Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
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Son started having trouble breathing on Saturday around noon. Nurse line said take him to urgent care, urgent care doc looked at him for just thirty seconds before saying "Take him to the emergency room. Don't bother with the local ones, go straight to the children's hospital, they'll just transfer him anyway." Then we had a very busy four hours at the children's ER where everyone was very serious and urgent and we've been in the PICU ever since.
So, not well.
Thinking of you all. Let us know if there's anything we can do.
Honestly, if you have some interesting longform articles that aren't paywalled, I could use something to take my mind off the present.
No clue what you're into, and the links in the "reading" folder of my bookmarks are all dead, but grabbed links to a few collections of long articles. Haven't vetted them myself.
https://www.newyorker.com/archive
& a couple of youtube channels which go in depth and which are long & calming.
https://youtube.com/@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles?si=bMdNUYd6KTEUp1up
https://youtube.com/@ChristianWilliamsYachting?si=z7kFysGzN0CLMvjF
Should have some direct links to articles come the morning. Here's hoping you have some good news by then.
The news is an asthma diagnosis, which will be very manageable now that we know about it. He should be home day after tomorrow; it's a shame he'll miss Halloween, though.
So glad it is going to be manageable.
First time I heard of asthma, it was the kid brother of my friend and he had to go to hospital a lot but that was back in the early 80s. Then I went to a new school and seemingly everyone had asthma, so I imagined they'd all be having emergencies.
Accidentally landed on your profile when trying to reply & happy to see that Violent Femmes quote :)
Safe home. As for Hallowe'en, think you've had the scariest of all time!
Shit man. Any update? Did they at least figure out the cause?
Bronchiolitis brought on by rhinoenterovirus (aka. the common cold) intersecting with dormant, previously undiagnosed asthma.
I’ve experienced exactly the same with my son. He was in hospital for about two weeks but is now absolutely fine.
Really scary and distressing time, I still get wobbly when thinking about it… but the doctors and nurses will look after him.
I hope you’re doing okay. At least as okay as you can be. Don’t forget to eat and sleep yourself.
Wow, two weeks? I should count myself lucky. We're looking at three full days, four nights in the PICU plus the half a day spent in the ER.
Eating, I've got no appetite. Plus he's not allowed to eat or drink so I feel like I can't do it in front of him. A neighbor brought soup in a thermos that I can take swigs of throughout the day. Sleep at least I'm keeping up with, though I'm exhausted and distracted all the time.
Thanks for your kind words.
Hey man, it's been a few weeks and your post has been on my mind. How's the kiddo holding up? How are you holding up? Hope all is well.
Out and happy. He'll be on flovent for a couple years as a preventative, but no known triggers beyond respiratory infection. Sad he missed trick-or-treating but no lasting damage — fully covered by insurance.
Thanks for checking in.
I'm so glad and thankful to hear that. All the best.
I’ve been living with chronic asthma my whole life, I was born premature, 7 months specifically (also 10 days in a incubator), and ever since my lungs are terrible. When I was a young child my parents had to take me to the emergency room constantly because of asthma attacks and often I had to stay at the hospital under constant supervision. What I know is how it feels to not be able to breathe, but I can’t imagine how my parents felt. I hope your son is better now.
I miss my mum. She's been dead a few years now, and was elderly and in poor health. And I am a grown up. But sometimes I just want to be able to lay down next to her again and feel safe. I really miss her.
I will be ok. Just needed to tell someone. And if I tell anyone here in my real world they will want to make it better or something and it can't be. It just is.
I'm on my first vacation since 2015. Decided to treat myself to three nights at the ocean and the weather was perfect. I stood in the waves and just took it all in. Then I took a scenic train ride on a steam train and it was magical. No complaints.
Try and sneak more vacations in going forward if possible :) everyone needs a vacation
Not so great. My Grandma passed away a few days ago due to breast cancer. I got to see her and say what I wanted to say to her about a month ago but it doesn't make the hurt go away.
🫂 It's been just over a month since my grandma passed away as well. It's just so rough and especially cancer sucks, I'm really sorry for your loss.
I'm so sorry.
Magical, which would take too long to explain, and am off on an unexpected road trip later in the week with some new friends.
Feeling good, which is... weird but very welcome.
The fairies are real, people. The fairies are real.
Whatever you've had I hope you're sharing!
Glad things are going well 🙂
My niece, who disappeared months ago (she lives off grid, in an anarchist community), has reappeared. I'm going to spend the day with her.
Apart from that, I'm using my vacations to help my partner in her craft business to prepare a fan convention.
{screaming intensifies}
There is a guy on my degree course who actually made me consider crashing my car, because that seemed preferable to having to keep tolerating him. Given that I'm not generally prone to such thoughts, that says something about the severity of my reaction to his behaviour. I have met lots of arrogant people, and I can cope with those. I have met lots of stupid people, and I can cope with those. But the combination of this guy's incredible arrogance and his profound incompetence at virtually every task is having a severe impact on my mental health, in large part because he's a team member on a group project and I'm the team leader, which means I can't ignore him and it's me who has to fix his many, many fuck-ups so that the whole project isn't derailed.
When I assign him a task that is actually within his abilities (and where it won't matter much if the output isn't great), he refuses to do it because he considers it beneath him. He insists on doing something important and central to the project, and literally won't stop doing it when I tell him to stop (and it's not like I have the option to physically stop him). When he fucks it up, which he does every single time, he argues with me when I tell him to do it again and do it properly. Repeat two or three times until he's actually done it right. Or, you know, until I give up and just fix it myself, because that often takes less time than arguing with him.
On top of this, he constantly interrupts me to try to tell me how to do the things I'm working on, because he's under the erroneous impression that he knows more than me. He doesn't. We come from different subject backgrounds prior to starting this degree, and in short, the tasks I'm working on for the project relate to my subject background, not his. A particular task he was lecturing me about today is one I was graded over 95% for last year. The way he was telling me to do it was flat out wrong, and I had to be ruder than I like to be in order to get him to back off, because "no, I got this" wasn't cutting it.
I am not the only one who is frustrated. 30% of the class have expressed annoyance or anger. One fellow student bought noise cancelling headphones for the sole purpose of not having to listen to him. Pretty sure he was a contributing factor in another student dropping out. The others are probably just too polite or shy to say anything. But we are currently teacher-less due to an unforeseen medical emergency, so largely in an "independent study" phase, which makes it difficult to get help.
So there is screaming into the void.
As you are limited in your ability to appeal to higher ups, I'd gear up to axing him.
Be careful to document EVERYTHING, and ideally to give him some research task or other discrete element out of the main project & which you can attribute solely to him. If he bangs it out of the park you'll have to just be glad he has strengths after all.
These assignments are supposed to train students how to work with those we do not get along with, but sometimes that necessitates not letting an obstructive individual have the opportunities to be obstructive.
I have already been documenting everything, since that is part of the assignment. We get graded individually based on contributions, so we have to keep records of who did what. So at least he can't fuck up my grades.
We also have to do individual research. He won't do it because he thinks it's pointless. This is definitely contributing to his lack of competence, as he's not learning techniques that he should be. This is a very practical skills based degree, so learning skills by looking at what professionals have done is a big part of it, and he literally won't do it because "you don't learn to drive by looking at the history of the car" (he can't drive either). It makes it challenging to assign him something at the edge of the project. The thing I assigned him to last week was intended to be that - it needs to be done, but it's a part that will work well whether it looks great or crap. And this was the thing he refused to do.
So he's probably on the way to being axed of his own accord. It's just terribly frustrating in the meantime. I've always thought I could work with anybody, even those I don't get along with. I can find common ground to get along with almost everybody. Turns out having a couple of shared interests with this guy isn't enough. He thinks he's the main character and everybody else are just NPCs.
Not too shabby. Weather is cooling off, days getting shorter, I love it. Work is good. Hired some random cat off the street a couple weeks ago, and while he may not be the most productive member of the team, he's fitting right in.
chuck was adopted on wednesday! he’s doing well with his new family. i’m back down to two dogs in the house, and we’ll probably stay that way for a couple of months.
the weekend was full of multiple parties including a block party across the street which featured the local professional wrestling troupe. they’re always very entertaining!
i’ve come down with some kind of nose/throat thing, but at least the covid test came back negative. this is the third time i’ve been sick this year, and it hasn’t even gotten chilly here yet. i’m usually one to get sick maybe one a year in the wintertime, so i don’t know what’s got me all outta whack this year.
Share dog pics!
oh right yes that. here’s me with chuck right before i drove him to his new home.
Been trying to contact some of my old college mates after years. It's difficult. Some have changed their contact info or even scraped their social media. Totally understandable.
I managed to talk to one person from our old group. He's been fine, he says. We're meeting for food and drink next week. Let's see how it goes.
Great start of the week, as Martin Luther did his thing tomorrow a few years ago, and for a few years we now had a public holiday for him ;)
Also, after starting to do cardio for the first time since childhood last week, I managed to start again today morning. And surpass last week, running for 4800 meters. I was confused why it was so much brighter, bit but more people around in the morning, till I was reminded later in the day, that DST ended ;)
Hoping this week goes better than last week. The terribleness of it all peaked on Saturday, when I was rudely checking my phone at the funeral of someone who died in a very sudden, tragic way, because my dad was having emergency surgery >1000 miles away.
Losing my mind tbh
Busy week for me so far and I am knackered. Been out and about with work which is nice but it's so tiring being sociable on a Monday, usually I work from home in my pyjamas. Finally got an answer regarding my salary, it's not going down in April after all. I think appealing to my director did it, for a manager she is pretty great.
Performing in a concert on the weekend as well as doing a choral workshop so I will be amazed if I can speak on Sunday. Going to a work conference up north(ish) next week which will be fun. Staying in a relatively posh hotel overnight and cannot wait.
I have 3 days off this week, can't complain! Halloween isn't a big deal here but I took my son out early and got some sweets from the local shops. Not much at all, but he had a cool costume my partner spent 3 days working on. I felt bad taking him out early but we came back home and the rain came down, so we dodged that. Now we are getting some unhealthy fast-food delivered.
I felt so sorry for all the kids yesterday, trick or treating can't be fun when it's tipping down
I'm so busy with my work that I tend to forget to talk more on here 🙃 but other than that I have hope that thing will get better for me. Mentally and financially!
Hope you all are doing ok or better soon.
I'm okay. Home lab is (mostly) humming along nicely. I got a new (to me) car last week which has been a joyous contrast to the half-dead 2002 Taurus I've been dragging along for 2+ years. Work is work. I asked to start working 10's, which my boss signed off on, so I'm pretty happy about that.
I don't know what it is about this year, but I'm struggling to get in the Halloween mood. It's usually my favorite holiday but I'm just not feeling it for some reason.
I'm at an amazing conference right now but feeling introverted at the moment so I'm here instead of interacting with flesh and blood people. :)
Yesterday morning, I woke up to security camera footage of a rat in my basement, right outside my home office. This morning, I checked the traps I set yesterday afternoon -- they were all empty but I discovered a wasp nest under my back deck.
Both problems are manageable but this is not how I wanted to spend my weekend.
