祝日 / Permanent Vacation
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
noise dept.
almost home
Three Goblin Art
trying on a metaphor
todays bird
dirt enthusiast
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cherry valley forever
Claire Keane
ojovivo
Peter Solarz
Keni
Kiana Khansmith
izzy's playlists!
blake kathryn
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Jules of Nature
tumblr dot com
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@lothruin
The Pignic fabric collection is complete and available at @spoonflower 🐷🪡 #spoonflower #fabricdesign #quilting #quiltersofinstagram #retrokitchen #retrodesign #surfacepatterndesign https://www.instagram.com/p/CplKbUJv0rg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
A couple of weeks ago, I found a treasure. I work for a moving company. A couple of decades ago, they bought bales of rag blankets to use as moving pads. As we prepare to close for good, we have been going through old storage vaults, and I found this in the old equipment. This is a Victorian quilt. I’ve had it confirmed by a quilt appraiser that it is no later than circa 1900. It’s torn and stained and dirty and I love it. How often does a person like me; not a professional, just a very enthusiastic and fairly skilled amateur, get a chance to restore something like this? The final picture is the fabrics I’ve pulled from my vintage fabric stash to use as patching materials for tears and places where the fabric is disintegrating. I have done an initial wash (it was SO filthy I could not work on it until it had been cleaned), and have removed the yarn ties, the batting, and the backing fabric. (Per the appraiser’s advice.) In the next post, I’ll examine the back of the quilt top. So much can be learned in seam allowances.
here’s your regular reminder that if you consistently, regularly get headaches, you are almost certainly having migraines, not regular headaches.
MOST recurrent headaches are migraine headaches.
“migraine” does not mean “extremely painful headache.” it is a type and source of pain, not a degree of pain. migraines can also include some or all of the following: fatigue, sensitivity to light and sound, visual auras, nausea or vomiting, dizziness, cognitive impairment, etc. these symptoms can be mild or severe and it may actually be difficult to determine if you have them. (who wants a bright light in their eyes during a headache?? i thought that’s just how headaches were lmao.)
this is important because while aspirin, NSAIDs like ibuprofren, and other over-the-counter pain meds can effectively alleviate migraine pain, getting diagnosed with migraines allows for a wider range of treatments and preventatives.
it’s also important because, in my opinion, your average general practice doctor is not equipped to diagnose you with chronic migraine. don’t go to one expecting them to. a neurologist with migraine specialty is a better option, although a regular doctor can still be useful if they listen to you lol.
my life would be miserable and unmanageable without sumatriptan. and i never would have gotten a prescription for sumatriptan if i hadn’t gone to my GP and said, “i have migraines and want to try migraine medicine,” even though at the time i wasn’t 100% sure that was true.
if you have chronic headaches, they’re almost certainly migraines. if no one has said that to you before, let me be the first. start treating your migraines.
multiple times in my youth, i went to the doctor expecting them to figure out and tell me if i had migraines. each time, the doctor asked, “do you see an aura?” and when i said no, they determined i must not be getting migraines. no one ever told me that only 20% of migraine sufferers experience auras. that means 80% don’t, yet that is frequently used as important diagnostic criteria! what!
a book i recommend over and over is The Keeler Migraine Method by robert cowan. highly recommend if you’re trying to figure your migraine situation out.
Migraines don’t have to involve headaches! Turns out I’ve had migraines my whole life and I didn’t know, because it doesn’t cause headaches. Rather, I get
Extreme irritability
Photophobia
Sound sensitivity
Tingling and numbness
Inability to remember words
Trouble remembering
Trouble with basic arithmetic
Dizziness
Visual changes (stop being able to perceive depth)
Back and shoulder pain
Fatigue
I chalked a lot of this up to autism and overstimulation.
I saw a neurologist and now I have medicine to treat my migraines. What I have are called ocular migraines.
Please look into migraines without headaches. You may be totally unaware that you have migraines.
Migraines without headaches are called silent migraines, and they’re absolutely a thing. For me they’re even more frequent than painful ones.
Here’s a test which, while not infallible, has led to multiple of my friends realizing that they had migraines and didn’t know it: Do you feel nauseated? Confused? Like you pulled an all-night even though you didn’t? Or are you feeling just generally off in a way that’s hard to define? Go into a really dark room and shut the door behind you. If whatever weirdness you were experiencing gets suddenly better as soon as you’re sitting in the pitch-dark, you almost certainly are having a migraine.
I’ve mistaken migraines for food poisoning and car sickness. I’ve had friends who have mistaken them for everything from seizures, to covid, to a poor night of sleep, to even just having had too much alcohol to drink. The symptoms of migraines are extremely varied, and very few people have all of them - but light sensitivity is common and a bit of a dead giveaway. If you have light-sensitive anything, bring it up with a doctor as a possible migraine symptom.
Also, at least sumatriptan: if you’re NOT having a migraine, it does fuckall. Certainly doesn’t relieve ordinary pain.
If you ARE having a migraine, it helps. Sometimes not all on its own, maybe you still have to rest in a dark room for a nap cycle. But it “does something to the migraine.” Even if it doesn’t fix it all the way, you can clearly feel it doing SOMETHING to the migraine process itself.
One neat trick for finding out if you have migraines or not is going to the (right type of) doctor WITH one, and then they’ll try migraine medication on you, and diagnose you with migraine if it helps. They can also give you an injection, which is usually way less of the medication and fewer side effects than oral dosing (and a workaround for migraine nausea).
I…should probably look into this a little more
I have random periods where lights just seem really bright and it’s like I’m really sensitive to everything, and it feels almost like my eyes are strained.
I’ve had at least one “classic” migraine—I had an episode where I was having these bubbly lights in the corners of my vision, and it soon turned into the most painful headache I’ve ever had.
This list is seeming familiar though…
Not enough people understand that aphasia is a migraine symptom. I have had chronic migraine for almost 7 years, and I really thought I was going senile at first. In my late 30s. I also get aphasia as my migraines come and go, and ebb and flow in severity, NOT just during the aura phase. Symptoms of aphasia, for me, include: Stuttering as I try to find words Inability to recall words Trouble reading words Trouble reading numbers, but not doing math, just reading numbers My touch-typing going completely crazy, like letters all in the wrong order and extra letters thrown in at random Slurred speech As a recovering Gifted Kid, aphasia leaves me feeling actually legit GUILTY. Guilty for not being as eloquent as I should be, guilty for being STUPID, guilty for being BUMBLING, guilty for being inexpert and clumsy. Guilty and ashamed. I cope with this like so: By developing a habit of stopping myself mid-tonguetrip, saying “WORDS” and starting over By stopping mid-sentence to say “Word that means *insert complicated but explicit definition of word so people can guess which SPECIFIC word, not a synonym, but the exact word, because otherwise I have failed*” By asking “Do I sound drunk? I feel like I sound drunk. I’m talking through a mouthful of marbles” at least four times a week. Sometimes, if I am really having trouble, I can cover my eyes completely and speak blindfolded, and the problems will resolve at least a little. This shit is nuts. And it sucks. I’m currently in a treatment transition, and it’s happening while I’m also in an employment transition, and my life is just going to be pretty fucked for the rest of the year.
Been working on more beading projects.
So like, I designed a whole fabric collection. I call it Bumblebutts. It’s inspired by a couple of vintage fabrics I’ve seen in the wild, with colors drawn from deep summer Nebraska roadside flowers. You can find it here: https://www.spoonflower.com/collections/613068-bumblebutts-by-lothruin
Woodrow Wilson Crumbo [Woody Crumbo] (Native American Potawatomi, 1912 - 1989), Last Sunset, n.d., screenprint.
His native figures are absolutely stunning. He also did horses and deer. I have a serigraph print of his called Spirit Horse. It’s gorgeous. But his deer... oh my word. One of his deer prints is on my Grail list.
Acherontia Atropos in peyote stitch #craftersofinstagram #crafts #beadedjewelry #beading #peyotestitch #deathsheadmoth #deathsheadhawkmoth https://www.instagram.com/p/CigDinfvoj_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
A new wrap bracelet design that is fully convertible in a lot of fun ways. It is a large closed loop, with a hand made removable hook.
As always, 95% of all my supplies come from 2nd hand sources. This means I work with limited ranges of colors and styles, but every piece is one of a kind and hand made, and there will be few to no duplicates.
y’all like to make fun of men having pictures with the fishes they caught on tinder but for me that’s hot as fuck. It tells me he has a hobby, leaves the house at least sometimes, has a friend that takes a picture of him, and most importantly, that he has killed. absolute panty dropper
This guy just wants to fuck people’s dads…
this post was tagged with countless amounts of anime boyfriends and other assorted blorbos from shows but finally someone gets me
This post reads like it’s about catfishing rather than fishing fishing, and I’m here for it either way.
Have you ever seen such an angry cat planter before in your life?
i love those blinking red lights they put on top of radio towers and windmills and skyscrapers etc, theyre like electronic flowers or something to me
Thanks to a union job for the railroad in the late 70s, my dad was able to fulfill a lifelong dream of learning to fly. Of course, he had to lose his job first, but he did it. He started working for the place he was taking lessons, and kept learning and getting his licenses, and he has been a commercial pilot now for close to 40 years. He started taking lessons when I was about 7, and used to take my little sister and I on solo flights and touch and go’s. After he got his PPL, while my mom was riding the bus to work daily, we bought a very small airplane, because driving 11 hours back home over a 3 day weekend with two kids under 10 was impossible. But flying home in 5 hours made visits home possible. This is relevant. As a child, I spent so much time at small airports all over the midwest, and so much time OVER the midwest. These lights, all the lights; the tower lights, street lights, the lights of distant towns and cities, the revolving airport tower lights that changed colors depending on what side of the light you were seeing, the blue lights of the runways; they are all beautiful. I spent hours looking out the little windows watching the earth go by. At twilight especially, the glow of these lights just as they come on, twinkling alive so far below, is like watching a fairy garden awaken. We don’t romanticize modern life nearly often enough. We think of myths and legends as things of the past. But with just a little bit of hope, we can turn the cold realities of industrialization into lovely things.
When you already own 7 sewing machines, and can’t justify bringing home the coolest one you’ve seen in a long time, you have to throw it’s picture all over the internet in an effort to feel better about it. White model 603, an a rare red and white color scheme. The cutest ding dang sewing machine I ever did see.
Did I design a Fallout-based blackwork design in order to learn how to do it? Yes I did.
My town had an event organized by groups that serve minority and underprivileged teens, and Law Enforcement, to “Bridge the Gap”, and I guess kudos for trying to actually do some community policing, but like... Something tells me that cop isn’t connecting with those kids real well, and honestly, I’ve been giggling about it since yesterday.
sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really.
You’re being kind when you say “almost 100% fatality”. What people need to hear is: if you get to develop rabies symptoms, you’re dead. If you get heavy treatment after developping symptoms, you still need a miracle. Like, a real miracle, you should enter some religion if you escape that.
ALSO, I don’t want people feeling confident about petting stray/wild animals because there’s a vaccine available, either. I’ll explain why from my own experience (I’m not a doctor).
I got bitten by a wild tamarin once, on the pulp of my index finger. It drew blood, there are many wild animals in the area (tamarins, possums, bats, foxes) and it isn’t that uncommon to hear about 1 or 2 rabies cases every now and again (a puppy we gave to a friend got it, for instance), so I went to an ambulatory immediately.
Because I was bitten in an ultrasensitive area, I needed fast treatment. But it was also a small area, so the usual thing they do - inject the vaccine in the place - wasn’t a choice. They told me they’d divide the shot in 5 small ones, and inject me all over my body, so the antidote would get to my entire system fast.
Please stop for a moment and think that the disease is so worrysome that they’d rather needle me all over than to give me one shot and wait until it spread through my system.
Then they said that, okay, but there was a catch first. I needed to take an antiallergic shot. “Why?” “Because the virus is devastating, and as the vaccine is made from it, but weakened (like almost every vaccine) it will still create a reaction, and it’s a strong one, and it’s veru common for people to have strong allergic reactions to it.” YOU HAVE TO TAKE AN ANTIALLERGIC SHOT IN ORDER TO TAKE THE VACCINE COZ THE VACCINE COULD POTENTIALLY MAKE YOU REALLY SICK
ALSO IT WASN’T JUST “A LITTLE ANTIALLERGIC SHOT”
IT WAS ONE OF THESE FUCKERS HERE.
It was OBVIOUSLY dripped in my body and not injected because HAHAHAHA. Truth be told I was an adult already and I’m tall so I have a lot of mass but STILL.
So after I had taken the antiallegic and was starting to feel drowsy (as a side effect of it) the doctor came with the 5 shots.
- One in each buttock
- One in each thigh
- One in my left arm
They all stung like a bitch and I usually don’t care about shots.
“Okay so can I go home now?”
“No, we have to keep you under observation for 2h so we’re SURE the vaccine won’t give you any reaction.”
BINCH I WAS GIVEN A BUTTLOAD OF MEDICINE BUT THERE WAS STILL A RISK.
I slept through the two hours and then was liberated to go home. My legs, butt, and left arm hurt all over, like I had been punched there, for a few days. I also had a fever (not feverish, a fever)
BUT DID YOU THINK IT WAS OVER?
WRONG!!!
I had to take four reinforcement shots in the next month, one a week, so I could be positively be considered immunized. Every time I took a shot, my arm would swell and hurt like it’d been hit, and when night came I’d have a fever. Because that’s how fucking strong the vaccine is, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW VICIOUS THE VIRUS IS.
So yeah. DO NOT PUT YOURSELF IN RISK, GODDAMNIT. Rabies is a rare condition all over, THANK GOD, and 1 confirmed case can be already considered a surge and a reason for mass campaigning, AND FOR A REASON.
If you like messing with stray/wild animals, don’t go picking them up and be extra careful. Or just, like, DON’T - call a vet or an authority that can handle them safely.
I must add that I live in a country with universal healthcare, so I didn’t pay a single penny for my treatment. Is this your reality? If not, ONE MORE REASON TO NOT FUCKING PLAY WITH THIS SHIT.
Rabies is 100% lethal. Period. If you are scratched or bitten by an animal you’re not positive is vaccinated, you need to find treatment NOW. And probably go through all that shit I’ve been through (also if you are immunosupressed? I DON’T KNOW WHAT’D HAPPEN)
Stay safe and don’t be stupid ffs
Guys, I know this isn’t art nor anything like that, but I’ve been hearing about this rabies thing and ???? Look I trust none of you would risk yourselves like this, but maybe you can educate someone through my experience and stuff.
Also rabies does not necessarily cause frothing-at-the-mouth aggression in animals. Docility is also a very common symptom so any wild animal that is ‘friendly’ or ‘likes to be pet’ is suspect. Literally any wild animal is a vector.
Finally, you don’t need to be bitten. All you need is to come into contact with an infected animal’s bodily fluids through a cut that maybe you didn’t notice when you were handling it when it drooled on you.
Never touch a wild animal.
Infection with the rabies virus progresses through three distinct stages.
Prodromal: Stage One. Marked by altered behavioral patterns. “Docility” and “likes to be pet” are very common in the prodromal stage. Usually lasts 1-3 days. An animal in this stage carries virus bodies in its saliva and is infectious.
Excitative: Stage Two. Also called “furious” rabies. This is what everyone thinks rabies is–hyperreacting to stimuli and biting everything. Excessive salivation occurs. Animals in this stage also exhibit hydrophobia or the fear of water; they cannot drink (swallowing causes painful spasms of the throat muscles), and will panic if shown water. Usually lasts 3-4 days before rapidly progressing into the next stage.
Paralytic: Stage Three. Also called “dumb” rabies. As the infection runs its course, the virus starts degrading the nervous system. Limbs begin to fail; animals in this stage will often limp or drag their haunches behind them. If the animal has survived all this way, death will usually come through respiratory arrest: Their diaphragm becomes paralyzed and they stop breathing.
And to add onto the above, saliva isn’t the only infectious fluid. Brain matter is, too. If, somehow, you find yourself in possession of a firearm and faced with a rabid animal, do not go for a head shot. If you do, you will aerosolize the brain matter and effectively create a cloud of infectious material. Breathe it in, and you’ll give yourself an infection.
When I worked in wildlife rehabilitation, I actually did see a rabid animal in person, and it remains one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, because I was literally looking death in the eyes.
A pair of well-intentioned women brought us a raccoon that they thought had been hit by a car. They had found it on the side of the road, dragging its hind legs. They managed–somehow–to get it into a cat carrier and brought it to us.
As they brought it in, I remember how eerily silent it was. Normal raccoons chatter almost constantly. They fidget. They bump around. They purr and mumble and make little grabby-hands at everything. Even when they’re in pain, and especially when they’re stressed. But this one wasn’t moving around inside the carrier, and it wasn’t making a sound.
The clinic director also noticed this, and he asked in a calm but urgent voice for the women to hand the carrier to him. He took it to the exam room and set it on the table while they filled out some forms in the next room. I took a step towards the carrier, to look at our new patient, and without turning around, he told me, “Go to the other side of the room, and stay there.”
He took a small penlight out of the drawer and shone it briefly into the carrier, then sighed. “Bear, if you want to come look at this, you can put on a mask,” he said. “It’s really pretty neat, but I know you’re not vaccinated and I don’t want to take any chances.”
And at that point, I knew exactly what we were dealing with, and I knew that this would be the closest I had ever been to certain death. So I grabbed a respirator from the table and put it on, and held my breath for good measure as I approached the table. The clinic director pointed where I should stand, well back from the carrier door. He shone the light inside again, and I saw two brilliant flashes of emerald green–the most vivid, unnatural eyeshine I had ever seen.
“I don’t know why it does it,” the director murmured, “but it turns their eyes green.”
“What does?” one of the women asked, with uncanny, unintentionally dramatic timing, as she poked her head around the corner.
“Rabies,” the director said. “The raccoon is rabid. Did it bite either of you, or even lick you?” They told us no, said they had even used leather garden gloves when they herded it into the carrier. He told them to throw away the gloves as soon as possible, and steam-clean the upholstery in their car. They asked how they should clean the cat carrier; they wanted it back and couldn’t be convinced otherwise, so he told them to soak it in just barely diluted bleach.
But before we could give them the carrier back, we had to remove the raccoon. The rabid raccoon.
The clinic director readied a syringe with tranquilizers and attached it to the end of a short pole. I don’t remember how it was rigged exactly–whether he had a way to push down the plunger or if the needle would inject with pressure–but all he would have to do was stick the animal to inject it. And so, after sending me and the women back to the other side of the room, he made his fist jab.
He missed the raccoon.
The sound that that animal made on being brushed by the pole can only be described as a roar. It was throaty and ragged and ungodly loud. It was not a sound that a raccoon should ever make. I’m convinced it was a sound that a raccoon physically could not make.
It thrashed inside the carrier, sending it tipping from side to side. Its claws clattered against the walls. It bellowed that throaty, rasping sound again. It was absolutely frenzied, and I was genuinely scared that it would break loose from inside those plastic walls.
Somehow, the clinic director kept his calm, and as the raccoon jolted around inside the cat carrier, he moved in with the syringe again, and this time, he hit it. He emptied the syringe into its body and withdrew the pole.
And then we waited.
We waited for those awful screams, that horrible thrashing, to die down. As we did, the director loaded up another syringe with even more tranquilizer, and as the raccoon dropped off into unconsciousness, he stuck it a second time with the heavier dose. Even then, it growled at him and flailed a paw against the wall.
More waiting, this time to make sure the animal was truly down for the count.
Then, while wearing welder’s gloves, the director opened the door of the carrier and removed the raccoon. She was limp, bedraggled, and utterly emaciated, but she was still alive. We bagged up the cat carrier and gave it to the women again, advising them that now was a good time to leave. They heeded our warning.
I asked if I could come closer to see, and the clinic director pointed where I could stand. I pushed the mask up against my face and tried to breathe as little as possible.
He and his co-director–who I think he was grooming to be his successor, but the clinic actually went under later that year–examined the raccoon together. Donning a pair of nitrile gloves, he reached down and pulled up a handful, a literal fistful, of the raccoon’s skin and released it. It stayed pulled up.
Severe dehydration causes a phenomenon called “skin tenting”. The skin loses its elasticity somewhat, and will be slow to return to its “normal” shape when manipulated. The clinic director estimated that it had been at least four or five days since the raccoon had had anything to eat or drink.
She was already on death’s doorstep, but her rabies infection had driven her exhausted body to scream and lunge and bite.
Because, the scariest thing about rabies (if you ask me) is the way that it alters the behavior of those it infects to increase chances of spreading.
The prodromal stage? Nocturnal animals become diurnal–allowing them to potentially infect most hosts than if they remained nocturnal.
The excitative stage? The infected animal bites at the slightest provocation. Swallowing causes painful spasms, so they drool, coating their bodies in infectious matter. A drink could wash away the virus-charged saliva from their mouth and bodies, so the virus drives them to panic at the sight of water.
(The paralytic stage? By that point, the animal has probably spread its infection to new hosts, so the virus has no need for it any longer.)
Rabies is deadly. Rabies is dangerous. In all of recorded history, one person survived an infection after she became symptomatic, and so far we haven’t been able to replicate that success. The Milwaukee Protocol hasn’t saved anyone else. Just one person. And even then, she still had to struggle to gain back control of her body after all that nerve damage.
Please, please, take rabies seriously.
This has been a warning from your old pal Bear.
I knew how bad it was, but I had never read anything like the raccoon story.
I am not exaggerating when I say that is literally terrifying.
Y'all please read this. That is absolutely hideous. That’s literally like something from a horror movie.
Do not fuck around with wildlife. Or weird strays.
TFW Rabies education comes across your dash because some fuck up calls themselves Rabiosexual.
Rebloggin’ for that raccoon. o.o The original post I can pretty much guarantee is a troll, but it’s useful to know just why rabies is such serious shit.
Education right here
Extra reminder: If you see any animal other than a dog who’s been attacked by a porcupine? It’s rabid.
Dogs are dumb, friendly fucks who will investigate anything; everything else in the animal kingdom knows better than to mess with a porcupine, unless their brain is being ravaged by something beyond their control.
If you see a non-dog animal that has porcupine quills sticking out of it? Don’t try to help it yourself. Call animal control.
@talesfromtreatment @is-the-cat-video-cute tagging you to spread the word? Apparently people have forgotten that rabies is a brain disease, terrifying, is fatal if not treated immediately, the treatment is horrid, and the treatment is very expensive
Also I heard that in the USA, human rabies pre-exposure vaccines are not widely available and cost something like $900
Get your pets rabies vaccine every year, folks. Aside from everything else - and that’s a lot of everything - the test for rabies involves the brain, so the animal will be killed first.
And that is a kind end. The videos of rabies seizures are nightmarish
This is also why you’re not supposed to sleep outside without cover (ie a CLOSED tent) if there are swooping bats in your area. Apparently it can be very hard to realize you’ve been bitten by a bat (vs a bug, I guess it’s very small). Some students from my university were on a trip where they came into contact with bats, taking lots of selfies holding them etc, in the area they were supposed to be sleeping and the professor lost it when they saw some of the pictures. The students were housed elsewhere and the university had everyone vaccinated at the school’s expense- the pre-exposure vax may be expensive, but the number of shots you get post-exposure can vary (as demonstrated above) and it was ASTRONOMICAL.
When I looking for places to move to when I can finally leave the states, I looking to laws and procedures to bring my cat with. Any place that had eradicated rabies, intense policies and quarantines for any animal entering the country, unless you were coming from a different place that had also eradicated it. Some of would put your animal down if they were symptomatic at all. I remember thinking “what can’t rabies just treated?” No it can’t be, putting your pet down is the humane option if there symptomatic.
[image: a sixty-milliliter syringe, with human hand for scale. the syringe barrel is likely around five inches long and likely has an inside diameter of an inch or more.]
When I talk to my students about Louis Pasteur and the development of vaccines, I *have* to talk about rabies.
Do you know why “dog catcher” was such a serious occupation? Because in the late 1800s rabies ran rampant in urban street dogs. Because people who got bitten by street dogs… had probably just gotten a death sentence.
As a child, Louis Pasteur watched a man from his hometown die slowly, painfully, and unstoppably from rabies from a rabid wolf bite and it stuck with him so hard that when he grew up he put his own life on the line studying and working with rabid animals to develop a treatment. (Louis Pasteur’s wife, Marie Pasteur, was also a talented, passionate scientist who worked uncredited by his side. Many of their daughters also took up research.)
When Louis Pasteur did his first human test of his rabies vaccine, it was because a mother came to him desperate. Her 8 year old son had been bitten 14 times by a street dog. Doctors were certain he was going to die. She’d heard what Pasteur was working on and begged him to try to save her son.
He tried.
It worked.
This made national news. This made GLOBAL news.
And in the small Russian town of Beloi, locals read about this miracle cure. Their town had been attacked by a rabid wolf and twenty two people had been bitten. They knew these people were going to die. So the bitten people set off walking, carrying the most injured. They walked for weeks to get to France, where Pasteur was based.
When they arrived, the only French word they knew was “Pasteur.” Their cases were dangerously far along, possibly too far. Pasteur began treatment anyway, pushing with the most aggressive dosages he dared.
This also caught global attention. The world waited on tenterhooks.
Pasteur’s vaccine saved 19 out of 22.
The world was awed.
And when those Russian villagers returned home, to their families, it would have been like seeing the dead return.
Vaccinations changed our world.
When my child was just small we found a bat under his crib. It was late at night, and without thinking much of it, I caught the bat under a bowl and removed it to the outdoors, then went back to bed. The following day, I was absolutely chewed completely out by someone at the county Health Department. (Although, in fairness, no bat-removal people, either from the city or a private concern, would have been available at 2am, and we did not have the money to abandon the house and find another place to sleep until someone would be available.) Our kid started a 4 shot vaccine course just an hour later, despite the fact that there was no evidence that the bat had come within arms length of him. On the positive side: After every shot, we gave my kid a new bat-themed toy or book. His copy of Stellaluna came from that time. Also, the Skelanimals Diego toy. a year later, when my kid was bitten by a family pet, and the nurse asked me if the dog was current on it’s rabies shots, I was able to say “Yeah, and so is the kid, so they’re both safe.”
Mia was very excited about finding this stick. Her tail goes nuts when she is super happy. The breeder from whom she was rescued was definitely billed her as a purebred GSD, but she favors working lines rather than show lines (thank goodness), with her coat, coloring, and build. She carries her tail in a standard GSD way most of the time, but when she gets super excited, this happens. We call it ornery tail, and don't care if the AKC calls it a "fault". It is entirely too cute, and too expressive, to be a negative.
I spent my entire adult life being relatively flat-chested. I had the size of breasts that made people say “You know, in France those would be considered the perfect size.” And so, a totally unexpected consequence of nearing menopause is the sudden advent of Titties in my life. I didn’t know this could be a side effect of perimenopause, but here we are. In the hormone lottery I won chronic migraine and two extra cup sizes. I don’t know how to manage these melons. I never imagined my life with gazongas. My Ladies are of a certain age, if you get my drift. They turned 38D last week. For a gal who hovered somewhere below a B until 2 years ago, this is awkward.
