Muscle diagram worksheets

hi again. I ended up deleting the post in question because it was making me extra anxious, but I posted a combination vent/advice post talking about the extreme back pain I'd been having and how hard the decision to call 911 for help was on me. thank you to everyone here who supported and encouraged me, it means a lot.
lots of medical talk and some serious discussion of fainting from this point on, so read with caution if that's a trigger for you.
so, I've now been in the emergency room for 2 days ( I think? had a major panic attack which felt like it removed a whole day from my mind) as they haven't had a spare bed to actually admit me to the hospital properly. but since I've been here, they've done a lot for my pain and I've had tons of tests.
having to be in the hospital is absolutely fucking miserable for obvious reasons, but I am glad I called for help. my pain was extreme and I started considering 911 because I'd spent an entire day without being able to eat or drink because I just couldn't stand. I hate what agoraphobia does to you. I couldn't fucking feed myself and could hardly make it to the bathroom, but the sheer fear of leaving my apartment really had me trying to just... not seek help. I hate this fucking disorder. it's like a prison.
anyway, I'd been told before I probably had a herniated disc, but that's not the case. so I'm very glad I came. I got a CT scan and they've discovered an approximately 10 inch long teratoma inside me. it's either next to or sprouting off my ovary and is pressing against my spine and my intestines mostly. haven't had bathroom issues thankfully, but can't say the back pain is really any better.
guys, when I say this shit was shocking to see, I'm not exaggerating. I wish I had asked for a copy of my CT scan. imagine a diagram of a human being, and inside there is an football shaped mass shoved against the spine. fucking horrifying. it is a relief to know what's going on, but because of the sheer size of this thing and the fact I'm now completely unable to get up or stand on my own, my doctor told me "you're not leaving the hospital with this still inside you" and is aiming to schedule me for surgery this weekend. she said Monday was also a possibility but was aiming for earlier.
this will be my first time having major surgery in my entire life (I'm 25!) and i don't have any of my coping objects like my plushies or my fidget toys, all I have is my phone.
also, they don't know for sure if the thing is a teratoma actually, but two doctors who've examined the scans in different ways suspect it is. they also just took a crap ton of blood from me to do some testing for cancer a couple of hours ago. cancer is still an option that's on the table.
I'm. exhausted. i'm not even as upset over the possibilities as I can be anymore, and I think that's because the night I arrived was the first time in my entire life I experienced 10/10 pain and spent probably several hours uncontrollably sobbing. they couldn't keep me in a bed forever simply because the ER didn't have enough, and sitting in a chair is the most painful position possible for me, and I couldn't stop sobbing because I was just in so much pain... even after they gave me some heavy pain meds and muscle relaxers...
I came very close to passing out because it hurt to breathe. I am appreciative for being in the hospital because the staff has helped me a lot obviously, but GOD I wish ANYONE could've listened when I was BEGGING for help to breathe. it kept going like:
me: gasping and leaning over nearly fainting PLEASE HELP ME BREATHE I CAN'T FEEL MY LIMBS
staff: yeah, that's because you're breathing really shallowly
me: PLEASE HELP ME BREATHE
staff: take a deep breath in
me: takes a shallow shaky breath in. sputters out. literally forgets to breathe multiple times and accidentally holds my breath and gasps out in pain
staff: yeah just like that
three different. staff members did this to me. and also one nurse tried to give me a call button on a cord, I told him audibly I couldn't move or feel my hands, he shoved it awkwardly in my unmoving fingers and I of course instantly dropped it as he walked away. he came back to check on me and seemed surprised that happened. so that part wasn't ideal. I can't remember well but I think the only thing that stopped my panic was just becoming too exhausted to shout in pain any more. fucking horrific experience.
lol and shout out to the person in the next emergency room seat over from me, who literally raised her voice at me to be quieter and be respectful of other people. and then repeatedly loudly complained to nurses about how loud I was. nurses didn't really give her the time of day about that one, at least. each one put on their "I'm going to be polite but you're an idiot" voice.
everything else has been okayish though. I'm now in a bed again since I think that amount of pained screaming made them realize I need to be in one. im. as okay as an emergency hospital trip for an agoraphobic can be. I ate a hospital cheeseburger that was surprisingly good.
so, how's everybody else's weekend plans?

I’ve significantly improved my SRPE through the use of an H-Wave electronic stimulation device (its proprietary technology, different than TENS). I’ve tried a few different medications (Hydroxyzine, trazodone, amitriptyline, baclofen, sertraline, and duloxetine), all of which have provided temporary relief at best, or exacerbated the condition at worst.
Over the past 7ish weeks I’ve made a lot of progress with my SRPE through a few different approaches. I’ve completely stopped taking Baclofen, as it lost its effectiveness at 30mg and I didn’t want to go higher, and am not taking any other prescription medicines at this time.
I’ve seen the pelvic floor PT a few times and have been doing nightly stretches. Those have definitely helped, but in early April the PT got me an H-Wave electronic stimulation device which has so far been very beneficial (all external, nothing internal). The PT has me using it for an hour per night, and then I will eventually start using it less frequently. After a day or two of using it I noticed that it completely relaxed my pelvic muscles, decreasing the number of SRPE awakenings I have each night to usually 1 or 2. A side, but related note, I’ve always had to pee frequently. For instance, in the morning when drinking coffee I’ll normally go to the bathroom at least every hour. After using the H-Wave device the night before, I’ll now go noticeably less— a sign to me that I have had significant pelvic tension, which in addition to possibly causing SRPE, causes me to have to pee frequently. The initial benefits from the H-Wave lasted about 3 weeks and then started to go back to how I was, so I got discouraged—but I spoke with an H-Wave patient care rep and learned that the electrode pads have to be changed out every two weeks or they lose their conductivity. After changing out the pads the relief immediately returned.
In addition to the H-Wave, I’ve gotten some benefit from taking OTC magnesium glycinate before bed (magnesium taurate works too). Even before I got the H-Wave, the magnesium significantly helped reduce the frequency of SRPE awakenings (though do cause some GI issues). Combined with the H-Wave and pelvic stretches, I’m now waking up usually 0-2 times per night. I’ve also stopped taking magnesium for the past week to see how that impacts my sleep…no negative impact…still waking up 0-2 times and getting the same amount of sleep.
As of now, I’m averaging 6.5-7.5 hours of sleep per night, which is much better than the 5ish I was getting, and down to 0-2 awakenings per night (previously I was waking up 4-5 times total per night and almost every hour after my first wake-up until I would give up on sleep and get out of bed).
While this is all anecdotal to my experiences, I feel pretty optimistic about managing this in the future. The long term benefit from the H-Wave remains to be seen, but having a little over a month and a half of benefit from it, I am feeling pretty good (additionally, the ancillary benefits like having to pee less frequently are a sign my pelvic muscles are relaxing). The PT and the patient care representative at the company say that the low frequency mode of the device helps improve blood flow to the targeted muscles and reduce muscle tension, and can provide long term relief. The high frequency mode provides temporary pain relief (so I’m focusing on using low frequency).
The H-Wave devices are expensive ($4,000 USD), but my insurance covered 100% of the cost (it was prescribed by the PT). They also offer a rental program I believe. I’m pretty confident my SRPE is caused by pelvic tension, so if you’re in the same boat, it might be worthwhile trying. There are also several used ones available on EBay and Mercari for $400-600 USD). This device is different than a traditional electronic stimulation device (like a TENS). This is proprietary technology and is supposed to provide healing as opposed to temporary pain relief. If you do end up trying it, send me a message and I’d be more than happy to share the electrode placements I’m using.
While I know some people have found relief from prescriptions, that route hasn’t worked for me and the side effects often outweighed the benefits. While this disorder seems to have many different causes, I am confident my issue is pelvic floor tension. I’m not sure if the H-Wave/Pelvic floor PT will cure my SRPE, but I’m happy to be at 0-2 awakenings/night and finally getting some quality sleep. Happy to answer any questions anyone has as I haven’t seen anyone discuss this approach yet on this page. Feel free to message me if you want details or the diagrams for electrode placement, etc.

Art by u/United_Patriots, Go check his work out, he himself has a pretty good AU series called Nature Of Orion.
A Music track I wrote, Inspired by the contents of this chapter.
Back to the present, (future?) Ahh whatever, that special october 2154! Do you ever wonder why I chose that date? Well, October 13th is my birthday, and it’s the start date of dark cuts! Also yes, in fifteen whole chapters, we’ve only reached midnight on the second day.
As always, thanks to u/Ben_Elohim_2020, u/VeryUnluckyDice, and u/JulianSkies for proofreading. Those three have been a wonderful help as always.
Last but not least, thanks to u/EdibleGojid, my wonderful co-writer, without him, none of this would’ve been possible.
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[First]-[Previous]-[Next]
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Memory transcription subject: Taran, Investigator
Date [standardised human time]: October 14, 2154
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At that moment, more than anything, I wanted to peel my eyes away from the display. The vile scene… I knew how it would play out, how it would end. I did everything I could to rip myself away from the screen, but I just… couldn’t.
The footage coming in from the classroom had me enraptured in the worst way possible; equal parts fascinating and horrible. Morbid curiosity kept me watching as the drunken arxur hunted the clone, which Selik’s mind presently occupied.
“Youhhh… hehhh… put up a better fight than that kolshhhh did… I’ll give you that much!” Vriss gloated, already assured of his victory as the skalgan tried futilely to claw herself free from his vice-like grip.
So long as Vriss was boasting, he was spilling the information we needed. We couldn't afford for Selik to tap out just yet, we needed more time, more answers.
Glancing at the machine monitor, toward the vital diagram, it reminded me just what kind of pressure Selik was under. Red flashed out along the tail and chest regions and the heart rate monitor threw up several warning lights. It was strange to realise that it represented real pain she was experiencing right now.
Hastily, I tapped out a message on the software pager, ‘Keep him talking.’
The pager was our only line of communication with Selik even though, in reality, she was no more than a meter away, hooked up to this amalgam of wires that posed itself as medical engineering. She couldn't hear us or respond to any form of contact; Prauva had explained that the device blocked all incoming and outgoing information.
I gave a short glance to Selik. Her body looked still and restful; all except for her chest, which rose and fell rapidly, mirroring the clone’s laboured breathing.
“Whhh… What did you do to him?” Selik wheezed, the arxur’s grip on her was so tight that it took great effort to squeeze out the words. I feared her ribcage might just collapse under the arxur’s raw strength.
It had been a while since I had been reminded of the terrifying strength the aruxr were holding back. Muscles designed for the hunt evolved to overpower weaker prey… a description that applied to almost everyone.
“Ehhh… nufin… sadly… he’s not mine to kill… but youuu are.” Vriss’ tongue slipped over the words. We were lucky that he stopped drinking when he did, much more in his system and he might have ended up impossible to interrogate at all.
The arxur opened their maw, dragging their long tongue over the back of the skalgan’s head, they took their time, savouring the moment, not the flavour. They wanted to draw even more fear from their prey. A terrified whine emitted from the clone, to the arxur's apparent delight.
In the back of my mind, I had expected him to… go feral or something. That without his inhibitions he might start randomly killing anything in his path. I knew that wasn’t how predator instincts worked, but prejudice was hard to shake.
It was worse somehow, knowing that as he did it he actually had the control to stop himself, but didn’t want to.
I had seen similar things before.
I’ve watched security footage of the worst of the worst; rape, brutal murders and even sadistic torture. I’ve had them rewatched over and over for me to analyse each and every detail. The times when such scenes would replay themselves in my nightmares had long since passed. There were few things I wasn't utterly desensitised to.
I was plenty familiar with the aftermath of arxur raids too.
My mother's hand in mine, cold, waiting for rescue- I killed the thought before it could overtake me.
But this…
The room was a near-perfect recreation of an old skalgan classroom, with a holo-projector at the front showing the benign math equations a child of the federation might be taught. It was uncannily familiar to me, though the details were muddled; chairs built to the gojid format, not venlil, propaganda posters out of place, not quite belonging to the setting. ‘The Krakotl Exterminator Forces Need YOU!’
Not that Vriss cared about such historical inaccuracies as he tossed the venlil across the classroom, effortlessly breaking her over the teacher's desk. Blood quickly spread out from where a rib had punctured her skin, the orange seeping through her wool.
…This was something else.
The skalgan’s legs fell limp, no longer flailing. She was utterly helpless now. Without any chase left to be had, the arxur would soon claim his kill.
Glancing over to the clone monitor, the lower half of the diagram had turned from red to grey, indicating that the system could no longer connect to that area.
“Shame her spinal cord got severed, broken legs hurt like hell.” Prauva mused from over my shoulder. She looked somewhat entertained by the sight. I frowned, she had a callous attitude towards Selik all night and it rubbed me the wrong way. I wasn’t going to get on anyone's case for harbouring distrust for the killers, but something about her seemed off.
Somehow, Selik maintained her questioning, some hidden source of determination keeping her going. One by one she spat out the pained words, “Where is he going?”
Watching it all in real-time, knowing it was real, happening only a few meters away with nothing you could do to stop it. It was deeply, viscerally, terrifying. My scales were displaying their sickly green, broadcasting my current state of mind to Prauva, and at this point, I couldn't care to suppress it.
“Sssame place I am, the Kaal estate, for his hatchlings uuh…. coming of age.” Vriss finally answered.
The Kaal estate
Three words told us so much more than just where Klien was going, it told us who the boss was, Kaal. The CEO and founder of a small arms company based here in the city of District Three. Ironically my revolver was one of their products. With that information, all I had to do was look up Kaal’s information in a database, use that to find his daughter’s info, and I’d know exactly when this ‘coming of age’ would be. With a little help from Selik's knowledge about arxur culture, we would be set to, not only save Klien but to decapitate the entirety of Shattered Claw.
Mentally, I had written Klein off as dead without even realising it, but now there was a chance. There was hope.
Selik pushed herself off the desk, flopping on the ground behind it with a heavy thud. Her eyes darted around before widening in realisation at what she had done. She was cornered, nowhere left to run.
The arxur crouched over her, smug satisfaction evident in the very way he moved, “It'sss time you stopped asking questions you aren't supposed to knowhh… you’re gonna be a gooood girl and die quietly.”
I winced as he wrapped his claws around her neck. Her eyes looked like they were trying to escape her skull as he squeezed. A sickening, popping, crunch reverberated through the room as her vocal chords crumpled, fragile tissue and cartilage breaking under the pressure. She gurgled in pain, no longer able to scream as blood bubbled out of her mouth.
“Brutal, Isn’t it?” Prauva asked casually, unbothered by the sight.
I turned an eye to the skalgan, the way she… didn't care, It was one thing to be desensitised, which was common in former cattle or those who were unlucky enough to survive multiple arxur raids… this was different. Her eyes met mine, I could swear I spotted a glimmer of some sort of sick satisfaction in them before she looked away.
“This is my life. Every single day, I get to die. Over, and over and over.” She spoke with flat intonation, her sassy facade falling away.
Vriss released Selik from his grasp, looking proud of his work before reaching for her arm, pulling it towards him and clamping his jaw around it. With a twist, he wrenched it free from her body. He waved the severed limb in front of her, giggling with depraved joy.
“Just… food; a plaything to these monsters.”
She continued to talk, taking my lack of a response as permission to carry on.
“Some like to fuck after feasting you know? Have you ever seen that? Someone taking your dismembered corpse and shoving their rancid cock into it?”
I didn't even want to think about it. There wasn't any way I would be able to live with myself if I let this place continue to exist and exploit these people.
“No one should go through that. I promise, we’ll shut this place down and get you out of here.”
Prauva laughed, devoid of actual humour, “It’s… not so simple. I can't just leave. Even if somehow you get rid of Shattered Claw? It wouldn't change a thing as long as they’re still around.”
As Prauva spat those words out, she pointed at Selik. Her idle body remained on the bench, vulnerable and still, like a patient under anaesthesia during an operation, waiting for someone to pull her out.
Vriss tossed aside the severed limb and began to lap up the blood as it gushed out of her wound. “Hmmm, tastessss just like Iron Fffive… fuuuuck… how much did you drinmk-?”
Selik gurgled.
“Mhm don't answer that.”
My mind was finally made up. This was fucked up. I had fucked up, no matter what the arxur had done, nothing could justify putting her through this. “She shouldn’t be going through that. How do we disconnect her?”
“You can’t, no way out while the clone’s alive…” She explained, though I knew it was a lie. She had woken herself up just earlier.
“...Besides, isn't this nice, to turn the tables for once?”
Something churned in me, her rhetoric felt familiar. Things I've felt. Hatred I had kept deep inside. I never trusted the arxur, never liked them, but somehow… Those thoughts and feelings, when repeated to me from her mouth… They felt radical, deranged even.
I glanced toward arxur on the screen, now covered in orange, and saying his last farewell to the venlil below him. “It's beeen fffuhn… I’ll definitely recommend you to the othhherrsss.”
After everything I lost to the arxur, everything they did, and everything they continued to do I had every reason to hate them; To utterly despise them for what they had done, and I did.
I looked back at the arxur in the seat. She had barged in on my case, somehow managing to convince Ketsim to allow her to take it despite my objections. Her very presence infuriated me. What right did a killer like her have to be a cop anyway? What bumbling idiot thought arxur could be capable of anything other than violence and murder?
I could read people well. I knew she had to be concealing some sort of darker motive. There had to be something. Feasting on the crime scenes? Some grand deception; a trap she was luring people into?
Or at least so I thought; no matter what happened, that facade simply refused to crack.
She seemed to hate eating flesh going so far as to shovel plant matter down her throat when she thought I wasn't looking. She was ashamed of her scars, hiding them under human garments, using the weather as an excuse for wearing them. This whole place disgusted her just as much as it disgusted me.
Here Selik was taking the punishment for her species’ crimes just to save one kolshian she called a friend. She didn't have to do that. There was no benefit, nothing to gain. Not unless she genuinely cared.
I couldn’t find a crack in the facade, because there was none.
The arxur on the screen began to tear into the clone with his claws, ripping flesh, bones and organs. Splattering himself with orange, bellowing with glee as he murdered her.
That monster and Selik couldn't be the same. It was irreconcilable, that a creature capable of such cruelty could also be capable of such selflessness.
Whatever terrible rule the arxur followed, she was an exception. She had to be. Maybe she was just one of those so-called ‘defectives’, a concept I would have otherwise laughed at, but it was the only explanation.
I faced Prauva and my scales flickered red in anger for a brief moment before I took back control.
“Turn the tables? Is this what it's about?” I demanded answers, what justification she possibly had for what she’d convinced Selik to do.
Prauva wasn't intimidated. “They raided my world, killed my family, but I hid, I survived, and it didn't make any difference. I still ended up as their cattle. Only now, every time I get to relive that moment, wishing I could die. But every time, I wake back up on that chair. Every time, regretting the one time I survived. This time, I finally got the chance to do something back. It’s one, tiny, fraction of what they did to me. One death for hundreds of mine. So yeah, it's nice to see one of them suffer for once.”
The arxur, alcohol finally catching up to him, slumped over what little remained of the clone.
“How do I wake her up?” I repeated the question.
“Why should I tell you?” She replied, without a hint of empathy for Selik.
“I need her help, We’re trying to save an innocent father's life you know?”
“Really? One good deed is all it takes for you to side with them? She gets what she deserves”
I couldn't take it, I didn't care what they had done to her, she was just blindly exacting punishment on whoever she could. It didn't matter what justification she had, it was cruelty all the same; sick and twisted.
I reached for the cable that connected Selik and the computer, my fingers wrapping around it tightly. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I pulled her out suddenly, but it was getting clear that I needed to make a choice. I just hoped it wouldn’t cause any irreversible damage to her mind.
“Wait! If you do that… it’ll kill her!” She yelled, a feeble lie made up on the spot to try and stop me. With her attitude, I doubted she would have cared for Selik’s life. The vindictive skalgan would’ve probably done it herself.
“I don't believe you.”
I yanked on the cable, disconnecting all the wires from the computer in one go. I was rewarded by a sudden gasp as Selik shot up out of her seat. Her eyes darted around the environment, taking in the dimly illuminated facility, glazing over when she looked at me or Prauva. She didn’t seem to register our presence at all.
Shakily, she wrapped her claws around her neck, laughing weakly as she verified it was still there. As her surprise at being alive faded, she went limp, rolling sideways off the seat and curling herself into a ball on the floor, shivering.
She had cheated death, Unscarred, but not unscathed.
Looking at her lying there like that. It sparked some genuine empathy for the arxur, that memory again. I wanted to rid myself of it, bury it, kill it.
I had stashed myself in a cupboard, hiding myself away from… them. Clutching to all I had left of her… all that was left of her.
I turned my back on her. Wiping it from my mind, Selik was an arxur, she didn’t need my empathy.
My eyes returned to the footage from the classroom. Vriss looked like he wasn’t in particularly good shape, he was still slumped over the clone, but his eyes were open darting all over the place and he was shivering, twitching. He hadn’t just passed out, he was overdosing.
“Shit…” I muttered, and Prauva noticed too. We couldn't call help, that would give us away. I couldn’t exactly sneak a body out of here without being caught and I needed Vriss alive if I was gonna ask more questions. I had to go in there and figure out how to keep him alive without revealing myself to him either.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK! If he dies before he gets out of here, my employer is gonna dock my pay.” the skalgan exclaimed under her breath so as to not be overheard by anyone nearby as we rushed down the hallway.
“Is that seriously what you’re worried about?” I hissed.
“If I don't pay off their so-called ‘debt’ they'll have me here forever.”
It didn’t surprise me, working for a business like this must be worse than death, so it would have been an empty threat. Instead, dangling the hope of freedom at just a paw's length away. That’s how they kept people trapped. People would do so much more for the promise of life, than under the threat of death.
I burst into the classroom, nearly slipping on the bloodied floors but I managed to adjust my stance and keep myself from falling
Vriss twitched and seized, rolling off the clone onto his back. I stood over him as his eyes briefly flicked to me, unable to comprehend what was happening to him. He reached a hand towards me in a bid for assistance.
“Shit, what do I do!” Prauva mumbled under her breath before looking at me accusatorialy “You did this! You have to help me!”
Selik stumbled in, her eyes set on the remains of the clone. She fell to her knees, staring at her clawed hands as if she'd killed it herself. Pain evident in her eyes as she mourned the non-person.
Something snapped inside of me.
My scales darkened all the way to black, matching those of the arxur.
We didn't need Vriss anymore; in fact, if he disappeared now, there wouldn't be any more risk of our involvement getting out. Alcohol poisoning in a club? Just a simple accident. That's if there even would be anybody to find it. Clones were too expensive to waste, no doubt they simply dumped the leftovers into a meat grinder, made burgers out of them and fed them back to their clients or something else equally fucked up.
Monsters like Vriss deserved no empathy.
What a miserable creature one must be, to derive pleasure from another's suffering…
“Why should I help you?” I echoed her words back to her.
“What!?” She stared at me, wide-eyed in shock.
“He deserves this, doesn't he?” I quoted her again.
The arxur’s belly twitched, orange puke leaking from the corners of his mouth before falling back into his airways, blocking them. I watched as he began to drown in the blood he’d spilled, choking down his last meal.
“But what about me? You have to help me!” She begged, her words falling on deaf ears.
“Word of advice, clean up his body before anyone notices.”
“You think you can just get away with this? I’ll tell the-”
“Who would you tell? Your boss? The gang? I’d keep your mouth shut and your head down if you want to live long enough to watch me burn this place to the ground.”
As Selik sobbed, and Vriss suffocated, I remained silent, watching.
A thought bubbled up, strange next to all the angry, hateful, confused and conflicted emotions I felt. A question, sober, but no less cold in its delivery.
“You ever wonder what it would be like if you were born an arxur? Who you'd be? Would you still be the same person, or… would you be like every other arxur?”
Prauva had the audacity to scoff, my meaning failing to penetrate her thick skull. “Are you gonna tell me that I’d be just like her?”
“No,” I said flatly.
I stepped toward Selik, who had gotten a fair bit of blood on her. I’d have to take her through the showers before we left, I put a hand on her good shoulder. Selik, claws shaking, let go of the body, wordlessly understanding my order. It was time for us to leave.
The monster at my feet finally became still. I felt nothing as it died, eyes silently begging me for mercy as the life faded from them.
I turned away from Prauva.
“You'd be just like him.”
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[First]-[Previous]-[Next]

PART ONE THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
Lucas tapped the flat of his finger twice on the partially open door, more to let Boyd know he was coming than actually requesting permission to enter. He pushed it open and strode through as the somewhat welcoming grunt came from within.
“Hey, sexy,” he said, crossing the two rooms to zoom in on Boyd sitting at his bench. On the spinner before Boyd was a larger figure than he had ever done before: an eighteen-inch figure of a woman with an hourglass figure wearing a form-fitting formal gown that flowed to the floor, swaying as if she’d just stepped to her right. Her hands were curled as if she were holding something or someone, but that part was missing.
“Ooooh,” Lucas said, resting his head on Boyd’s shoulder to examine the piece closer. “She’s pretty.”
“She’s also the viscount’s granddaughter, who I think is married to a prince somewhere in Eastern Europe. I’d have to pull out her details again, but she’s already got two kids, and she still looks this good.”
“She doesn’t look old enough to have two kids.”
“That’s what happens when you marry when you’re still a teenager.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t an arranged marriage.”
Boyd did a slow pan to level an annoyed look at him.
“What? They used to.”
“Slavery was a thing in America back in the day, too.”
Lucas made a deflating raspberry. “If you want to get technical,” he grumbled.
Boyd twisted his seat to face him, loosely curling his arms around Lucas’ waist. “Where are you off to, Mister Soon-To-Be-Masters?”
Oh-ho. Someone’s feeling playful. “I thought you were going to become a Dobson,” Lucas countered, leaning in to give him a quick morning kiss.
“Yeah, but then I was reminded I do have family that I care about.”
“None of which are Masters. Your mom and Aunt Judy are sisters who changed their names when they married. If you were going to take any of their names, we’d both be changing to Davenport.”
Boyd looked down at where their abdomens rested against each other.
“Hey,” Lucas said, sliding his hand under Boyd’s chin and lifting it so he could see those beautiful baby blues focusing on him. “What’s going on, love?”
Boyd opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He tried twice more. “Ten years,” he finally croaked. “They took me in and gave me a home within the family for nearly two years, and I repaid them by cutting them out of my life the second I could. Who does that to their own?”
“Somebody with a lot of fear,” Lucas answered honestly. "And that somebody isn’t you anymore. You’ve invited Emily to be our accountant, and personally, I hope you know what you’re doing there…”
“Emily has always been good with money. The only time she’s ever been off is when she borrows money from you, and you go to get it back. By the time she’s finished explaining all the financial movement around the transaction, you end up owing her twice as much, and she’s really convincing. Computerised flow charts and everything.”
Lucas hoped he was exaggerating. If Emily had been that quick and deceptive to separate Boyd from his money when she was a teenager, she might have been even more cunning now. Lucas would remain attentive until she proved herself because the love of his life had earned this break. “Okay,” was all he said since he didn’t want to argue.
Boyd nipped the tip of his nose. “Don’t you ‘okay’ me in that tone of voice.”
Lucas pulled back and rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. It hadn’t hurt, but it was weird. No one had ever done that before. “I’m a cop, love. In my world, it’s guilty until proven innocent.”
“Getting back to my original question. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go and get some supplies for Levi and Maddy. The dumbass has been worrying himself sick over where he can leave Maddy on short notice if he and Austin get called out to a fire together. They can’t waste up to an hour each way getting over to Queens and Brooklyn.”
“Tell him she can stay with us,” Boyd said without hesitation. I’ll be here all the time, and if I’m out and it’s an emergency dump-and-run, I can drop whatever I’m doing and call someone to teleport me back.”
Lucas leaned in and kissed him again. “And that’s just one of the many reasons I love you,” he said once they parted. “Charlie will be here too, which means Robbie won’t be far away either. Levi still wants to run it past Llyr since it’s his place, but so long as we keep her on our side and away from Miss W, it won’t be a problem.”
“You’ll need to remember to lock up your guns when she’s here.”
Lucas nodded thoughtfully in agreement without speaking. It would devastate everyone if Maddy somehow managed to get her hands on one of his work firearms and fire it. He’d need to get a thumbprint safe – something that he could get at very quickly in a crisis.
“How is she with beds?”
“What?”
“Don’t little kids have those hospital guardrail things, so they don’t roll out of bed and hurt themselves? I mean, your bed isn’t that far from the floor, but if you’re getting supplies, you might want to think about some of those things to keep her in.”
Lucas hadn’t thought about that. “Okay, then it’s going to be a bigger shopping trip than I thought, but that’s alright. Levi and Maddy are going to chill in the apartment until I get back.”
“Do you want me to check in on them?”
“Nah, it should be fine. Levi knows where Charlie’s office is, and if he’s going to annoy anyone while they’re at work, it should be our sister.” Lucas turned Boyd back to his carving and leaned his head on Boyd’s shoulder. “You keep outdoing yourself, you know that, right?”
“These tools are magic. I can’t do a thing wrong with them.” With a slight grimace, he added, “Hey, have you ever heard the story about the kid who gets the magic piano?”
Lucas squinted warily. “Am I going to like this story?”
“It’s a cautionary tale. This kid finds a magic piano, and all he has to do is work the pedals, and the piano plays itself. No one notices it’s not the kid, and the kid’s ego grows with each performance until he’s an international sensation. Then, he has a fight with the piano over who the star really is. The following night, the piano refuses to play, and the kid is booed off the stage. His family is left financially ruined.”
“I will beat you within an inch of your life if you equate that to you.”
Boyd looked at him. “How can I not? I mean, when I relax and just let the tools do what they’re made to do, the pieces come out flawlessly—every time. But the second I worry, minor defects creep in. Nothing I can’t counter and fix, but still…”
“If it concerns you that much, why not do a piece every now and then without the divine tools to prove to yourself that the skill is yours and the tools are just tools?”
Boyd looked over the divine toolset, then back up at the shelf where his older tools were. “That’s a good idea,” he admitted.
Lucas lightly kissed him on the lips and stepped out of his grasp. “I’ve been known to have them now and again. Oh, and don’t forget we’re going to Angus’ this afternoon. Just the six of us.”
Boyd raised his left hand in acknowledgment, but his focus was back on the carving even as his right hand picked up a scalpel of some kind and drove it across the carving’s middle. The blade was then smoothly passed to his left hand to make an incision from that side while his right reached for a new tool.
As he’d said, his motions were flawless, with chips and shavings flying at the speed of a professional wood chopper. Lucas could watch him work all day, but if he was going to make it to Angus’, he needed to leave now.
He let himself out and headed for the main front door to the level.
A little over an hour later, after grabbing several sets of clothes in his brother’s size, Lucas was standing in the middle of the children’s clothing section, blinking in confusion at all the options. He would go to touch one, then back away, unsure.
He must have looked pitiful because a staff member in her mid-thirties took pity on him and approached with a warm smile. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, this is crazy,” he answered, gesturing to the millions of clothes options before them. “My brother asked me to look after my niece in an emergency, and I want her to have whatever she’ll need at my place in case he doesn’t have time to take her home.” He looked at all the clothes. “Whatever that entails.”
“That’s really sweet. Is your brother a doctor?”
“Fireman.”
The woman gave Lucas the once over. “I can see that.”
Lucas chuckled. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. Between him, Levi and Mav all sharing their dad’s muscle, they’d always caught people’s eye. “Anyway,” he said, wanting to move this along. “My niece is three going on four, and she’s about this high,” he said, showing her height as an inch or two under his hip.
“Does she have any favourite TV shows?”
“Spongebob,” Lucas said, incredibly grateful for his conversation with Levi over breakfast. He’d have never had that answer otherwise. “And if you’re not doing anything after we get her clothes sorted, my fiancé mentioned something about bed rails since she’ll be sleeping in my old queen-sized bed. This is an all-in shopping trip for her, and I have no idea what to get.”
“Do you have any toys for her? And no, I’m not pushing for a commission here. Little minds need to be kept stimulated, or little hands will end up in places they have no business being. If this is your first time looking after her, you’re going to want a few toys, books, and things to keep her busy.”
“My brother is already nagging me about buying her the basics. What would you recommend that won’t make it seem like I’m trying to buy her affection?”
“Are you okay with electronics, or are you trying to steer her away from that?”
“It doesn’t faze me. It’s more the cost. I don’t want to buy her what my brother hasn’t or can’t afford. I’ve been into too many households where kids have every version of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo and every known game that goes with them. Those kids appreciate nothing, and that’s not something I’m okay with.”
“You see a lot of people’s houses?”
“I was a beat cop for over eight years before my promotion.”
“A policeman and a fireman? I’m sure there's a joke involving a bar in there somewhere.”
“If there were, the third person would be an ice hockey player,” Lucas chuckled again, already liking this woman. As they wandered through the aisles, she added things to his cart. Clothes were first, but they quickly moved on to toys. A couple of generic soft toys. and the board game “Candyland”. Lucas grabbed ‘Hungry, Hungry Hippos’, as that was one he and his brothers had played when he’d been Maddy’s age. Then came two large boxes of Duplo.
Not once did it feel like the sales assistant was pushing an agenda. She even paused to consider the options as if she were buying them for her own kids. Lucas really appreciated that.
As they were walking the isles, Lucas came to a screeching halt and stared at a range of doctor, nurse and vet play sets. Two jumped out at him. One had a plastic pet carrier with a handful of bulky instruments, and the other came in a bright blue bag with red handles and a white pawprint on the side. It had a comprehensive range, including toy bandages, pill bottles, cream jars, syringes, a stethoscope and even a cone of shame. Both went into the cart after he checked to make sure the two soft animals would fit in the carrier.
Mason’ll have a field day showing her exactly how to simulate using all this stuff, he thought to himself with a grin.
“You’re really very thoughtful,” the woman said after he explained why they both had to be purchased.
Lucas specifically asked for books after that. Real books with paper pages. He was sure his mother (as a high school English teacher) would murder him in his sleep if he didn’t buy Maddy at least ten books ranging from ones she could memorise and pretend to read (which, in her grandmother’s eyes, taught her word structure and was the first step in learning to read), with ones he could read to her. And that, of course, required Spongebob bookends to hold them together.
“Your fiancé is a lucky woman if you’re willing to do all of this for your niece,” she said once the cart was full and they were heading back to the checkouts.
“Yes, he is,” Lucas agreed, deliberately sliding in Boyd’s gender without making a huge issue of it.
Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Wow, I really shouldn’t make that assumption anymore, and I apologise.”
Because this was New York. “Apology accepted,” Lucas said, waving it aside. Boyd might have been embarrassed, but thankfully, he wasn’t here. “Thanks again for all your help.”
* * *
((Author's extra-long note:
Heya guys! Just letting you know I need to take a week off. [It’s nothing to do with the community here, I promise! I love writing this, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.]
In fact it's … you know what? Stuff it. You guys might as well know. Remember how I mentioned earlier this year we were fighting for more care for my special needs daughter?
That’s the issue.
Our support coordinator has our written authority to act on our behalf. Yet we’ve been told in writing from the government department that if she doesn’t back off, the whole request, including thousands of dollars of specialists interviewing our daughter and reporting their findings, will be deleted, and our request, including all-new interviews and reports, will have to start all over again.
I’m almost at the point where I’m not sleeping, but our support coordinator has promised us to fight because, in her words, “This is getting ridiculous.”
I’ve been really struggling to write this week with everything going on in the background. I’ve finally admitted I need to pull back (just for one week—I mean it when I say how much I love this writing and the little community we’ve formed) to focus on sorting out the mess, so that my writing isn’t tarnished by the battlelines that are being drawn up in the background.
(I already scrapped a page and a half because my anger at things [I bounce between anger and depression] had people who were usually very chill (Robbie) acting in a very aggressive manner that simply wasn’t them. Because of this, I’ve already used up several of my backlog this week and I loathe to lose any more, given how hard they were to build up. (The thought of using them up without others to take their place was also adding to my stress.)
And I was told by my beta reader, ‘Given you’ve been doing this for over three years, and you’ve only had the occasional day off due to sickness, take the week and regroup, stronger than ever.
I agreed. This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
I hope with all my heart that you’ll all still be with me when I return next week.
Karen. ))
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

I've recently been reflecting on my efforts at being more productive and started writing some longer form content to help structure my thoughts.
I wrote up the below in the past few days and wanted to share. Perhaps some of you have also found yourself hindered by an ongoing search for the ideal life path vs. just enjoy the journey.
Hope you find this helpful!
Despite your inflated sense of yourself, you are not, amongst all other humans, impervious to being brainwashed. This is a hardwired feature of your mind and a circuit that is operating at all times, if you allow it to do so. You aren’t being brainwashed in the cartoonish mode of being made to act like a chicken or empty your wallet. However, you are being brainwashed nonetheless.
Replace the word “brainwashed” with “influenced” and you may start to see my point. If you read me, you are not a fan of the influencers for stupid people (a la Andrew Tate) but perhaps you have more refined taste (Huberman, Attia, Ferriss, Jocko, Peterson, Newport). If there are any such personalities you are a fan of, I assure you that in your efforts to live a more productive, successful, disciplined life… you have been brainwashed.
I want to focus on how quickly the messages that you hear from these sources transition into “shoulds” that run in the background of your daily self-talk. These sources are an unending stream of great ideas for how you should wake up, how you should work, how you should eat, how you should exercise, how you should have sex, how you should meditate, how you should partake in leisure and so on. Notice that they don’t always come in the form of a statement that says “you should do x.” They may come in the form of “my typical daily routine looks like y”. Either way, your mind is primed and ready to sponge it all up.
If you were but a simple peasant farming in Ye Olde England six hundred years ago, your life was governed by a very rigid set of “shoulds”. There was the Bible, there were social norms, the rules of the king, and so. However, these were still a relatively manageable list of rules that one could live by, and it was not unreasonable to assume that you could mostly stay on the Righteous Path. Fast forward to the algo-influencer age and all bets are off. Open up any platform and within minutes, you’ll be bombarded with more “shoulds” than you can possibly keep in mind at once. This observation comes with no value judgment on the quality of what we are being told, I am only commenting on the volume.
You are wrong if you tell me that you are effective at curating the good stuff that will improve your life from the algo-influencer-Youtube-podcast-x regime. I know you think you are because, as we noted, you are a fan of the high class, refined content. The good stuff. The science backed stuff. Here’s the thing, once a source of information finds some sort of “resonance” with your subconscious, you are going to suck it all right up. All the great stuff you hear will immediately seep into your subconscious and become a constant quiet voice in the back of your mind berating you with a litany of “shoulds.”
Alas, you object - it’s all good stuff. Huberman has me locked onto managing my dopamine levels, Attia has me optimizing my diet, Dr. Zoidberg has me keeping limber, and Cal Newport is showing me how to live a deep life. I want to point out three problems with what is going on here.
Problem #1 - Your mind is not actually asking what end purpose is being served by adopting the idea that you “should” be doing a given thing.
Let’s cue Jocko Willink on this one. I am someone who, for many years, felt it was important to wake up at 4:30am because of… discipline. Why? Well, I must get up early to be up before the enemy and for freedom. I note that discipline is the ultimate meta-”should”. Discipline means getting yourself to do all the “shoulds” on your list. Can anyone tell me what outcome I’m missing out on by not partaking in a daily cold plunge, heat plunge, ice bath, or looking at the sun within 15 minutes of waking up?
Problem #2 - Even if you have a desired end goal, your mind is not doing a rigorous job of assessing whether or not a given “should” will get you there.
Most of us would like more control of our daily schedule in order to have more freedom and flexibility. The grindset types on Youtube, or on X have a common solution for us. I am not likely taking a huge leap in that one “should” you have picked up is something to do with entrepreneurship. Ok, have you really considered whether starting your own business will give you more freedom? Maybe it will… I just suspect you picked up this idea without really looking at the pros and cons.
Problem #3 - Even if you’ve been bequeathed a fantastic, grade A, “should” from someone… you’ve got more than you can handle already.
If a “should” that you heard on Youtube or read in a book resonates for some reason, your mind will take it up and start beaming you subconscious messages to do that thing. Your mind will also happily send you 10 of these at once. Are they contradictory? Who cares? I “should” wake up at 4:30, and I should sleep at least 8 hours with no alarm clock. I should also consider being a night owl creative type, and stay up late to grind if life demands it. Some “shoulds” probably aren’t even really defined to any precision. I should be more driven, more mindful, more dynamic. I genuinely feel all those impulses and can’t even begin to tell you what it would like to actually do them. Mr. Brain has no problem with cognitive dissonance, and will dutifully tell me to live up to all of these.
Let’s now talk about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (as an aside, yes I also feel a “should” to be more religious, spiritual, and penitent). Well, really I want to talk about The Promised Land. I know you… you are the hard driving, disciplined type. You like to punish yourself for not living up to your expectations. Alas, you are on the verge of getting there. If you could just get a few days in a row where you nail all your “shoulds,” it will all fall into place. One perfect day will lead to the next and the next. Then, I’ll have made it. I’ll be in the land of enlightenment (and oh so productive). Fellow pilgrim, I’m right there with you on the Righteous Path.
Wait a second, something feels off. Did I say above that our mind will happily adopt any set of “shoulds” no matter how contradictory or ill-defined they may be? And, did I also say that I’m striving to get to The Promised Land by doing “All the Shoulds”? If The Righteous Path is the road that leads to The Promised Land, I’ve got some bad news for you. You are permanently off The Righteous Path. This, my friend, is why you constantly feel like you are not living up to your expectations. They are impossible - you never had a chance. It’s ok though - Jesus died for your sins and there is still a path to salvation.
Oh, but, I’m not ready for salvation, I want to rock on. Here’s what we’d all prefer to do when faced with that sensation of being off the Path. It’s time to hunker down, and go to war, and GRIND. Don’t tell me I can’t do it all. When fate whispers, “You cannot Withstand The Storm,” the Warrior Whispers, “I am the Storm.” I’m feeling chills (no really, it’s a great quote). That’s how we roll. We man up and get that shit done. Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but if that worked you wouldn’t still be in the market for motivational content. You are still lost… no Youtube video is going to get out of the bottomless deep of the “should.”
Back to Jesus (gasp - you didn’t warn me this would be a borderline sacrilegious article). It’s okay, Jesus is fair game in the algo-world. This is that obnoxious pause point in a self help book where there’s a worksheet page and you are asked to write stuff down. Take 10 minutes and make yourself a list of all the “shoulds” that you are feeling at this point about your life. I’ll help you get going with some prompts: businesses to start, podcasts to create, books to read, daily rituals to adopt, food to eat/not eat, workout routine to start, races to run, people to call, projects to do. You get the idea.
More work for you. Now imagine your perfect day. I mean a day that checks all the boxes. I despise rap, but seek inspiration in imagining the productivity version of the Ice Cube hit, “It was a Good Day.” How would you spend your time? Think about it hour by hour, minute by minute. When do you wake up? What do you do after waking up? How much time do you spend working? What sort of work? What else do you do? Map it all out. Imagine this as a day where you fully control your schedule.
Are you still with me? Probably not. This is too many words for the internet and I’m asking too much of your lazy ass. You should be less lazy. See what I did there? Ok, next step. Map your perfect day onto reality. Take any of the days from the past week where you had real life commitments such as work meetings, errands, childcare and ask yourself how you would map this perfect day onto that reality. Where would the three hours of Cal Newport Deep Work fit? How would you wake up at 4:30am after being up late because your kid was sick or your friend from out of town was visiting?
My point is, of course, obvious. However, don’t underestimate what I am saying. I am not saying that you can’t always have your perfect day. I am saying you can never have the perfect day. You are imposing unrealistic expectations upon reality. This conflict has always existed and you had two choices: 1) Dig deeper and muscle through because you are failing as a person to be sufficiently disciplined, or 2) Accept that your “shoulds” were always impossible to fully satisfy, and try something different.
Here’s the last thing I want you to do for now. Go back to your “should” list from the first step and take a critical eye. I give you permission to cross out as many as you’d like. If you are unsure before you cross it out, ask yourself: Where did this idea come from? Does it help me lead a happier life? Do I even agree with the premise? When in doubt, cross it out and feel the freedom.
I’ll leave you with one last message - you are probably doing just fine. Are there improvements you can make in your life? Sure, we all can. However, you aren’t failing, you aren’t straying from The Righteous Path, and there is no Promised Land. There’s just the lower case p path, and that is alright.

Nephew is 8 and behind in reading and writing, and I believe he has CAS. He has speech therapy 3x a week at school. School SLP is 65 years old. We have asked her for guidance on additional therapy, and she has always been hesitant. She hasn’t shared things to do at home to help with speech issue — just sounds and reading worksheets. She said she thinks he has “weak” muscles. She even said he could be tested by a neurologist for motor issues?? I emailed her asking for guidance on next steps on testing and also on home activities. Also stressed what I’ve been learning about the importance of specialized therapy. This is the response. I don’t know how feel about this. What are everyone’s thoughts? For context, we are struggling finding providers as nephew lives in super rural area. What do we ask for, specifically?

Hello, is it possible to use the MyoWare Muscle Sensor 2.0 with Raspberry Pi 4? As far as I know, you need an ADC as Raspberry Pi doesn't have any analog pins. I have PCF8591 YL-40 AD DA module. How would I go about connecting the sensor to Raspberry Pi in terms of circuit diagram and software/libraries?

I am very scientific and visual when it comes to learning. I am also super detail-oriented. I like to know everything that is happing so that i can best replicate it. I am gonna put a link of a video kind of what I'm talking about https://youtu.be/wYwk07QM4rc?si=oataxo2WQglDj3Hi . Except I am wondering if, instead of speech, there are any videos where a diagram is shown while sounds of singing are being made. I am having a lot og trouble with my onsets and I want to see exactly how the throat, mouth and body move from a relaxed position to a singing position . I want to see what moves, how much, what sounds make which muscles move. I know this is a lot to ask, but if you know of any videos/ apps pls lmk. Thank youuuuuu

Mysterious solder joint illustrations (PNG image file)
I've run into these two images, one showing a good and the other a bad solder joint, in multiple different slide shows, as still images in how-to videos, etc. and am wondering whether anyone here might know anything about their original source.
Forrest Mims's work came to mind but a fast skim through those parts of the Mims canon that I can easily check didn't turn up either drawing.
Thanks in advance!

TLDR: major right lower leg cramps in the same spot for years about every month, started happening a couple years after my leg broke 11 years ago.
Main story:
For years I've had these major cramps that would only occur around the same area where I broke my leg. It broke due to some pocket of gas or air that was trapped in my bone, weakening it, waiting for an impact. In early June of 2013, I fell over on my bike off a ramp and fractured my right lower leg, above the ankle (don't know which bone, but maybe 1/3 distance from the ankle to the knee).
The doctor who put my leg in a cast put the cast on with my leg improperly aligned, and this wasn't noticed or said or whatever until the cast was removed 6 months later and taken off earlier than the 9 months we were told by the doc. The nurse who took it off even told us that I didn't need a cast to begin with, I just needed a boot for a few months; hence why they were removing the cast early. My parents tried pursuing litigation, but the doctor just disappeared. He moved out of state before my cast was even removed (couldn't book an appointment with him, so we just had it checked out at the local hospital, that's when we learned about not needing a cast and such; xrayed and removed the cast same day), then he moved of the country before we got anything figured out. Ended up just dropping the whole thing, but I'm still dealing with the problems it caused. Never attended any physical therapy because my dad didn't think I needed it, but I walk mostly normal now when I'm not effected by the cramps, tho my right foot is noticeably pointed outwards; like so much so I've been called out by different band directors and a field judge during marching band for how my foot sticks out. Most people don't notice it tho until I say something.
My lower right leg is not in line with my knee, it angles out to the right more than normal (if I lay on my back, my left foot points mostly straight up, but my right foot lays down almost flat on it's side. When I stand up tho, I'd guess it's only 45° to right right if my knee is straight forward). A couple years after I broke it, I started getting an extreme cramp that would last 10 or 15 minutes every few months on the back side of my leg near where I broke it. It feels like my foot is trying to bend backwards: if I try to relax and give in, it shoots to a 10/10 pain, but if I resist and try to point my foot upwards or bring it back towards me then its only the 7-8/10. Lifting my leg up so it doesn't touch anything helps a bit. If I'm sleeping when it happens, I've gotten used to yanking the covers off of it since the weight of the blanket makes it worse.
And after the cramp is done, my whole leg is extremely sore and it hurts to walk on, sometimes I'd use my old crutch to help walk, but I've gone with a cane in the last 3 years when it occurs. For a few hours upwards of a day after the cramp, it could occur again if I moved my leg in the wrong way, specifically pointing it downwards too much. The soreness could last days or a week tho, and I would walk with a limp until the pain subsided, the cane and crutch helping to not put so much pressure on that leg and at least mitigated the pain.
I never really brought this up with my primary doc cause I just assumed it was related to the breaking of the bone and maybe the muscles were like trying to pull the bone back in place since my lower leg was misaligned. But a couple days ago, I just had the exact same cramp in my other leg?? Like exact same cramp, same spot, same feeling, tho for a much shorter time (maybe 2 minutes max), but the pain hurt just as much. Leg was sore and hurt to walk afterwards for the day tho I didn't need the cane like when it happens to my right leg. I was laying in bed asleep with a cover over my feet when it happened. I yanked the sheets off my legs like normal, but it was the other leg? I believe my foot was pointed far downwards (tippy toe sorta look but laying down) when I woke up, so maybe this was just a more normal cramp? It's got me concerned tho cause if this starts happening in both my legs, even if it's months apart at best between cramps, if they occur close together I'm not sure how'd I'd be able to walk well afterwards. This just got me more worried, but I am still more interested in my right leg and it's reoccuring cramps.
I'm planning on bringing this up to my doc when I see her in a couple weeks, but I wanted to get a few opinions from here before I do. Happy to answer any and all questions; I tried to put as much detail as I could here, but please ask if you need even the smallest of details. I tried looking up a diagram or anatomy of the leg see if there was an obvious answer (like the soleus or achilles muscles, maybe the gastronemius cause it hurts the most afterwards even tho the pain or cramp doesn't feel like it originates there), but I'm not sure. I'm not a doctor obviously lol.
Other details:
My left leg hasn't endured any major trauma like the right leg (no breaks or fractures, no major cramps like this until now), tho it is a few cm shorter than the right leg (not sure if the right leg being set wrong also lengthened it or if it's just naturally a little shorter, doubt it matter tho)
My left leg was never xrayed, so idk if it also an air pocket or whatever in the bone, but I'd guess it doesn't since when I broken my right leg, I actually fell over onto my left leg; despite that, it was somehow the right leg which broke.
I also did have a reoccurence of the left leg cramp a few hours after the big cramp, like what happens with the right leg sometimes when it cramps. Besides the duration and pain afterwards, this left leg cramp has been very similar to the right leg cramp.
Supplements haven't worked. I tried taking potassium and eating more bananas years ago, didn't change anything. My diet has changed wildly a couple times and none of it ever changed the frequency or severity of the cramps. My mom got me some over the counter medicine a year ago that is supposed to help with leg cramps and soreness, but it also did nothing even for the soreness afterwards.
Nothing really predicts these cramps either, they just happen randomly. I've had them as soon as a week or two apart, but I've also gone like 8 or 9 months without a cramp before. Typically, they happen about once every month, maybe month and half. I do occasionally get a general 1-3/10 pain where I broke my leg out of no where that lasts a couple days too. Not sure if it's like arthritis, or humidty like how old people say their joints predict the weather lol. I've not noticed a pattern yet tho, that dull pain just comes and goes also every few months.
Last thing I can think off: three years ago I pulled a muscle in my upper right leg. This is when I switched from crutch to cane because I went from using a crutch for a few days every couple months to using it just to walk every day. The cane was just easier and more practical especially since my job at the time required me to walk around a parking lot at the end of the day. This slowly went away over the course of maybe two or three months. Even tho I mentioned all this, I don't think it's related because I still had one of my normal major cramps in the lower leg during the same time. I just wanted to be very thorough in my details.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention: I'm male, currently 22, almost 23, and I broke my leg when I was 11, almost 12. The cramps have persisted through big weight gain and loss, diet changes, medicine changes, etc. And I still do get minor cramps in that leg and the other one too, typical cramps I think tho that are just caused by moving in a weird way, last about a minute or less, more uncomfortable than painful, don't leave last pain or soreness beyond maybe an hour.
These other super painful cramps just happen out of nowhere tho, they haven't ever occured when I was in school or working, never while driving or exercising: I'd guess the only pattern would be they happen when I'm more relaxed maybe? Most often when I'm laying down either bed, or couch, or reclining chair.
From what I can see of my leg during the cramp, it just looks like my foot is trying to point downwards. I don't see anything on/under the skin like ripples or tension in the muscles like I've seen in some videos. It literally just looks like my foot is pointing downwards; meanwhile I'm heaving and panting in pain, lifting my leg in the air, and holding that for 10 or 15 minutes while I try absolute hardest to, what feels like, not allow my foot to bend backwards.
So again, if anyone has any ideas of what anything might be, please let me known. I'm getting tired of dealing of dealing with the pain and I wanna get it figured out. And since my left leg did a similar thing, now I'm even more worried. I hope I didn't overwhelm with info lol, I've had plenty of time to try and understand what's been going on, but I think it's finally time to get some outside help.

maybe i'm just about to start my period, it comes at random, but i feel like all i can think about is food
i went grocery shopping a few days ago but i made sure to only buy filling, nutritious, and low-ish calories things so if i do end up binging, it's not that bad. i bought mostly meat (chicken, turkey, and beef) along with some veggies and fruit. bought some keto bread too - im not keto but it tends to be the lowest cal options. and my favorite part of it: protein pasta. so id say it's pretty well balanced although i do switch the protein and veggies on the food plate diagram as per my dieticians instructions (i have ARFID so it's hard for me to eat anything that isn't meat, but im doing a lot better now and protein and veggies are almost equal on my plate)
but for some reason i just can't stop thinking about food. i eat around 2000-2200 cal a day (maintenance is 2700). im full at around 1800 but the other 200-400 is all just grazing between meals. i cant fast, im miserable the entire time and always ends in a binge, although i do try to get a couple bottles of water in before i eat in the mornings so kind of intermittent fasting? idk
im still losing weight, a seemingly random amount each week. sometimes it's 0.2lbs, sometimes it's 5lbs. but im sure that has to do with salt intake why some weeks are more successful than others. but the food noise is awful. im positive i would've lost probably 2x's more weight over the past month if it wasn't for the food noise
short of stimulant medication and weight loss injectables, is there a way to curb the constant thoughts about food? they only seem to stop when i'm walking but i can't walk 24/7. im taking a rest day tomorrow and sunday to give my body a chance to recover sore muscles and to enjoy mother's day with my family instead of obsessing over getting above a certain amount of steps so im sure the food noise will be worse
any tips?

Hey y’all!! So I have my tox on the way, but I’ve never administered it myself. I’ve studied it very thoroughly online but I’m still not satisfied. Any tips would be so appreciated. My goal is to inject where my jowls, jaw will look more defined, and to get rid of the wrinkles on my forehead and crows feet. Just a lift and anything that will make my face look youthful! I had it done back in February and I paid $700 for her to do only around my brows, and crows feet and 11’s… but my wrinkles are still there 🤷🏻‍♀️ she did a crappy job. I am an excellent candidate for Botox because I’ve only had it done maybe 3 times in my life. So it normally works like a charm for close to a year!! But this time it was no bueno. It’s because of her I’m taking it into my own hands and will try doing it myself 😂 who has $700 to throw away and have like 2/10 of the results you paid to have ? No thanks!!!! 🙏 also I’d love some diagrams on muscles and thickness of injections?? Thanks ahead of time!!

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After Action Report - Venlil Colonial Defense Force
Subject : Captain Farva
A gentle giggle rose from the foot of my bed. I curl up in my blankets at first not willing to be woken by the kids; Whatever they were up to; my mind still foggy from morning dreariness. I heard chief Donu exchanging excitedly with someone not far away in engineering speak, my tired brain could not parse. The tones of synthetic beeps, and electrical humming slowly entered my awareness. I raised my paw to wipe the morning dew from my eyes but I felt some kind of resistance to my paw. I sit up confused, I am not in my bedroom, or my quarters aboard my ship.
I am on a soft bed, with a soft blanket made of a finely woven material draped off my form. Around me is a curtain wall hung off of a curved metal pole which encompasses the entire bed, and I am flanked on both sides by medical equipment. Boxy screens display what I assume to be my vital signs accompanied by a strange blocky alien script. Inspecting my arm I notice an IV drip is inserted into the vein. Feeling a fading headache I reach up to my forehead where I feel a bandage covering a tender wound. Where Did I….
A sharp meep escapes my mouth. I am on the predator ship!
I quickly begin to tear at the IV line, not wanting whatever poisons the predators are feeding me to further enter my body. The room goes quiet, the curtain wall is disturbed, I focus on tearing away the bandage, panicking my coordination falters but I almost have it out when a paw reaches out to stop me. A cream colored venlil has rushed to my bed frantically batting at my arms in an attempt to stop me from saving myself.
“Captain, please let me help. I don't want you to hurt yourself!”
Not thinking, in full stampede mode I back hand the interloper with my paw.
A startle meep escapes her lips.
The IV is ripped out with the sudden motion.
Orange Blood begins to drip from the improperly removed IV.
This site further raises my heart rate.
The Venlil Recovers and I recognize her.
“Nurse Fila, What are you doing? what's going on?!”
“Farva you need to calm down, your going to be alright let me look at that arm”
“NO!”
I pulled my injured arm away. Jumping up to stand on the bed. Why was Fila working with the predators? What had they injected into my body?
“What are they holding over you! Why are you working with the predators! Where's Nyan?!”
“Captain Farva please calm down, These predators are different, they don't want to hurt us, you need to believe me”
It must have been some mind altering drug, these predators clearly have her under their spell! I needed to get out of here. I couldn't force her to come with me. I needed to escape and regroup, and pray to whatever gods will listen that I could get off this ship somehow.
I bolted from the bed crashing through the curtains, they did not move out of the way fast enough and my mass caused the curtain rods to be hoisted from their housings. I collapsed upon the floor, my movement hindered by the tangled mass of predatory linens. I struggled against the vile curtain entrapment. I had to use my claws to tear my way free of them. I looked up, predatory growls of surprise, and startled meeps echoed out from all around me.
My peripheral vision was filled with images of both predator and prey alike, I was surrounded on all sides. Nurse Fila was behind me stunned by my sudden actions. Donu looked towards me with concern, and I looked to the far end of the room to see Nyan, In the clutches of a blond haired predator. Digging her claws into his young flesh.
Donu gets up gesturing with her tail in a placating motion. “Easy now Farva, don’t do anything rash!” Donu speaks.
They have her too!
I bolt past her and the massive predator standing next to her. I go to grab Nyan, but he is pulled from my reach! The large predator turns her body to shield me from her catch.
“Hey easy now!” It barks, holding Nyan away from me.
Nyan reaches his paw out past the predator. A horrified look in his eyes.
With only the frantic strength a mother could conjure, I grasp his outstretched paw and pull him from the predator's grasp. With him once again in my arms I see the door to the pen we are in begin to open. Wasting no time, I bolt full sprint from the door. Only to be met by a large black mass. A tall impenetrable wall of muscle, cloaked in foot to shoulder black artificial pelts. Holding a colorful pink box, no doubt gaining that color from being caked in the blood of innocent prey animals. I raise my paw not holding Nyan to swipe at him, to rip my way past him. But before I can make contact my arm is grabbed by the predator's meaty digits. It holds me tight just below the paw where the wound from the ripped out IV sits. Blood dripped from the wound, no doubt triggering its bloodlust. I drop Nyan to free my other paw, I go to swipe the predator to free my arm but again I am stopped. I look to my right to see Donu restraining my arm.
“Donu let go!” I scream. “You're not of your own mind!”
“My mind is fine thank you!” She replies.
I turn to kick her away, striking her twice with quick kicks. Desperately trying to free myself from her deranged clutches. I wind up to kick a third time only for Nyan to wrap his whole body around my legs.
“Nyan Stop” I cry, my heart beating at a million light years per hour.
“Please…Don't hurt Teal’c and Donu” Nyan pleads.
I frantically wiggle my body desperately trying to regain autonomy from my traitorous captors.
“Im going to sedate her” proclaims my former ship nurse Fila.
Grabbing a Needle she stalks towards me, eager and willing to deliver me into the jaws of her captors.
“That will not be necessary” says the large predator holding my arm. He sets his package upon a nearby bed, and grabs my other arm from Donu, and then easily flips me around. And holds my arms behind my head, he then proceeds to kick my legs out from under me and forces me to the ground in a vice-like headlock.
“BE CALM CAPTAIN FARVA” It bellows “Further resistance will only cause more harm to yourself, and more worry from your crew, listen to them”
“Captain please just relax your safe, if they wanted to hurt you they could have a long time ago” Donu almost seems to try and trick me to the predator's side. But I see her glancing nervously towards the cut on my arms. Deep down I think she knows what that means. Nyan also pleads with me to listen. It's at this I begin to tear up at the hopelessness of it all. I wail out in despair frantically thrashing to free myself from the predator's death grip but to no avail.
I sit here once again, bested by predators, having failed those I love, but instead of rotting in a cattle pen or in the belly of an Arxurs stomach. They lie in a different kind of pen, their minds’ no longer theirs, as they fall victim to the predator's spell. Brainwashed to serve as the perfect compliant cattle.
Nurse Fila approaches a needle in her hand.
“I'm going to sedate her I need to look at that wound”
“Hold up a second” speaks the blond predator, she seems to be calming down.
The truth is I have no will left to fight, I have been bested time and again, there is only sorrow left and self pity. I only wish for a swift end now. I don't wish to live with the weight of this long string of failures weighing on my mind any longer. I go limp in the predator's arms.
“Please just… make it quick predator” I manage to say, sobbing making it hard to talk as I get out the words between snuffling breaths.
“It's okay Farva, please don't be sad” Nyan pleads as he clings tightly to my waist.
The predator holding me growls quietly into my ear. “I am going to release you now, do not attempt to harm nurse Fila as she is trying to help you now, do you understand?”. I tilt my ears in the affirmative, nothing happens for a moment until Donu signals to the predator who I guess whose name is Teal’c that I responded in the affirmative. My arms are slowly brought to my side. My left arm is released but not the wounded right one. Teal’c displaying some knowledge in medical etiquette seems to be intentionally applying pressure to the wound to prevent bleeding, I am led back to the bed.
Nurse Fila is about to attempt to fix my wound but is stopped by the blond predator.
“Allow me, this should go a lot more smoothly with this.” The blond predator produces a strange golden metal device, it appears like a strange wiry gauntlet, with metal claws and a strange crystal in the center. It emits a strange pulsing sound that I cringe at, but I am held firm by nurse fila, I can't look away as the strange glow it emits passes over my arms. The curtain of despair lifts for a moment, replaced by incredulousness as before my eyes the wounded artery in my arms miraculously seals itself, as elegantly as a flight suit being zipped up. My arm is left feeling slightly warm which soon fades, any sign of the wound is gone.
Fila speaks in an incredulous tone.
“It is endlessly baffling how your medical bay is stocked with simple alcohol based disinfectants and primitive bandages and sutures. Like something I'd see in a primitive yotul field hospital, while simultaneously containing healing tools so advanced they would make the finest Zurulian theoretical medical engineers sell their own tail.”
The blond predator lets out a high pitched broken chortle, which my translator pings as laughter. “I don’t know what a Zurulian is but compared to what we've seen this is nothing, this is a miniature version of the same technology used in a Goa'uld sarcophagus, which can reanimate dead tissue, bringing people back to life even after complete brain death.”
“Fascinating” Donu replied “what is the nature of this radiation”
“That technology itself is actually derivative of an ancient healing device created by our distant primordial ancestors the Alterans, which emitted subspace based healing radiation. We currently have the original device back in our home dimension being reverse engineered back in area 51” Spoke a third predator, who was standing up against the far wall.
He seemed to be holding onto himself quite fiercely, perhaps he struggled to hold in his bloodlust, unlike the two predators currently at my side.
“For predators they have such wondrous technology Farva” Donu says as she takes my paw and massages it gently in an attempt to ease my anxiety. “I almost wouldn't believe it if not for what they have shown us so far. Tell me, do you know how they got us off of our ship?”
A wave of realization washed over me as I sat dumbfounded in the bed. How did they get us off this ship? My brain had been in nonstop flight mode since the battle. I had been so occupied with survival I never stopped to contextualize my mere presence, on this ship, in one piece, why had we all seemingly awoken in this ship's hangar bay. No wait we didn't awaken, most of us were standing. Maybe we were drugged and removed, with no memory of the lost time. But that couldn’t be right. I was looking at the countdown to the core explosion. It had hit zero. I saw the flash myself.
“I was on the bridge holding Nyan in my arms, but after that I remember being in that hangar bay, with Nyan, in the exact same position.”
“The humans have a technology that allows them to break down matter at the atomic level, transfer it via an electromagnetic molecular confinement beam, and reassemble it at a different location completely remotely!” Donu excitedly proclaimed.
“You were teleported directly from the bridge to our ships hangar bay with your crew, and Donu to our infirmary due to her severe radiation poisoning.” Commented the blond predator.
Nyan finished crawling up the bed and snuggled into my side. “They fixed Donu, Samantha fixed her with her healing glove!” Nyan excitedly brayed, his tail wagging uncontrollably.
My stomach dropped, how had I forgotten, how did I let that slip my mind, Donu was subjected to at least 3.6 standard units of gamma radiation. Her presence here was a miracle. I hugged her tightly, my guilt for my actions only increased, how could I neglect the damage done to one of my oldest friends. Was I so predator diseased that I forgot to think of my herd?
The predator whose name was Samantha spoke ”Yeh sorry it took us so long, we cut it a lot closer than we wanted, but we had to adjust our transporter lock to account for the radiation flooding the ship, the levels experienced were harmless for the most part, but enough to cause problems.”
The fear chemicals were slowly draining from my mind, my head became clearer as I started to consider the actions of these predators so far. They had offered to help my ship while risking their own vessel, they had tried for peace before throwing themselves into battle, they had little reason to help us and little reason to try and take our technology as their capabilities seem to surpass ours in many ways so far.
I looked towards the blond haired predator, towards Samantha.
“Why did you help us? What do you hope to gain?”
She responded ”Well now we would like to maybe get some intel about this local region of space, we are not from around here and frankly we could do with some help securing some parts. But with that in mind we didn't really expect anything out of you when we first got your hail. We helped because you were in trouble, and your situation sounded dire.”
“And I'm just supposed to believe that! Prey ships would be waging pros and cons before even thinking about helping another ship under attack, especially with not knowing anything at all about the other ships capabilities”
Donu squeezed my paw and interjected. "These humans aren’t like normal predators, they are pack predators, they are very social, and even appear to feel genuine empathy, they even eat plants, they have been feeding us from their own reserves!”
“How is that possible?” I ask, having never heard of such a thing.
“Well where we come from” Samantah responded ”Omnivorous life is extremely common, not just on our home planet but nearly every one of the thousands of habitable planets we have visited contain omnivorous life in some form or another, It is an incredibly beneficial evolutionary trait.”
“Thousands! How can that be, our scientist have never encountered such a thing”
“That's the thing, they're not from this galaxy Farva, they're not even from this dimension!”
Donu gets into explaining the technical aspects of the Daedalus's faithful journey to our dimension, while Nyan, an always hungry growing boy, runs off during her explanation, to approach the large predator known as Teal’c.
“Can I have another donut?” he asks, pointing to the box that I now realize is not covered in blood but instead merely painted a gaudy pink.
“You may, but only after you have completed your grooming rituals, it is important for little ones such as yourself to learn and maintain proper hygiene practices” Teal’c spoke, his growls almost seeming to take up a fatherly aura.
He looks disappointed slightly but then his ears and tail perks up as he runs behind Samantha and out of sight, he remerges with a hairbrush and plops himself down on the predator's lap. To which she responds by snarling at him intensely.
“Donu” I shriek, interrupting the third predator's speech on the volatile nature of fourth dimensional space. Shocked at how quickly the predator could go from civility to volatility so rapidly. I was quickly calmed by Donu and Fila assuring me that this was merely an odd habit of the humans. The upturned teeth baring signaled happiness to them. Samantha made it clear to me that since her jaw was not clenched it did not indicate aggression. Her explanation sounded dubious, but after further observation, her following actions did not seem to indicate she wanted to harm the boy. Nyan offers her the brush once he sees that I am finished panicking.
She gives and odd closed mouth smile. "You have an almost PHD level knowledge of physics! don't tell me you don't know how to brush your own fur”
His tail gives a meek wag. ”I like when you do it, you have such nice flat nails and warm fingers!”
He makes his eyes go wide like a pup pleading for attention. The predator’s resolve immediately falters. ”Awh how could I say no to such a cute little angel”.
Samantha begins to help the boy detangle his fur, running her long grasping appendages through his fur in combination with the brush to gently pull apart the knots. He’s already clean from the grime that was present on him from when we were back on the heavily damaged ship, speaking of which I gesture to nurse Kila.
“Kila, how is the crew? How are they holding up? why aren't they here?”
“17 survivors including yourself, the humans have set up a triage center in their hangar bay, keeping the crew together and trying to give them some space, their stable but many of them are bedridden. They're quite scared naturally but,“ nurse Kila gives a look towards the humans “but I think we are going to be alright.”
“So what happens now?” I asked, “you aren't from this dimension and you said you were having drive problems, can you fix those? What are your plans for this dimension?”
The third predator stalked out from his isolated corner to address the room in a posture that emphasized the obvious restraint that was required to contain his instincts around us. “Hi ummm.. My name is Doctor Rodney Mckay, I think I can help with that question, simply put, our drive system uses a specialized quantum subspace field generator to warp 4th dimensional space in a way that allows us to track and catalog dimensional eddies as we call them, and track their specific frequencies which allow us to…….”
------- one long boring explanation later ------
“Ah So I see, you came to this dimension by mistake and need a replacement part that you cannot manufacture yourself to return home, but you think we might be able to manufacture a replacement with our industry?” I asked for clarification from Rodney.
“I discussed with your chief engineer earlier, we should be able to reproduce the part we need at what Donu described as a hyper fabricator, the meta materials available in your dimension you use for warp travel should be sufficient to recreate the part we need”
“In exchange I believe we can help you with your little arxur problem.” Spoke Samantha, running her grasping appendages through the fur of a contented Nyan, who was happily munching away at the strange circular Staryu-like treat the human Teal'c had presented him. Samantha proclaiming it to be sourced from his personal stash.
I was taken back by the revelation that they wanted to offer further assistance, when the predators first mentioned their damaged drive system, I thought they might try to leverage our place as rescued survivors as a means to get access to the part they needed to repair their damaged vessel. But now they were offering further assistance in exchange?
“I don’t understand, you've already done so much? Why would you help us more and risk more damage to your vessel?”
“Well if you want the reason we are going to put on paper, “Samantha said, ”it's to gather intel about a potential threat, and to ensure trust and cooperation of the locals to better expedite the procurement of mission critical drive components. If you want our real reason, its that no one deserves what has been done to you, we can't stay because we have responsibilities in our home dimension, but we don't see why we can’t help you while we are here.”
“So wait, are you proposing what I think you're proposing?”
“I am, from what we learned from your crew the arxur take a large portion of their abductees as cattle, we can track your subspace trails quite quickly and we think we have a good chance of hunting down the arxur transport ships.”
Nyan angled his head to look at both me and the human. Hope in his eyes, the idea of getting my family back would normally seem like an impossible dream, but here I was being comforted by predators, offering to risk their lives for a very lopsided trade in our favor. An ember of hope for the first time in many claws went alight in my chest.
I looked to Donu, who while trying to hide it, looked forlornly in Nyans direction. He was so happy to hear about a rescue plan and excited by all the predators' incredible technology, but while my family was young and fertile enough to be taken as cattle and potentially rescued. I had little doubt that if his family wasn't eaten, or killed in the bombing of the colony, the arxur would have no reason to hold a couple of such advanced age as cattle.
While I myself was a meek prey and a hopeless failure of a military officer, these Humans, despite obviously being fierce predators, had shown off an odd compassion. If anyone could; stand up to the arxur, and hunt them in return it was them.
I would help them anyway I could, they were unfamiliar with our foe, but they have shown themselves to be quite adaptable so far. Working together, we just maybe had a chance at making up for my failures. To set things right, and to save innocent prey from a fate worse than death.
“I think I may have to take you up on your offer kind predator”
Officer Report - Captain Caldwell
CLEARANCE LEVEL 5
Our interim chief engineer Dr.Mckay has successfully clamped open the 4th dimensional hole in space ; as he calls it; so we are clear to jump through this dimension freely without losing our path back to our home dimension. While my first impulse would be to jump to Earth, Unfortunately it seems that this dimension’s earth cold war went hot and it is currently a bombed out waste land. That being said carter and Mckay have struck a deal with the captain of the destroyed venlil defense frigate, in exchange for aiding in the rescue of captured civilians, they are willing to grant us access to the advanced manufacturing equipment needed to repair our Quantum drive.
While the antagonistic cannibalistic arxur are certainly an intimidating foe, they are not invincible and our ship stacks up favorably against theirs when specialized techniques are employed. The problem they cause for us is more unique. Carnivores are rare in this dimension and seemingly more so are omnivores. The Herbivore species known as the venlil are quite afraid of us, having dealt with these arxur for so long, and also due to a seemingly quite intense biological fear response, have been very wary to deal with us. Fortunately due to our admittedly unusually charismatic crew, and their admirable diplomatic efforts, we seem to have gotten them to calm down a lot since we initially transported them onto our ship. I am going to check up on the venlil crew and captain in the Medbay now, as they will be the most essential venlil to our efforts going forward.
As I walk in it seems that captain Farva is fast asleep, while Rodney appears to be using a Donut to explain the workings of a stargate to the aliens engineers.
“Okay so the stargate, you see this donut, imagine it's about 10 venlil tall, and made of metal” Rodney picks up another donut and hands it to the Child named Nyan. ”Okay first off don't eat that, secondly imagine you are a ancient alien race, and you want to get to point A to point B as fast as possible. Ftl isn’t quite fast enough so what if you could instead skip the trip and skip to the end. The stargate network allowed the ancient alternans to simply walk from planet to planet” Rodney used his finger to gesture from donut to donut in his explanation of the stargates, speaking about their functions as well as their dangers, mentioning some notable accidents associated with their use, like unwanted time travel, stellar poisoning and dimension hopping, the ladder being a large part of why we were here in this dimension to begin with. Most concerningly however, the venlil Nyan took a bite out of the donut when rodney finished his explanation.
Samantha was working quietly with nurse Fila and looked up from some chemical diagrams when she noticed I had entered the room. I asked if I could have a word, and took Her, Rodney, and Teal'c aside to have a meeting with them. We left the room due to the venlil’s exceptional hearing, as we had previously discovered when various medics made some inappropriate comments on how the venlil were “cute enough to eat '' thinking they were out of earshot.
Having taken them aside I spoke up. “I have already told this to Shepard and our medical staff in the hangar bay, and I would like to congratulate you on your remarkable progress on bridging the gap with the venlil. Going from shoot on sight in the hangar bay to literally eating out of your hands in a matter of hours represents some major diplomatic prowess.”
“Thank you captain” Samantha Said.
“There behavior is indeed most unusual” followed Teal’c
“But seemingly quite understandable given what they have been through with the wraith, Sorry! Arxur, Freudian slip.” chimed rodney.
“I would love to look at the biosphere of one of their planets, their ecology seems preposterous judging by the way they describe it. But they are a space faring species so they presumably know what they are talking about.” added Samantha.
“I myself am curious based on what you reported general, their dimension is quite odd but I suppose ours would be weird to them as well, but we have responsibilities back home.” I responded curtly. “I do have a question for you all though, The Venlil are a herbivorous species with intense emotional reactions and societal values pertaining to the consumption of meat, including animal products correct?”
Samantha answered ”We have been avoiding the subject of meat consumption as much as possible, focusing on our plant based foods for the venlil’s comfort, and they have been happy to keep that topic to a minimum after the initial introductions, but I don't believe they would respond well to the idea of consumption of…..” Samantha trails off with a worried look. “Oh god wait, please don’t tell me”
Teal’c looks confused, Rodney facepalms.
“You do know that donuts have eggs in them? Don't you.”

PART ONE THOUSAND AND NINE
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Sunday
“Dad! For crying out loud, I haven’t got my shoes on or anything!” I shouted, having no clue where we were at that moment and not particularly caring.
“Good thing you’re not walking through the front doors downstairs then, or you might’ve seen the huge sign that says, ‘No shoes, No shirt, No service’,” a different voice said, though I couldn’t see who had spoken with Dad standing between us.
I leaned back and to one side and spotted a guy that had my build and was an inch or so shorter than Dad (but still way taller than me), resting his butt against the front of a mahogany desk with his arms folded and his feet crossed at the ankles. His long black hair was loose and almost reached his elbow, and between that and his skin tone, he was basically a headdress short of a Wild West extra.
With that unasked-for opinion, I realized I was being a world-class jerk and silently apologized to him.
Dad turned with me when I moved around him to stand in front of this guy who looked too much like family not to be Uncle Barris.
“So, you’re my nephew, huh?” he asked, unfolding his arms enough to hold his hand out to me. He didn’t try to stand up, which I appreciated as it kept him at eye level with me.
“Apparently. Sam Willcott,” I said, taking his hand.
“So I heard.”
Remembering my conversation with Uncle YHWH, I hmphed in amusement as I shook his hand.
His grip increased. “What’s so funny?” he asked, no longer quite as friendly as he’d started out.
I saw no harm in telling him. “Uncle YHWH pointed out how often I use the word ‘so’. Maybe you’re where I inherited that trait from.”
Instead of laughing along with me, he suddenly threw himself fully onto his feet with his left hand clamping onto my shoulder as he stared down at me. “When the fuck were you talking to Uncle YHWH?” he demanded, a hair’s breadth away from shaking the answer out of me, I was sure.
“I—yaah—ahhhh…” I blustered, feeling as trapped as any prey he’d ever hunted.
Dad saved me from answering by grabbing Uncle Barris’ fingers and peeling them from my shoulder. “Lay off, Barris. Sam talked with him a while back before he knew what was what, and nothing happened.”
“He could’ve…”
“Uncle YHWH could have done a lot of things,” Dad agreed. “He hasn’t, and it’s not like we haven’t seen his angels around the place. You know wherever they are, he’s watching and hearing everything.”
Which is how he knew about what I’d said at Tucker’s place this morning. I’d been wondering about that after he told me he couldn’t leave consecrated ground. I discreetly rubbed the back of my leg against the front of the other, feeling through my pants the lumps of the braided rope bracelet with a handful of tiny shells woven into it. Somehow, I’d forgotten that part.
“Let him go, Barris.”
The hand that still gripped mine was finally released, but instead of stepping backwards away from him, I went to the side and twisted slightly to look at them both, not sure who I was more annoyed at.
“Take a breath, Sam,” Dad ordered, letting his brother go to focus on me. “You’re okay.”
I did, but not for the reasons he thought. “Uncle YHWH doesn’t hate any of us, and he didn’t attack any of you. How could he? He’s the one guy who’s stuck in Heaven, and you think he somehow attacked all of you in Mystal … which, to my understanding, is nowhere near Heaven.” I had no idea if that was the case or not, but the way YHWH talked about missing his family, I had to assume they were a long way apart not to cross paths sooner.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,” Barris growled, and Dad moved a few inches forward to partially shield me.
“Maybe I don’t,” I agreed if only to end this stupid, circular argument. “Or maybe I do. You know he didn’t do it, so why are you roping him into your ban on all elders? He can’t have done anything. He wasn’t even there.”
“Because he’s still capable of bringing the Elder Court of Mystal to us, Sam,” Dad answered for Barris. “While we stay out in the open, away from the churches, anyone who comes after us has to cross native ’Faolian ground on the pryde’s nesting homeworld to do so. The pryde will be all over them the second they set foot outside a church.”
“However, if we go into said church, he can have the Elder Court in there waiting for us, and there’s nothing we can do to stop what happens next,” Barris concluded.
Dad squatted slightly so I didn’t have to keep looking up at him. “You’re a hybrid, Sam. A blend of mortal and divine. I’ve told you, the first thing they’ll do when they get their hands on you is kill you for existing.”
“No,” Barris said, shaking his head and rubbing his lips. “The first thing Mom’ll do is use him as bait to lure you and the other four in. Then, once she has all five of you in custody, she’ll make you all watch as she kills him slowly to teach you never to spawn another.” His eyes met Dad’s. “This is Mom we’re talking about.”
I died a little inside when Dad breathed out slowly and didn’t argue. “But Mom’s pregnant with three more!” I squeaked, finally getting the picture.
“Not if your grandmother gets her hands on her,” Barris said. “And she will. As soon as she finds out we’re all missing…”
“She already knows,” I said, and that definitely got their attention. “They all do. Uncle YHWH says Uncle Chance has been leading the search for Earlafaol for a while now since the only one to have ever walked the path is Uncle Avis—whatever that means—but he also said something keeps moving the search party around. It takes a bit for Uncle Chance to get his bearings again.”
“They’re on their way here?” Barris repeated, going very pale for an American Indian.
“Listen to what else he said,” Dad barked, shoving his brother in the shoulder to snap him out of it. “Something’s running interference with their search.”
“Sam doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about!”
“But Uncle YHWH does. He always has.”
Again, they both turned their attention to me. “What exactly did he say?” Barris asked.
I knew I couldn’t guess this, so I internalised and relived that hour of conversation up in Inwood before answering. “He said he’s known all along where you all were because he saw Lady Col save you all through the Ophanim she keeps on her.” I glanced at Dad. “And he said Aunt Heshbon has been trying to use her ophanim to come here directly, but he hasn’t been letting them through. C’mon, Dad. You know Uncle YHWH’s on our side here,” I insisted, wishing they’d believe me.
“He might come across as that…” Barris argued.
“Oh, come on!” I snapped, barely resisting the urge to stamp my foot like a toddler. “He is! He didn’t even get mad at me when I unintentionally messed with worshippers this morning!”
“Wait, what?!” Dad was suddenly right in front of me, blocking Barris. “You told me you were going to Gerry’s for breakfast,” he reminded me.
Crap. Me and my big mouth. “I did—I mean, we did. But then her dad’s best friend, who also turns out to be Gerry’s godfather, showed up, and we got into a religious discussion.”
“About what?”
I shrugged, not really wanting to go into it. “Stuff,” I answered evasively. I could tell from the look on his face that that wasn’t going to cut it, and I cleared my throat. “You know I’ve never been interested in religion, and after you showed me … what you did,” I added cautiously, glancing around him to Barris, who was hanging off my every word. “I started asking them questions about how things worked from their side for context. Apparently, that’s a no-no.” I shrugged, almost amused by their slack-jawed look. “Who knew.”
“You talked to him again today?”
I huffed and nodded. “It’s why I didn’t really want to come here. I’d just gotten back from frozen wasteland Chile where he had Michael…”
“Michael?” Barris repeated.
“Yeah – Michael. Big dude. Green wings. Total tool that’s full of himself.”
“That sounds like him,” Uncle Barris said with a nod.
“Anyway, when we got back, he was waiting on the sidewalk for us. He said his boss wanted to talk to me and wasn’t taking no for an answer. Very mafia-ish, if you ask me.”
One of Dad’s hands went to my shoulder. The other cupped my chin and twisted my head from side to side. “And you’re positive he didn’t hurt you?” he asked when he couldn’t find any physical injuries.
How many times did I have to say the same thing? “No!” I insisted. "He said he liked my curious nature, but he explained why I couldn’t ask people questions and asked me to direct all my questions about Heaven to him. Since he asked nicely, I agreed, though I mainly did it because I didn’t want him turning into something else because of anything I accidentally said. I like him the way he is.”
“Llyr, I’ve never really paid much attention to the hybrids,” Uncle Barris said, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and two fingers as if he had a headache. “Are they all this high maintenance?”
“If you think this is bad, wait until you meet his human roommate. And what’s worse, the true gryps have fallen head over ass for that little prick and won’t let anyone touch him. He’s even got War Commander Angus wrapped around his little finger.”
“Aw, fuck off. That cold psycho doesn’t care about anyone but the pryde…”
“HEY!” I shouted, cutting off whatever else he was going to say. “You leave Angus alone.”
Barris stared at me. Genuinely stared at me. “He’s serious,” he finally said, pointing at me while looking at Dad like I had to be crazy for my stand.
Dad smirked and nodded. “Angus has mated, so he’s not the same as he has been. Since his latest return from the border, he’s more or less adopted Sam and all his roommates like an extended clutch. They’re as protective of him as he is of them. Trust me, it takes a bit of getting used to.”
“Wait—Sam and the humans are protecting a true gryps war commander?” Barris asked with a derisive squint.
Oh, I just looooooved being talked about like I wasn’t even there ... especially when I didn't even want to BE there in the first place! “Well, this has certainly been fun. We should do it again sometime. The end of the year sounds soon enough,” I said, throwing one hand up in farewell and already turning far enough away from Dad to walk forward.
“Take one step into the celestial realm, and I’ll hunt your ass down and drag it right back here,” Uncle Barris warned.
“Then include me!” I shouted back, rounding on him. “Stop talking about me like I’m not even here, or I won’t be!”
Dad’s hand clamped firmly on my shoulder again, and I genuinely thought after his last warning that he was going to knock me into next week for my crappy attitude. But when I looked up at him, he was practically beaming with pride.
“That’s my boy.”
Wait, are you … taking credit for…whatever this is? When I realised he was, I wanted to kick him in the shins so bad—just not quite badly enough to commit suicide. What surprised me was Uncle Barris started chuckling.
“Spoken like a Mystallian,” he said, walking around his desk to sit down in the high-backed office chair. He leaned to one side, pulled out one of the lower drawers and placed three tumblers on the desk, along with what was becoming a very familiar nameless wine bottle.
“None for me, thanks,” I said as he uncorked the wine bottle and poured two fingers into the first glass.
His querying gaze met mine. “Why not?”
“The first time I tried it, I didn’t think I could get drunk and overindulged.”
“Too shitfaced to stand,” Dad clarified. “My staff had to bathe him, and he remembers just enough to be humiliated.”
I slowly turned my head towards Dad. “Thanks,” I deadpanned, for I could’ve gone the rest of my life without Uncle Barris knowing that.
Uncle Barris chuckled some more and added the same amount of ambrosia to the other two glasses. “Here,” he said after passing the first one to Dad. He nudged my arm with the other. “This small amount won’t do anything; you have my word. Not even a buzz. I’d like a decent toast with a real drink to commemorate our first meeting.”
I thought about that, knowing I could stick to my guns and say no, but also appreciating the fact that he hadn’t tried to strongarm me. He’d said what he wanted, and if I said no, I think he’d have been disappointed but okay with it.
As such, I accepted the drink. “It’s on you if muscle memory kicks in and I throw up all over you,” I warned.
“Good luck hitting a hunting god.”
“Cheers,” Dad said, raising his glass.
Uncle Barris and I tapped our glasses against his and I threw back the drink.
And wonder of wonders, I didn’t die. Not even when I licked the remnants from my lips and sighed happily at the empty glass.
I could’ve also done without the knowing look Dad and Uncle Barris shared though …
…just saying.
[Next Chapter]
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

I'm done with all the exams finally !!! A lot of the posts on this subreddit helped me towards achieving this goal. So I'm adding mine in case it helps someone in the future.
My Background
I took and passed my FE Exam in my final semester of college last year. I started my master's in January 2024, right after I graduated in December 2023. My graduate school research is in Thermal Hydraulics and I liked those classes most so I registered for the now-decoupled PE Mechanical: Thermal and Fluid Systems on April 23rd, 2024. That semester I enrolled in graduate-level Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics, thinking it would help with studying (it helped very little to none).
Study Material - I only used PPI's Self-Study Bundle
I bought PPI's Self Study Bundle (3 Months Access: Jan 20th - April 20th, 2023) which cost $665.88
The Bundle included:

• Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual (Physical Book)
• Official NCEES Practice PE Exam (Physical Book)
• Learning Hub Access for 3 Months
  • 2 Additional Practice Exams
  • Quiz bank (with about 800 questions)
  • Auto-generated study schedule (which can be customized)

I followed the schedule generated for me on the learning up. I had customized the schedule to have weekends off. The schedule provided much-needed STRUCTURE, which was a really big selling point for me on PPI. It organized scheduling for taking diagnostic tests, reading chapters, practicing problems from the chapter, and taking full-length practice exams. After I completed my schedule I spent the remaining before my exam (about 1 week) time taking 10-15 questions practice exams.
My Study Progress
To be honest, I did not realize how little of actual engineering my undergraduate degree prepared me for. I knew I was lacking knowledge but I did not realize it was that much. Reading through the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual helped to make up for my lack of knowledge. It probably even made me a better engineer. Below I tracked all the major testing milestones of my study timeline and share some thoughts on each stage.
Study Start: January 23rd, 2024
Opening Diagnostic Test - 70% (January 24th, 2024)
This was the first agenda on the schedule and it deceived me into thinking I was more ready than I actually was for the exam. Turned out that the first diagnostic test only covered basic fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and mass balance principles mainly things learned during undergraduate studies. (In other words the easiest problems on PE exam).
Second Diagnostic Test - 40%: (February 26th, 2024)
After reading all the fluid Mechanics, heat Transfer, and mass balance principles sections, the schedule calls for a second diagnostic test. This was focused on everything else in the exam. I had to guess a lot of problems as I did not know how to solve them. This was hard and showed me just how much I did not know.
First full 8hr Practice Exam (Non-NCEES) - 55%: (March 20th, 2024)
At this point, I had read about half of the book and my generated schedule had called for the exam to be taken at this point. It was a full-length test with the designated 50-minute break. I treated it as such It was very hard, I guessed a huge chunk of problems: some from running out of time but most from just not knowing how to solve the problem. I struggled more second section (breadth section) compared to the principles section. Also, I did not realize just how exhausting an 8-hour exam was. I remember cycling between giving up and having little confidence throughout the exam. Because of my frustrations of not knowing things on the exam, I did not follow my test-taking strategy as well as I would have liked. I would spend way too long trying to figure out a problem simply because I had not been able to solve the last 5. In the end, I reviewed what I missed and learned from the overall test-taking experience. Much work was still needed.
Second full 8hr Practice Exam (Non-NCEES): 65%: (April 8th, 2024)
At this point, I had read about 85% of the book's content and my generated schedule had called for the second exam to be taken at this point. I felt I knew more than the first time. Plus I followed my strategy a lot better as I didn't panic and tried to maintain confidence. But there were still gaps. I did not finish and had to guess a few questions. I guessed way less than I did in the first exam. However, once I finished the exam I knew more work was required. Nonetheless, I was happy with my progress.
Official NCEES Practice Exam (NCEES): 73.75% (April 15th, 2024)
This was the last item on my generated schedule. At this point, I had read the textbook and completed and reviewed both prior practice exams. Like the first 2, I treated it like an actual exam: 8hr and a 50-minute break between. The exam felt relatively good as I took it. Most questions were straightforward others were tough but I was able to finish with time to spare. I also guess very minimally so I was pleased. The practice exam felt way easier than the PPI practice exam questions. The problems took less time to solve, generally had fewer steps, and had more qualitative questions. I had kind of expected this as several Reddit posts had said the PPI exams are harder than actual problems. While reviewing I learned that some exam questions are written with very long descriptions and tons of extra information but are actually very easy to solve. It seems the long description and extra information were a way to throw you off as you think there is "no way this long question is solved with such few steps". This highlighted to me the importance of reading the question and not just the numbers or diagram. If the diagram is super complicated, chances are the problem is short. Overall, I felt ready to take the exam but I was too close to barely passing (70-75%) to be super confident. So I knew I still needed to practice more.
Quiz Bank - 10-16 question quizzes: 83% avg score for last 7 quizzes (April 16th - April 20th)
For the remaining time, I kept practicing problems to ensure I stayed current on different areas of the exam. At this point I had gotten pretty used to the PPI style of questions so I was doing a lot better. I ended up using 152/796 questions from the quiz bank and had an average time of 5 minutes and 20 seconds per problem. I did this until my subscription expired on April 20th, 2023. It was tiring to just solve problems but I just kept pushing through as several Reddit posts had said you can never study too much. I wanted to go into the exam thinking I gave it all I got.
Official NCEES Practice Exam Redo (NCEES): 94% (April 21st - 22nd)
Since I had lost access to the Quiz bank, I decided to redo the practice exam but not in a testing environment but in 10-15 question short blocks. This was very useful as a week had gone by and I had forgotten the correct answers so it was a way to ensure I learned from my mistakes. I learned from most mistakes but made a couple of blunders and had forgotten some things. I felt ready and prepared myself for my big day tomorrow. (April 23rd, 2024 - Test Day).
Test Day - April 23rd, 2024
I woke up that morning from a good night's rest and prayed with my family. I had waffles and eggs for breakfast. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary and tried to remain confident. Luckily for me, my testing center was only 10 minutes away from where I stayed. I got there 30 minutes before my test time - 8:00 AM. However, due to a long line of people checking in for their exams, I didn't begin my exam until like 8:07 AM. My strategy was to use 3:45 minutes (stop countdown timer at 4:15) for the first half and 4:15 minutes for the second half. My question strategy was I would first solve very easy problems on the first run, flag problems I was sure I could solve but were long, and leave everything else unflagged and unanswered. On the second run, I would solve flagged problems and on the third run, I would solve everything else.
First half - I did the first run and solved about 10-15 problems. I ended up with like 10 unflagged and unanswered questions I was not fully sure I could solve. And started on the second run and was struggling to answer. I think I went on a run of 3 consecutive questions that I thought were solvable but I couldn't get an answer. These questions felt a lot more similar to PPI questions than the NCEES practice exam which made me panic. I was banking on the questions being easier than the PPI not the same. I was struggling through the flagged questions but I tried my best not to panic by simply smiling through it. So I just ditched the whole strategy and decided to just move to the next unanswered problem irrespective of whether I had flagged it or not. This was an incredible idea. Turns out a lot of the questions I had left for my third run (unflagged and unanswered) were a lot easier than I thought. This gave me the confidence to go back and tackle some of the flagged questions I had left. However, I had used up way too much time and ended up having to guess 7-9 problems to meet my designated first half-stop time.
Break - I drove to Chick-fil-A for the break and tried to not think too much about the exam. I knew the next section was very important because of my shortcomings in the first. The only problem was in all of the 3 practice tests I took I always did much better in the first section compared to the second. I decided to change my strategy for the second and third runs. For the second run, I planned to flag long questions I could solve and also questions I had a general idea about the topic and could maybe solve. The goal would be to have fewer than 5 questions in the third run and these would only be problems I had no clue.
Second Half - The strategy worked better and I had significantly less 3rd run questions. The second half felt a lot better than the first one. I was consistently getting answers in the choices and the questions felt more similar to the NCEES practice exam. I finished this section with 30 minutes to spare which sucked because I couldn't go back to the first section. I used up all the time to just review and ensure I maximized my score in this section. I had to make a few corrections. I still had to guess about 3 questions but these guesses were a lot more educated than the first section. I was done and exhausted.
I felt meh...it could go either way (pass or fail) but I felt a little more confident towards a pass since a passing score is typically around 70%. My main real confidence booster was I felt the same way after my FE Exam.
The Wait
The one thing that sucks about taking it while still in school is that school just resumes. I had heat transfer and fluid mechanics homework and finals that week and the following week. So I guess they helped get my mind off it.
Result Day and Advice
I got the famous email saying the results were out, logged in was filled with joy to see the green passed. I felt relieved and happy to be done. Here is some key advice I have for you: some from friends, some from online, and some from my experience-

1. Study, study, study! Do as many practice problems as you can before taking the NCEES official practice exam.
   1. By practicing a lot you will realize you will naturally commit to memory certain conversions and formulas. These were some for me:
      • Gallons x 0.134 = ft^3 (used a lot in the exam)
      • Bernoulli equation (useful for pipe flows, pumps, head loss questions, and more)
      • Pump power (there are so many pump power problems)
      • Reynolds's Number
      • First Law Thermodynamics and conservation of mass
      • Pv=RT
      • Thermal resistance - conduction through plane wall & convection and heat exchanger rate of heat transfer.
      • Dealing with British units, primarily using the gravitational constant (32.2)
   2. Also, practice for qualitative questions. This requires knowing some theory so find ways to practice those. I just did all of the available qualitative questions PPI had (about 50).
   3. Be thorough - take studying and reviewing problems seriously. Don't think you got it after reviewing it. Ensure you got it. This may entail solving it again which gets tiring but that repetition will ensure it sticks. You should learn something new every time you review a problem you got wrong or guessed right.
2. Have some sort of schedule and stick to it. I struggle with schedule so I used PPIs but you absolutely need one.
3. Have an exam strategy, and never spend too much time on one problem.
4. Take things on Reddit even my experience with a grain of salt. I got caught up in too many Reddit forums and believed that PPI questions were harder than the actual exam which made me relaxed when I saw a question that was super long or hard while preparing using PPI. This hurt in the first half as a lot of the questions were pretty similar and I guess the brain muscle memory from solving problems saved me.
5. Know you can retake it if you have to. Don't stress out if you leave feeling not super confident. You can always take it next year.
6. Follow all the advice in the below link. His story is a great read for folks who may have been out of school for a while unlike myself. I used his advice and experience a lot. Probably the Reddit post I referred back to the most.

PASSED PE Machine Design & Materials - First attempt : PE_Exam (reddit.com)
Congrats you made it this far! Thank you for reading, I hope this helps. I hope everyone passes. The joy of being done is absolutely worth it so stay dedicated and good luck. Also sorry for any grammatical errors, I only proofread once.

Waiting a while to see a cardiologist... still a couple weeks out.
I have been having heart palpitations, and when they are more frequent, I feel like I constantly have to burp. Stomach feels fine, but i'm still burping a lot. It is sometimes triggered by doing a lot of excersize (ie, bouldering for a few hours).
Palpitations picked up quite a bit two weeks ago when I did a very strange bouldering move that resulted in a sharp pain down the side of my neck. I thought I pulled a muscle and that it would be sore for a while, but the pain went away after 15-30 minutes. That night I had an episode of quite a few palpitations with the weird feeling of always having to burp. Looking at a diagram of the neck, the pain could definitely have come from the Vagus nerve.
Has anyone had symptoms similar to this? Does it seem like a possibility? Thank you!
I was also working out a lot 5-6 days per week (rock climbing 3-6 hours per day) for about a month leading up to this, so my very first thought was that my electrolytes were severely depleted or that I really over-exercised.