fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5563 ]

[ SECRET POST #5563 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5563 ⌋

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So I took a day off this weekend to give myself time to relax, clean house, work in my garden, and do my taxes. I'm trying to hold off spending bunches of money because I also have property taxes to pay; half this year's equals 3/4 of a month's pay.

I went to put my hens away and one is showing signs of egg peritonitis, an infection caused by either an ectopic egg, or an egg that bursts inside a hen before she can lay: in obvious pain, crouched on the ground, with a swollen lower abdomen and her butt caked in yellow yolk colored chicken shit.

All my hens will be five in June of this year, but I don't know that this one will make it. The prognosis for this kind of infection is a week tops, more usually one or two days, and the hail Mary treatment is heavy duty antibiotics and surgery. My last hen with this problem was seven or so; she laid a ball of pus and died less than a day later, before I could get her to the vet.

My vet, who was not a bird expert but kept chickens herself and once saved this particular hen's life, switched to a different practice 2 hours away by public transit a few weeks ago, and I didn't know my hen was sick until it was too late to call anyone for an appointment until tomorrow.

That's assuming her new boss will let her treat birds and that she's working tomorrow and has an available appointment and the hen doesn't die tonight or before I can bring her in.

The only specialty bird vet in my area is a racist shitheel who called Michelle Obama a gorilla and, the only time I brought a hen in, said "I hate this breed," told me she was dying, and that "I can wring her neck for you right now." The appointment cost $250, vs $46 for my usual vet, and three years later, that hen is still alive.

Also I got chicken shit all over my sweater and critters (probably possums, maybe a raccoon) keep digging up my raised beds, my cat is ill and has lost a ton of weight and fur, and I haven't been sleeping well.

I just wanted a relaxing weekend off, ffs.

I’m so sorry this is happening anon! :( Your hen and you are in my thoughts!

(And JFC that racist vet is absolutely horrible, and deserves to lose his practice/job for his behavior towards your hen!!)

holy crap what an asshole vet

Part1 : "There's no excuse to still read Harry Potter when you have Discworld and Earthsea!" For the love of god stop saying this. I'd love to find a good, author-who-isn't-a-shitbag alternative to HP, but I hate Terry Pratchett's style of humor and the first two Earthsea books bored me to tears.

Part 2: I liked the Percy Jackson books until a friend passive-aggressively guilted me out of it. "It's okay if you like them, they're just not for me because I've studied enough ~real~ Greek mythology, so I know the books are lazy derivative interpretations of the myths. Like, can we get an Aphrodite who isn't an Alpha Bitch, please?" PJO Aphrodite is not even an Alpha Bitch. Some of her kids are, and they get called out for it by another one of her kids for using their mom's reputation as an excuse to say being that way is in their nature. This is canon. Friend still somehow got to me and I can't enjoy the books anymore.

For Part 1: I understand this. I’ve never read the books, but I’ve seen all the movies and still enjoy them. I hate JKR, and will never pay a cent to support any of her new endeavors. But am I really hurting anyone by watching movies I already bought before JKR went Mask Off? I don’t think so. Same with you continuing to read books you already own. And if you don’t like any of the series people consider better alternatives to HP, then that’s completely valid, and you shouldn’t have to make yourself read something you don’t like. I personally love Terry Pratchett and The Earthsea Cycle, but they’re not for everyone. And that’s okay.

And for Part 2: I’m sorry your friend ruined the Percy Jackson books for you with her obnoxious passive-aggressive attitude! I honestly really don’t like purists like this. I love mythology, and Greek mythology was my gateway into that passion. But that doesn’t mean every work that uses mythological figures and stories are automatically lazy and derivative just because they’re not 100% true to myth. Especially a book series for young adults that’s definitely not going to have the gods be true to myth in some ways, especially all the rapey ways. PJO is a great book series that’s absolutely not lazy and derivative! It’s fun, has great characters, and uses Greek myth in creative ways. Some works can be slightly annoying to people familiar to myths if they get the stories and characters completely wrong. But I really only get that annoyance if the work was already bad, honestly. I’m pretty lax about things not being completely faithful if they still use the myths in interesting ways, and are enjoyable.

Oh please keep reading Rick Riordan if his writing does it for you. I discovered PJO as a full-on adult and when I recommend the books to kids, I tell them first and foremost that I really enjoy them myself. There are so many interpretations of Greek mythology ranging from very serious to very silly.

Yeah like... not even the ancient Greeks agreed on everything.

I have hardly slept this week due to stress because in spite of it being risky, I scheduled my first vaccine shot for tomorrow. (Short version: I'd like to attend my birthday con this year since it's happening again, case numbers are low in my region - and if I schedule my shots just right, even if my body can't produce/maintain antibodies (that being why I didn't bother before), I'll be at about whatever peak effectiveness I can muster up right when the con starts and can go back to extreme social distancing afterwards.)

Of course there is a possibility that I won't have recovered from the side effects by the time it's time for me to get a second shot, which means I probably shouldn't. Which means I'd have put myself through it for nothing. And if I get GI-related side effects it'll almost certainly kick off another round of my increasingly severe symptom flares - the last of which I suffered 3 years ago and still haven't fully come back from.

Then on top of tension making all my usual health issues worse - I have a nasty stress headache at the moment on top of the gut nonsense, and my jaw aches from being clenched in pain/nervousness - my body apparently decided now would be a great time to bleed again, when the last time that happened was New Year's Eve (also great timing, but at least I wasn't planning on going anywhere).

I almost wish I still had a Valium prescription. It did nothing for the pain, but it kept me from being anxious about the pain because I didn't care about anything at all and I just lay around not doing anything. Which was why I stopped taking it almost immediately.

[Warning: Petty venting]

I am annoyed at electricity this week.

My laptop battery has given up the ghost, so the computer crashes if the power plug is even lightly disturbed. I usually use it in bed to listen to audiobooks when I fall asleep. So the battery dying just encourages me to keep working from bed all day, which I know isn't very good for me since my bedroom gets very little natural light.

At the same time, my car battery is on the fritz. The car wouldn't start today until I charged it for about half an hour. When I started driving, the locks kept clicking, which probably indicates some kind of deeper electronic issue. I'm pretty lucky in that I don't need to commute, but it still sucks for driving to the supermarket, which is several miles away with no public transit.

Annoyingly, my roommates are out of town for the next two weeks, so taking the car to be serviced is significantly more of a pain than it would normally be. And the car being iffy makes repairing the computer harder too.

I’m having a lot of issues with my circadian rhythm, it’s all out of whack! I called my step-father(who graduated from medical school before he found another career he was more passionate about, and is thus the closest thing my family has to doctor we don’t have to pay to get an educated opinion from on medical issues) to ask what he thinks the issue might be, and he said I basically don’t have a circadian rhythm at this point. I don’t know if that’s completely true, or if it was a joking exaggeration, because he has a silly sense of humor. But my sleep schedule is so messed up I could honestly believe it. It helps that I still need to do a lot more research about this subject myself to fully understand it.

If I sleep at all, it’s so far from being at night that it’s ridiculous. I haven’t slept for more than 4 hours at a time in quite a while. This circadian rhythm abnormality started to become a problem in 2018, and it’s gotten significantly worse in the last few years. Before I could push through and make myself stay up all day so I could sleep at night sometimes, but it was a constant fight with frequent slip-ups. And the sleep I got at night was still not great, with my already existing insomnia making sleeping to 5 feel like sleeping in. Now, it’s much more difficult to push through the exhaustion during the day to keep my schedule somewhat ideal. And it doesn’t matter if my sleep schedule is in the ideal state of stay up during the day-sleep at night routine, because now sleeping in till 3 feels like sleeping in. It also doesn’t matter if I had managed to keep my schedule in check for weeks or months, one slip-up of falling asleep during the day will ruin everything and put me back to square one.

I’m taking some medication for my depression and anxiety that used to help me sleep through the entire night, and it was single-handedly keeping my insomnia at bay. It’s obviously not helping as much anymore, but it’s still the reason I get any sleep at all. And it’s never instantaneous sleep, because I always have to go through rituals and fidgeting. I never fall asleep sooner than an hour after I’ve taken my medication.

It helps that I work from home, so I’m not risking losing my job over this. But it’s obviously still putting a damper on doing other things I enjoy and spending time with other people a lot of the time. Even when I’m there, I feel like a zombie. It’s really messing with my mental state, and worsening my depression. I’ve gone to an actual doctor about it last week, and she has some ideas, but wants me to do bloodwork first. Which is fine, and I have an appointment for that on Friday. But until she gets the results back, she says she can’t be exactly sure what the problem is, because it could be any number of things.

I also have anemia, which I was diagnosed with in 2015. It honestly didn’t feel like a problem for a while, and I forgot I was anemic sometimes. But it’s very likely that it’s a real problem now, if some of the previous bloodwork I’ve done in the last couple of years is any indication. And I’ve been taking beef liver pills for it by recommendation from my general physician as an alternative to iron supplements after I had a bad reaction to them in the form of splitting headaches. But my physician didn’t seem satisfied with the results from the liver pills last time I saw her. She never told me before that there were other kinds of iron supplements than the one she initially prescribed, and there’s a couple that aren’t as strong as that one. So I’m starting one of those now instead of the liver pills, and hopefully it helps. My step-father has told me that my anemia could be a cause for my circadian rhythm problems. But until I get the results from the bloodwork and a possible plan of action from the doctor, or unless the new iron supplements start helping, I’m still stuck living this way.

Sorry for the long-ass vent! For some reason not getting enough sleep, and my circadian rhythm being out of whack makes it hard for me to focus on anything else. I’ve banned myself from bringing it up in conversation with anyone, because once I start talking about it, it feels like it’s hard to stop. As evidenced by this comment, obviously. I don’t want to talk people’s ear off about it, and complain all the time. So I basically just usually angst about it to myself.

I'm sorry you're struggling, anon. Sleep struggles are horrible, I know that first hand.

I have no idea if you're dealing with a full-on circadian rhythm disorder or not, but I highly recommend you look into the possibility. The main ones, that I'm aware of, are Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder (where your natural sleep and wake times are significantly later than what is deemed "normal"), Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder (where your natural sleep-wake rhythm is longer than 24 hours, causing you to not have a consistent sleep-wake rhythm because you continuously sleep and wake up a bit later day by day), and Irregular Sleep-Wake Disorder (where you sleep in multiple bouts per 24-hour period but are unable to consistently sleep in one solid span like most people).

Based on your description, the last one sounds the most likely of the bunch. However, it's also the one I know the least about. I have DSPD myself, which is why I know about circadian rhythm disorders in the first place.

The thing is, if you do have a circadian rhythm disorder, it's important that you know about it, because they're genetic, and pretty much impossible to "fix." One may be able to manage their circadian rhythm disorder, with a carefully tailored approach, but effort, willpower, and "sleep hygiene" alone will absolutely not cut it, no matter how hard you try, so if you do have a CRD, the sooner you know about it the better, so that you can stop pouring all your energy into an unwinable battle. :/

Thank you so much for this reply! It was very helpful and informative, and I could not be more appreciative of the help!

I will definitely look into these, because I hadn’t heard of several of them. And as for the last point, I won’t know just yet, but I’ll brace myself for that possibility. Part of me was already afraid that I would never go back to normal, that this might just be my new normal. So while it won’t be great news if I find out that’s what I have, I won’t have been completely unprepared for the possibility.

Thanks again!

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[ SECRET POST #5563 ]

Late venting

Pet illness and yuck cw

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