darkoshi

The SC House of Representatives today passed a horrible bill, #4624, banning gender affirming care for minors and requiring teachers to "out" trans children to their parents. It still has to pass the Senate.

Per Ballotpedia:
South Carolina has a Republican trifecta. The Republican Party controls the office of governor and both chambers of the state legislature.
The House has a Republican majority of 88-36 (71% Rep, 29% Dem).
The Senate has a Republican majority of 30-16 (65% Rep, 35% Dem).

Also according to Ballotpedia, those majorities increased in both 2020 and 2022.
In 2020, the House had a Republican majority of 78-45 (63.4% vs 36.6%),
and the Senate had a Republican majority of 27-19 (58.7% vs 41.3%).
I wonder if those increases were due to redistricting.

In the 2020 Presidential election, Trump got 55.11% of the SC vote compared to 43.43% for Biden.
In the 2022 SC gubernatorial election, the Republican candidate got 58% compared to 41% for the Democratic candidate.

So the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the legislature is much more skewed than in the overall population, without even taking into account how people who haven't voted in the elections are more likely to skew Democrat.

I got a flu shot and a Covid booster shot last weekend.

Previous times, they applied a regular bandage over the injection site. This time they used a different kind:
Inject-Safe™ Barrier Bandages

These are round and are stuck onto the skin before the injection. The adhesive is only on the white foam part around the edge of the circle. The needle goes through the center.

I liked that it let me see where the needle would be going in beforehand.

Today I wondered if the needle piercing thru the bandage could result in a tiny circle of bandage material getting injected along with the vaccine. But I learned the word "non-coring" which means that isn't supposed to happen with these.

http://injectsafebandages.com/ has a video showing a needle piercing one of these bandages on a balloon without the balloon breaking.

I wasn't expecting a video about reaching a million subscribers to have a deep, emotionally impacting message.

Watch on YouTube

Video title: ONE MILLION SUBSCRIBERS - Defining success
Posted by: Ren
Date posted: Jul 28, 2023

I didn't care for Ren's last song/video, "Murderer"; I found it disturbing. It would be unusual if I liked every single song an artist released. But I am still amazed by his talent. If you're new to Ren, please watch some of his other videos first.

For reference, I'll list the progression of symptoms I've had with my "trigger thumb" so far.

Many online sites mention the main symptom of trigger finger being that the finger gets stuck in a bent position, but so far, that has happened to me almost not at all.

It began like this:
The top joint of my left thumb feels bumpy or jerky (for lack of a better word) for a short period after waking/getting up in the morning. It feels like the bones are bumping against each other and slightly displacing each other as I bend the thumb. It is not painful, only disconcerting/worrisome. Usually the jerkiness only persists 10 or so minutes after getting up.

Note: Only the top joint of the thumb is affected. The bottom joint moves normally.

~30 days in:
The jerkiness began happening at other times during the day as well.
Then the thumb began feeling slightly jerky for most of the day.
The bone at the base of the thumb feels sore when I rub it.
The thumb feels achy when I bend it.

~37 days in:
The thumb is still jerky a lot of the day, and when it stops being jerky, the joint still feels sort of stiff, not flexible, and sore when I bend it.
Above I wrote, "It's not painful, only disconcerting/worrisome."
But for some days (or weeks?) now, it HAS been painful when I bend the thumb and it makes that bumpy feeling. It's bad enough to make me yelp when I unintentionally bend my thumb in the morning after waking up and then feel that pain.

~38 days in:
Thumb is stiff and hurts if I bend it.

~42 days in:
5:15pm Thumb has remained stiff since getting up.
The thumb-pad feels slightly numb or different, but I think that is only due to it being cold; my right hand fingers are cold too.

Around this time:
The hand felt weak. Holding any weight with the hand, even picking up a glass of water, made it ache. So I either used the other hand, or both hands, to pick things up. Turning door knobs with the left hand was also difficult and painful.

~61 days in:
I took two naproxen tablets a day, for about a week.
It reduced the soreness, though hasn't made my thumb any less stiff.
My left hand feels pretty normal except when I accidentally bend the thumb - then there's a strong short-lasting pain.

~67 days in:
By this time, the top thumb joint was stiff most of the time. When I attempt to bend the thumb, the tip of the thumb bends inwards only about 25 degrees. When I apply more force, the top joint begins to ache and I feel strongly disinclined to force it to bend any further. However, during the day while doing various activities, I occasionally bend the thumb all the way without thinking. When that happens, there is a sudden sharp pain in the top joint, and the thumb immediately jerks back to the unbent position.

Using my right hand, I can hold and bend the left thumb inwards a normal amount. When I do this, the left thumb feels sore, but it doesn't jerk.

..

I went to an orthopaedic doctor, was diagnosed with trigger thumb, and got a cortisone shot in the thumb.
My hand was first sprayed with a topical anesthetic. The shot contained betamethasone mixed with lidocaine. It was not painful; just a brief sting.

While driving home, my left hand started tingling; that must have been from the lidocaine. I believe the tingling went away over the next few hours.

The doctor had warned me that some people get severe pain after the shot, and that icing the joint helps prevent it. So I applied a cool (but not cold as I don't like getting cold hands) gel-pack to the thumb joint over the course of the rest of the day. I did not experience any unusual pain.

To be continued

What's the point of me getting up "early" after only 4 hours of sleep, if it never results in my going to bed earlier? Grrrr... I try to reset my internal clock but it doesn't seem to work.

Yesterday I was still up to see the sun rise before going to bed. It was pretty. It'd be nice to be able to see it every morning - but *after* a good night's sleep rather than before.

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The doctor said I had trigger thumb, as I suspected. He gave me a cortisone shot in the thumb, which from what he said and what I had read, gets rid of the problem in the majority of cases. He said if the shot doesn't help within 3 weeks, it won't. It's been 2 and a half weeks, and it hasn't fixed my problem so I'm quite disappointed. Possibly it's because my problem was more extreme to begin with, not being able to bend my top thumb joint hardly at all.

The day after the shot, there was some improvement - I could bend the thumb, jerkily. But that only lasted a day or two, and then it went back to being stiff for most or all of the day.

The doctor said if the first shot didn't help resolve the problem for at least 4 months, he wouldn't try another shot. He would go to the next option which is surgery to cut the tendon pulley. I'm not ready to agree to that yet. I plan to take Vitamin B6 (P5P) supplements for a while to see if that helps any, based on some stuff I read, even if it is far-fetched. The thumb at least doesn't hurt most of the time, and I've already gotten quite used to the joint not bending like normal.

Yesterday, I was surprised to find that soaking the joint in warm water (which I read about and/or heard in a Youtube video) makes it loosen up to where I can bend it (jerkily) for a little while. The doctor didn't mention that, at least not that I recall.

A week or two before the doctor appointment, my hand was a lot more achy, so that it was even difficult to pick up things with the hand. My other hand started acting up too, which worried me even more. But taking naproxen helped with that and so far it hasn't gotten that bad again.

This sounds like good advice for dealing with doctors; don't be discouraged from going back if the initial (and/or subsequent) tests done don't find anything wrong, or if the initial recommendations/treatments don't work:

https://healthunlocked.com/painconcern/posts/145999921/extreme-pain-bending-thumb-at-top-joint
cyberbarn: ... Have another chat with your GP. Medics do standard tests for the most common things, and then the patient disappears from their mind. It is only if we go back that they do the next round of tests when the first ones didn't work. Every consultation should end with 'if this doesn't get better/work, please come back'.

I vaguely remember a scene from a book long ago, where someone was whipped as punishment and salt was rubbed into the wound. The whipped person eventually escaped or ran away, and then the rest of the story began.

I thought the purpose of the salt was to make the punishment hurt worse and/or to keep the wounds from healing as well or to make them scar more.

Something reminded me of that lately, so I looked it up. It turns out that historically, the purpose of putting salt on a wound was not as I thought, but rather to prevent infection.

Pour Salt In An Open Wound:

In the end, though, the phrase “salt in the wound” comes from the days when salt was rubbed into wounds as an antiseptic. During the earlier centuries, when England was establishing its navy, most sailors were forced into service. While at sea, punishment was often lashes with a cat’o’nine tails. These whippings would almost always break the skin, and salt was rubbed into the wound to prevent infection. In this way, “salt in wound” was a very literal, stinging phrase.

Nowadays, putting salt on wounds is NOT recommended:

Is It Safe to Use Salt on Wounds?
Salt in a Wound: Is it Viable for Emergency Medicine?

I did finally get a Tdap vaccine shot on Wednesday.

Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Whooping Cough Vaccination: What Everyone Should Know

- DT (generic) and Td (Tenivac® and generic) provide protection against diphtheria and tetanus.
- DTaP (Daptacel®, Infanrix®, Kinrix®, Pediarix®, Pentacel®, Quadracel®, and Vaxelis™) provides protection against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough.
- Tdap (Adacel® and Boostrix®) provides protection against tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough.

Upper-case letters in these abbreviations mean the vaccine has full-strength doses of that part of the vaccine. The lower-case “d” and “p” in Td and Tdap means these vaccines use smaller doses of diphtheria and whooping cough. The “a” in DTaP and Tdap stands for “acellular,” meaning that the whooping cough component contains only parts of the bacteria instead of the whole bacteria.

..
Studies estimate that diphtheria toxoid-containing vaccines protect nearly all people (95 in 100) for approximately 10 years. Protection decreases over time, so adults need to get a Td or Tdap booster shot every 10 years to stay protected.
..
Studies estimate that tetanus toxoid-containing vaccines protect essentially all people for approximately 10 years. Protection decreases over time, so adults need to get a Td or Tdap booster shot every 10 years to stay protected.
..
In studies showing how well the whooping cough component works, Tdap fully protects:
- About 7 in 10 people in the first year after getting it.
- About 3 or 4 in 10 people four years after getting it.

I got my 2nd Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shot yesterday afternoon. I felt fine afterwards. During the rest of the day and night, my arm became slightly sore, but not nearly as much as after the first shot.

I went to bed around 2:40am, still feeling mostly fine. I felt very tired and worn out, as I'd done a lot of work, including physical activity, that afternoon and evening

A few hours later (about 14 hours after the shot), I woke up with a mild fever and chills/shivering. I put more blankets on the bed and managed to sleep some more off and on. The mild fever (ranging from 100.2 to 100.9) and headache persisted till the early afternoon. Then I took some acetaminophen; the fever went down and I started feeling better. My joints & some muscles were also achy today but they are feeling better now too.

The fever hasn't come back, so unless it returns during the night, I think I'm over it.

This is an interesting video from last August, about the development of the vaccines & antibody treatments. It's 54 minutes long, which is why I didn't get around to watching it until now.
The Latest on COVID-19 Vaccines, Treatment

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New to me:
Read Your Food Labels: Watch out for Maltodextrin (It has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease; it also has a very high glycemic index.)

Keeping Narcan® at Home can Prevent Holiday Overdose Deaths - may be helpful, if you know someone who might be at risk of overdosing.
Narcan®, the nasal spray version of naloxone, is available through pharmacies without a prescription. Medicaid and many insurance plans also cover the cost. A number of community-level organizations make Narcan® freely available, and a list of these community distributors is available at justplainkillers.com/overdose-prevention.

DHEC Reminds Residents that Staying Home is Staying Safe this Holiday Season
As South Carolinians continue to follow public health recommendations, expect an influx at popular testing locations over the coming days... . All DHEC-sponsored testing locations use pain-free nose or oral swabs or saliva testing.

I wonder if these pain-free tests are less accurate than the deep-nose one, or why I still keep hearing about people having the painful tests done?

(My mom had told me she would *rather die* than having one of those painful ones in the nose done, because of how bad it had hurt her earlier this year or last when her doctor did a procedure that involved putting a scope or something in through the nose.)

Inhaled Vaccines Aim to Fight Coronavirus at Its Point of Attack

If an injectable vaccine were to be made available in the next few months, I'd be quite wary of getting it yet, as it doesn't seem that enough long-term testing of potential negative side-effects could have been done. But I don't seem to have quite as many reservations about one that would be inhaled or sprayed; I'm not sure that is logical of me.

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How quick and dirty Covid tests could end the weariness

"Even if a cheap-as-a-cup-of-coffee test could be produced and distributed in sufficient quantities, problems remain. The most obvious is the issue of false positives. The Office for National Statistics estimated that 1 in 2,000 people were infected with coronavirus in England and Wales in late August. With a test that has a false-positive rate of just 1 per cent, you would wrongly flag up 20 uninfected people for every genuine case. The rarer the virus, the worse this problem becomes."

But as the test would be so cheap and easy, couldn't the people who test positive simply repeat the test a certain number of times, to determine if the first one was really correct? I suppose that could be a problem as usually the false negative rate is higher than the false positive rate. But still, surely repeating the test a certain number of times would give a good indication?

This makes me wonder, not for the first time, what the false-positive and false-negative rates are for the current tests that are being used. If I recall right, there are hundreds of different tests being used in different places. I don't know if test takers are even told which specific test they're getting, and what its false positive & negative rates are.

So far, I've found this FDA page which lists the info for about 50 of the blood antibody tests:

EUA Authorized Serology Test Performance (EUA = Emergency Use Authorization)

This page lists a lot of viral & antigen tests as well as serology tests, but doesn't list false positive/negative rates along with them like the above page does. That info may be buried in the linked-to docs for each test, but I'm not sure:
In Vitro Diagnostics EUAs

.

These are the main types of tests:
Viral (molecular) test: detects genetic material of the virus. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are of this type.
Antigen test: detects certain proteins in the virus.
Antibody test: detects the antibodies produced by the body in response to the virus.

Nice animated timeline of when each type of test is most likely to give a positive result.

Additional notes:
IgG = Immunoglobulin G
IgM = Immunoglobulin M
IgA = Immunoglobulin A (this one is not mentioned in regards to the above serology tests)
pan-Ig = I did not find a definition for this; I would guess it is some combination of the above.

random thought:
It must be horrible to be intubated and not even able to communicate something as simple as "I am very cold, please give me blankets".

It would be good to learn to finger-spell the alphabet signs, so one would still have a way to communicate that didn't require pen&paper or keyboard, etc.
But then again, I wonder how many medical professionals are able to recognize and understand it?

.

And then again, if they had to strap down your hands to keep you from pulling out the tube like they did with Qiao after his car accident, that wouldn't help much. At least they keep you mostly in a daze so maybe you don't even feel things like being cold.

I got the FluBlok flu shot yesterday. The nurse said I'd feel a pinch, so I waited for it (looking away from the needle as per my usual) but felt nothing at all, which surprised me. I'd thought a muscle injection would feel worse than a blood draw from a vein, but apparently I was wrong. Later I felt a very slight sting while moving my arm, but that was it.

I didn't get the TD booster shot yet. They had told me they had it when I called the day before (after making me wait a few minutes on the line while they checked), and it seemed like they were clear on the difference between the TD & the TDaP. But when I got there, the people there that day checked and said they had only TDap, not the TD on its own. (I'm not sure who was right). But they ordered it for me and will let me know when it gets in.

I'm a bit glad I didn't get both at the same time. This way, if either one affects me, it'll be more obvious which one was the culprit. (And it'll be less likely for them to interfere with each other.) But so far, I feel normal. Except for a slight stiffness in my leg/hip joint this afternoon, which could be due to anything.

Continued from: https://darkoshi.dreamwidth.org/697114.html

This page has more info; not sure if I saw this one last time:
https://edvfood.com/2015/10/24/vegan-flu-shots-2015-update/

The original article above (from 2015) indicated that Target had the Flublok (egg-free, recombinant) vaccine available, but a later comment on the article indicated that they no longer did in 2016.

https://www.sanofiflu.com/locator/locator-map.cfm - this page lets you search for places that offer FluBlok

Based on my search, the local Kroger and Walmart store pharmacies have it.

I called my Kroger to verify. They have both FluBlok and the TD (tetanus/dyphtheria) booster shot available.
So I plan to stop by there one day this week after work to get both of them.

Before this, I'd never have thought of going to Kroger for immunization shots.

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Lately, I've gotten several emails from my insurance plan, reminding & advising us to get flu shots. Driving home on Friday, I thought about it again, and my right upper arm immediately started phantom-aching simply from thinking about it. It was odd/amusing, as I don't even remember the last time I've gotten a shot in my upper arm.

Yesterday morning, I was talking with Qiao, who's already gotten the flu shot this year. I asked if they give it in the upper arm; he said yes. Then we got to talking about tetanus shots, etc., as I remembered I needed a booster for that too, from my above post.

Later that day, I accidentally jabbed my finger with a safety pin, and then started worrying a bit about tetanus.

So now I have a concrete plan of action.

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After my efforts 2 years ago to get myself an official primary care doctor, the doctor's office sent a letter earlier this year that he'd left the practice (I suppose he moved or transferred somewhere else). That disappointed me, as he'd seemed nice and competent the few times I'd seen him. The letter said that they'd soon be contacting me to get set up an appointment with one of the other doctors at that location, but they never did.

So I probably won't bother setting up an appointment for an annual exam this year, as there seems to be no reason for doing so.

A mandolin cutter put some gouges into my thumb yesterday. That's what I get for ignoring the warning to always use the food-gripper thingy with it. It was bound to happen eventually. Maybe I won't ignore the warning anymore.

With the waterproof bandages they have nowadays, the gouges hardly bother me. It would be nice if they made smaller mini-sized ones so that I wouldn't have to cut them in half for cuts on my fingers. The cut side makes it easier for water to eventually leak in, when washing hands or taking showers.

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One reason I like the sounds of katydids and cicadas and such is that they speak of another world right in the midst of this one. The human world could disappear and they'd still be there, singing those same songs.

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I discovered that one of Notepad++'s dialog boxes has a button labelled "I'm going nowhere". At first I was perplexed, then amused.

Many people don't X solely because they are against Y.

I think that could mean either:
For many people who don't X, the only reason they don't is because they are against Y.
or:
For many people who don't X, there are reasons for it other than them being against Y.

Actually, depending on X and Y, it could even mean:
Many people X, but not only because they are against Y.

..

from https://vaxopedia.org/2017/05/19/which-vaccines-are-vegan/
"...many vegans don't vaccinate solely because they are against vaccines."

..

I had read it is recommended for adults get tetanus & diphtheria booster shots every 10 years, and wondered if I should get one.

I am in favor of vaccines; they prevent a lot of disease and deaths.

But as a vegan, I don't like it that vaccines are made using animal ingredients and animal testing. It was long ago, in my teens, when I first read that some vaccines are made using eggs. So I checked if that is still the case today. It is.

Most flu vaccines, and a few others, are still made with eggs. Flublok is one which isn't. It is made using insect cells instead. Based on this page, it is made with "insect cell lines", so maybe it doesn't even require insects to be killed anymore to get those cells.

This web page lists vaccine ingredients, including "process ingredients (substances used to create the vaccine that may or may not appear in the final vaccine product), and growth mediums (the substances vaccines are grown in)"
https://vaccines.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005206

Based on that data, the current tetanus & diphtheria vaccines all are made using bovine extracts. So I'm still ambivalent about going out of my way to get those kind of vaccinations, when they are only suggested or recommended but not required. I don't work with children or sick people, so as an adult, I haven't been required to get any vaccinations. I wish there were vegan alternatives available, so that I wouldn't feel conflicted about it.

I find these kind of ideas helpful to combat the mental conflict:

Comment by user PacNW: Thank goodness for vaccines. I get them all. They are one of the best things about living in the modern era and not during the dark ages.

I know they aren’t vegan, so I compensate for that by making an extra donation to an animal rights/protection/welfare organization whenever I get one. We won’t be able to help animals if we die from some horrid, preventable disease.

Comment by user Sandra: if you have to go to the hospital for a serious illness, you will likely use more animal tested products than if you stayed healthy. In some cases doctors many even request having specimens taken from you and tested on animals. Stay healthy as possible for the animals too!

In other words, it's regrettable that most vaccines currently aren't vegan, but it would be much worse if those vaccines weren't available, or weren't widely used. So until vegan vaccines are more widely available, it is still the more ethical choice, for both humans and animals, to get vaccinated than not.

Vegan Flu Shots: A Guide

[ 2019/11/03 - that link isn't working today, but this one is:
https://edvfood.com/2015/01/08/vegan-flu-shots-a-guide/
]

..

That reminds me, I was reading about rabies a few weeks ago. I'll make that a separate post.

My mom has experienced occasional vertigo for a long time, but it must have gotten worse lately. A doctor recommended physical therapy. I'd have never thought physical therapy could help with vertigo.

But from what the doctor told my mom, which matches up with what I've read now, there are crystals in the ears which can get out of their normal place, and this causes the vertigo. Special movements can be done to get them to go back into their normal place, thereby relieving the vertigo.

https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-q-and-a-bppv-dizziness-caused-by-inner-ear-crystals/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/canalith-repositioning-procedure/about/pac-20393315

https://healthfully.com/cure-inner-ear-crystals-5652655.html

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I had a weird visual phenomenon this evening.

As I was getting a popsicle out of the freezer, there was a small spot in my vision, like the kind you get after staring at something bright. I didn't think anything of it until I sat down in front of my computer and had trouble reading because of the spot. It was grey and blurry with my eyes open, but bright when I closed my eyes. It occurred to me that I hadn't been staring at anything bright, so what the heck could it be?

The spot was in the center right side of my vision. The edge of the spot was psychedelic, flickering color patterns. Over the course of about 15 minutes, it got larger until it filled almost half of my right eye's vision.

I did a search to find out what it could be.

https://www.ourhealth.com/conditions/eye-conditions/temporary-blind-spots-in-vision

Some of the comments on that page mention high blood pressure, so I got out Q's blood pressure monitor and checked mine. 105 over 65; that is normal for me. By then, the spot had faded away.

From some more that I read, it sounds like it might have been an ocular migraine, without the headache. I haven't had anything like that before. Except one time when I was a kid and I lost my vision for a few minutes while I was waiting for the bus; never could explain that either but I had attributed it possibly to chlorine getting in my eyes as I'd just come from the swimming pool.

Now I'm feeling a bit woozy. Not sure if it's an after-effect of that strange phenomenon, or just because it is late.

update, Saturday afternoon: Today while working in the yard, exerting myself, I had a different visual phenomenon, one which isn't unusual for me. The kind where when I close my eyes, I see dark clouds with bright/silvery linings. That only lasts a few seconds.

The risky chemical lurking in your wallet / New research finds that the BPA in cash register receipts can be absorbed through skin. (article from 2014)

Explainer: Store receipts and BPA (from 2017)

“When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA [leaching out],” Warner observed back around 2009. A nanogram is a billionth of a gram. “The average cash register receipt that's out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA,” he reported several years back. That’s a million times more than what ends up in a bottle. (By free, he explained, it’s not bound into a polymer, like the BPA in a bottle. The individual molecules are loose and ready for uptake.)

Is BPA on Thermal Paper A Health Risk? - includes tips on reducing exposure. Yikes... "Quickly wash your hands after touching a receipt. Scrub with soap and water. If you wait longer than four minutes, it’s too late."

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Darkoshi

Darkoshi's Enchantment

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Entries tagged with medical stuff

South Carolina legislature

different injection bandage

Ren still impresses and surprises me

trigger thumb symptoms

sleep, trigger thumb

doctors and tests

salt in a wound

Tdap vaccine

2nd vaccine shot

links

naloxone, covid testing

COVID-19 tests, vaccines

sign language alphabet

injected with a ... flu shot

vaccinations, update

going nowhere?

ambiguous phrase. vaccines & veganism

vertigo & ear crystals

ocular

BPA in paper receipts / thermal paper