[frostedmagnolias]

Brooch

c. 1832

Gold, enamel, hair

Albany Institute of History & Art

[ranticore]

i made some bluesky posts about it but idk it bears repeating i find it really disheartening that nature/ecology/sustainability/specific animals is now just another theme for online artist to make landfill waste merch out of. because everything is a fandom and fandom is identity and stickers/badges/merch signify this identity (of loving nature). the green and brown crunchy stickers with native wildlife on them have the exact same environmental impact as any other

[3liza]

im revisting my cardio stress test results and frowning because i am scoring into athletic ranges for cardio performance on tests i should be, according to my less-active-than-an-average-office-worker lifestyle and health factors, completely tanking, and i am going to need a cardiologist to explain to me how my having to tap out of a stress test as soon as i hit the jogging segment because i felt like my joints were falling apart still got me into the "93% of maximum possible expected performance for age/gender". again i have to ask: the average 30-40 year old tumblr user cant walk briskly on a treadmill for 10 minutes without falling apart? that doesnt sound right. i was fully expecting them to tell me my heart sucks and im extremely out of shape based on my subjective experience of the test

on the one hand i think everyone including myself likes to think luck and genetics are a lot less influential on personal physical condition than they actually are, on the other hand im unclear on how to explain these metrics and my apparent functional shortcomings. it cannot possibly be somatic, there just isnt any rational or irrational reason for me to be bouncing around with great physical potential and strength while having trouble walking in a straight line to the kitchen without grabbing chairs and counters and experiencing periods of panting and tunnel vision. something isnt adding up, in both directions. my lifestyle should be producing the standard NEET qualia in terms of cardiac performance; the protective effects of genetics, never drinking, rarely smoking/vaping, and mostly cooking my own food shouldnt be strong enough to be overcoming all the other crap, nor have i ever responded well to periods of physical training and conditioning. even in active athletic training or heavy manual labor periods i **do not** put on muscle or become particularly better conditioned

edit: is is possible that scoring athlete numbers on the couch potato test when you are a couch potato IS diagnostic of something? if so, what?

[jillyyfish]

I am also 30-40 and gave up shortly after the jogging started (or didn’t start, in my case) and i was told i had “diminished exercise capacity.” But my HR also skyrocketed pretty much as soon as i started walking - if yours stayed low, they might be saying that your heart “performs” well even if you’re functionally limited. (that is 100% a guess, i don’t know what they mean when they say the things they say) i feel you tho, i saw a pulmonologist because of my constant shortness of breath and they were like “your lung performance is even better than average for your age and gender” and i was like ok tell that to my me…

[fuck-usag]

i'd also be interested to see where I land on this - same age range, also cannot run anymore. literally can't. Joints will not.

Also I think they're comparing you to like. Heart failure numbers. You can be 30-40 and have heart failure. There are a loooot of people out there in terrible shape

[cut-catches]

hello exercise physiology graduate here (i studied and conducted these tests in college, and i also have POTS myself and went through the whole wringer of cardiac testing and diagnosis too, so i have both sides of the experience lol)!

so maximal stress tests are purely a test of the heart (to some extent the lungs as well since those are necessary for oxygen uptake lol), but all we’re measuring is heart performance. if your joints are preventing you from going further on the test, that’s not going to be at all discussed in the results because that’s not what this specific test is for. (and yes prev addition is right, we’re mainly looking at results in terms of checking for things like heart failure and other danger markers, so being generally unfit in genpop terms, but still having results indicating a healthy heart, is still a good score)

the maximal stress test is HARD and most people, even many decently fit people, actually can’t go very far into the jogging/running segment. so if you make it there with a somewhat stable heart rate and no ekg anomalies, then that’s indeed above average and a good sign for your heart health specifically. however, if your endurance made you tap out before your heart rate actually reached 85% maximum, then it’s not necessarily a full picture of what we’re looking for in the test, so there could potentially still be some heart issues that go undetected.

so what do exercise physiologists look for in a test like this? for healthy/athletic populations taking the test, they’re just using it to measure their maximal abilities and get their vo2max values, and truly see how far/long they can go on the test. but for medical populations, that’s obviously not the case. when we do this test, we’re not measuring how long you can go really, but more so how your heart reacts to the workload. ideally, we want you to go until you reach 85% of your maximum heart rate in the test. we’re looking to see as the workload increases and as your heart rate increases, are there any extreme jumps in heart rate, or is it a steady (in simplified language) rise? are there any arrhythmias or irregularities that occur in the ekg readings? does blood pressure rise as expected?

if we find that all of those things come back with normal range results, then that’s going to mean you get good test results! but just like any test, it’s only looking at a small and ultra specific range of things to rule in or out a few very specific diagnoses. just because you appear healthy on these specific measures, doesn’t mean you are healthy in all measures, it simply means that the cause of your issues isn’t the one that this test looks for. so it’s not doctors dismissing you or the test being bad, it’s just that your limitations are coming from another cause, and even though it’s frustrating going through so many tests with no answers, i try to think of it more like, hey at least you’ve narrowed it down a little bit!

[3liza]

it was so generous of you to answer my very open-ended question in such a communicative, intelligent, and helpful way. i am genuinely grateful. so it terms of POTS/whatever, and diagnostics, it sounds like (correct me if im wrong): my heart is in good shape, and this is good news, but the test was not necessarily intended to give us any information about dysautonomia, but more like...to make sure i'm not about to keel over from a heart attack. people with healthy hearts and lungs can also have POTS, it's just important to rule out cardiovascular dysfunction as well?

[fursasaida]

Yes, that's exactly right. Most POTS patients have normal, healthy hearts. But some heart conditions can mimic POTS symptoms (and of course someone can have both POTS and a heart condition), so you need to rule those out to avoid treating the wrong thing or letting a potentially dangerous heart condition go untreated. In the same way, you do an echocardiogram to check for structural abnormalities and a Holter monitor to check for arrhythmias. For most POTS patients these will all come back as normal, which frustrates a lot of patients for exactly the reasons that @cut-catches explained - the tests are only looking for very specific things, so "normal" doesn't mean what we'd expect it to mean from the patient end - but they are actually progress in terms of narrowing things down and making sure that what looks like POTS is actually POTS. There aren't really definitive tests for dysautonomia other than a tilt table, so it's mostly ruling things out until dysautonomia is the only remaining explanation rather than looking for it directly.

[3liza]

i already did a tilt table and they claimed the results were "normal". im not sure this is correct because i came very close to blacking out and was in an altered state of consciousness the whole time after they tipped me up. i am sorry to bring it up because i know it's obnoxious, but the nurses and techs running these tests kept commenting on me being underweight, too small for the equipment, not getting normal or expected readings etc, and the title table tech couldnt even get the finger monitors to register me as an alive person until he microwaved a heat pack to put on my hands. he also didnt know basic information about the conditions he was testing for, which is another thing i run into a lot. the tilt table tech also assured me he had collected all the sensor pads and then i found one still stuck to my chest when i got home. if i tell a cardiologist "im pretty sure the guy who did the tilt table was a moron" i dont think that's going to be helpful but it does seem clinically significant???

i dont really understand how the only doctor ive encountered in this deep blue democrat liberal metropolitan area who jumped immediately to actually treating an observable condition was a quack who charges $600 cash for every appointment, when what we're testing for is the single most common dysautonomic condition in the world, a world which has had a ~99.99999% covid infection rate, thereby producing an estimated 2,400,000,000 people who have or will have a postviral dysautonomic illness (approximately 20-30%), most of whom will be experiencing this in the form of POTS. like what are we doing. what am **I** doing????

[datasette]

This is all really good and helpful info, and really puts into perspective the tests that I've had done for POTS, where the cardiologist ended up telling me "the tests we did, echo cardiogram and long term ecg, both came back great, but you still feel bad, so we're prescribing you those beta blockers anyways".

Some less helpful commiserating: this was after more than a decade of searching. Before that, the only time a doctor ever tried treating an observable condition for me was ALSO the time i visited a quack. I complained to her that I feel absolutely parched every minute of my day, something I have complained about to countless practicing conventional medicine, who then all just shrug their shoulders. She prescribed basically all the supplements to me that come recommended for POTS, meaning electrolytes and B-Vitamins.

(Without, unfortunately, telling me what they were really for, so after I saw the price tag for the first time I went through the pills I had and then stopped. And only picked back up about 5 years later through my own research. So - mixed blessing.)

[raeiyyn]

thinking about this excerpt from giovanni's room as i lay in bed staring at the ceiling endlessly

[bi-enad]

Image ID:

"I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do with that storm, that far-off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine."

End ID

[pmamtraveller]

Karin Hosono - Wind

[justsomeguycore]

as per my last straw,

[teaboot]

"I don't believe Tarot is real, but it does work"

Expand on that, king (genuinely curious)

I feel like…

okay, so it’s a lot like conceptual art, or like introspective meditation, at the risk of sounding pretentious

Like. It’s not so much about “the cards are a portal to a higher wisdom that knows more than me” thing- it’s more of a, “given the symbols drawn, could I interpret them posing a question or possibility or suggestion?” Followed by, “is this applicable to my current context? COULD it be?”

Like.

I don’t lay out á tarot hand and say “ah yes, the devil and the tower, I am about to be betrayed”

But I MAY lay out a hand and say, “okay, devil and the tower. Something treacherous and danger. Am I approaching a treacherous or risky situation in my life? What might be a tipping factor? Am I being deliberately reckless? Maybe I should spend some more time working on X project I’ e been thinking of before spending money on it” or “you know what, I HAVE been kind of uncomfortable with X thing, I should say something” or “yeah okay I KNOW Tom from work sucks to work with, I KNOW, yeah maybe I should consider ways of handling that”

Less of a magic oracle, more of a tool for doing literary analysis on real life. Like simplifying everything and laying it out flat so I can gain some distance to untangle my problems without in-your-head crap like projected feelings and social obligation getting in the way and muddying the waters.

So like. I don’t think tarot cards can legit tell the future, but I DO think that self-reflection, mindfulness, and consideration sometimes allow us to predict and calculate our own circumstances.

So, IMO- It’s not real. But it works

If that makes sense

[greelin]

cptsd kind of annoying. Release me

[matchagirl]

udarilatokom

[castledeity]

Lee Mosely wearing the soft armour Maille Dress by Samantha Pleet

[pmamtraveller]

Art Nouveau floor tiles

[p-urest]

[junkyarded]

so many people post like they are from the dimension of No Misogyny because the misogyny all around them just registers to them as fine and normal

[fairycosmos]

this lifetime is very bizarre and then youre not even supposed to also be bizarre. Ok

[9e978e]

via

[xenosagaepisodeone]

they're making the omelas child go to therapy so it can learn about interpersonal accountability and realize the impact that its confusing and antisocial behavior has on the people around it

[hicockalorum-deactivated2018031]

Kathleen Lolley