Histology of liver fluke
Children of the Night (Part 3)
2024.05.15 19:50 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 3)
An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?
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A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?
2024.05.15 19:48 LaceyTMAU Fecal odor possibilities (scientifically proven not some bs)
As many of you know I’m not new here and I’m not a doctor with a fixed school of thought. So I’d like to share some things some of you should search in yourselves for!
EPI may refer to Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency, a condition that occurs when the pancreas doesn't release enough digestive enzymes, making it difficult for the small intestine to digest food. (Food isn’t processing which sits and rots in you and the odor comes from your mouth and pores etc) you’ll know because you can’t process fats at all. When you eat fried food you’ll smell like shit!!!
Liver flukes are parasites that can infect humans and cause liver and bile duct disease. There are two families of liver flukes that cause disease in humans: Opisthorchiidae (which includes species of Clonorchis and Opisthorchis) and Fasciolidae (which includes species of Fasciola).
Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is a condition where there is too much bacteria in the small intestine. It's also known as bacterial overgrowth or small bowel bacterial overgrowth syndrome. (3 diff types)
H. pylori is a common type of bacteria that attacks the stomach lining. It's usually passed from person to person. Most infections are harmless. But the bacteria is to blame for most peptic stomach ulcers, and if it's not treated, it could be a risk factor for cancer. (Really bad breath like shit)
Most of you have gas that smells like shit that’s why you stink. Try Simithicone chewables, moly b and digestive enzymes!
Check your vitamins these conditions are serious and will wreck havoc on your digestive system.
Also don’t ask me for per reviews I’m too lazy to go find them haha :)
submitted by LaceyTMAU to TMAU [link] [comments]
EPI may refer to Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency, a condition that occurs when the pancreas doesn't release enough digestive enzymes, making it difficult for the small intestine to digest food. (Food isn’t processing which sits and rots in you and the odor comes from your mouth and pores etc) you’ll know because you can’t process fats at all. When you eat fried food you’ll smell like shit!!!
Liver flukes are parasites that can infect humans and cause liver and bile duct disease. There are two families of liver flukes that cause disease in humans: Opisthorchiidae (which includes species of Clonorchis and Opisthorchis) and Fasciolidae (which includes species of Fasciola).
Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) is a condition where there is too much bacteria in the small intestine. It's also known as bacterial overgrowth or small bowel bacterial overgrowth syndrome. (3 diff types)
H. pylori is a common type of bacteria that attacks the stomach lining. It's usually passed from person to person. Most infections are harmless. But the bacteria is to blame for most peptic stomach ulcers, and if it's not treated, it could be a risk factor for cancer. (Really bad breath like shit)
Most of you have gas that smells like shit that’s why you stink. Try Simithicone chewables, moly b and digestive enzymes!
Check your vitamins these conditions are serious and will wreck havoc on your digestive system.
Also don’t ask me for per reviews I’m too lazy to go find them haha :)
2024.05.14 23:02 Kalibouh Tumor growth after immunotherapy?
Hey homies,
I saw my oncologist today for my PET scan results. After three rounds of double whammy imunotherapy, my liver tumor has vanished and my skin doesn't flash on the scan anymore either!
While this is brilliant, my lymph node in my neck has grown a bit (I can feel this one in my throat, very annoying) and the tumor on my spleen, which was tiny and not very active in January, is now 23 mm and very active... that's a huge growth.
The doc says I need a new PET scan in four weeks to see if it's not a fluke - apparently tumors can grow quickly and then shrink again. Has this happened to any of you?
I honestly thought I would get good news today. This spleen thing - even the doc though it was ignoreable. And now it is suddenly a real thing, although I was doing immunotherapy! Has this happened to you? Should I be worried? I still hope I will be healthy one day....
submitted by Kalibouh to melahomies [link] [comments]
I saw my oncologist today for my PET scan results. After three rounds of double whammy imunotherapy, my liver tumor has vanished and my skin doesn't flash on the scan anymore either!
While this is brilliant, my lymph node in my neck has grown a bit (I can feel this one in my throat, very annoying) and the tumor on my spleen, which was tiny and not very active in January, is now 23 mm and very active... that's a huge growth.
The doc says I need a new PET scan in four weeks to see if it's not a fluke - apparently tumors can grow quickly and then shrink again. Has this happened to any of you?
I honestly thought I would get good news today. This spleen thing - even the doc though it was ignoreable. And now it is suddenly a real thing, although I was doing immunotherapy! Has this happened to you? Should I be worried? I still hope I will be healthy one day....
2024.05.04 20:17 Flagg1991 Children of the Night (Part 3)
An hour after getting back from the Mason apartment, Bruce Kenner had the distinct misfortune of meeting Bertha Henderson.
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?
submitted by Flagg1991 to Viidith22 [link] [comments]
A plump, gaudy woman with wrinkles and sun beaten skin only an alligator could love, Bertha Henderson wore bright red lipstick, bright red rouge, and way too much mascara. Her tangled hair was a dull red color and her clothes - pink pants and a white floral top - stretched tight across her bulbous frame. She looked like the kind of woman who lived in a trailer with velvet pictures of Elvis on the wall and pink flamingos in the front yard.
She acted like one too.
From the moment she stormed into his office, she hadn’t shut up once. She scolded, chided, accused, and badgered, sometimes even wagging one fat finger in his face like he was a naughty little boy. Ten minutes into the dressing down and Bruce was beginning to fantasize about police brutality.
It took him another ten minutes to find out what the hell she even wanted.
“It’s my granddaughter,” she shot back, “she’s missing in your town.”
My town? Lady, this is barely my office. I share it with three other people.
“Well, if you’ll calm down, maybe I can help.”
Jesus Christ was that the wrong thing to say. She hit the roof and didn’t come down again until Bruce was this close to arresting her for assault on a police officer. “Young man, I do not appreciate the way you’re talking to me. My tax dollars are the only reason you have a job. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working at a car wash.”
At least I wouldn’t have to deal with you.
Bruce took a deep breath and held his tongue in check. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“I told you, my granddaughter is missing. If you listened to me, you’d know this already.”
Bertha produced a picture and slid it across the desk. Bruce studied it. A girl, roughly sixteen with black hair, blue eyes, and dimples smiled back at him. “She;’s with that Rossi man, I just know it,” she said bitterly.
“Who?” Bruce asked.
Rolling her eyes like he was stupid, the old woman told him the story. Jessie - the dimple faced girl - had the rotten luck of having to live with Grandma Bertha after her parents went to jail on drug charges. They lived in Sand Lake, a little town in the mountains outside Albany, where Bertha was no doubt loved and admired by all. One day, Jessie, who her grandmother lovingly described as “A little troublemaker”, ran off. Bruce didn’t blame her. He’d known Bertha for half an hour and he wanted to run off. Bertha did some snooping on Jessie’s laptop and found that the “little whore” had been chatting with an older man, Joe Rossi. Rossi, or so Facebook said, lived in Albany and worked at Club Vlad.
“I want him arrested for pedophilia,” Bertha said and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. “He’s a dog just like all men. She’s probably pregnant already. Another mouth I have to feed.”
Behind the old battle ax, Vanessa appeared in the doorway and lifted her brows as if to say What a piece of work. Knowing her, she’d probably been standing just out of sight this whole time with McKenny, the elderly evidence clerk, and snickering into her hand like a little girl. LOL she called him young man.
Bertha noticed him looking over her shoulder and started to turn. Vanessa’s face went white and she ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding detection. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” Bertha said to Bruce. “Meanwhile, if I don’t get Jessie back, the state’s going to stop sending me my checks. I need that income. I can’t work, you know. I have gout.”
Too bad being an asshole isn’t a job, you’d be world-famous
“I’ll go talk to him,” Bruce said.
“I want more than talk, young man, I want action.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Bertha finally decided to waddle off and ruin someone else’s day, Vanessa came in and sat in the chair the old woman had so recently occupied. “Oh, my God,” she said, “that was intense. I was this close to radioing in a 1015.”
1015 was code for officer down.
“Funny,” Bruce said without a trace of humor. He had kids going missing, a dead guy someone moved around like a goddamn Barbie doll, and now this. What next, hemorrhoids?
“What do you think? Code 1 or code 2?”
Code 1 meant top priority. Code 2 meant not a top priority. Bruce thought for a moment. It didn’t sound like Jessie Henderson was in danger. It sounded like she met a guy - granted, one too old for her - and decided to hide out with him from her psycho grandma. Maybe it could be something more, but he had a gut feeling that it wasn’t…and his gut feelings were usually right. “2,” he finally said. “I got shit to do.”
By shit, he meant “Talk to the families of those missing boys again.” He’d been interviewing them for two days looking for clues, but there was nothing. It’s like they just vanished. Bruce didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Vanessa said and slapped the desk.
When she was gone, Bruce sighed.
Never a dull moment, he thought.
***
Ed Harris - no relation to the Hollywood actor - had been the medical examiner for the City of Albany since 2002, and in all that time, he had never seen anything quite like this.
It was Wednesday evening and Ed was locked away in the cold, sterile space beneath the city offices that comprised his domain. With its puke green tiles, harsh lights, and cloying smells of disinfectant, the .coroner's office creeped most people out, but not Ed. He was at home here, as comfortable surrounded by toe-tagged bodies as a cactus was surrounded by desert. A thin man in his fifties with curly, steel gray hair thinning in the middle, he wore a white smock, blood stained over his clothes that made him look like a butcher instead of a low level government functionary. He had a dark and dry sense of humor, but then again, so do all people who play with dead bodies for fun and profit.
The coroner’s office was a vast, utilitarian vault segmented into multiple different rooms. Here, where the magic happened, three stainless steel tables stood in a row; a bank of refrigerated drawers kept watch, making sure nothing funny happened. One of the cold fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a hum of electricity, and water dripped rhythmically from a faucet. It was a cold, eerie place, but to Ed, it was home.
On most nights, only one of the tables was occupied, but tonight, two were. On one lay an old lady who died of what appeared to be cyanide poisoning. On the other was Dominick Mason.
Naked save for a white cloth draped over his groin to protect his dignity, Dom was the most corpsy corpse you’d ever hope to see. In fact, if you looked up dead guy in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of him. His body was pale and sunken, one side covered in purple splotches where his blood had pooled, and his eyes were closed. His abdomen was slightly distended with the expected build up of gas, and his flesh stuck fast to the bones beneath. In other words, he was text book. A normal corpse.
Mostly normal.
As men of his trade are wont to do when strange bodies mysteriously appear, Ed had opened Dom up, making a Y shaped incision from his neck to his groin. He hummed to himself as he did so, his hands wielding his sharp and shiny tools with the deft assuredness of a seasoned surgeon. Done cutting, he dipped his gloved hands into the cavity and started removing organs. A spleen here, a liver there, nothing Dom would miss. When he got to the heart, however, he stopped.
There was something…off…about it. At first glance, it was black and withered like an oversized raisin. An odd and putrid odor emanated from it and though he was familiar with the various smells and stenches the human body produced after death, this wasn’t one of them. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even compare it to anything. Plucking a magnifying glass from the metal cart next to the table, he peeled back part of Dom’s chest and examined the heart closer.
That’s when things got really weird.
Dominick Mason’s heart was, indeed, shriveled, but it was not black. Instead, it was almost entirely covered by an interlacing crisscross of what appeared to be black mold. Here and there, Ed could glimpse flashes of the heart beneath: It was wrinkled and a sickly gray color. “What is this?” Ed asked himself at length. He grabbed a pair of tweezers from the tray and carefully, very carefully, attempted to remove a piece of the mold for analysis. The moment the cold metal tips touched the heart, it gave a violent spasm that sent Ed falling back with a shocked gasp, the tweezers falling from his hand and clinking to the tiled floor.
The heart began to pulse like an alien egg sac, slowly at first, then more rapidly. For a moment, Ed was frozen in place, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Once you die, your heart ceases beating. That’s that. Only living hearts beat, and Dominick Mason was certainly dead. He was dead from the moment Ed first laid eyes on him earlier that day and he was dead now. Yet there was his heart, beating anyway.
It could be a muscle spasm. They usually aren’t that violent and consistent, but dead bodies sometimes do strange things. As he watched the blackened muscle expanding and contracting, however, Ed had the most eerie feeling. He went to rub the back of his neck, realized he was still wearing blood soaked gloves, and stripped them off. He was spooking himself out; he needed a break and a hot cup of coffee. He’d come back fresh and start over again.
With that mold.
Could you really blame him for being creeped out? That stuff wasn’t normal. He’d never seen anything like that before, not even in textbooks. Dom was scrawny and didn’t get enough vitamins in life, but overall, he was healthy; that mold…or whatever it was…had no business being there.
Going over to the coffee pot, which stood in the same room to save travel time, Ed grabbed a styrofoam cup. When he was done here, he planned to go home and -
A terrible, metallic clatter rang out, and Ed jumped. He turned around, and when he saw Dominick Mason standing next to the table, hunched slightly over and staring at him, an electric burst of fright shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, so strong it made the edges turn gray. Pale, hands hooked into talons, and the flaps of his chest hanging open to reveal the cavity beneath, Dominick Mason looked for all the world like a boy who’d been caught sneaking out to meet his girlfriend. A weak, involuntary, “Oh, God,” slipped from Ed’s trembling lips, and the spell was broken. Dom came alive and ran toward the door leading out to the parking lot. He slammed through it, and the sound of it crashing open and then falling closed again echoed through the empty chamber.
Shaking, panting for air, and soaked in piss, Ed sank to the floor in a sitting position, his eyes wide and staring like those of a soldier returning damaged from the front.
It was a long time before he composed himself enough to call the police.
***
Dazed and caught in a nightmarish twilight realm where nothing made sense, Dominick Mason limped painfully down the sidewalk, a stranger lost in a strange land filled with danger and hostile creatures. Barefoot and shrouded in a white sheet, he trembled with cold and struggled to ignore the dark, threatening shapes looming from the fog in his brain, shapes that would turn into unspeakable truths if he let them.
Passersby openly stared at him, their expressions either morbidly curious, disgusted, or alarmed. A man put his arm protectively around his girlfriend; a woman pulled her little boy to her breast, and another man sneered at him, his nose crinkling. Dom, his glazed eyes narrowed against the harsh glare of the many street lamps, headlights, and storefronts, lumbered headlong toward nowhere, his fear growing until he was shambling. He imagined he could hear every cough, every whisper; smell the odor of every unwashed body. Each car horn was deafening, every whiff of ass or armpits sent his stomach churning. The rustle of a passing pedestrian’s jacket jammed into his ears like icepicks, and the approaching globes of LED headlamps burned his eyes. He gritted his teeth and groaned against the pain.
The dense mist wrapping his brain made it hard to think. Like a frightened animal, he made his way on instinct alone. Home. He needed to get home. Out here, on the street, he was exposed. At home, locked away in his small apartment, he would be safe.
A car passed in the street, bass heavy rap music blaring from its open windows, and Dom’s brain exploded with agony. He threw himself against a street sign and held on for dear life, his legs weak. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he almost went down. He was also cold.
So, so cold.
People around him quickened their step; they never took their eyes off him, as though he were a venomous snake that would strike at any moment. He needed to get away from them. They were going to hurt him; people always hurt him.
Pushing away from the sign, he began to hobble once more toward home, wherever home was. He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down Central Avenue, and each time, he saw that no one was following him as he had feared.
No one, that is, except for the man in sunglasses.
Tall and lank with curly hair, he wore dark Aviators and a leather motorcycle jacket over a button up shirt. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his face showed no expression. He was always there, always a few steps closer. Outside Capital Fried Chicken, a group of people openly stared at him, He heard their whispers as he passed. What’s wrong with him? Dude’s straight tweakin. And the one that struck him the most. That guy looks dead.
Dom hobbled faster, as if to outrun the realization that he was, in fact, dead. The man in sunglasses was closer now, his footsteps so loud that Dom winced. He turned around, and the man was impossibly in front of him. Dom ran into him and bounced backward, going ass over tea kettle and landing on the former. They were in front of a church on a darkened corner, the lights here either burned out or shot out - you could never tell in Albany. Even though it was dark, Dom could see everything with crystal clarity. Dom tried to scurry away, but he was too weak to escape. Right there and then, he decided to give up. Come what may, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
The man stared down at him, emotionless, unspeaking.
Dom squirmed.
“You’re real lucky I came along,” the man said. His tone was flat, even.
Dead.
“Get up,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
Home?
Yes.
Dom wanted to go home.
The man helped him up, and Dom followed him into the night.
***
Bruce Kenner stood in the middle of the medical examiner’s office at half past nine that evening with his hands on his hips and stared doubtfully down at Ed Harris. The lonely cavern was alive with activity as cops went over everything, all of them looking either bemused or a mused. Bruce was neither. He’d been at home, sitting in his chair and having a beer in front of AEW Dynamite when Vanessa called. “You might wanna get down here,” she said, sounding confused, “something really strange is going on.”
Ed Harris - no relation to that one guy - sat in a straight back chair beside his cluttered desk and gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands, putting Bruce - for some reason - in mind of a monkey. When Bruce came in, the old man was white as a sheet and shook like a leaf. In the last half hour, little had changed.
“Tell me again,” Bruce said.
He and Ed were pretty good friends. He knew that Ed knew standard police procedure. Cops don’t ask you to repeat your story a thousand times over because they’re forgetful fucks, they do it because telling it again and again helps to jog loose details that you might have forgotten. Ed, therefore, did not protest. “I turned my back,” he said and chopped the chair like Jackie Chan, “and I heard the noise.”
His voice was thick, unsteady, and halting. He sounded as squirrely as he looked…and he looked pretty damn squirrelly right now.
“I turned around…and he was looking at me. He was standing there and he was looking at me.”
This was the fourth time he’d had Ed go through the story, and nothing had changed. Bruce felt something stirring deep inside his gut. It was either disquiet…or he had to fart. He opened his mouth to speak, but sighed.
“You don’t believe me,” Ed said.
“I dunno, Ed. Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away.”
Ed flashed. “I know that, goddamn it, but this one did.”
Bruce glanced at Vanessa. She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Bruce asked.
Ed opened his mouth, closed it again, and said, “I did the autopsy.” His voice broke on the last word, and he sounded almost like he was pleading. “His fucking liver’s on the floor. He stepped on it. The man has nothing in him. I-I’m telling you, there’s no way he’s alive.”
During the autopsy, Ed had sat Dominick Mason’s organs on the little tray table where he kept his pointy things. Mason knocked it over while getting up. Indeed, there were human organs on the floor, and one of them did look kind of squished. Bare, bloody footprints led to the exit door, up a set of concrete steps, and then disappeared in the alley behind the office.
“You said you left his heart,” Bruce said.
“And his brain,” Vanessa helpfully added.
Ed pinched the bridge of his nose like a put upon professor dealing with two particularly stupid students. “Even with his heart and his brain, he’s dead. You saw the livor mortis. He was cold, he was stiff. His heart wasn’t beating, he wasn’t breathing. He was in one of those drawers for nine hours, not breathing, no blood flow - it’s impossible. It’s just…it’s impossible. I don’t care what you think, he was dead. And even if somehow he wasn’t, I cut out almost everything. I opened his stomach, I took his spleen - you don’t just get up from that. You don’t walk away from that, much less run.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his bottom lip because he didn’t have a Twix. He didn’t look like the smartest man in the world…and he wasn’t…but he knew a dead body when he saw one, and the body they took out of Dominick Mason’s apartment was D.E.A.D. And like Ed said, even if by some freak fluke of nature he wasn’t, he couldn’t just get up and go about his day with no liver, spleen, or kidneys. Hell, Bruce had his gallbladder out and he couldn’t even walk away from that.
“You said there was something funny about his heart,” Vanessa said.
Ed finished off his coffee. “Yeah. It was…moldy. I-I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is it possible that…has something to do with it?”
“Unless the rules of biology have changed overnight, no,” Ed stated.
While Ed poured himself another cup of Joe, spilling some because he was still shaking, Vanessa took Bruce aside. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Is he telling the truth?”
For that, Bruce did not have an immediate answer. All else aside, he was a cop. He followed the evidence - and his gut instinct - wherever it led him. Ed was a sober man - he was not a drunk, insane, or stupid - and no man on earth could fake the look of trauma in his eyes. Bruce’s eyes went to the bloody footprints leading away from the exam table and his stomach roiled. It might be cliched, but there had to be a rational explanation. “Yeah,” he finally said. “The kid got up like he said, but there’s no way he was dead. Maybe…I dunno, he had a surge of adrenaline or something. I’m not a doctor.”
“That’ll only get him so far,” Vanessa said. “We’ll probably find him on the street somewhere.”
He went back to the purple splotches on Dom’s face, to his cold stiffness. There’s no way he was dead?
Bruce was confused, and he hated being confused.
“I dunno,” he said, “maybe.”
But he had the gnawing feeling that they wouldn’t. They would never find him…and Bruce would be confused forever.
Goddamn it, Mason, he thought, where are you?
2024.04.23 18:03 Irksomecake How safe is my watercress?
I’m have collected a load of watercress from a large patch near my family’s house but my folks say it’s probably contaminated with liver fluke from the livestock. Liver fluke used to be a problem in the area, but that was 20 years ago.
The fields are not currently stocked, but were last stocked with cattle that favoured the watercress patch for muddy wallowing. They haven’t been about since October.
I was hoping for watercress salad, but a soup might be more sensible.
submitted by Irksomecake to foraginguk [link] [comments]
The fields are not currently stocked, but were last stocked with cattle that favoured the watercress patch for muddy wallowing. They haven’t been about since October.
I was hoping for watercress salad, but a soup might be more sensible.
2024.04.19 15:50 saltw083 Help with Parasite infection
Parasites are normal, our body is host to billions of different organisms so don't panic or think it is unusual. In nature we all share this space, even part mitochondria in our body wasn't originally part of our body and a parasite that helped us grow.
Parasites are common and studied more extensively overseas, in America it is not researched as pharmaceutical companies won't put money into something they can't make a lot of money off of.
If you need help with large worm infections like liver fluke, pinworm, tapeworm, hookworms, roundworms, etc. Try cure zone . org for some advice.
There is a lot of information but read through a lot of forums to determine which treatment is best for you. Common medical treatments like Praziquantel and Albendazole are good but need much longer periods of treatment than 1 day. 1 day doesn't get rid of everything. You will find a lot of people have experienced this in America, in Asian countries the treatments are usually for longer periods of time up to 2 weeks to eradicate parasites.
Some common medications are:
Pyrantel for Pinworms, Roundworms and even Tapeworms
Praziquantel for Liver flukes and Tapeworms
Ivermectin
Albendazole
Fenbendazole
Natural remedies:
Papaya seeds
Pineapple
Coconut Oil
Oregano Oil - diluted and mixed with another carrier oil
Epazote
Quassia
Senna
Ayurveda and Chinese Traditional medicines are great because they've been used for thousands of years. Best solution is to go to a Traditional Chinese Doctor to get a treatment plan if the infection is serious.
Post your questions or experience on the Forum. Good luck
submitted by saltw083 to Parasiteshelp [link] [comments]
Parasites are common and studied more extensively overseas, in America it is not researched as pharmaceutical companies won't put money into something they can't make a lot of money off of.
If you need help with large worm infections like liver fluke, pinworm, tapeworm, hookworms, roundworms, etc. Try cure zone . org for some advice.
There is a lot of information but read through a lot of forums to determine which treatment is best for you. Common medical treatments like Praziquantel and Albendazole are good but need much longer periods of treatment than 1 day. 1 day doesn't get rid of everything. You will find a lot of people have experienced this in America, in Asian countries the treatments are usually for longer periods of time up to 2 weeks to eradicate parasites.
Some common medications are:
Pyrantel for Pinworms, Roundworms and even Tapeworms
Praziquantel for Liver flukes and Tapeworms
Ivermectin
Albendazole
Fenbendazole
Natural remedies:
Papaya seeds
Pineapple
Coconut Oil
Oregano Oil - diluted and mixed with another carrier oil
Epazote
Quassia
Senna
Ayurveda and Chinese Traditional medicines are great because they've been used for thousands of years. Best solution is to go to a Traditional Chinese Doctor to get a treatment plan if the infection is serious.
Post your questions or experience on the Forum. Good luck
2024.04.18 19:36 zetronox List of Common Risk Factors
Potential Risk Factors for Step 1
1. Pancreatic CA —> smoking, chronic pancreatitis, diabetes, age >50, obesity
2. Gastric CA (intestinal) —> H pylori, dietary nitrosamines/nitrates/smoked foods, smoking, achlorhydria, chronic gastritis, blood type A
3. Gastric CA (diffuse) —> e-cadherin mutation (NOT H pylori)
4. Liver HCC —> Hep B (+/- cirrhosis), Hep C, cirrhosis, hemochromatosis, aflatoxin (Aspergillus), alcoholic fatty liver, NAFLD, Wilson disease
5. Liver angiosarcoma —> arsenic, vinyl chloride (factory worker)
6. Colorectal CA —> hereditary CRC syndrome, IBD, obesity, charred & fried foods
7. Urothelial/transitional bladder CA —> smoking, occupational (rubber plastic aromatic amine containing ‘aniline’ dyes, textile, leather), naphthylamine (moth balls), phenacetin, cyclophosphamide
8. Bladder SCC —> schistosoma hematobium, chronic ‘s’ystitis, smoking, stones (chronic nephrolithiasis)
9. Breast CA —> early menarche, late menopause, nulliparity, BRCA
10. Prostate CA —> increasing age, African American
11. Thyroid papillary CA —> radiation
12. Cholangiocarcinoma —> primary sclerosing cholangitis, chinese liver fluke (Clonorchis sinensis)
13. Endometrial CA —> unopposed estrogen (PCOS or long term tamoxifen use), endometrial hyperplasia, nulliparity
14. Cervical/anogenital SCC: HPV (E6 P53, E7 Rb)
15. Most common CA due to abestos exposure —> bronchogenic/bronchial/adenocarcinoma (can cause mesothelioma too)
16. Esophageal SCC (upper 2/3) —> alcohol, hot liquids, caustic strictures, smoking, achalasia
17. Esophageal ACA (lower 1/3) —> Barett esophagus, chronic GERD, obesity, smoking
18. Ovarian CA —> advanced age, increased ovulations (early menarche, late menopause, nulliparity), endometriosis, BRCA1/BRCA2
19. Renal cell CA —> smoking, obesity, HTN
20. Acute pancreatitis —> gallstones (most likely), alcohol
21. Chronic pancreatitis —> alcohol, cystic fibrosis
22. Caplan syndrome —> asbestos, coal pneumoconiosis, silicosis
23. Osteoarthritis —> obesity
24. P falciparum with schizonts —> hypoglycemia
Found an old post on this sub with a few of these and added my own as well. Let's keep the list going! Comment if I missed or got any of these wrong.
submitted by zetronox to step1 [link] [comments]
1. Pancreatic CA —> smoking, chronic pancreatitis, diabetes, age >50, obesity
2. Gastric CA (intestinal) —> H pylori, dietary nitrosamines/nitrates/smoked foods, smoking, achlorhydria, chronic gastritis, blood type A
3. Gastric CA (diffuse) —> e-cadherin mutation (NOT H pylori)
4. Liver HCC —> Hep B (+/- cirrhosis), Hep C, cirrhosis, hemochromatosis, aflatoxin (Aspergillus), alcoholic fatty liver, NAFLD, Wilson disease
5. Liver angiosarcoma —> arsenic, vinyl chloride (factory worker)
6. Colorectal CA —> hereditary CRC syndrome, IBD, obesity, charred & fried foods
7. Urothelial/transitional bladder CA —> smoking, occupational (rubber plastic aromatic amine containing ‘aniline’ dyes, textile, leather), naphthylamine (moth balls), phenacetin, cyclophosphamide
8. Bladder SCC —> schistosoma hematobium, chronic ‘s’ystitis, smoking, stones (chronic nephrolithiasis)
9. Breast CA —> early menarche, late menopause, nulliparity, BRCA
10. Prostate CA —> increasing age, African American
11. Thyroid papillary CA —> radiation
12. Cholangiocarcinoma —> primary sclerosing cholangitis, chinese liver fluke (Clonorchis sinensis)
13. Endometrial CA —> unopposed estrogen (PCOS or long term tamoxifen use), endometrial hyperplasia, nulliparity
14. Cervical/anogenital SCC: HPV (E6 P53, E7 Rb)
15. Most common CA due to abestos exposure —> bronchogenic/bronchial/adenocarcinoma (can cause mesothelioma too)
16. Esophageal SCC (upper 2/3) —> alcohol, hot liquids, caustic strictures, smoking, achalasia
17. Esophageal ACA (lower 1/3) —> Barett esophagus, chronic GERD, obesity, smoking
18. Ovarian CA —> advanced age, increased ovulations (early menarche, late menopause, nulliparity), endometriosis, BRCA1/BRCA2
19. Renal cell CA —> smoking, obesity, HTN
20. Acute pancreatitis —> gallstones (most likely), alcohol
21. Chronic pancreatitis —> alcohol, cystic fibrosis
22. Caplan syndrome —> asbestos, coal pneumoconiosis, silicosis
23. Osteoarthritis —> obesity
24. P falciparum with schizonts —> hypoglycemia
Found an old post on this sub with a few of these and added my own as well. Let's keep the list going! Comment if I missed or got any of these wrong.
2024.04.18 17:39 pandasoondubu Drinking may be affecting liver at 26. Am I really abnormal with my drinking?
I’m 26F and I have recently had a blood test. Everything normal except my liver results were high. I wasn’t super shocked I guess since I DO drink but I definitely was not expecting it to be affecting me at my age and I am thin and generally a pretty healthy person.
I used to drink a lot when I was younger. Started at 15-16 and would party on the weekends, a lot more once I was in college but around mid 20s I probably average about 9-10 drinks a week, more or less depending, mostly just drinking on the weekends with friends or having a glass of wine after work sometimes. I never really drink to get drunk and very rarely get out of control.
I’m going to get tested again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, but am I really drinking so much that I could cause liver damage at the age of 26? I thought it was normal amount of drinking for my age but perhaps not…
I love my drinks, it’s one of my favorite passtimes, so hoping I don’t have to give it up.
Has anyone else experienced this?
submitted by pandasoondubu to alcohol [link] [comments]
I used to drink a lot when I was younger. Started at 15-16 and would party on the weekends, a lot more once I was in college but around mid 20s I probably average about 9-10 drinks a week, more or less depending, mostly just drinking on the weekends with friends or having a glass of wine after work sometimes. I never really drink to get drunk and very rarely get out of control.
I’m going to get tested again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, but am I really drinking so much that I could cause liver damage at the age of 26? I thought it was normal amount of drinking for my age but perhaps not…
I love my drinks, it’s one of my favorite passtimes, so hoping I don’t have to give it up.
Has anyone else experienced this?
2024.04.14 19:05 No_Classic_2467 Watercress vs. Liver Fluke
 | Hi y'all, it's watercress season here in Appalachian Virginia. How do you all feel about the risk of liver fluke on watercress from rural streams, streams cutting though farm fields, etc? Though the creek in my mountainous neighborhood seems very clean it does pass through cow fields and under single lane bridges. Also as you can see from the photo I'm not the only one enjoying the cress (or at least the beautiful water) this time of year. 😆 Thoughts on watercress harvesting safety? submitted by No_Classic_2467 to foraging [link] [comments] |
2024.04.14 02:20 Alternative_Pin_3124 Need Advice of what to do or how to help myself
My doctors want to say it’s fibromyalgia. I am a trans dude with ADHD and autism. I was diagnosed with depression and GAD in the past but I haven’t taken medicine for the in like a year and a half. (Use to be on Zoloft, Wellbutrin, and prazosin but stopped because it didn’t feel like they helped much) I do use testosterone.
Also this is a copy paste convo with some of my friends families from over time so please excuse the use of time markers and such. And I’d be happy to answer anything for clarification. Thank you to anyone that’s reading this.
List of symptoms I’ve recognized: Heart: ⁃ racing heart ⁃ Slowing heart ⁃ Palpitations ⁃ Squeezing
Pain or Discomfort: ⁃ Pins and needles whenever I’m hot, stressed , in pain, or anxious that happen throughout the body. Sometimes my hands and feet and other times (usually the worst) my arms shoulders chest neck back and head ⁃ Uncomfortable throughout the chest and back ⁃ Cant walk much or stand for too long because it will trigger the pins and needles ⁃ Chest, neck, head, wrists, waist, abdomen, back ⁃ Pressure on chest ⁃ Easily fatigued esp throughout the day ⁃ Symptoms hit harder at night ⁃ Itchy after intense pins and needles or heat ⁃ Stiffness in muscles ⁃ Pain specifically in the upper left part of my chest where my heart has constant pressure and squeezing and pain sometimes in the front and back ⁃ Pain in the center of my left ear ⁃ Pain in different parts of my waist ⁃ Pain in my wrists ⁃ Pain at the top of my head and in my left side of my jaw and neck and under my chin
Perception: ⁃ Hypersensitive ⁃ Sensitive to either cold or hot temps ⁃ Hard to concentrate ⁃ Hallucinations during bad episodes ⁃ Tinnitus ⁃ See stars ⁃ Feel heavy dissociative episodes ⁃ Two parts: constant and episodes
Sleep: ⁃ Sleep for super long periods of time or have trouble sleeping or staying asleep ⁃ Wake up with back burning at nights - Waking with panic attacks - Intense Nightmares
Other: ⁃ Sleep apnea ⁃ High blood pressure ⁃ Insulin resistance ⁃ Weight gain since it’s started ⁃ Twitching muscles —————-
I have a constant state I’ve been in that I just am really tired and weak. Very intolerant to any heat whatsoever even when I’m cold and I put a blanket on it triggers the episodes. Dissociated, anxious, hard to concentrate. And my chest feels constantly tight and feels like it’s squeezing. My muscles feel tight constantly.
The episodes are like pins and needles (in the sense of pain not numbness) throughout my entire body but it’s mostly unbearable in my upper body entirely and only gets helped by being colder and sometimes helped when I’m laying down or sitting down. The worst ones I usually have a panic or anxiety attack and it genuinely feels like I’m dying.
So far I’ve recognized it’s triggered by heat, anxiety, stress, any laborious activity including walking.
I can’t walk much anymore and whenever a place has a wheelchair I use it and I constantly need my partner to help me anytime I leave the house.
———-
What I’ve done so far:
December: first time recognizing something is definitely happening. At this point I booked seeing my doctor, but my symptoms were only really the pins and needles happening more often when I’m hot, anxious or stressed. None of the other symptoms were really happening yet.
Saw sleep doctor and scheduled to do sleep tests because I was certain I have sleep apnea. ————————— January: At this point, towards the end of the month, my symptoms were episodic and happened maybe like every other week.
I got to see my doctor. She did a TSH test and they found my levels to be slightly high at a 9.8 so she told me to go see an endocrinologist. And she had did some basic blood tests for my b12, CBC, and to check if I had Covid or an std. the only thing that came back was that my blood is thicker than it should be because of T and told me to see a hematologist. Also referred me to nutritionist to lose weight.
She told me my b12 is lower than usual but non deficient and has me getting b12 shots every month and taking them orally too everyday. She also gave levythyroxine, but I took it one day and I felt extremely horrible since then. And every doctor I’ve talked to told me this is just a coincidence, but since that day, the everyday symptoms have hit and haven’t stop. And only have gotten worse.
I went to ER quite a few times in this month. They ran some xrays of my upper right abdomen, neck, and chest. They also an a few CAT scans I believe of my heart and head. Everything came back normal and they gave me zofran and hydroxyzine for nausea and anxiety.
Also saw a sleep doctor and was told I have severe sleep apnea so I started a Cpap on February 8th and have been using it since.
I also changed my diet to be gluten free/dairy free just in case it was a thyroid issue. And dropped processed foods the best I can. (Financially relying on my friends and partner right now so it’s hard)
My HRT doctor told me to start taking cod liver oil supplements everyday so I have been. —————————- February: Hematology told me I need to lower T and maybe my thicker blood was causing issues and that it would get better lowering it and using the Cpap for longer. She did tests to see if my blood cells were smaller than normal and if I have any genetic mutations. Still waiting on the genetic mutation results and she is double checking my doctor on b12 because apparently either side of the spectrum can cause pins and needles and heat flashes.
I saw my cardiologist and he prescribed me high blood pressure meds and said the ER did a lot of tests so he wasn’t gonna do anything more except for one holter test which was useless because I didn’t experience my heart palpitations that day.
I called like crazy everyday for cancellations and booked two endocrinologists. First one ran an inflammation marker test and TOLD me it was normal and because the ER ran the same tests as my doctor and that the tests came back normal, they think my doctor has a fluke or that my thyroid being affected is just a symptom of something else. So she told me to go see a neurologist.
Saw the nutritionist, completely unhelpful entirely. They offered surgery and medication that would slow my metabolism and then offered me a weight loss program that would require 400$ out of pocket every month so that went nowhere lol.
My doctor referred me to get an EMG test so I didn’t have to wait an extra month for my neurologist to tell me to since those weren’t booking out till September. ———————— March: Saw my second endocrinologist, he told me that the tests my first endocrinologist did weren’t normal and that I do have inflammation markers raised. He told me to see a rheumatologist and ran a test for cortisol levels. Those came back normal and said to seek help elsewhere for now.
Saw my HRT doctor, he said that he doesn’t think my testosterone wasn’t the problem and that my bloodwork shows the normal amount of change in blood that most people go through when taking t. He lowered the dosage anyways to .8
Saw the neurologist, they said that because my symptoms are all encompassing, they think it’s not a neurological problem and referred me to rheumatology. They scheduled me for an MRI of my pituitary gland, but that would be for my endocrinologist to follow up with me.
Hematologist and cardiologist said they are just gonna wait till I see my rheumatologist and don’t really think anything on their end can help.
—————— April: Because I called every single day, I got a cancellation for tomorrow (April 9th) to see the Rheumatologist. And I’m hoping to the universe that they find anything. Because it’s at a point where I’m undeniably going through smth. It’s not just anxiety or I need to lose weight. Something is very wrong and I can’t keep living like this.
I see a therapist too, but the symptoms have only gotten worse and I feel like I’m just being told to wait till it gets worse snd more obvious to what it is and getting tossed around between doctors while I suffer. I can’t do anything anymore. Even distracting myself is hard and getting emotional in any way can trigger the symptoms. It’s so hard to sleep and the weather is only going to get hotter and hotter.
Every test and doctor and waiting list for anything takes so damn long to book despite me calling every single morning for a cancellation. And I’m just so exhausted and frustrated.
Talked with the rheumatologist! They said that they think I have fibromyalgia and that I should get on symbalta and to talk to my pcp about it. They also think what I have is probably endocrine or nerve related and that it’s something less common so they put a bunch of tests the other doctors haven’t tested. My pcp referred me to psychiatry, so I’m on a waitlist for that. I have an MRI for my pituitary gland this Saturday and an appt with my sleep doctor on Friday, but I guess at this point they are just trying to find any indication for anything.
Talked to my sleep doctor. Prescribed me Gabapentin. I used it and used my Cpap and didn’t wake up with any panic attacks so that’s good! Hoping it works for the future.
I did the MRI for my pituitary gland. Absolutely horrendous esp as an autistic individual :( I had a bad panic attack in the bathroom because I didn’t know they encase your head and the sounds were overwhelming despite knowing it would be 😭 but now I’m just waiting for Sjogren test to come back from rheumatologist. If its negative, they said they will just diagnose me with fibro and end it there :/
submitted by Alternative_Pin_3124 to Fibromyalgia [link] [comments]
Also this is a copy paste convo with some of my friends families from over time so please excuse the use of time markers and such. And I’d be happy to answer anything for clarification. Thank you to anyone that’s reading this.
List of symptoms I’ve recognized: Heart: ⁃ racing heart ⁃ Slowing heart ⁃ Palpitations ⁃ Squeezing
Pain or Discomfort: ⁃ Pins and needles whenever I’m hot, stressed , in pain, or anxious that happen throughout the body. Sometimes my hands and feet and other times (usually the worst) my arms shoulders chest neck back and head ⁃ Uncomfortable throughout the chest and back ⁃ Cant walk much or stand for too long because it will trigger the pins and needles ⁃ Chest, neck, head, wrists, waist, abdomen, back ⁃ Pressure on chest ⁃ Easily fatigued esp throughout the day ⁃ Symptoms hit harder at night ⁃ Itchy after intense pins and needles or heat ⁃ Stiffness in muscles ⁃ Pain specifically in the upper left part of my chest where my heart has constant pressure and squeezing and pain sometimes in the front and back ⁃ Pain in the center of my left ear ⁃ Pain in different parts of my waist ⁃ Pain in my wrists ⁃ Pain at the top of my head and in my left side of my jaw and neck and under my chin
Perception: ⁃ Hypersensitive ⁃ Sensitive to either cold or hot temps ⁃ Hard to concentrate ⁃ Hallucinations during bad episodes ⁃ Tinnitus ⁃ See stars ⁃ Feel heavy dissociative episodes ⁃ Two parts: constant and episodes
Sleep: ⁃ Sleep for super long periods of time or have trouble sleeping or staying asleep ⁃ Wake up with back burning at nights - Waking with panic attacks - Intense Nightmares
Other: ⁃ Sleep apnea ⁃ High blood pressure ⁃ Insulin resistance ⁃ Weight gain since it’s started ⁃ Twitching muscles —————-
I have a constant state I’ve been in that I just am really tired and weak. Very intolerant to any heat whatsoever even when I’m cold and I put a blanket on it triggers the episodes. Dissociated, anxious, hard to concentrate. And my chest feels constantly tight and feels like it’s squeezing. My muscles feel tight constantly.
The episodes are like pins and needles (in the sense of pain not numbness) throughout my entire body but it’s mostly unbearable in my upper body entirely and only gets helped by being colder and sometimes helped when I’m laying down or sitting down. The worst ones I usually have a panic or anxiety attack and it genuinely feels like I’m dying.
So far I’ve recognized it’s triggered by heat, anxiety, stress, any laborious activity including walking.
I can’t walk much anymore and whenever a place has a wheelchair I use it and I constantly need my partner to help me anytime I leave the house.
———-
What I’ve done so far:
December: first time recognizing something is definitely happening. At this point I booked seeing my doctor, but my symptoms were only really the pins and needles happening more often when I’m hot, anxious or stressed. None of the other symptoms were really happening yet.
Saw sleep doctor and scheduled to do sleep tests because I was certain I have sleep apnea. ————————— January: At this point, towards the end of the month, my symptoms were episodic and happened maybe like every other week.
I got to see my doctor. She did a TSH test and they found my levels to be slightly high at a 9.8 so she told me to go see an endocrinologist. And she had did some basic blood tests for my b12, CBC, and to check if I had Covid or an std. the only thing that came back was that my blood is thicker than it should be because of T and told me to see a hematologist. Also referred me to nutritionist to lose weight.
She told me my b12 is lower than usual but non deficient and has me getting b12 shots every month and taking them orally too everyday. She also gave levythyroxine, but I took it one day and I felt extremely horrible since then. And every doctor I’ve talked to told me this is just a coincidence, but since that day, the everyday symptoms have hit and haven’t stop. And only have gotten worse.
I went to ER quite a few times in this month. They ran some xrays of my upper right abdomen, neck, and chest. They also an a few CAT scans I believe of my heart and head. Everything came back normal and they gave me zofran and hydroxyzine for nausea and anxiety.
Also saw a sleep doctor and was told I have severe sleep apnea so I started a Cpap on February 8th and have been using it since.
I also changed my diet to be gluten free/dairy free just in case it was a thyroid issue. And dropped processed foods the best I can. (Financially relying on my friends and partner right now so it’s hard)
My HRT doctor told me to start taking cod liver oil supplements everyday so I have been. —————————- February: Hematology told me I need to lower T and maybe my thicker blood was causing issues and that it would get better lowering it and using the Cpap for longer. She did tests to see if my blood cells were smaller than normal and if I have any genetic mutations. Still waiting on the genetic mutation results and she is double checking my doctor on b12 because apparently either side of the spectrum can cause pins and needles and heat flashes.
I saw my cardiologist and he prescribed me high blood pressure meds and said the ER did a lot of tests so he wasn’t gonna do anything more except for one holter test which was useless because I didn’t experience my heart palpitations that day.
I called like crazy everyday for cancellations and booked two endocrinologists. First one ran an inflammation marker test and TOLD me it was normal and because the ER ran the same tests as my doctor and that the tests came back normal, they think my doctor has a fluke or that my thyroid being affected is just a symptom of something else. So she told me to go see a neurologist.
Saw the nutritionist, completely unhelpful entirely. They offered surgery and medication that would slow my metabolism and then offered me a weight loss program that would require 400$ out of pocket every month so that went nowhere lol.
My doctor referred me to get an EMG test so I didn’t have to wait an extra month for my neurologist to tell me to since those weren’t booking out till September. ———————— March: Saw my second endocrinologist, he told me that the tests my first endocrinologist did weren’t normal and that I do have inflammation markers raised. He told me to see a rheumatologist and ran a test for cortisol levels. Those came back normal and said to seek help elsewhere for now.
Saw my HRT doctor, he said that he doesn’t think my testosterone wasn’t the problem and that my bloodwork shows the normal amount of change in blood that most people go through when taking t. He lowered the dosage anyways to .8
Saw the neurologist, they said that because my symptoms are all encompassing, they think it’s not a neurological problem and referred me to rheumatology. They scheduled me for an MRI of my pituitary gland, but that would be for my endocrinologist to follow up with me.
Hematologist and cardiologist said they are just gonna wait till I see my rheumatologist and don’t really think anything on their end can help.
—————— April: Because I called every single day, I got a cancellation for tomorrow (April 9th) to see the Rheumatologist. And I’m hoping to the universe that they find anything. Because it’s at a point where I’m undeniably going through smth. It’s not just anxiety or I need to lose weight. Something is very wrong and I can’t keep living like this.
I see a therapist too, but the symptoms have only gotten worse and I feel like I’m just being told to wait till it gets worse snd more obvious to what it is and getting tossed around between doctors while I suffer. I can’t do anything anymore. Even distracting myself is hard and getting emotional in any way can trigger the symptoms. It’s so hard to sleep and the weather is only going to get hotter and hotter.
Every test and doctor and waiting list for anything takes so damn long to book despite me calling every single morning for a cancellation. And I’m just so exhausted and frustrated.
Talked with the rheumatologist! They said that they think I have fibromyalgia and that I should get on symbalta and to talk to my pcp about it. They also think what I have is probably endocrine or nerve related and that it’s something less common so they put a bunch of tests the other doctors haven’t tested. My pcp referred me to psychiatry, so I’m on a waitlist for that. I have an MRI for my pituitary gland this Saturday and an appt with my sleep doctor on Friday, but I guess at this point they are just trying to find any indication for anything.
Talked to my sleep doctor. Prescribed me Gabapentin. I used it and used my Cpap and didn’t wake up with any panic attacks so that’s good! Hoping it works for the future.
I did the MRI for my pituitary gland. Absolutely horrendous esp as an autistic individual :( I had a bad panic attack in the bathroom because I didn’t know they encase your head and the sounds were overwhelming despite knowing it would be 😭 but now I’m just waiting for Sjogren test to come back from rheumatologist. If its negative, they said they will just diagnose me with fibro and end it there :/
2024.04.12 23:10 cplm1948 Brought my ldl down from 180 to 110 and ApoB to 100. What’s next?
Hello,
In the spring of 2022, at 24 years old, I did my annual physical and was surprised to see my ldl was 180 with triglycerides being in the 80s. I thought this was a fluke as I had recently bulked and I also just got back from a vacation full of terrible eating, drinking, and smoking and my previous test, which was only a few months before at a diff doc, came back with a ldl of 120 (at my previous doctor this was in the “normal” range). I got serious and started a pretty restricted diet of no red meat, no simple carbs, no dairy, and a lot of fiber.
2 months later my moms work is offering lipid tests of employees and their families so I walked in and took a test. My ldl came down to 97 and triglycerides were 68. I was happy and thought my theory of the last screening being a fluke was proved right. I went back to eating somewhat normal but still fairly restrictive.
Fast forward to the fall of 2023 and my ldl is back up at 140. I get super upset but still push on to see if I can lower it again. I start a really restrictive diet again (although not as restrictive and cheating a bit with the holidays and whatnot) as well as supplementation with turmeric, kyolic aged garlic, citrus bergamot, and magnesium. Fast forward to this week and I’ve gotten my lipid results back.
At 26 years old, now my Ldl is at 110, triglycerides at 73, and ApoB at 100… my doctor is happy with these numbers but I am not. I’m sure I can improve these numbers if I added more things into my diet (beans and lentils for example) and cheated less and cut back on alcohol (I have 2-3 glasses of wine or Friday and Saturday), but honestly I’m getting tired. I’m afraid that with those changes the numbers aren’t going to improve that much to improve my risk profile.
Speaking of my risk profile, I have no family history of CVD, no family history of high cholesterol (my mom and sister are borderline obese and eat terribly but still manage to have normal lipid profiles), normal blood pressure, and normal blood glucose. I have normal kidney function and my liver is healthy. I do have very very mild (clinically insignificant) biliary dyskinesia however and have also had my appendix removed (which there are studies showing that individuals who underwent appendectomy are more likely to have cvd). I also have an anxiety disorder. I have no idea why my cholesterol is so high considering I’m very active, have a perfect bmi, and have a good diet. There also is no obvious familial component. Also how tf is my ldl so high while triglycerides are so low????
My numbers without being on a strict diet are horrendous for my age and even with strict diet they aren’t stellar either. So what is next? The only viable option to me seems to be statins or some other type of pharmacological intervention. As I age, even if I maintain this diet, my numbers will only continue to rise. I’ll be living a restrictive life only to maintain an increased risk anyways. The only solution other than medication I can see is a whole food plant based diet but I don’t think I could do something so drastic for the rest of my life. I want to be able to enjoy my life, not live in constant restriction and fear. Of course I’ll go to my Dr to talk about my options, but what do you guys think? I’m just really down and quite worried and I need to get this off my chest and try and see a way through this. Im just afraid of what the future holds for my cardiovascular health and afraid of going on statins. Any input is greatly appreciated.
submitted by cplm1948 to PeterAttia [link] [comments]
In the spring of 2022, at 24 years old, I did my annual physical and was surprised to see my ldl was 180 with triglycerides being in the 80s. I thought this was a fluke as I had recently bulked and I also just got back from a vacation full of terrible eating, drinking, and smoking and my previous test, which was only a few months before at a diff doc, came back with a ldl of 120 (at my previous doctor this was in the “normal” range). I got serious and started a pretty restricted diet of no red meat, no simple carbs, no dairy, and a lot of fiber.
2 months later my moms work is offering lipid tests of employees and their families so I walked in and took a test. My ldl came down to 97 and triglycerides were 68. I was happy and thought my theory of the last screening being a fluke was proved right. I went back to eating somewhat normal but still fairly restrictive.
Fast forward to the fall of 2023 and my ldl is back up at 140. I get super upset but still push on to see if I can lower it again. I start a really restrictive diet again (although not as restrictive and cheating a bit with the holidays and whatnot) as well as supplementation with turmeric, kyolic aged garlic, citrus bergamot, and magnesium. Fast forward to this week and I’ve gotten my lipid results back.
At 26 years old, now my Ldl is at 110, triglycerides at 73, and ApoB at 100… my doctor is happy with these numbers but I am not. I’m sure I can improve these numbers if I added more things into my diet (beans and lentils for example) and cheated less and cut back on alcohol (I have 2-3 glasses of wine or Friday and Saturday), but honestly I’m getting tired. I’m afraid that with those changes the numbers aren’t going to improve that much to improve my risk profile.
Speaking of my risk profile, I have no family history of CVD, no family history of high cholesterol (my mom and sister are borderline obese and eat terribly but still manage to have normal lipid profiles), normal blood pressure, and normal blood glucose. I have normal kidney function and my liver is healthy. I do have very very mild (clinically insignificant) biliary dyskinesia however and have also had my appendix removed (which there are studies showing that individuals who underwent appendectomy are more likely to have cvd). I also have an anxiety disorder. I have no idea why my cholesterol is so high considering I’m very active, have a perfect bmi, and have a good diet. There also is no obvious familial component. Also how tf is my ldl so high while triglycerides are so low????
My numbers without being on a strict diet are horrendous for my age and even with strict diet they aren’t stellar either. So what is next? The only viable option to me seems to be statins or some other type of pharmacological intervention. As I age, even if I maintain this diet, my numbers will only continue to rise. I’ll be living a restrictive life only to maintain an increased risk anyways. The only solution other than medication I can see is a whole food plant based diet but I don’t think I could do something so drastic for the rest of my life. I want to be able to enjoy my life, not live in constant restriction and fear. Of course I’ll go to my Dr to talk about my options, but what do you guys think? I’m just really down and quite worried and I need to get this off my chest and try and see a way through this. Im just afraid of what the future holds for my cardiovascular health and afraid of going on statins. Any input is greatly appreciated.
2024.04.11 19:51 BroadwayDancer Turned away by so many doctors, any advice is great
 | Hi all, I apologize for the gross pictures. I’ve lost all hope and if someone has any idea, I’d be incredibly grateful. I’ve been dealing with severe stomach problems for almost a year. It started with minor stomach pains. Eventually I pooped blood. I went to the hospital and they gave me some type of pain med and sent me home. (Went back to the ER 3x after that with the same results.) After the pain med wore off it started right up again (severe stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea, sometimes vomitting) and would calm down after a while. On and off for months on end, I’ve had to call out of work for 2+ days at a time until my stomach stopped hurting enough for me to walk. I’ve had colonoscopy, and endoscopy and neither showed much. This is the most recent picture and I found an article on liver flukes. Is this what could be causing my pain? Thank you again for any advice submitted by BroadwayDancer to poop [link] [comments] |
2024.04.11 18:40 Derek800 Pet Insurance Question
I have a question about how pet insurance works. I am thinking of getting it for my 6 year old shih tzu mix dog. She just had a blood test that revealed a high liver count and they vet wants to retest in about a month to see if it's a fluke or needs to be researched further.
Does anyone know if this is considered a pre existing condition if I started a new policy now but I don't know if she has any issues or if it's just a fluke on this one test?
submitted by Derek800 to Insurance [link] [comments]
Does anyone know if this is considered a pre existing condition if I started a new policy now but I don't know if she has any issues or if it's just a fluke on this one test?
2024.04.11 18:39 Derek800 Pet Insurance Question
I have a question about how pet insurance works. I am thinking of getting it for my 6 year old shih tzu mix dog. She just had a blood test that revealed a high liver count and they vet wants to retest in about a month to see if it's a fluke or needs to be researched further.
Does anyone know if this is considered a pre existing condition if I started a new policy now but I don't know if she has any issues or if it's just a fluke on this one test?
submitted by Derek800 to Pets [link] [comments]
Does anyone know if this is considered a pre existing condition if I started a new policy now but I don't know if she has any issues or if it's just a fluke on this one test?
2024.04.10 17:11 wcbc2ec A Not At All Brief Novella Covering Tips For Studying With ADHD: how to tackle Steps, Shelves, and Dedicated periods for those of us who never learned how to study
I typed this up as a comment to a previous post, but Reddit wouldn't let me post it for some reason, probably bc I went full ADHD and the comment was long AF. Going to post it here in hopes it's helpful for other ADHD students who have created 1 million study schedules, can't follow through, try to use too many resources, spend 365 hours reviewing one Uworld block, and spiral bc they just can't figure it out.
This is more geared towards folks in dedicated periods, though some of the tips can be repurposed for longitudinal studying.
Obviously won't work for everyone, but I finally feel like I'm in my study groove after 3 years of medical school.
Hey - ADHD student diagnosed late who also … never learned to study? Analysis paralysis with all the resources. New study method all the time. Elaborate study plans I don’t follow through with? Check check check. Here’s what is finally working for me. Please enjoy the classically long ADHD over explanation below. This is A LOT. I know. But I also never learned to study and it took me til end of 3rd year to really piece it together. You've got this. Find what works.
My TL;DR:
Notice how there is NO real content in here (except for a BRIEF example of the different buzzword). It's not me saying, "these are the s/sx for xyz syndrome," it's me writing down WHY I made the mistake. After time you'll realize you start doing things repeatedly, and that's where you train yourself not to make silly mistakes.
Lol we have fuggin ADHD, we can't follow a schedule for shit. That being said, I generally break it up as follows:
submitted by wcbc2ec to medicalschool [link] [comments]
This is more geared towards folks in dedicated periods, though some of the tips can be repurposed for longitudinal studying.
Obviously won't work for everyone, but I finally feel like I'm in my study groove after 3 years of medical school.
My TL;DR:
- Drop Anking - you'll end up with too many cards and be unable to review and get in a negative spiral. I'm serious. Suspend it all.
- Pick a certain # of qs a day you need to do and do them, even if you can't review as thoroughly as you'd like.
- Create an error log for WHY you made the mistake, not the content of the mistake.
- Create your own Anki cards based on the synopsis and/or explanations of wrong answers. Make them descriptive, don't do discrete closed deletions.
- If you must write out notes, only do it for NBME shelf practice exams.
- Wake up early. Take a walk outside every day, multiple times a day.
- Delete whatever your vice is off your phone - reddit, discord, insta, TikTok (honestly everyone should delete bc social media is so unhealthy and is spreading negativity throughout our generation via targeted efforts from other countries disguised as normal people, but that's a soapbox for another day).
- Stop Anking. I was die hard Anking for preclinical. It helped me a lot. But it also is merciless if you get behind and it's not great on these shorter term deadlines with a vast majority of info. If you unsuspend for every question you get wrong, you’re gonna be screwed. I DO use Anki and make my own cards - I talk about that more below.
- UWorld. Just stick to it. I have ADHD, so obviously system block by block sucks for me. I do random, tutored, untimed. If my brain is being flighty, I’ll do a 15-20 question block to start so I have the gratification of finishing a block. If I’m in a groove I’ll do 40 questions straight. But whatever way it goes, I try to get through a certain # of questions a day.
- NBME step or shelf practice exams: Do multiple. How many are available for the exam you have soonest? Leave one for 3 days before the exam, and then evenly space out the rest between now and then.
- Self made error log.
- Written review for NBME practice shelf exams.
- Edit: Amboss google chrome and Anki plug ins while reviewing UWorld/NBMEs/doing Anki cards so you aren't tempted to open another tab and go down a rabbit hole. Plug in will automatically underline things in the explanation that you can hover over for more info. Promise I'm not an Amboss shill, I just realized I was heavily relying on it today and forgot to include it in this post.
- Ex: High output heart failure underlined. Hovering gives you a small Xray and this description in a small pop up, "A state of heart failure characterized by increased cardiac output and lowered systemic vascular resistance. May be caused by AV fistulas, renal disease, anemia, beriberi, or Graves' disease."
- I do each block in tutor mode. Flow chart after I submit the question:
- If it's right - great! If I got it right because I know my shit, I'll read the main point at the bottom and go to the next question.
- If I got it right because I kinda guessed - I read the blurb at the bottom and then the reasoning behind the answers I was debating between. Then I move on.
- If I got it right but it was a fluke and totally random guess, I will read the blurb at the bottom first, the paragraph(s) explanation at the top, and then all of the answers.
- If I got it wrong, I immediately stop, don't read anything, and utilize this method to go through my answer methodology. When I first started I had a sticky note outlining the steps so I wouldn't have to open reddit to read the post and get distracted again. I have realized through this SO MANY stupid mistakes from not reading closely, and it has legitimately improved my scores significantly in a very short period of time. An example from my log below.
- I do NOT do anything besides READ the answer explanations and update my reasoning error log while going through the block the first time. Don't have a pen with you. Don't put more than one sentence in the more detail section of your error log.
| Reason | Solution | More Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Didn't READ the KEY WORDS carefully in question stem | Carefully read the key words - do not gloss over | Highlighted "left lateral temporal lobe," but was thinking frontal lobe bc I did not pay close attention |
| Slow down | Realized afib early, ignored later when focused on symptoms | |
| Didn't recognize answer as a synonym of buzzword | Read carefully and think of what it really means | Atrophic ovaries = streak ovaries. You know the syndrome, think through all of the phenotypical manifestations |
- After I finish the block - wahoo! Grab something to eat if you need it. Stretch if you need it. But, bc you have ADHD, if you're in the flow, don't stop. It's time to review and move on to the more active learning portion.
- Go back to the beginning of the block you just finished. Pull up Anki, and create new cards for your UWorld missed Qs deck.
- Review all of your questions, not just the ones you got wrong. Read all the wrong answers. If you got the question right and the wrong answers all make sense, great, move on. If not, make selective Anki cards for the main points you want to take away. (edit: utilize the Amboss plug in to hover over terms you need more info on - helps you not open another tab and minimizes risks for distractions). Don't fall into the trap of making a ton of individual close deletions. I was used to that from Anking, but I started making three broad types of cards: case overview, descriptor, or basic definitions. Examples below. Notice how I will include multiple bits of info for recall, not just one specific definition. I found seeing all of the info together helps my brain more, rather than just one fact about Homer Wright rosettes, and then two days later a card asking where medulloblastomas are generally found.
- Case overview
- Front: Most common malignant cerebellar tumors in children. Typically located in cerebellar vermis Histology: small blue cells that may surround a neuropril (ie, interwoven nerve fibers and synapses) → Homer Wright rosettes
- Back: Medulloblastoma Aggressive and prone to local and disseminated metastasis. [Screenshot of the histology]
- Front: Skeletal abnormalities, lens dislocation, intellectual defects, vascular thromboses. Genetic defect in what enzyme?
- Back: Homocystinuria cystathionine beta-synthase enzyme
- Descriptor
- Front: What causes thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura? What is the classic presentation of TTP?
- Back: Decreased levels of protease ADAMTS13 (cleaves von Willebrand factor). Pentad: fever, thrombocytopenia, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, renal insufficiency, neurologic dysfunction.
- Front: Histologic findings of psoriasis. Where is it typically found?
- Back: Neutrophilic microabscesses and epidermal hyperplasia (acanthosis). Extensor surfaces [screenshot I found helpful]
- Basic Definitions
- Front: HBsAg When detectable? What does it indicate?
- Back: Hep B virus surface glycoproteins Detectable during acute infection Persistence >6 months = chronic infection
- Front: Midsystolic click followed by late systolic murmur
- Back: Mitral valve prolapse [with screenshot I found helpful]
- Front: Bordetella pertussus toxin? Effect?
- Back: Pertussis toxin Disinhibits adenylate cyclase via Gi ADP-ribosylation → increases cAMP production in host cell → increases histamine sensitivity & phagocyte dysfunction
- DON'T SLEEP ON THE EXPLANATIONS OF WRONG ANSWERS, EVEN IF YOU GOT THE QUESTION RIGHT. I have learned SO MUCH from how they phrase the explanations of wrong answers in terms of how to think of similarities and differences between disease states, enzymes, etc. I would say the majority of my cards I make come from the info I've picked up in the explanations of wrong answers.
- When you're done making your cards, congrats! You did awesome for your future self. I am proud of you, and you should be too. At this point, you should take a break. Go walk around the block. I'm serious. So much research shows that outdoor movement is beneficial for your brain and it's so easy to get glued to your desk during dedicated periods. I PROMISE you're not going to get more benefit from studying for those 10 minutes than you will from walking outside.
- Figure out how many step/shelf practice exams you have unused. As mentioned above, schedule one 2-4 days before your step/shelf exam, then divide the rest between now and then [advice for people trying to study for multiple shelves in a row due to retakes or how their school schedules them: I would really only go one shelf at a time, so don't be taking shelf practice exams for your 3rd shelf retake before you've retaken your 1st shelf].
- If you've already taken practice shelf exams, review them in the manner below BEFORE you take your next practice shelf exam.
- Take the test
- Review same day.
- I use a slightly different review strategy compared to UWorld. Yes it's controversial. It works for me bc it forces my brain to slow down. Going question by question:
- Continue with your error log per above
- Hand write the learning points you need from each question and/or the wrong answer explanations. Try not to get too deep in this, but if it's a topic that you struggle with (for me, Vit D metabolism), this is your time to write everything out. This is controversial, and easy to get sucked into writing too much, but writing legitimately helps me encode the information so much better - I still remember drawing out graphs from 2.5 years ago when trying to remember something for a shelf exam. But it takes FOR EFFIN EVER, as you know. Because of that, I will write out my review notes for NBME practice tests ONLY.
- REALLY try hard to distill to main points. Blurb at the bottom. One sentence for wrong answers. Only go deep on the explanation if it's something you have no idea about and had no idea what they were talking about.
- edit to add: Some NBME explanations REALLY SUCK. We know that. Use the google chrome Amboss add on during review for more info on terms you might need.
- After you've hand written reviewed the test, go through it again and create Anki cards per above. This may seem like double work, but my theory is these q's are written by the people writing the exams. This gives me two reviews in one day, and then I've also added it into my spaced repetition.
- After I do the writing review of the test, I basically never look at it again, because I will have hopefully distilled it into Anki and my brain. I will maybe go through all my notes a day or two before the test with a highlighter to highlight main points I want to remember. That's it. And I rarely do that.
Lol we have fuggin ADHD, we can't follow a schedule for shit. That being said, I generally break it up as follows:
- Waking up early AF. Before the sun rises. I know I know, a lot of people think they are night owls and just study better at night. But try it for one week. You will be SHOCKED at how accomplished you feel if you get 2 hours of studying in before the sun's up, and you will ride that high and build a reinforcing loop.
- In dedicated: waking up at 4 am, studying til 2 pm - thats 10 hours of study time (minus 1-2 hours for breakfast, sunrise walk to pump the blood and feel alive, breaks to walk outside), and it's STILL EARLY in the afternoon. You can now go DO things and feel accomplished instead of guilty about it. Give it a week. You owe it to yourself to try.
- Do practice questions, review questions, and create Anki cards in the morning/at the beginning of your day.
- Pick a certain # of questions you want to do every day and stick to it. EVEN IF YOU CAN'T REVIEW THEM ALL AND MAKE CARDS FOR THEM ALL.
- Perfect is the enemy of the good - it took me forever to learn this, and I still fight with the desire to want to perfectly finish my reviews at the expense of not doing enough questions.
- Thoroughly review your first block, even if it's just a block of 15 questions...but then just make sure you get through the rest of the damn questions.
- You've gotta get your reps in and if you're taking the blocks in untimed tutor mode, keeping a methodology error log, and READING the main point and wrong answer explanation, you are learning.
- I have started renaming my UWorld blocks to "Review," when I finish the test before I review. If I'm able to immediately review, once I'm done with the review I'll rename it to "X - Reviewed."
- Then I go do more blocks. If I can't keep up with the reviews and making cards, THATS FINE, just keep it as "Review" until you have time to come back, or don't. You are still reviewing these topics when you first read the summary/wrong answers, and many of the wrong answers you review and make cards for when you DO have time to review cover that material as well!
- This is SUCH a stupidly simple visual way for me to know how much review I have to do if I'm a day or two behind in reviews and feeling motivated to catch up
- Pick a certain # of questions you want to do every day and stick to it. EVEN IF YOU CAN'T REVIEW THEM ALL AND MAKE CARDS FOR THEM ALL.
- Review Anki cards due for the day in the evening. Try to get through all of your cards.
- My brain is less sharp in the evening, and I make way more stupid mistakes when answering questions, which then starts to spiral my imposter syndrome bc I'll come out of the block with like 40% correct. Yes, sometimes things come up and you just need to slog and it's the only way to get all your Qs in, but really try to avoid doing Qs at night.
2024.04.10 04:03 lilaamuu moistening herbs? i feel like a dry alien from meme 🤢
hi, i been fighting dry eye syndrome for few years but lately i got dry mouth and dry nose so basically all mucous membranes. eyedrops, moistening toothpaste and salty nose spray don't help much.
things i already tried: drinking lots of water, eating lots of goji berries, eating chicken or beef liver every week, methyl+adenosyl b12, magnesium + potassium, high quality fish oil, flaxseed oil, white chrysanthemum tea, ginseng, licorice, linden, marshmallow root, fruits, veggies, stopping dairy... idk i just feel dry af and doctors don't know why this is. i use saliva promoting toothpaste and it doesn't help. but this dryness gets much worse during sleep! and gets better when i wake up. maybe this is a side effect of antidepressants i've been on few years back for sleep. they were causing this in the moment but i don't take any meds as for now.
edit: second possible cause is my liver fluke infection that i described in this comment
i do sometimes take horse chestnut and grape seed extract though for varicocele vein issue. both are very astringent and i think they dry me out too, but i still can't figure out if astringent herbs bring dryness or not?? like regular black tea, for example? some people say "yes, of course", others say that it's not herbs fault 🤷♂️ i tried making all teas using milk instead of water but i still had dryness.. i don't do caffeine daily tho, only occasionally. i don't smoke nor drink alcohol.
i remember someone said Rehmannia is useful for dry eyes, i might try that but it's rare where i live, almost unheard of. but i can order Rehmannia glutinosa root. just not sure if it's Yin deficiency anymore! any chance any of you had same experience as me with such dryness? would appreciate if you share 🥺 thanks everyone.
submitted by lilaamuu to herbalism [link] [comments]
things i already tried: drinking lots of water, eating lots of goji berries, eating chicken or beef liver every week, methyl+adenosyl b12, magnesium + potassium, high quality fish oil, flaxseed oil, white chrysanthemum tea, ginseng, licorice, linden, marshmallow root, fruits, veggies, stopping dairy... idk i just feel dry af and doctors don't know why this is. i use saliva promoting toothpaste and it doesn't help. but this dryness gets much worse during sleep! and gets better when i wake up. maybe this is a side effect of antidepressants i've been on few years back for sleep. they were causing this in the moment but i don't take any meds as for now.
edit: second possible cause is my liver fluke infection that i described in this comment
i do sometimes take horse chestnut and grape seed extract though for varicocele vein issue. both are very astringent and i think they dry me out too, but i still can't figure out if astringent herbs bring dryness or not?? like regular black tea, for example? some people say "yes, of course", others say that it's not herbs fault 🤷♂️ i tried making all teas using milk instead of water but i still had dryness.. i don't do caffeine daily tho, only occasionally. i don't smoke nor drink alcohol.
i remember someone said Rehmannia is useful for dry eyes, i might try that but it's rare where i live, almost unheard of. but i can order Rehmannia glutinosa root. just not sure if it's Yin deficiency anymore! any chance any of you had same experience as me with such dryness? would appreciate if you share 🥺 thanks everyone.
2024.04.09 16:50 Southern_Bandicoot87 Liver flukes are parasitic flatworms that infect the liver and bile ducts of mammals, including humans
submitted by Southern_Bandicoot87 to u/Southern_Bandicoot87 [link] [comments]
2024.04.08 23:39 071214 New dumb question.. MTS and human pathogens?
 | I have been an avid planted aquarist for years without really utilising snails. I have since acquired and started appreciating two species that are generally regarded as pest snails (in some countries). MTS and Ramshorns are amazing, they are aesthetic (when you get to see the nocturnal MTS) and the ramshorn's are are so active and efficient at algae removal. I regret reading the Wikipedia page on MTS tonight. Are they really something to be avoided as 11 of the trematode parasites carried by MTS are also parasites of humans? Is there any recourse like taking regular de-wormers or something of the sort? submitted by 071214 to PlantedTank [link] [comments] I made this post not to monger any fear, but with the hope of someone more educated than me to explain that keeping MTS is safe. https://preview.redd.it/gin6z9lypbtc1.png?width=954&format=png&auto=webp&s=994a22ec941f9462633612e9b9408b0e76f147b4 |
2024.04.06 02:11 Fickle-Newspaper-548 Head and neck eczema, facial swelling!! any suggestions?
tldr is I have been dealing with facial swelling (close to bee sting allergy range) and face and neck rash/eczema, crusty scalp border, my skin won't stop leaking clear fluid and some slightly yellow that dries grainy. My face swells overnight and (sometimes) de-swells throughout the day, but the skin inflammation doesn't stop. I'm a 23yr old female, and I feel so debilitated.
I've seen a few doctors, 1 rheumatologist, 2 derms, and 1 allergist, tried to test a lot of possibilities but I feel like I'm running out of options. Does anyone have any suggestions on possibilities I can explore with my doctor or just general tips on how to manage? whether you read this whole long post or not, thanks for reading! It's easy to feel alone and I really appreciate any support.
things i'm getting to right now:
the sun feels good, I try to take some time in the sun
i like exercise, recently only been doing hardcore treadmill walking at home because of social fears from everything.
submitted by Fickle-Newspaper-548 to eczema [link] [comments]
I've seen a few doctors, 1 rheumatologist, 2 derms, and 1 allergist, tried to test a lot of possibilities but I feel like I'm running out of options. Does anyone have any suggestions on possibilities I can explore with my doctor or just general tips on how to manage? whether you read this whole long post or not, thanks for reading! It's easy to feel alone and I really appreciate any support.
things i'm getting to right now:
- ask derm about head and neck eczema and to be prick tested for malessezia, also ask her about weeping eczema, which I though was plasma but since it's been so long with no healing I'm not so sure anymore. for that, hoping for some type of antibiotic which might help with the full rash at least
- switching to vaseline (lanolin might be making things worse for me? I haven't reacted well to lanolin creams in the past, and I only recently found out that aquaphor contains some)
The whole long story.....
dec 2020- front neck hives the next morning after a home-cooked special dinner. Hives eventually accumulated into rash.
- got food allergy blood test, found out I was allergic to sesame (although it was really quite low?). Cut out sesame. Neck continues to have rash/dryness/swelling of rash area
- still have front neck eczema, manageable but always a little dry, a little red
- right temple gets an insane dry eczema patch that eventually gets infected, I use muprocin and I think a round of antibiotics to clear it up
- neck rash still there, really hard to manage with all the cold weather starting up etc etc, very red and dry and irritated all the time, I began trying to manage it more with a prescribed topical steroid
- began to get bouts of small rashes popping up on my face from time to time
- one day woke up with eyelids very swollen (like cried for 2 days straight swollen) and red and a bit of raised red on my cheek. it subsided throughout the day, and I think the rashes would come and go over the course of days
- a week later from 3., I wake up with my entire face swollen, most noticeable eyelids and cheeks, and skin is very red/rashy and sensitive/irritated, with hives down my chest and back, in my right elbow crease. I immediately scheduled a doctor's appt., where I was told to hydrate a lot with creams and aquaphor, and take a mix of allegra, zyrtec, and benadryl until I could get to the derm. My face skin's texture felt very thick and heavy. the swelling would go down slightly (but usually not all the way or sometimes not at all) throughout the day. In the morning, my face would swell back up. It didn't feel like any of the antihistamines were really doing much.
- I see the derm around 5 days later. She doesn't have anything to say to me except that I should see an allergist. She prescribes me another type of steroid ointment and protopic (tacrolimus), and tells me that if that doesn't clear up the rash in a week, I should call her and she'll prescribe me oral steroids. She didn't refer me to an allergist and I didn't feel like it was in my means at the time (I was at university at the time and everything felt very hard, with school and dealing with school insurance as I was not in my home state).
- My skin clears up; it feels like a miracle. the swelling stops and the old skin goops off in grainy glumps with the binder of aquaphor, leaving me with baby soft skin. in the cold weather, little blood flow to my face allowed no redness. Aside from the burning pain you have to sit through during the first couple uses of protopic, the side effects of protopic were extreme heat sensitivity for me and of course with that being unable to drink; I learned to love the cold weather after that. Showers were hard because all the blood would rush back to those places were I had rashed out the worst, leaving me red, hot and blotchy. It was hard to exercise because of this at first too.
- Years go by with me using protopic. I hoped the face swelling rash breakout was a fluke. Weening off was hard, first of all because I noticed that if I went more than a couple days not using it, my eyelid (specifically my left) and some rash areas would start to pop up on my face. So I used it to keep those in check. Second of all, there was a lot of pain involved (because if I was unsuccessful and felt that I really needed to use it again, then I'd have to go through that burning pain of starting tacrolimus again).
- I was gradually able to work out without becoming too hot-flushed as cause of tacrolimus vs just normal exertion, and I learned that if I stayed away from certain alcohols and mixes I could usually keep the heat flushing tied to that to a minimum. However, I really began to feel weighed down by the side effects of tacrolimus and the fact that I couldn't seem to stop using it. Still, I would use it as needed and even on other rashes I would get from time to time, mainly back of neck, chest, shoulders, and elbow crease eczema. Aside from my face, it wasn't as effective on the rest of my body. I'm not sure if it was because the rashes themselves felt different (composition wise, and in the way they would flake off? I'm not sure if they were really any different or not). but anyways, I did constantly have some type of eczema on one of those other parts of my body, that would never go away fully, even with ointment usage (tacrolimus, topical steroid) for weeks. Even on my face, sometimes my eyelids would get a bit swollen and the sensitive skin inflammation would pop up even with consistent tacrolimus use. hot flushing did occur very randomly from time to time as well.
- if I don't use tacrolimus the face swelling comes back. I tested this by accident when I forgot my almost empty tube of it before going on a trip, and my eyelids (my learned hallmark of when everything's about to go down) start the swelling+inflamed sensitivity.
- I'm back in my home state now. i go to the doctor about some wrist pain I've been having, with no specific cause or injury. she notices all the arm and neck rashes I have, as well as my flakey crusty ears. She points out the (weakly) symmetric nature of my rashes tells me it might be autoimmune related, sends me to get all the basic blood panels. I have some allergies I knew about, and a positive ANA, but the titer is on the low end at 80. She refers me to a rheumatologist.
- -brief interlude-My inner elbow eczema is flaring up badly at this point, so I try an elimination diet of nightshades and garlic. I don't think it really helped, it was more just me being conscious of it that helped it a bit? Anyways, the eczema could never fully go into remission it seemed.
- the rheumatologist hears my history, and I do more blood tests to test out autoimmune more extensively. The tests all come back normal, and the allergist says has no idea what is wrong with me. In regards to the rash aspect, he asked me if I've ever considered whether it was eczema? I was a little dumbstruck in the moment, because it felt so rudimentary-- I thought we were already well past that point of understanding, like I thought that we both already understood, yes, I have eczema on my arms and parts of my neck. I was a little shocked that he felt the need to mention that, as I had already told him all of my past history with rashes, eczema, and prescriptions. He refers me to a derm at my request.
- It's october 2023. I'm going on a trip. I'm out of tacrolimus, and I request more from my home doctor. she ignores my request, and I go on the trip fine. I had been slowing and limiting my use naturally because my tube was almost done anyways, so I figured it would be ok. After the 6hr plane ride, I noticed that my face skin was very dry and textured, and getting a little red. I assumed it was because of the plane's uber filtered air, and quickly set to my usual routine of lots of aquaphor (a normal nightly thing for me). I was having trouble - the rash on my face (cheeks, eyelids, the usual) was textured and raised and red, and not going away. It wasn't really evident what made it worse. At this point I start taking claritin to try to help. 2 weeks of this, until I wake up with a very similar occurrence as that first swelling moment in 2021 - entire face swollen like a bee sting allergy, skin rash/textured, hives down my back. In addition to the claritin, I'm taking benadryl and extra strength ibuprofen. In a last ditch effort, I get the lowest dose topical steroid at the store. It pretty much clears up both the swelling and rash over the course of the next few days, except for some little patches that refuse to go away, even after the next 2 weeks.
- It's months later since that trip. I still did not have any tacrolimus, an ending use of hydrocortisone after 2 weeks (standard I was told) didn't work, as the rash spots on my face kept coming back and I'd need to reapply. I was getting very concerned about the long term use of hydrocortisone and even my prior tacrolimus use, and the fact that I could not shake these random rash patches + the ones that popped up all over my body led me to consider TSW. Regardless of whether I had TSW or not, I decided that it was time to ween off use of hydrocortisone on my face, as I've heard of all the harm and risks. I followed a similar schedule as (here), and took b complex + taurine supplements that may help with the redness throughout the process.
- Even with the gradual stop, my skin was not taking it. It felt painful to have to put it through so much stress, lay on the steroid again, and then repeat the process (talking about the weening off) Eventually as I got to the true slow down, of trying to miss 3 days of hydrocortisone use, i was really feeling like the hydrocortisone application wasn't even worth it anymore, and just continued my stopped usage hoping that the rash that would start on the 2nd day and increase by the 3rd/4th would sort itself out with my potentially more equipped skin.
- Over weeks and weeks, the rash just kept getting worse until I woke up with a swollen face again. It wasn't to the point of bee sting allergy swelling, but enough to make me look like a completely different person to my mom (primarily eyelids, under eye area, cheeks). My skin hurt, as it was inflamed all the time, and all the fluid retention in my eyelids made me feel fatigued all the time. My neck started with hives and spots of rash.
- interlude ll here -- I started another elimination diet that focused on chemical intolerances - namely salicylates and amines (the FID Program in the Eczema Detox book), and even slow introduction and monitoring my symptoms, keeping a log, it was unclear whether it really played any influence. I tried covering my hands before bed, wrapping my arms.... it didn't work to stop my night itching.
- there were some portions on my face (the stickler spots on my face that refused to leave during hydrocortisone use) that immediately began weeping when I weened off the hydrocortisone. I wasn't sure if it was weeping in the infected way, or the healing/plasma way. As the days went on, my neck rashes seemed to get bigger. It made me more cold sensitive, since I would constantly have this chill/tingling from the dryness at the back of my neck (even drenched in aquaphor). My sleep began to get disrupted, as now I would fully wake up multiple times throughout the night from scratching.
- My derm appointment finally arrived. The derm took a quick look at my face, neck, and arms, and said I should see an allergist. Then perscribed me opzelura for my neck and elbow creases, after I had told her about my rough relationship with previous prescription drugs and how I felt slapped by the temporary solutions and dependencies, and how I only really scratch in my sleep, meaning my hands get all over the place (which might be bad with opzelura based on its instructions). At this point, my elbow eczema didn't even feel like a concern to me, and I was really tired how every doctor I saw kept averting my concern of facial swelling+rash by only referring to my eczema. She said that in the meantime, until I saw an allergist, I should try doubling or tripling claritin. After some reminding she referred me to an allergist.
- I gave my allergist the rundown, and gave him copies of all the bloodwork I had done thus far. He gave me a brochure for dupilumab. I kept trying to push the conversation back to my facial swelling concerns. he scheduled me for a prick test for environmental allergies (which I had done a blood test for and gave him a copy of) and sent out another blood test for a few other markers that he said I hadn't tested for yet (when I tried to ask what they were he just looked confused, said, for your... and pointed up to his face. I clarified, "what do they check for" and he mumbled something about liver and kidney.) as well as the environmental allergies blood test (again).
- The next appointment (for prick test) was weird. My blood test results had come in, and he told me I was quite allergic to dust and mold, and a few tree pollens. The thing is, we were already aware of all of this, because it was in the blood tests that I had done prior and given him a copy of, and we had already discussed it. He was pronouncing it as if he had found the root. I did the prick test, and it showed similar results to my blood tests. To the allergist, it seemed like my case was closed. He asked me a bunch of questions about my environment (which he had already asked and I answered as he took notes, in my first appointment) and told me that if I cover my bed and pillow with protectors then my symptoms would clear up by at least 25% in one go. The thing is, I already told him and reiterated that my mattress and pillow were covered (My family was very careful with airborne allergens and dust mites as my brother had childhood asthma). Regardless, the allergist kept going in circles and basically just told me to take some claritin, close the windows, cover the mattress/pillow, get an air filter, stay away from cats and dogs, and I should be fine. You know the story by now, these were all things already at play in my environment (my room has a hepa filter, I don't have pets, my window is never open, I've tried antihistamines), and I had reiterated all of this to him. After I emphasized how debilitating my skin was, how bad it hurt, caused brain fog, made it hard to do normal things like shower, his only other option was applying for dupixent (dupilumab). I did consider it after he gave me the brochure during my first appt. I had concerns though, as there have been an increasing amount of accounts of users of dupixent developing head and neck eczema, something tied to increased sensitivity to malessezia.
- Currently, I'm trying the allergist's recommendations. I washed/steamed everything in my room and even got new protectors for my mattress and pillow. I'm double dosing claritin for 2 weeks. So far, the swelling that comes overnight has only increased, and the neck rash/eczema spots have evolved into 1 large rash enveloping my neck and up around my jaw. It seems to be only increasing, trying to creep down my collarbones, chest, and shoulders. Yesterday night I woke to my ears and especially earlobes swollen and leaking clear fluid. Everything is constantly dry and red, painful, and things are weeping or feel wet all the time now with the night itching. I feel so gross, like I smell like plasma or sickness all the time (this sort of metallic smell), and there are constantly grimy skin cells gooping off of me, and clear or yellow fluid leaking from me. I've scheduled a derm appointment to check for infection and malessezia sensitivity.
the sun feels good, I try to take some time in the sun
i like exercise, recently only been doing hardcore treadmill walking at home because of social fears from everything.
2024.04.05 18:16 Ricosss Hypercaloric low-carbohydrate high-fat diet protects against the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in obese mice in contrast to isocaloric Western diet (Pub: 2024-03-20)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2024.1366883/full
Objective: Obesity and metabolic complications, such as type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), are one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. The major role of high sugar and carbohydrate consumption rather than caloric intake in obesity and NAFLD pathophysiology remains a subject of debate. A low-carbohydrate but high-fat diet (LCHFD) has shown promising results in obesity management, but its effects in preventing NAFLD need to be detailed. This study aims to compare the effects of a LCHFD with a high-fat high-sugar obesogenic Western diet (WD) on the progression of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Methods: Male C57BL/6J mice were initially fed a WD for 10 weeks. Subsequently, they were either switched to a LCHFD or maintained on the WD for an additional 6 weeks. Hepatic effects of the diet were explored by histological staining and RT-qPCR.
Results: After the initial 10 weeks WD feeding, LCHF diet demonstrated effectiveness in halting weight gain, maintaining a normal glucose tolerance and insulin levels, in comparison to the WD-fed mice, which developed obesity, glucose intolerance, increased insulin levels and induced NAFLD. In the liver, LCHFD mitigated the accumulation of hepatic triglycerides and the increase in Fasn relative gene expression compared to the WD mice. Beneficial effects of the LCHFD occurred despite a similar calorie intake compared to the WD mice.
Conclusion: Our results emphasize the negative impact of a high sugacarbohydrate and lipid association for obesity progression and NAFLD development. LCHFD has shown beneficial effects for NAFLD management, notably improving weight management, and maintaining a normal glucose tolerance and liver health.
submitted by Ricosss to ketoscience [link] [comments]
Objective: Obesity and metabolic complications, such as type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), are one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. The major role of high sugar and carbohydrate consumption rather than caloric intake in obesity and NAFLD pathophysiology remains a subject of debate. A low-carbohydrate but high-fat diet (LCHFD) has shown promising results in obesity management, but its effects in preventing NAFLD need to be detailed. This study aims to compare the effects of a LCHFD with a high-fat high-sugar obesogenic Western diet (WD) on the progression of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Methods: Male C57BL/6J mice were initially fed a WD for 10 weeks. Subsequently, they were either switched to a LCHFD or maintained on the WD for an additional 6 weeks. Hepatic effects of the diet were explored by histological staining and RT-qPCR.
Results: After the initial 10 weeks WD feeding, LCHF diet demonstrated effectiveness in halting weight gain, maintaining a normal glucose tolerance and insulin levels, in comparison to the WD-fed mice, which developed obesity, glucose intolerance, increased insulin levels and induced NAFLD. In the liver, LCHFD mitigated the accumulation of hepatic triglycerides and the increase in Fasn relative gene expression compared to the WD mice. Beneficial effects of the LCHFD occurred despite a similar calorie intake compared to the WD mice.
Conclusion: Our results emphasize the negative impact of a high sugacarbohydrate and lipid association for obesity progression and NAFLD development. LCHFD has shown beneficial effects for NAFLD management, notably improving weight management, and maintaining a normal glucose tolerance and liver health.
2024.03.31 15:32 ImplodingMirage Antichrist Decoded: Mosquitoes = Moss/Mold/"Yeast" + Qui/"Key"+ Toe/Tow/Drag/Dragon (Tower) = The "Key" is the Yeast/mRNA and 5G Towers.; "Musky Toes" = Musky/Moldy + Toes/Toenails = Toenail Fungus (Yeast) "Musky Toes" = Musky/Elon Musk + Toes/"Iron Toes"; Daniel 2:42-43
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2024.03.30 23:01 ImplodingMirage Antichrist Decoded: Mosquitoes = Moss/Mold/Yeast + Qui/"Key"+ Toe/Tow/Drag/Dragon (Tower) = The "Key" is the Yeast/mRNA and 5G Towers.; "Musky Toes" = Musky/Moldy + Toes/Toenails = Toenail Fungus (Yeast) "Musky Toes" = Musky/Elon Musk + Toes/Iron Toes; Daniel 2:42-43
 | submitted by ImplodingMirage to SATURNSIMULATION [link] [comments] |