heart&soul

🐈‍⬛

[blue--deer]

*slides this across the table* you're going to want to read this

[elodieunderglass]

There are Experiences behind this sign

[mobius-m-mobius]

he's really having the time of his life 🥺 (insp)

[the-apocrypha]

Attn: People With Cervixes!

When was your last Pap smear?

Because I am tired of seeing young people (think 40 year olds!) die horribly of an almost completely preventable disease, and I haven't seen the obligatory Tumblr PSA about it, so I'm making my own.

1. CERVICAL CANCER IS REALLY BAD

Cancers that have a good prognosis are usually cancers that can be caught early--like skin cancer, which is easily seen, and therefore usually treated very early. Cervical cancer does not give you symptoms until you have very advanced disease, which means unless someone is regularly testing your cervix, you will likely not be diagnosed early. More than half of people diagnosed with cervical cancer present with advanced disease. 75% of them will be dead within 5 years. For comparison, when caught in the earliest stage, there is a 90% 5 year survival rate. Treatment for those diagnosed is chemo and radiation, and believe me, those are not fun. If you do happen to be in the lucky 25% of survivors, if your cancer comes back, you have an 85% chance of dying within a year. Also! We think of cancer as something that happens to old people, but the average age of diagnosis for cervical cancer is 50.

2. WHO GETS CERVICAL CANCER?

Cervical cancer used to be the most common cause of cancer-related death in women in America, but at this point it's basically a disease of People Without Pap Smears--developing countries, immigrants, low socioeconomic status, BIPOC, rural communities, LGBTQ, etc.

3. HOW DO PAP SMEARS SAVE YOUR LIFE?

A Pap smear is a screening test for two things: HPV, and your cervical cells. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world. Literally half of the people in America have some strain of HPV on their body. Most HPV infections go away on their own (in people with healthy immune systems), but some strains are Very Bad, and some people are just Very Unlucky, and the HPV starts causing your cervical cells to turn cancerous. 91% of all cervical cancers are caused by HPV. So a Pap smear looks to see if your have HPV, and if so, is it one of the bad ones? And also, do you have any cancerous cells hanging about in your cervix? And! It takes 10-30 years for HPV to turn those cells into cancer, which means you have a really really long time to catch it before it becomes cancer and cut those pre-cancer cells out!

4. WHAT ABOUT THAT VACCINE?

The thing my dad said I shouldn't get because it might make me a slut. Yes! There is an HPV vaccine! You should get it! It protects you against the nine most common cancer-causing types of HPV. It's recommended starting at age 11, and you can get it up to age 45 now! (It used to be 26, but as of 2020, it's now extended.)You can get it from most primary care doctors, or from Planned Parenthood, CVS, Walgreens, etc. If you get the vaccine you still need Pap smears.

5. I HEARD YOU CAN ONLY GET THE VACCINE IF YOU'RE A VIRGIN

Fake news. While the vaccine does not treat old infections of HPV, it does prevent new ones, so while the benefits are theoretically decreased in those who have already been sexually active, it does not mean you will not benefit from having it!

6. WHO GETS PAP SMEARS?

Everyone with a cervix starting at age 21, until you lose your cervix or until you're 65. You should get them every 3-5 years (depending on your exact age and what test your doctor does).

7. BUT I GOT THE VACCINE

Nice! You still need Pap smears.

8. I HAD ONE AND IT WAS HORRIBLE/I'M SCARED OF THE EXAM

Talk to your doctor about this in advance! Good gynecologists (and other providers) will work with you to minimize discomfort as much as possible. They can use a small speculum and lots of gel, prescribe anti-anxiety medications to take in advance, and some people will even use numbing creams and/or laughing gas.

9. BUT I DON'T HAVE/CAN'T SEE A GYN

Most primary care physicians can do them! So do a lot of urgent care centers!

10. BUT I'M A LESBIAN

HPV can be transmitted through oral/genital contact, hand/genital, and even hand-to-hand-then-genital, so you still need Pap smears.

11. BUT I'M A VIRGIN/ASEXUAL

You still need Pap smears. HPV can be transmitted not just through penetrative sex, but also through oral/genital, hand/genital, and hand-to-hand-then-genital, and also 9% of cervical cancers are not caused by HPV.

12. BUT I'M A TRANSGENDER MAN

If your cervix was removed, then congrats! You do not need Pap smears. Otherwise, unfortunately, you are still at risk for cervical cancer and need to be screened.

13. BUT I'M A TRANSGENDER WOMAN

Neovaginas do not need Pap smears! Congrats! Consider getting the vaccine, though, to prevent spreading HPV to others.

14. BUT I'M A CIS-GENDERED MAN

Congrats! You do not need Pap smears! You should still consider the vaccine though, not only to prevent the spread of HPV to others, but also because HPV causes 50% of all penile cancers as well.

In summary: please please please go get your pap smear. Go get vaccinated. The spread of HPV can be prevented, and cervical cancer can be caught and treated before it even becomes cancer.

DON'T FEAR THE SMEAR

[the-apocrypha]

it's cervical cancer awareness month y'all

[thestereotypebuster]

Also, pap smears need to start at age 21 OR when you start being sexually active, whichever comes first.

[macabrekawaii]

Please get regular paps. I had cervical cancer, and had multiple surgeries and led to a hysterectomy. I am alive because I got regular paps, and monitored this over a decade until, alas, I needed surgery. If I was just la de dah not getting regular screenings? I dont want to think about what could have happened. I had HPV (I am older than the vaccine was available, and it was not made available to my age group until it was too late for me). Get Gardasil, get regular paps. Save your life. 

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

hey uk people who remember her: cervical cancer is what jade goody died of. very publicly. get your cervix prodded.

[theatricuddles]

[ID: a medical diagram indicating a cervix, the small canal at the bottom of the uterus which connects to the vagina.]

[kayloulee]

if you are fucking terrified of a pap smear and don't want to get one and don't think you need all that business with the speculum and the people looking at your genitalia and so on

guess what!

they've made such a thing as Self Collected Cervical Screening Tests! I did one myself last year!

Australian government health department link: https://www.health.gov.au/resources/collections/self-collection-for-the-cervical-screening-test

USA National Institutes of Health link - it was approved by the FDA last year: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2024/fda-hpv-test-self-collection-health-care-setting

You can do this test yourself, or a clinician can do it for you. No speculums involved. It is a bit uncomfortable but it's not like a traditional Pap at all. Here's how I did it. I was at my GP for something else. She asked if I'd had a Pap test in the last few years. I said hell no, I'm asexual and not sexually active, but also I heard you guys have this self exam thing now, can I do one of those? She said SURE! And she handed me a little bundle of stuff that honestly looked like a big RAT test swab and a collection bag.

I took my test swab and myself into the clinic bathroom. I stood with one foot on the toilet lid and one on the floor. I read the instructions. YMMV but basically you insert it like a tampon applicator that's got a skinny toothbrush situation instead of a tampon. You wriggle it around a bit. This was fairly unpleasant and scratchy but not too bad. I think I should have fingered myself a bit first to get some room to move, actually - but I'm not sure if that would be a problem because of contamination from my hands. Maybe you could ask if they'd give you a medical glove to wear? Anyway then I took the swab out again and I put it in the bag. Job done. Returned it to the nurse, went on my merry way.

No speculums, no stirrups, no random people staring at my insides. 10/10 would do again.

[vaspider]

These are FDA-approved, and fall under the "better than nothing at all" umbrella for sure, but the article you link notes that the efficacy of these tests relative to clinical collection has not been studied. This test also only tests for HPV, one of the main causes of cervical cancer. It doesn't check for what a pap smear checks for, which are changed cells that can indicate the presence of cancer. (They also check for other infections as well, usually - I always had a full battery run when I had a cervix, whether I wanted one done or not.)

So like... this is good, and it may be enough if you're younger or if you don't have a family history, but it is not the same test. Check with your doctor.

[maidsuokasenpai]

I honestly think the original ah lads not again post is the funniest

[maidsuokasenpai]

[thebibliosphere]

My dad was a bit of a tearaway growing up. He still would be if it weren't for the advancing arthritis and my mother holding him back by his shirt collar for the last 50 years.

They both grew up in the slums of post-WW2 Glasgow. My mother talks about living in damp, mold-ridden basement flats and her mother owning multiple cats to keep down on the rats, while my father likes to recount how he grew up every night looking at the stars... through the hole in the roof.

He was also best friends with my mother's brother, which was how they met at the tender ages of 9 and 11 and got married ten years later. But before that, my dad was in a gang. They'd cut about the back streets with skinned knees, hand-me-down bikes rattling over cobblestone streets away from the polis. Mucky boots full of holes thudding over the tin roofs of the outhouses as they hopped the walls to avoid getting caught smoking—a habit my father laments he picked up at age 11 and has never been able to shake.

One time, in his mid-teens, my dad saw another boy getting the shit kicked out of him. Not an unusual site in that part of Glasgow back then, especially when the football was on and the bars spilled out into the streets with the drunken malevolence of festering religious bigotry that still, sadly, prevails to this day. But this was no honest scuffle. This was five to one, ten to one, depending on Dad's mood when he tells the story. And for all he was a scruffy wee toe rag who was no better than he ought to be, my dad had a firm sense of fairness, and the fight in front of him was not fair. So he jumped in and started battering the fuck out of people.

It's worth noting that my dad and I share many traits. Our humor, our love of words, and most notably, our height. My dad is 5ft 2 on a good day, 5'3" at a literal stretch. It earned him the nickname "wee barra," a name that's stuck to this day, even as my father shrinks with age and begins to resemble a Norman Rockwell-esque grandpa: silver-haired, red-faced with a smile that makes you think of Christmas.

Anyway, turns out the boy he rescued was the son of a reasonably well-known crime lord. The kind of mad cunt who'd give you a Glasgow Smile if you cut in front of him at the post office but who also donated to charity, loved his kids, and could be very kind and generous to a boy in over his head who saw an unfair fight and moved in to break it up.

I wouldn't say they became friends. More acquaintances you could nod at in the street. And when the time came for my dad to get down on bended knee and ask my Mum to marry him, that passing familiarity meant they got a discounted price at a local pub venue to host the wedding festivities. All proper posh and swanky. Or as posh and proper as a pub in the 70s could be.

Sadly, in the literal weeks running up to their wedding, my Mum's father grew sick and died. Lung cancer. It'd been eating away at him for years, and nobody knew. So while my mother sat by her father's deathbed, nursing him to the end, my father had to reschedule their wedding and help plan for a funeral instead. It was with no small trepidation he showed up at the pub and was led into a back room to say, "er, very sorry, but, er, we won't be going ahead with the wedding, er, would you mind waiting for the rest of your money... please?"

And this crime lord, this terrifying figure of a man, humphed and grumped and said, "very sorry to hear that, lad. Did things just not work out?"

So my dad explained about his future father-in-law, the funeral, and needing to help look after his future mother-in-law, and he recounts how the room got very still and quiet, and after a pause, this monster of a man renowned for violence turned toward the safe behind him, reached in and pulled out an envelope—the one my father had written "wedding deposit" on—and handed it back to him.

"Away and take care of your family, son," was apparently all he said, and my dad, clutching the envelope to his chest, nodded, said thank you about a million times, then legged it out the door.

I remember thinking the first time I heard this story, probably about the age of 9 or 10, still fully entrenched in the moral parables being taught to me every Sunday in a dusty church basement, that there was some higher moral to impart. Like how even the most monstrous of men could be capable of kindness and good and redemption. Upon voicing this, my dad laughed so hard that he inhaled his cigarette.

"Christ, no. Don't be daft," he said, between hacking coughs. "The lesson is don't owe money to the fucking mafia."

Anyway, that's the man who taught me right from wrong and how to read, write, and tell stories. It should probably help explain some things.

And today, we found out the cigarettes finally caught up with him. Lung cancer. We don't know what stage yet. He says he can breathe just fine, which is funny because I feel like I'm suffocating.

I don't know what to do.

But at least I don't need to tell a crime lord I can't pay him the rest of his money. Small mercies.

[dajo42]

if you dont have me on facebook you are probably not missing out on any posts but the comment section is important too lmao

I went to the Renaissance faire dressed as a warrior.  I had a real sword with me, too.  I was standing (in character) next to a sword-fighting ring, where kids of all ages got the chance to pick up a sword and challenge the champion.  Some woman walks by, with her little girl.  The girl starts walking towards the ring, saying she wants to fight.  But the mom pulled her away hella sharply, and was like, “That’s for boys.”  You don’t want to be a BOY, do you?”    And the girl looked around and saw me.  I think she thought I was a boy; I had my hair in a ponytail, and was wearing a hood.  So she comes up to me and asks me, “Do you think girls can be fighters, too?”  And her mom looks like she’s silently gloating.  Like she thinks I’m going to say no.  So I take off my hood, untie my hair so that it flows freely, and kneel before her.  And I’m like, “Milady, anyone can be a fighter.”  I swear, the look on that mother’s face made my day.

[maneth985]

[luxgalador]

This post was good but then it got better

[celticshenanigans]

Okay, this is a slight topic diversion, but in response to the above comment. I’ve volunteered at the CT Ren Faire for years now. For the last 5 or so I’ve worked in the game section, and we have a game similar to the above comment called “Smite the Knight”. I’ve been in the ring before, it’s a ton of fun getting to run around with the kids. The main goal is entertainment. Have a good shtick, keep the crowd engaged, and let the kids have a good time.

In both work and observing, I have learned something about kids. A lot of parents try to get their boys to go fight. Of the young ones that do, they tend to be shy. You get the ones who just swing the boffer swords around with no regard for life, but, mostly, they’re reserved. It’s adorable. I mean, they’re kids.

But the girls. THE GIRLS. Holy crap. I swear, the pinker the dress, the more taffeta and glitter…the more intensity. I remember, the first year I worked there, one girl came in, grabbed the biggest sword she could, and WENT TO TOWN on our knight. Lifted it over head, let out this primal scream and mowed him down. Homeboy is 6′2″, she was FIVE. And once he was in the fetal position (He was fine. It was for show.) on the ground, she stopped, put her foot on his chest, and yelled “I AM A FIERCE PRINCESS!!”. Later in the day when she walked by a couple of us yelled “Ah! It’s the fierce princess!” and she stopped and flexed. It was the best, and I will never forget that girl.

[complete-in-ix-deactivated20230]

OH MY GOD IT’S BACK YES

[the-ironhobbit-deactivated20170]

This has improved since last I reblogged.

[tinierpurplefishes]

I taught karate for like 5 years, and the girls were always, pound for pound, better than the boys. Even the girls who didn’t really want to do it and were only there because their parents made them were better than like 95% of the boys.

[shadesofmauve]

I was playing fiddle at a ren faire, and two little girls were really enjoying our set. After quite some time one of them walked up to me and shyly offered me her star tinsel tiara, because she “didn’t have any money. And this protects you from trolls!” I said “Thanks, that’s really sweet – but what about you? Don’t you need protection from trolls?”

At which point this six-ish-year-old girl whips out her certificate from the axe throwing booth and says “Nah, I’m fine.”

I still have that tinsel tiara. It’s draped over my modem. I figure it’ll protect me from the most trolls that way.

[callmebliss]

I am not in the habit of reblogging a post and slapping an “it got better” on there BUT I SAY GOTDAMN

[oddarette]

Biscuits and gravy manatee for the southern food babes out there 💖

[secondlina]

Please check out Crow Time on Webtoons.

[apofiss]

₍ ^. .^₎🌟(•- •マ

[never-obsolete]

Microsoft Office XP assistants

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I love it when the CEO is in stuff

[undeadentropy]

There are too many guys who look like this. I thought this was Adam Savage or Alton Brown or Adam Conover, until I realized this is probably a fourth guy

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

He's so unique his name doesn't even start with A. He's a bearded white guy with a whole different letter! Diversity!

[hareofhrair]

There does seem to be significant overlap in morphology, behavior, and ecological niche, but is it enough to justify grouping into a new taxonomical Type of Guy?

The research is ongoing...

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Yeah we can probably consider the incongruous letter to be a minor mutation that distinguishes him but he's still part of the same breed. Like a murder of crows with one albino crow.

[kwacpe]

I thought the first dude was the host of game changer

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

If you mean the guy in the first post, yes, he is the host of Game Changer

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#dropout#they are all a Category of Guy#in the same way that keith habersberger; grant o'brien; and ross bryant are all a Category of Guy#shitposting#queuetiful joe

When I first started watching Dropout it took me an embarrassingly long period of time to realise that Grant O'Brien and Ross Bryant were different people, and I frequently still have to wait for one of them to talk before I can tell them apart.

[shadykit]

[funny-tik-toks]

[wafflebloggies]

I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO UNMUTE,

[thememedaddy]

[sindri42]

I understand that most of your calls can be resolved by telling the dumbass on the other end to plug it in properly, or maybe turn something off and back on again. But I, an advanced dumbass, have already tried that and I'm afraid it's worse than either of us thought going into this.

[lentilswitheverything]

Once had an IT guy tell me the only possible explanation was a localised black hole under my desk disrupting the space time continuum, and I've always been obscurely proud of having an error that severe, even though it definitely wasn't me creating localised gravitational anomalies

[bumblebeebats]

I once had a computer problem so weird that it was escalated through like 4 different tiers of Apple Care until I was on the phone with this incredibly earnest guy who told me [in the thickest Eastern European accent imaginable]: "Oh my God... This is so strange... Haha!! Oh my God!!! Charlie, I will tell you, I have never encountered anything like this in my seven years of working here! All my days are spent usually helping people with stupid nonsense, but Charlie, you have brought me a PUZZLE! You have brought me a GIFT! I am FASCINATED! Now, I am going to get my manager, but Charlie, I PROMISE you. I PROMISE YOU, I will be back soon. PLEASE, Charlie, stay with me, and I PROMISE I will return to you and my manager and I will take care of you. OK?" and yes thank you i did tear up

[teaboot]

You encountered I.T. Poirot

[funkfuck]

has tumblr heard about the saga of raefarty yet

[musings-of-a-monster]

Before COVID shut the library down, I was helping a little boy and his mom find books.

“What do you like to read about?” I asked. “Dinosaurs!” This is common request, but can mean different things, “Okay. Do you want a story about dinosaurs, or facts about dinosaurs?” “Facts.” I took him to the dinosaur section (567.9) of the juvenile nonfiction. He picked out a couple books, and I asked him if there was anything else he was looking for. “Do you have anything on DNA?” I had to think about that for a second. “I think so…but I’ll have to look it up.” The boy beamed, “I want to find out how DNA works, so I can bring them back!” “We just saw Jurassic Park,” his mom explained with a smile that did not waver when she added, “We didn’t learn anything.”

[certifiedlibraryposts]

Certified Library Post

[hashtagloveloses]

so uh i might have cried into my pint of ice cream at an entire squad of past elphabas and glindas singing For Good together for the Wicked 15th anniversary concert

[vandersprodigy18]

This episode really demonstrates why M9 won the battle royale. They really are nigh unkillable.

They are rolling like dogshit and losing spell slots left and right, have less PCs than the VM fight at the Key, have taken exhaustion points and soo much damage, and their healing is being sabotaged.

But they still managed to complete their encounter in less than 1 episode. They managed to avoid all the obstacles leading to the boss fight. They had no deaths.

This party build is legit insane. Theyre so mobile, cant pin them down. Their casters control the battlefield. Their tanks are basically immortal. They have 2 guaranteed Divine Interventions, 2 Mass Heals. They have 1 Vestige, and an unending well of tricks in Fjord and Veth. They are dripping with advantages, resistances, and rerolls.

Mighty Nein most qualified assholes for the job fr.