, even though her eyes were wide open they never blinked, she didn't even move slightly, as I moved closer I finally managed to fully make out the expression of pure terror on her face, her mouth wide agape as if she was about to release a deafening screach, but she could not have, a single drop of solidified wax dribbled out of the corner of her mouth and clung to her cheek, my eyes traced the cream colored path back towards her mouth, first up her cheek then between the corner of her mouth and finally behind her teeth, there instead of her tongue or the roof of her mouth I saw a wall of wax which had filled in the entirety of her mouth.
I fell to my knees and hunched forward supporting my body weight with my arms, I was too late, I resisted the urge to vomit and got back up onto my feet, a mixture of tears and snot slid down my face and onto my lips, shaking now I slowly started limping over towards my phone which I had left on the couch next to where I had awoken just minutes before, just minutes before my life was destroyed because of my lies if I had just told Emma what I had gone through, if I had just told her what had happened on the night of the incident which now seemed trivial, even if she thought that I was crazy, I know that she would have complied just to make me feel comfortable.
It took me at least 30 seconds of repeated attempts to stabilize my hands enough to properly dial 911. “Someone broke into my apartment and hurt my friend” was the only reasonable explanation I could come up with that would not get the operator to hang up on me thinking that this was a prank call.
I sat there in the living room for an agonizing 10 minutes, crying, my sadness slowly transformed into anger towards myself, and my mind raced thinking of all the lies I’d told, I kept thinking that if I had just told her the truth she would not have been laying there in her bed, her body bloated, “every single orifice has signs of forced penetration and has been filled with what seems to be candle wax” is what was written on her autopsy report.
For a few days I was the main suspect in Emma’s murder, but due to the almost unstoppable crying and the unresponsive state that I was in when the police arrived, mixed with the lack of evidence of me having a way to produce 30 pounds of candle wax led to me being released out of police custody, but because I was the main suspect I was not told any details about what had fully happened to Emma, for days all I had to work off of was the image of her face frozen in terror, and a short glance I caught of her bloated body as she was being carted out on a stretcher.
I recounted every single word of our last conversations over and over again until they became permanently etched into my brain.
Emma’s parents originally wanted to cremate her, as that is what she had somewhat jokingly asked for whenever the topic of funerals came up, well she had joked about wanting to have had unpopped popcorn shoved down her throat before she was sent off to “scare the shit out of the guy cremating me” but due to all the wax which would have been impossible to get out of her body they were forced to bury her.
A few days before Emma’s funeral her body disappeared.
After Emma’s death, her parents took me into their home, after reading the autopsy reports and seeing her corpse they had thrown out every single candle they owned which made their home the safest choice I had, still, this did not stop me from buying a machete and keeping it under my bed, just in case.
I was laying on the bed in their guest bedroom The day that the police informed Emma’s parents about her disappearance, the bedroom is right above the front porch of the house, at first I heard them ring the doorbell which was followed up by 3 powerful knocks on the door, for about a minute I laid there on the bed listening to muffled voices exchanging distorted words I was barely able to make out which slowly transformed into distorted weeps, curious I lifted myself up from the bed, made my way over to the window and carefully lifted the bottom panel making Shure to not make too much noise, the distorted muffled sounds started forming into coherent words “We checked the security footage but the only strange thing we could see was a 5 second time jump” one of the officers spoke in a serious and almost monotone voice “which meant that the security guard who was the only person in the building had to climb down 2 flights of stairs walk through a 40 foot long hallway and then drag her body back up stairs and out of the building in 5 seconds” Emma’s mom let out yelp “ but don’t worry ma'am that’s actually good news because we know that her corpse is still somewhere within the building and was probably brought to the wrong floor by an intern, we’ve already warned all of the staff at the hospital to keep an eye out, and we also sent 5 officers to search the hospital”
I could not believe what I was hearing, my breathing quickened, but this time instead of fear I felt anger, that fucker stole her corpse and was probably in the weird separate plane of existence he always went back to after terrorizing me, cutting off chunks of her body, melting her, and drinking her.
I closed the window Emma’s mom's cries once again turned into a muffled rumble which was only possible to make out if you knew what to look for, I took a few steps back away from the window planning to lay back down, not wanting to bother Emma’s parents. I bumped into something, not something, someone, its fleshy towering form as solid as a wall sent me tumbling forward, I knew it was him, he had returned to take me too, to stretch his swollen cracked lips, push them down my esophagus, fill my lungs and stomach with wax. But despite all of that this time I was not scared, I was angry, and I was not going to stand there in terror like I had the last time I saw him.
I fell forward onto my knees my face missing the window sill just by mere inches, I put my hands onto the floor, lifted one of my knees, and rotated 180 degrees now facing the monster, to the right of him pushed up against the wall was the bed, light from the sun reflected off of the metallic button which kept my machete in it’s sheathe, the man started to stretch his lips, they were moving towards me, waving a wiggling through the air like a snake slithering towards me.
I dove towards the bed one of my feet pushing off of the floor and the other pushing against the wall which creaked under the pressure applied to it, I flew for a few moments before slamming down onto the carpet and sliding forward, the heat generated by my skin brushing against the carpet released a sharp stinging pain throughout my body, my outstretched arm landed just a few inches short of the machete, I quickly bent my arms, pushing my body up and crawled towards the machete. my fingers wrapped around the handle I spun around, my back pushed up against the bedside table, once again facing the man, he was still facing the window but his lips faced me and were just a few feet away from me, for what felt like minutes but was most likely no longer than a second, I struggled to hook my finger under the strap securing the machete into its sheath, as the lips inched towards me the man started producing gurgling noises, he was regurgitation wax.
I finally pulled the machete out of its sheath, I swung the blade at the man's lips, the blade was not met with any resistance as it sliced through the man’s lips which landed on the carpeted floor with an audible thud, the man did not have a physical reaction to my counter-attack, his lips kept creeping towards me, once again I slashed at the lips, still no reaction, I repeated this at least 3 more times.
I wanted to kill him, I wanted to take revenge for what he had done to Emma, but fighting back was pointless. I realized that no matter how much I tried to hurt it, I could not kill him, I could not get rid of him.
My rage dissipated and a mixture of fear and sadness crept in, and soon took over my body, I screamed for help, I screamed in fear, in agony, tears streamed down my face as the man's lips finally reached my face, he wasn’t met with any resistance as his lips snuck between mine, pried my jaw open and finally started to slide down my esophagus.
I heard the cops run up the stairs, they started banging on the door asking if I was okay only to have been met with muffled screams, hot wax started to pour down inside of me, the stinging pain of the heat made me want to plunge the machete which I had dropped onto the ground next to me into my stomach to create a gaping wound that the wax would hopefully funnel out of, the texture of the man's slippery, oily lips matched with the poison like flavor of the wax caused me to start gagging, I felt my insides bulging like at any moment my intestines would have been filled to the point where they would pop, I wanted to vomit, the drain myself of the filth I was filled with, but his lips had plugged my throat not allowing anything to get out.
Hearing my muffled screams the cops started kicking the door down, the man retracted his lips, the suction aided my attempts at cleansing my insides, I got onto my hands and knees streams of molten wax pouring out of me, solidifying on the the carpet, with another loud thud the door swung open slamming into the wall, the man was gone.
That’s the last thing I remember before I passed out, but according to one of the doctors who was in the ambulance that brought me to the hospital, I was still semi-responsive during the first 10 minutes of the ride to the hospital.
Approximately 13.4 pounds of wax were removed from my body, the doctors said that I was in a critical condition and some of them did not expect me to make it.
One of the officers who was there the day the man attacked me took a report of what had happened to me, due to the unmistakable evidence of what had happened to both me and Emma, and the fact that this was the 3rd instance of me reporting something like this the police finally started investigating who this man might have been.
Around a month later I was discharged from the hospital and once again have been staying in the living room of Emma’s parent's house.
I’ve been seeing the man again, candles were not allowed in the hospital I stayed at, which means that he’s probably very hungry, he’s close to attacking me again, I know it, he wants to finish what he started and I don't know if I have the power to fight back, I’m not sure if defeating him is even possible, I’m tired.
I’ve been seeing Emma too, her bloated, reanimated corpse often appears to be standing next to the man. If I let him take me will I get to join them? I’ve tried asking but they don’t answer, they just stare, I can’t keep living in constant fear, always looking over my shoulder, I miss Emma.

50F. I am not looking for medical advice, but I’d love to learn from experts how generally to approach evaluating a matter. I have an appt with my specialist pending. I’m an academic and enjoy learning about complex puzzles.
Here’s some context:

• For years, I’ve had kidney-area pain on my left side. Deep gnawing ache that keeps me up at night. Doctors have shrugged.
• I also have plenty of medical issues: autonomic dysfunction (orthostatic hypotension), autoimmune small fiber neuropathy, deficient IgG subclasses, etc. Overall health is poor. I am on low-dose IVIG, which helps with the above.
• A week ago, I had what I am going to call “an acute episode” that lasted for a day. Deep, agonizing mid back pain, that increased like a crescendo throughout the day. It appeared to be associated with intense gut pain.
• By the end of the day, the back pain had spread horizontally to each kidney area, but far more intense on the left - my area of long-standing pain. I vomited several times in the evening, and after the last upchuck, the pain started subsiding all around. It was (and still is) immensely painful with pressure on the area, but it no longer causes agony just by existing.
• This “episode” was bad. I almost went to the hospital. Probably should have. I thought of death. I’m pretty low drama, so this is not a trivial thing.
• Of note: a few hours before this agony began, I had a vasovagal reaction to a particularly inept set of needle sticks - multiple sticks and a lot of rooting around. Not typical.
• The next day, I had standing blood orders, and added a kidney urine panel. The urine alb/creat ratio came back high, at 88. All other markers - blood (CBC and CMP) and urine - were normal. A month ago, I did a 24-hour proteinuria test that was normal.

I’m interested in how to THINK about this, how to frame an approach to thinking about it, from a medical perspective.
For example, one doctor (not my specialist) suggests it was an acute transitory event, potentially pursuant to an infection. That it probably doesn’t indicate a chronic issue or a longer term risk. This doctor is prone to minimizing everything - but she may be right. Another doctor told me to get off my low-dose IVIG (28g monthly) ASAP. I won’t see my specialist for another month.
What could be going on?
How do you approach evaluating a seemingly acute issue like this? What questions do you ask when trying to evaluate risk and severity? How to you weigh past normal tests with an abnormal test immediately after an episode? How do you factor in acute moments in the context of potential chronic issues, and come to lean in one direction or the other? If this was a transitory event, does low-dose IVIG pose a risk? Etc. Are these even the right questions?
I’m looking to learn. Would love to have smart people open up their brains and share a thought process.
Thank you!

Good evening everyone. I am desperate for any input. I had FAI surgery about 6 weeks ago. I had the bone shaved down and the labrum and cartilage repaired. I had an accident about two weeks ago I fell out of bed 3ft to the floor and landed directly on my hip. I immediately tried to get up and felt a pop and some crunching sensations. I was seen by my surgeon who took an X-ray and he said everything seems ok but I have been in such horrible pain I can't take it anymore. I am concerned actually terrified I damaged the labrum or cartilage. Can they see if that was damaged by an X-ray? I know it's a journey for us all getting here. I had a major injury a few years ago and have been in consistent unbelievable pain. I have had shoulder, spine, and now this surgery. I'm 39 yo male and a flight attendant (since I was 19yo) I love my job it's all I have ever known and all I ever wanted to do. My profession is very physical and I have to be able to respond in an emergency. Struggling to keep it together and any input would be greatly appreciated. Wishing you all a successful recovery and thank you in advance.

Today I was at home with my girlfriend and we have a couple of occurrences that are very puzzling I have a cross that has thrown itself off the shelf I have it on, my tv suddenly turns off and on, so does my kitchen light and my garage door sensor floodlight, we keep hearing banging around the house but not loud banging just enough to think someone is trying to give up their position in hide and seek kind of way, my slider door has opened up about four inches when it was locked, and my babys bobo ie the pacifier, we’ve woken up with him crying a scratch on his face and his paci on the other side of the room completely laid out flat with the binky clip, I heard crying from upstairs where my baby was and went to go tend to him only to find him completely asleep, our latest occurrence has been with the cross on the shelf, we tested it and we think it’s our cross, we took the cross out of our room and placed it on the table on the island in our kitchen then we went to get ready for bed, as I was about to place my baby in his bed there the cross was laying perfectly straight right where I was about to put my baby then I took it out to my kitchen and placed it on the counter facing the sink then went to bed but before I went to bed I checked one last time and the cross was backwards I don’t know what to do I’m scared for my family we’ve been bleeding a lot more me from my nose and her from her area down south I’ve been having horrible aches and pains the past few days and so has she pls help us

When I’m around other people during a flare, they aren’t seeing the full me. Even at a 4-5/10, I may not feel comfortable pushing limits. Some days I am ready to go driving to places, some days I am only scraping the bare minimum. There are so many layers to everyone, activity levels ebb and flow while the pain morphs from a dull ache to a sharp burn and back again. Those that don’t understand can be unhelpful in the most frustrating ways, but others pleasantly surprise me with their empathy and ability to imagine life in someone else’s shoes. We may have hobbies that we can only do sparingly or not at all anymore, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have interests. We are still unique and talented individuals, even if we are limited in said talents. I’ve been doing more hobbies that can be done in and out of bed, like singing, making others laugh, reading, and random internet research. Sometimes I edit videos on my phone. A person who sees us for all that we are and who has seen our best and worst days with love and compassion are so important. 🤍
I hope this made someone smile today. :)

About 2 weeks ago I (Male 20) was walking in my home when I lost my breath and couldn't breathe for a few seconds until I coughed and managed to catch my breath again. Around the same time, I started experiencing chest pain that would come and go frequently. The pain relaxed for a few days but today the pain in my chest is returning for longer periods. Ive also been experiencing pain in my left shoulder and upper stomach as of today. I am concerned that I am experiencing the warning signs of a heart attack. Especially because I had a healthy brother pass away from a heart attack while doing physical exercise at school at only 9 years old. I'm not sure as to whether or not I should seek Medical attention since I dont have insurance. Is there any way I can rule out that this is a pending heart attack from home? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
Ps: I think I should mention that last time I had a physical appointment my doctor told me that I had high cholesterol. In addition, Im also overweight (6" 250lbs"). I should also mention that I chugged a 200mg energy drink 1 day prior to experiencing these symtoms and felt strong chest pain right after finishing the drink as well. Drinking around 225mg of caffine daily was a routine for me prior to experiencing these symptoms.

Ok long one ahead. I’m sorry I’m advance for my writing, I usually don’t write this much on Reddit.
For reference, I’m a female in her early twenties. I go through periods of mild activity level to pretty active. I walk around 5 miles a day currently with frequent exercise. I’m relatively healthy, could probably lose 10lbs but definitely not obese or overweight. I eat well for the most part & probably only consume fried foods once a week.
When I was 21 I was diagnosed with gallstones. It was a few months after my mom passed away and the diagnoses happened after three ER visits in which I had severe gallbladder attacks. For months before these attacks, I was having pain that I would pass off as gas and discomfort, but when I had my first attack I knew it was very different. Each time, no gallstones were lodged in my bile duct so they could never do emergency surgery. During my second visit, the doctors finally found out what was wrong. My doctor was shocked. Nothing showed up in my blood work indicating that I would have gallbladder troubles or gallstones, I was very active(2 hours daily in the gym) and not overweight he said, so it didn’t make a ton of sense but apparently I had a LOT more gallstones than normal in my gallbladder.
I decide that I really want to manage this through my diet because I’m so young & I have read that many peoples symptoms continue after some time. I would still wake up with gallbladder attacks once or twice every week, pain nearly every night, not really tied to certain foods either…yeah seriously…but I started taking the medicine I was prescribed in the ER (half of a 5mg hydrocodone that would basically put me back to sleep). Fast forward a few months, I am only having attacks around once a week. I read one obscure study that has studied female patients with gallbladder troubles at younger ages after having been on birth control. So I decide to stop taking my birth control.
After I quit BC, I start to have symptoms less frequently, only about one attack a month.
Fast forward to now, It’s been three years since diagnosis. After the first year and a half I saw significant improvement. I have only had 3 gallbladder attacks in the past year. None in 2024! I eat fried foods on occasion and red meats, all of the “no no” foods. Even now, my attacks are not linked to certain foods unless I eat fried food for more than one meal a day or two days in a row.
However, in the past three months, I’ve been having a full ache in my gallbladder from time to time. It hasn’t turned into an attack and feels different than it usually did when signaling for an attack….so I guess my question is…is this STILL gallstones after all this time? Why is there just a full ache sometimes? Has anyone else had a similar experience?
I guess I’m not sure what I’m asking but sometimes the feelings associated with my pain or discomfort are hard to explain and it can feel isolating. I wanted to share with my fellow sufferers.