@spooky-strawberry - Tumblr Blog

there are places in the world today that are experiencing 40°C for the first time in recorded history. of course there's no way to know whether chucking billionaires into volcanos will appease the sun god but i feel we're doing the scientific method a disservice if we don't at least try

tinyyellowflowers-blog

I have been thinking a lot about what a cancer diagnosis used to mean. How in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when someone was diagnosed, my parents would gently prepare me for their death. That chemo and radiation and surgery just bought time, and over the age of fifty people would sometimes just. Skip it. For cost reasons, and for quality of life reasons. My grandmother was diagnosed in her early seventies and went directly into hospice for just under a year — palliative care only. And often, after diagnosis people and their families would go away — they’d cash out retirement or sell the house and go live on a beach for six months. Or they’d pay a charlatan all their savings to buy hope. People would get diagnosed, get very sick, leave, and then we’d hear that they died.

And then, at some point, the people who left started coming back.

It was the children first. The March of Dimes and Saint Jude set up programs and my town would do spaghetti fundraisers and raffles and meal trains to support the family and send the child and one parent to a hospital in the city — and the children came home. Their hair grew back. They went back to school. We were all trained to think of them as the angelic lost and they were turning into asshole teens right in front of our eyes. What a miracle, what a gift, how lucky we are that the odds for several children are in our favor!

Adults started leaving for a specific program to treat their specific cancer at a specific hospital or a specific research group. They’d stay in that city for 6-12 months and then they’d come home. We fully expected that they were still dying — or they’d gotten one of the good cancers. What a gift this year is for them, we’d think. How lucky they are to be strong enough to ski and swim and run. And then they didn’t stop — two decades later they haven’t stopped. Not all of them, but most of them.

We bought those extra hours and months and years. We paid for time with our taxes. Scientists found ways for treatment to be less terrible, less poisonous, and a thousand times more effective.

And now, when a friend was diagnosed, the five year survival odds were 95%. My friend is alive, nearly five years later. Those kids who miraculously survived are alive. The adults who beat the odds are still alive. I grew up in a place small enough that you can see the losses. And now, the hospital in my tiny hometown can effectively treat many cancers. Most people don’t have to go away for treatment. They said we could never cure cancer, as it were, but we can cure a lot of cancers. We can diagnose a lot of cancers early enough to treat them with minor interventions. We can prevent a lot of cancers.

We could keep doing that. We could continue to fund research into other heartbreaks — into Long Covid and MCAS and psych meds with fewer side effects and dementia treatments. We could buy months and years, alleviate the suffering of our neighbors. That is what funding health research buys: time and ease.

Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir here. But it is a quiet miracle what’s happened in my lifetime.

loki-zen

Cystic fibrosis used to be a "disease of childhood" because people who had it rarely lived to be adults. Now it's considered a chronic illness.

catboybiologist

I know I'm saying this as someone who's career largely depends on this, but: please, this is why we need basic science research. If you ever see a headline or snippet about something "ridiculous" that scientists are doing, you are being propagandized. You are being lied to. And it's in a way that aims to stop this progress.

figtreeandvine

There is a cure for sickle-cell anemia. Not a treatment, a cure. One of the first to be cured on a non-experimental basis--after decades of excruciatingly painful episodes, hospitalizations, after a disabling illness their entire life--recounted asking their doctor after the (lengthy) treatment, "What's next?"

And their doctor said, "There is no next. You're done. It's gone.". No follow up treatment, no drug regiment, just...life.

shamebats

The (European) sun is a deadly laser, stay safe everyone

unfuckablebogtroll

☝️🤓 it’s because the further you move toward the earth’s poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at the hottest parts of the day, meaning the radiation hits your whole body, causing it to feel 10-20 degrees warmer than the thermometer reading will tell you. People from tropical climes, aka close to the equator, are used to the sun’s radiation hitting a much smaller target- their head and shoulders.

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

It’s not the heat. It very literally is the sun.

tiktoks-for-dead-pope

lilacblossoms

this kills me EVERY. TIME. I WATCH IT.

Her deadpan delivery is just... *chef's kiss*

astrodidact

intheheartofman

wonderwanda

I reblogged this yesterday, but I want to reblog it again. Diabetic ketoacidosis turns your blood acidic and will essentially burn you from the inside out.

The stories you hear of people dying from rationing, this is what happens to their body.

Affordable insulin isn’t just a right, it’s a necessity.

No one should have to die like that when it’s preventable with access to proper medication.

teaboot

"Affordable" should be the lowest fucking bar. Pharmaceutical companies should be tripping over themselves to offer insulin at "affordable". That shit deserves to be fucking free

fostershyperfixator

My local library had a days since James Patterson last published counter.

official-library-posts

official library post

intothestacks

I need non-librarians to understand that this is not a celebratory counter. It's a plea for help.

kosmogrl

omg the new emoji 🫪🫪🫪🫪

kosmogrl

🫪🫪🫪

kosmogrl

for those that can’t see it

couldbeglorious

i love him on android their eyes are even more off-center

cee4bugza

i don’t usually talk outside of tags but this was really funny to me

the-forest-library

Love it when a post finds its intended audience

the-toastr-rat

I know it's a little early, but it's good to let people prepare!

ruinedchildhood

anachronic-cobra

Cyber truck people trying desperately to find a redeeming quality in their glorified cardboard box: it... It has doors. They open. Glov comportmnt

thanksbrunette

orivu

larval-tear

elf sex: 3 to 12 effeminate twinks coo and giggle in a sensual pile in the woods. sometimes the elf queen joins and pretends they’re her baby birds

dwarf sex: a pair of strong able bodied warriors tacitly agree to mate as equals under a binding contract of tomelike thickness, with consent from the council

gnome sex: married couple of 200 years finally gives in to temptation and call upon the stork to deliver their child, then sleep in separate beds completely satisfied