Salka

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Posts posted by Salka

  1. Posted

    I know you were sort of joking with your edit about the coherency of your own posts, but it is a good point: there are plenty of people who don't know their arse from their elbow, namely infants and people with mental disabilities, so clearly there's got to be something more than "knowing your arse from your elbow" that makes it the case that it's not okay for people to eat you (or it's okay to eat babies, which I suppose is also possible).

    I know, that's a discussion I was having with someone today. I feel uncomfortable assuming that something is more okay to eat than something else, just because I identify less well with the way it behaves.

    Would you rather eat Stephen Hawking or a drunken fool eating discarded chips from a pool of vomit on the street, at 2am on Saturday night?

  2. Posted

    OMG REAL DOCTOR.

    I have booked to see a doctor this week and I've been twice already. The symptoms have gotten worse quite quickly so every time I go I seem to have new thing to add. There hasn't been anything new for a while now. Well, a week,

    I've cut out gluten and caffeine to see how that goes but it's too early to see what kind of a reaction it's having.

    Are you sure stress doesn't cause lip swelling? Because one doctor told me that it does... which I wasn't sure I believed but they seemed very certain... every doctor has given me conflicting advice :-(

    There is no history of allergies in my family, or of stress reactions. There is a history of thyroid issues and apparently heart problems, although all of the heart problems seemed to occur to older male relatives who smoked and drank heavily throughout their reasonably sedentary lives, so I'm not so worried about that...

    I'd never experienced random swelling or numbness before the recent episodes. The swelling of my lip happened very very suddenly and was gone within 20 minutes of taking an antihistamine. It swelled on the right hand side of my face both times, the first time on the bottom and the second time on the top.

    Another doctor said these symptoms sounded like hayfever, but I'm not sniffly or sneezy or blocked up, and I don't know anybody with hayfever who suffers from the symptoms I have.

    Guess I'll have to wait to see what happens at the allergy clinic. Booooo.

    Thanks for taking the time to give advice, dude :)

  4. Posted

    Awesome replies, thanks everyone! It's made me feel a lot better knowing that it could just be anxiety too. I noticed a couple of beetles and big ants in my house this morning and wondered if they'd come for me, but now I feel more confident that it their presence is just something to do with the heatwave...

    Subbes I'm Irish, it's Irish ingenuity ;)

    I thought of one other detail... the symptoms did somewhat get worse (swelling, numbness) around the time I got my two summer jobs... both of which are office based so I'm drinking a helluva lot more coffee than I would have previously. Whether it's a slight intolerance to caffeine or maybe the caffeine is exacerbating stress... HMMM. All these things are plausible and it's much nicer to think about these scenarios than it is to remember that the beetles might be waiting for me.

    Thank you everyone!

  5. Posted

    Laxan, nope, I've tried different combinations of soaps/shampoos/detergents. And used all the same ones in Berlin anyway. THE BERLIN THING IS REALLY IRRITATING.

    Also though I was on holiday in Berlin, so it is conceivable that despite all the other stress (boyfriend in a wheelchair) I was less stressed than if I was working 7 days a week. I've spent a lot of time trying to think of connections and things, but nothing seems to quite add up.

    So far it could be:

    Allergies (but no luck yet figured out what they might be)

    Stress (but doesn't quite add up given the times when it's happened)

    Asthma maybe? Exacerbated by a slight allergy?

    A slight allergy exacerbated by stress?

    But nobody has thrown in any proper scary diseases yet, so that's good :)

    Setentia, it sometimes feels like I'm allergic to everything when I can't isolate a single cause. But I read that apparently reactions to food can come hours after ingestion, and some people with celiac disease claim that they can feel the effects of gluten ingestion days after it happens... so I don't know what to think any more.

  6. Posted

    Yeah you know, that seems to be the most plausible thing. I'm working seven days a week and have been since the beginning of May, and on top of that have two commissioned art projects, and then trying to fit in as much band stuff as possible... I can see that there is maybe some stress, but I don't feel particularly anxious or stressed out. I work weekends in a different job from my main one, which breaks things up a bit and stops them getting monotonous. Besides, I quite enjoy both jobs.

    One time one of the attacks happened a few minutes after I read some crap news. Other than that they've all occurred when I've been chilled out and relaxing at home, or concentrating at work. I would just expect panic attacks, from my experience, to be a reaction to some sort of immediate stress...

  7. Posted

    Yeah, in fairness I'd only had the lip swelling, hives, and breathlessness then. She did refer me to an allergy clinic but also actively tried to discourage me by repeatedly saying 'it's probably nothing' and 'they probably won't find out what it is that's causing it.'

    She also told me that it might be best to wait a few weeks and monitor the situation, as though that isn't exactly what I'd done before I went to the doctor about it ¬¬

    Bonus facts: I'm otherwise healthy and active and the only allergy I have (that I know of) is penicillin. I think this extends to some types of other moulds too. Once I ate a blue cheese that made my mouth tingle, and one time I got the bright-red body rash after accidentally eating parmesan which turned out to have slight spots of blue mould on it. I'm not allergic to all mould, because as a self-test I purposely moulded up some food and rubbed/licked it, and nothing happened.

    Which is why I was particularly annoyed that the doctor recommended continuing to monitor it ¬¬ clearly I had gone to the doctor as a last resort...

    Right now breathing is super easy, which is nice.

    Every time I think of something that could be a potential cause, such as gluten intolerance, I then think of something that makes it almost impossible... for instance, in Berlin I mostly ate bread and drank beer, and yet had no ill effects. Frustrating.

  8. Posted

    I'm basically trying to gather info from anywhere. Doc me right up guys.

    For about ten years I've gotten occasional hives. They never came in patches, only one itchy raised hive, usually on my face or upper arms, that would last 20 minutes and then disappear.

    Starting about 6 months ago I had occasional episodes of feeling slightly breathless. Only subtly breathless, so much that I thought it was my imagination. This got gradually worse to the point where it would happen at least once a day for no discernible reason, and I began to think maybe it wasn't my imagination, but still ignored it because it didn't seem particularly serious. At this point the hives started to become a daily occurrence but this didn't really register at the time as it was such a gradual increase to this point.

    Then a few weeks ago my lip spontaneously swelled for no reason. It was very sudden and very tingly, but not itchy. I took an antihistamine and that went down after about 20 minutes. I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink in the hours leading up to it, and was perplexed, but decided as is common for me, to ignore it and move on. ¬¬

    Then the breathing problem became more frequent, and harder to ignore. I'll now have seemingly random episodes of feeling very breathless and like my heart is beating super-hard. I took my pulse and temperature while this is happening and it's in the normal range, but my heart feels like it's beating fast. The breathlessness is like - I am not breathing in an abnormal way, or holding my breath or taking shallow breaths, but I find myself taking big deep lungfuls of air and still not being satisfied, still feeling a bit like I'm out of breath. I've only noticed this happening when I am sedentary.

    Then my fucking arm went numb one morning. Totally out of the blue, I had just gotten up, got on my bike and was cycling to work. First my fingers got pins and needles, then it traveled up my arm and my arm was then mostly numb and sensitive feeling for about 6 hours.

    Then my lip swelled up again a different time. And sometimes I get a bright red all-over body rash, and sometimes I now get patches of hives too. Oh, and the breathing thing is now accompanied by a very subtle tightness in my chest when it happens. Which is maybe three or four times a day.

    DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT ANY OF THIS COULD BE? Any leads or thoughts welcome. I've been to a couple of different doctors and am booking another appointment for next week too. One suggested stress/anxiety, one fobbed me off with 'it's probably nothing', and another suggested a slight allergy to something and put me on a waiting list to go to an allergy clinic. Some other info:

    - I'm vegetarian but about six months ago had my iron levels checked and they were fine

    - I've tried excluding dairy from my diet which wasn't hard as I don't eat a lot of the stuff anyway. This had no effect

    - I'm currently trying to exclude gluten, on day two I have had no rashes or hives even though I didn't take an antihistamine, but I did have the breathing problems, so not sure how much of this is coincidence

    - I am working 7 days a week at the moment but not sure that I would describe myself as 'stressed'...

    - It happens in my home, my work, my other place of work, outdoors, indoors, other peoples houses... almost everywhere...

    Oh and just in case you thought you had it figured out, the symptoms occur every single day with one exception: I recently went to Berlin and not a single symptom occurred there. I drank beer, ate bread, cheese, was arguably not totally unstressed as I was pushing my broken-ankled boyfriend around in a wheelchair in 30 degree heat all day, and was wearing the same clothes I would wear at home, the same shampoo etc. So yeah. Maybe it was sheer coincidence but that seems unlikely.

    Anyway, it would be great if any of you had any ideas so that when I go to the doctor next week I have stuff to talk about. It's getting quite worrying.

    Yours breathelessly,

    Salks

  9. Posted

    Erkki if I was going to eat an animal it would probably be either fish, or chicken. I've had loads of chickens, they don't have a clue. From experience I'd say it's probably easier to raise and slaughter chickens without causing them distress than it is to raise cows/horses/pigs. Pigs know what's going on. Chickens can't tell their arse from their elbow.

    EDIT: I haven't ever slaughtered animals, I'm only going on having watched them and many other types of animal interact with each other and the world for many years, to draw that conclusion. Based on the coherency of my own posts sometimes I probably wouldn't suffer much emotional distress from being eaten either, so who knows.

  11. Posted

    There was a guy at my uni who would always go on and on and on about how selfish people are for giving in to the desire to have children, but strangely didn't think that he was selfish for giving in to the desire to continue living, which logically seems like it should be similarly obnoxious in his eyes.

    I don't think there's anything that HAS to be selfish about raising a child or two, something that every living thing on the earth does in one way or another and seems to be the closest thing that we can see to life having any kind of a point at all.

    There are ways people can go about it to not be dicks about it, but with religious people being told to pump them out as much as possible and women in many places in the world without access to education, contraception or anything resembling equal rights, that's obviously going to be quite a challenge, not to mention that we live in a hugely consumerist, shallow-as-fuck world where people love iPhones because they're SHINY and INSTABUY!!!`111one, and so preventing your one or two children from becoming a consumerist monster is in itself going to quite a task, because everything is affordable and shiny and instabuy these days. Let alone if you have 7 children because you're Catholic, or 10 children because you've got literally nothing better to do in Saudi Arabia, because you're a woman and your job is to have children.

    But I don't think STOP HAVING KIDS EVERYONE is the necessarily the best answer to these things. I think EVERYONE STOP BEING SUCH A DICK is a good place to start.

  13. Posted

    My recycling thing was a joke too, geez! You thought that was seriously serious?

    Maybe organic is cheaper when combined with being locally produced, I don't know. It also cuts out the middle man as the farms sell it directly to the shop, which is itself an independent local retailer. Also it's all just loose and on display openly instead of packaged away by machines, which probably cuts out some of the cost (and reflects well on me).

  14. Posted

    http://www.ucsusa.or...reality-of.html

    While a little cynicism is healthy, I wouldn't be so sure that horrible things don't end up in your milk/food. Remember BSE? Remember swine flu? Both were a result of horrific farming practices that you would like to think don't actually happen.

    Also: organic produce is not just about bragging. The farming practices used are far less harmful to the environment as fewer chemicals are used, etc. I buy a lot of organic vegetables from a store that sources local and seasonal produce. I don't buy them to brag or to to prevent cancer or supplement my magic homeopathic spells or whatever else people suppose you do with organic vegetables. I buy them because it's environmentally friendly, cheap and supports local farms. Also, they tend not to come wrapped in several layers of non-recycle-able plastic like most vegetables in supermarkets do in the UK. That annoys me because then I can't recycle all the surplus plastic, which makes me feel less qualified to brag to all my friends about how good I am at recycling which, let's face it, is the only reason anyone ever recycles anything.

    Erkki, in the UK there are quite strict rules that have to be adhered to in order to call something 'organic'. You can generally assume it means fewer chemicals pumped into the environment and more diverse eco-systems being supported on organic farms. In the UK at least, organic labels on meat also guarantees a certain standard of life for the animal (which as far as I'm aware is far higher than RSPCA-certified meat).

  15. Posted

    I lived next to a dairy farmer and he fed his cows a constant stream of penicillin to prevent their udders from becoming infected, or something. I'm allergic to it so I was surprised that this seems to be a routine preventative measure. So I don't know how widespread it is but the one farmer I ever knew did it.

  16. Posted

    Vimes: your point about using technology that's been made in 3rd work sweatshops etc is entirely valid, but just because that is the case with a lot of the stuff we consume, I still think that's not an excuse for people to give up on trying. I do try to make conscientious purchases and when people raise my awareness about things I hadn't previously been aware of, I take that on board and don't just whine about how WELL IT CAN'T BE HELPED BECAUSE I LOVE WEARING NIKE TRAINERS or whatever.

    I think that's an attitude that more people should take on board. Avoiding the vast majority of factory farmed meat is extremely easy. Brighton is pretty good for people being conscientious about things generally, and there isn't a single one of my friends that I know of who eats meat and doesn't make an effort to get free-range. But still there'll be slip-ups here and there... you don't think when you buy mayonnaise made with battery eggs, or fail to ask in a restaurant if the chicken is free-range. That sort of thing, but that's obviously far less obnoxious than people who knowingly and willingly purchase battery-farmed chicken breasts.

    I think everyone should make more of an effort to think about where everything comes from, from food to electronics and everything else, and we should all fucking discuss things and pass on information and debate these things and call each other out, because otherwise we'll end up just being a bunch of giant complacent pricks stomping all over other people and living creatures in order to cheaply live the easy lives that we feel entitled to.

    But still, there is only one viable excuse that I can think of for people who knowingly buy battery-farmed, unethical meat: Dickhead.

    Having said that someone said that apparently meat is cheaper in the US than vegetables... is this correct???

    EDIT: apologies for hastily written post, I'm at work (as always, it seems...)

  19. Posted

    Yeah, I'm vegetarian but I (save for the exceptions I'm about to mention) don't mind people eating meat. The things that bug me are: firstly, how greedy some people can be... three meals a day with meat? At least THREE LIVES for each day that you gorge yourself to a bloated, cancerous death which will not just a drain on the NHS and society when it happens, but also a kick in the teeth for the environment in the meantime.

    Also: how the 'animals aren't even sentient anyway probably!' argument is used in conjunction with people not giving a shit where their meat comes from. If you're going to eat meat, the least you can do is ensure as best you can that the animal has led the best life possible before its demise. There is really absolutely no excuse for not doing this... Oh except that in my world, animals don't HAVE feelings! Probably. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. Which is convenient because I plan to consume them in the most abhorrent way possible. Now that we're on this topic, I bet people who have been trafficked for sex probably love it too. And also I bet I have a million pounds in the bank, because thinking it probably makes it true after all!

  20. Posted

    This whole 'animals aren't sentient beings' thing is a very dodgy attitude seemingly based on wishful thinking and/or ignorance. Having grown up knowing more animals than I did people until I was about 15, I can assure you that even cows, who you seem to regard as non-sentient beef-machines, are perfectly capable of experiencing a range of feelings and emotions, including fear and pain. It's extremely dangerous thinking to assume that because you don't understand and cannot communicate with something, it isn't as 'good' or 'valuable' as you and therefore doesn't deserve respect.

    It's an abhorrent and disgustingly selfish and/or misinformed attitude that is too often used as an excuse for gluttony and the tolerance of extreme cruelty. I don't care if you eat meat but justifying it with 'animals aren't sentient and I don't care' is not only a dick move, but also a badly misinformed one.

    There is now a race between, I think, two different big companies to produce the first viable lab-grown meat, which is an exciting development. I think that it will probably be pretty hard to produce an authentic steak immediately, but I see no reason why lab-grown meat couldn't quickly replace a lot of the cheaper/processed stuff in peoples diets.

  22. Posted

    Okay I have a load of hot tips, which I'll write up later, but the most important one I shall share with you now. Everyone who goes to Berlin has to go to Cassiopeia. There is a beautiful beer garden, a climbing wall built on the side of an old bunker, an awesome venue where I heard some amazing freeform jazz, lots of little cosy bars and cafés, an outdoor cinema, that awesome big blue paddling pool that you always wanted as a child - you know, the most expensive one in the Argos catalogue. There's a skate park built inside an old warehouse that I believe they used to use to fix trains. There's also more, but I can't even begin to describe the awesomeness of it all and the great atmosphere. So everyone should go and do that right now.

    From a review on Yelp:

    I have no clue, Why people get so excited about this place. All i remember are a bunch of really young people, many dark halls and weird music.

  25. Posted

    Twig all I ever seem to read from you is whining about how people haven't read your posts properly. The problem here isn't everyone else. The problem is you; you're shit at communicating. Try harder, or stop trying to contribute to discussions that require you to communicate clearly.

    Seriously, for someone who generally believes people should just man up and not give a shit about anything, you're doing an awful lot of whining and victimizing of yourself.