social topic

2015-04-01 11:41:41 am

So club nintendo was down all evening yesterday so I was unable to log on to verify if I got my points. I logged in today and saw that there were no points. I called customer service and they said there was nothing they could do. So I basically went out and bought that game yesterday for NOTHING. I'm still gold, not platinum, and I can't get the awesome platinum reward that I want (Tropical Freeze). Fuck you nintendo.

Opium

2015-04-01 11:46:18 am

Quote from ryu:

That must have been a hard time to go through.

It was (and still is) pretty awful. His health issues are way scary. I met him through a group of people that all knew each other from a support group for people who were basically dying. The most fucked up thing about it is that when people get very sick, everyone they know bails on them, even family. Everyone assumes that someone else will deal with it and just avoids the person, and they are left all alone. Meanwhile the people who abandoned them go on telling themselves what awesome people they are. It's really horrible. It happened to my friend who died at age 25. His own mother wouldn't even see him. People just don't want to deal with it, so they don't. In 2012-2013 things got really bad and I had to help him on my own. All of my friends bailed, nobody wanted anything to do with it. I only had a few friends, and now I really don't have any. I don't have any respect for them any more.

Opium

2015-04-01 11:51:11 am

I would start crying at work and people would ask me what was going on, and I told a few of them, and they all just said Oh that's so terrible. Have a cookie.

I couldn't handle changing diapers on someone three times my size all the time, or the stress of not knowing if I would end up crying in the emergency room all night again before going back to work, I was basically on my own trying to take care of someone by myself. I just wanted one person to help me. And of course everyone was too busy pretending that someone else would help.

Opium

2015-04-01 11:57:44 am

My only solace was/is gaming. It was my escape. When he was sleeping I would have to immediately jump into a game so I didn't have to think about shit any more.

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2015-04-01 12:17:15 pm

ryu: 2015-04-01 12:17:08 pm

ryu: 2015-04-01 12:16:08 pm

2015-04-01 12:15:49 pm

Caring for an adult human is... difficult in many ways. I can understand people refusing to take responsibility, depending on the circumstances. If possible I'd want to avoid caring for a sick person myself, even though I do have experience with the matter. Used to work in a hospital and helped my uncle caring for my grandmother when she was dying. But taking care for a person 24/7, over a prolonged period of time, is a whole different matter. But that's why ideally there should be multiple people caring for someone who is sick. It's certainly a horrible scenario, and one can only wonder why there are no laws dealing with the issue.

Sorry to hear you're going through that nightmare. :/

Opium

2015-04-01 12:21:36 pm

Things are a lot better now. He's working and doing better than I ever thought he would. When he lost his extra weight, his diabetes went away and that was the cause of a lot of his other problems. His heart was fixed, too. I still have a lot of anxiety about his health, though.

Opium

2015-04-01 12:24:59 pm

He has no feeling in his feet so I have to examine them regularly. He bought new shoes that rubbed off half of the sole of his feet and he felt nothing. We didn't know until he went to change his sock and realized that it was stuck to him from all the blood. That was fun. He has to take a shit-ton of meds every day too. We argue about it a lot because I shouldn't have to manage so much of that stuff for him now that he's able to.

ryu

2015-04-01 12:32:11 pm

Quote:

He has no feeling in his feet so I have to examine them regularly.

Is that a chronical issue relating to his past diabetes?

Quote:

He has to take a shit-ton of meds every day too.

I'm not surprised to hear that. All the people I know who've had surgeries done on their hearts have to take dozens of meds.

Opium

2015-04-01 12:37:16 pm

Yes he has a lot of nerve damage and circulatory damage from the diabetes, much of which is irreversible. His incontinence is caused by nerve damage in his digestive tract, and he has neuropathy in his feet.

Opium

2015-04-01 12:40:09 pm

The blood thinners were the worst meds he took, and he doesn't need them any more thank goodness.

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2015-04-01 12:44:17 pm

2015-04-01 12:43:46 pm

Yikes.

Diabetes is fucking weird though. My latest understanding was that it is completely uncurable, so I'm somewhat surprised to hear you can get rid of it by losing weight. But then there's multiple types of diabetes so it might depend on that too.

Opium

2015-04-01 12:44:42 pm

You can totally get rid of it from losing weight if the weight is what's causing it. There's different kinds/causes.

Opium

2015-04-01 12:47:06 pm

His doctor confirmed that he no longer needs insulin. Another weird thing is that he could tell what his blood sugar levels were just by the way he felt. He would say it was high or low and guess the number before the reader confirmed it.

Opium

2015-04-01 12:50:58 pm

After he lost the weight he kept having low blood sugar episodes caused by the insulin. Those are really scary. So we would use less and less, and he would still have the epsiodes. Finally we stopped using it altogether and his sugar was fine. After a couple rounds of test he was given the thumbs up - diabetes = gone.

ryu

2015-04-01 12:54:35 pm

Oh christ. That shit can kill you. Good thing he pulled through.

Chanoire

2015-04-01 01:18:51 pm

Wow, Opium, that's awful. I'm glad he's doing better and sorry that things are so bad.

My grandfather had peripheral neuropathy the last year and a half of his life (his body was killing his nerves, basically), and my mom and uncle and I all took care of him. A few years later my grandmother started declining and needed a lot more care, which again was mainly my mom and uncle with me helping out whenever I could (since I was working full-time then). The load on us all was hard, but especially on my uncle, who moved in when my grandfather got bad and stayed there until after my grandmother died, and on my mom, who lives 400 miles away and was up here for weeks and months at a time. Giving them breaks when I could was about all I could do (I could've gotten family medical leave to take care of my parents, but not my grandparents), but it helped. My sister came up too when she could.

And yeah, it's so very, very hard seeing someone you love fall apart, which is probably what makes a lot of people stay away from sick family members. But it's so awful. I'm so sorry you've had to go through being your sweetie's caretaker alone.

Re diabetes, it's hardly comparable, but one of my cats was diagnosed with it and was on twice-daily insulin injections. I switched their food to wet from dry and a few months later his diabetes was in remission. Cats' pancreases just aren't made to handle the huge amounts of carbohydrate that holds dry food together, which is probably why feline diabetes is way on the rise. (I have a rant about cat food companies that you're spared because I need to leave for a medical appointment, like, right now.)

Wow, Opium, that's awful.  I'm glad he's doing better and sorry that things are so bad.

My grandfather had peripheral neuropathy the last year and a half of his life (his body was killing his nerves, basically), and my mom and uncle and I all took care of him.  A few years later my grandmother started declining and needed a lot more care, which again was mainly my mom and uncle with me helping out whenever I could (since I was working full-time then).  The load on us all was hard, but especially on my uncle, who moved in when my grandfather got bad and stayed there until after my grandmother died, and on my mom, who lives 400 miles away and was up here for weeks and months at a time.  Giving them breaks when I could was about all I could do (I could've gotten family medical leave to take care of my parents, but not my grandparents), but it helped.  My sister came up too when she could.

And yeah, it's so very, very hard seeing someone you love fall apart, which is probably what makes a lot of people stay away from sick family members.  But it's so awful.  I'm so sorry you've had to go through being your sweetie's caretaker alone.

Re diabetes, it's hardly comparable, but one of my cats was diagnosed with it and was on twice-daily insulin injections.  I switched their food to wet from dry and a few months later his diabetes was in remission.  Cats' pancreases just aren't made to handle the huge amounts of carbohydrate that holds dry food together, which is probably why feline diabetes is way on the rise.  (I have a rant about cat food companies that you're spared because I need to leave for a medical appointment, like, right now.)

Opium

2015-04-01 01:49:12 pm

Maybe remission is the more correct term to use than to just say it's gone.

It's awesome that you and your family worked together like that. That's all I wanted was someone to come help.

It was really bad, but like I said it's much better now. For a while it was just one thing after another, and I really was waiting for the day when I woke up next to him and he would be gone. Or worse yet he would die while I was on the phone with 911. I still have that anxiety even though he's doing well.

One of the weirdest things that happened is his teeth died. One by one they turned black. The blood vessels that were supplying his teeth with blood were failing. We had to borrow against life insurance to pay a dentist to take them all out. It took 5 visits that were a couple of weeks apart to do all the pulling and he was a mess over it. Fitting dentures was hell because your gums change shape continuously for a year afterwards, so we would have to have them adjusted constantly. They would only fit right for a day or two after the adjustment and then they were uncomfortable again. Then he became incredibly depressed about his teeth. At first I was hard on him about it, then I did some research and learned that depression after getting dentures was very common, and there were online support groups for people who were going through it. He wouldn't join the groups, but I kept trying to get him to. It makes sense that it would be really hard, but I never gave it much thought before. Freud theorized that losing teeth was symbolic of death, and I wouldn't call his logic faulty. Plus he had to change to way he ate, which is something so regular that we take it for granted. Losing the teeth was the hardest thing for him to deal with.

Maybe remission is the more correct term to use than to just say it's gone.

It's awesome that you and your family worked together like that.  That's all I wanted was someone to come help.

It was really bad, but like I said it's much better now.  For a while it was just one thing after another, and I really was waiting for the day when I woke up next to him and he would be gone.  Or worse yet he would die while I was on the phone with 911.  I still have that anxiety even though he's doing well.

One of the weirdest things that happened is his teeth died.  One by one they turned black. The blood vessels that were supplying his teeth with blood were failing.  We had to borrow against life insurance to pay a dentist to take them all out.  It took 5 visits that were a couple of weeks apart to do all the pulling and he was a mess over it.  Fitting dentures was hell because your gums change shape continuously for a year afterwards, so we would have to have them adjusted constantly.  They would only fit right for a day or two after the adjustment and then they were uncomfortable again.  Then he became incredibly depressed about his teeth.  At first I was hard on him about it, then I did some research and learned that depression after getting dentures was very common, and there were online support groups for people who were going through it. He wouldn't join the groups, but I kept trying to get him to.  It makes sense that it would be really hard, but I never gave it much thought before.  Freud theorized that losing teeth was symbolic of death, and I wouldn't call his logic faulty.  Plus he had to change to way he ate, which is something so regular that we take it for granted. Losing the teeth was the hardest thing for him to deal with.

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2015-04-01 03:24:33 pm

2015-04-01 02:46:48 pm

Quote:

depression after getting dentures was very common

I used to have issues with some of my teeth and for a while had constantly nightmares about losing them. It wasn't fun. :|

Poision Envy

2015-04-01 02:48:13 pm

Club 27 Goals

Quote from Opium:

So I basically went out and bought that game yesterday for NOTHING.

Well, it's a fun game at least right?

Opium

2015-04-01 02:52:48 pm

Quote from Poision Envy:

Quote from Opium:

So I basically went out and bought that game yesterday for NOTHING.

Well, it's a fun game at least right?

Haven't tried it yet, but it comes highly recommended. I think I will like it a lot.

I just got notice that they shipped my majoras mask prizes that I ordered earlier so maybe between those and the fun game I will get over it.

Quote from ryu:

Quote:

depression after getting dentures was very common

I used to have issues with some of my teeth and constantly had nightmares about losing them for a while. It wasn't fun. :|

That's what Freud was talking about - dreams of losing one's teeth. He theorized that if you had a dream where you lost your teeth then it was coming form a fear of death.