redbison8 said:In most cases, oral sex was unprotected... How long do you have to wait for results, and how reliable are they actually?
Ugh. Just hold off on the oral stuff until you're actually in a relationship where you're certain there's no HPV involved. You won't miss out if you aren't treating a one-night stand like an ice cream cone. Sex can still be great without going that route.
Ugh, figured I’d chime in for a second. CSR is definitely the fallout from overusing corticosteroids, high stress levels, and just generally poor lifestyle choices. As for me, I tackled my stress issues by simply walking away from my job and switching careers. Since then, the CSR hasn't come back. What remains—just like others here have mentioned—is this distorted vision that makes it feel like I'm looking through water, but even that is slowly improving. I’ve managed to get about 90% of my vision back, though the sharpness isn't exactly stellar. The main thing is that it doesn't limit my daily routine, and more importantly, I don't qualify for a disability.
Whether it decides to show up again... well, we'll just have to wait and see.
quietscout85 said:I’m thirty-eight years old, and honestly, this battle against gray hairs has been waged for quite some time now. My natural hair color is brown, and lately, I’ve been making regular trips to the salon to get it colored, but those little silver beasts just keep popping up regardless of what I do. They aren't even subtle—we're talking about strands about an inch and a half long that are bright silver and practically shimmer, and they feel much coarser than my actual hair... It's maddening! I have been seriously considering just letting them grow out and quitting the dyeing process altogether, but there's a catch: I still have a pretty youthful face, and these stubborn silver streaks just don't sit right with my look at all...
Oh, tell me about it. I'm in the exact same boat. But honestly? There is no way in hell I'm dyeing my hair. No chance.
Angela Wright said:From what you’re describing, it sounds like you're dealing with physical damage to the Sphincter caused by inflammation. It’s pretty clear that during the day, you’re consciously "clenching" to hold everything in, but once you drift off to sleep, those muscles relax and that's when the accidents happen. You really ought to see a urologist for a checkup and start doing some Kegel exercises to strengthen the muscles responsible for bladder control. http://www.tena.com/women/information/overactive-bladder/
Yeah, sphincter damage seems like a pretty plausible theory to me. But you'd need a cystoscopy to confirm that. If there actually is damage, it implies the inflammation was hanging around much longer than expected. Given where things stand now, I'm not convinced Kegels will do much heavy lifting, since they don't target smooth muscle. Maybe the sphincter will heal on its own over time. The key is to avoid letting this become a psychological ordeal.
So, use a diaper and stop obsessing over it. Things might just right themselves along the way. The human body is a strange machine. 🙂
They didn't actually perform a retinal scan; you can't see that manually. Either those two ophthalmologists who first saw me were just incompetent. It took two years of this mess before they finally figured out what was going on. Pure negligence, nothing else.
It’s interesting you say that; for me, it mostly went south in the middle of the night. Never during the day. I'd go to sleep around five, then wake up the next morning with this massive blotch right in my field of vision. It never happened during daylight hours—always while I was sleeping. They dragged me through the wringer with head MRIs, neck scans, evoked potentials, EEGs... you name it. Was it MS? Some other neurological issue? This, that... the usual runaround. Then, at one clinic, they finally found an Edem on my macula. Dammit, all it took was actually running the right tests to separate the facts from the noise.
Objects are going to look larger over time. That purple blotch you see at night and the white one during the day? It’ll fade, but the image will stay slightly distorted, along with those bright streaks and that massive central circle. You're looking at a loss of vision by a few percent. Once that's gone, it doesn't come back. And yeah, I dealt with my image shrinking by about 20 to 30 percent myself. Just enough to make my prescription feel off.
Everything was exactly the same for me. The symptoms were identical, all of them. That bright ring at the edge of the Edem hasn't budged. Even the image itself looks slightly distorted. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to fix itself.
Chloe Morgan13 said:Alright, that sounds manageable—not too scary at all. You don't have to run from doctor to doctor, dealing with endless OCT scans, constant checkups, and piles of medication. If that's how it goes, I can handle it. Thanks for sharing this; those are truly comforting words. =) I really hope my experience follows that pattern. Right now, I'm stuck on Diamox and a whole bunch of other "miracle" drugs for months on end. It demands so much time, money, stress, doctors, and everything else. As if being half-blind wasn't enough! So, your prognosis feels like a real light at the end of the tunnel compared to everything I've heard so far. 🙂
I was on Diamox for about ten months myself. Now, I just head in for checkups two or three times a year. There's some scarring left, but nothing major—just a little light streak. My advice? Watch out for hypertension, stress, and corticosteroids.
Chloe Morgan13 said:Exactly. My doctors told me it’ll likely recur because it’s been dragging on for so long. People who get it and clear up the Edem within two or three months usually forget they ever had it. :<
What do you mean by it coming back "mildly and subtly"? What does that actually look like?
It's just a tiny bit of Edem—just enough that I'll miss a single letter while reading something on a screen or in a book. Then it vanishes after a few days. Everything stays fine for months, then suddenly... just a little something again.
The Edem cleared up for me. I still have a scar inside the macula that shows up as a bright, distorted line, but overall, I've got 99.9% of my vision back.
Look, probiotics are basically how you repair the damage caused by antibiotics, but there are a few things you really need to understand first.
First off, taking probiotics at the exact same time as your antibiotic is a waste of money. The antibiotic just wipes out the good bacteria you just swallowed, which makes the whole thing pointless.
One way to handle it is to space them out. You take your antibiotic dose, then wait about three or four hours before you take the probiotic capsule.
Honestly, the best move is to skip the probiotics while you're still on the meds entirely. Wait until you finish the full course, then start them a day or two after that last pill.
As for Colonir... since it’s got more than just bacteria in it, maybe try the spacing method mentioned above just to get some benefit out of it.
Austin James5 said:Greetings. I am 18 years old, and I’ve run into a bit of an issue regarding smoking. To be clear, I wouldn't call myself a smoker, but I tried a cigarette the other day and was immediately hit with dizziness and a wave of nausea. It was a Walter Wolf white, and I had smoked it on an empty stomach. Interestingly, the following day, after eating a full meal and having plenty to drink, I lit up five of them in a row and experienced that same dizziness and nausea, along with a slight headache. I was actually planning on picking up a pack of Marlboro for Christmas, but now I'm somewhat hesitant that these symptoms might return. Does anyone know which cigarettes are particularly weak—perhaps some lights? What exactly is this problem? Most of my peers are just weekend smokers, so I suppose I might end up with something like 20 sticks a week. Please, help me out. Also, is it even possible for me to get hooked on just a single pack? Thanks.
Move on. You just need more experience in the field.
Seriously, don't start smoking. Once you cross that line, there is no turning back.
I don't get bothered by much, except for the Diamox, but this fluid buildup just won't budge. There’s always a little bit left there, and it’s constantly getting under my skin. Honestly, I’m right on the verge of having to start injections...
vividsailor7 said:I have no idea what kind of "torture" by the medical board you're talking about. Up until now, everything revolved around issuing medications and referrals, which was clearly too much for some people. Let me repeat: there were cases where my colleagues or I had to call out "the gentlemen" in charge because they refused to issue medications that were clearly indicated. Every single one of those conversations ended with them nodding along while they spewed nonsense about guidelines that make zero sense professionally. If a patient is indicated for Avastin, they will get it, just like they always have.
Exactly. They started shutting down labs in community health centers, diagnostic departments, and things like that. For instance, the lab at the downtown clinic just closed its doors. What is that even supposed to mean? Now everyone is being bounced around from one lab to another; they sent me all the way out to the Railroad district. When I see an attending physician, everything they do boils down to antibiotics, referrals, or maybe some vague guidelines. Though, in my case, they actually put in some effort. There are plenty of doctors out there who won't even look at you; they just process whatever paperwork you bring them.
With all due respect, specialists sometimes go overboard with diagnostics and treatments. My latest headache is a CSR in my right eye that’s been dragging on forever. They literally ran me through the wringer: neurologists, head MRIs, optic nerve scans, vertebral artery imaging, visual field tests—you name it. They kept swearing it was a neurological issue. And all this happened without anyone performing a basic, and I mean basic, ophthalmological exam. They harassed me for two years, and then my primary doctor simply told me he wasn't going to dig any deeper because we weren't getting anywhere. I couldn't let it go, so I went to a private eye clinic. They did the basic diagnostics and I walked out ninety minutes later with a diagnosis and a treatment plan. It’s a perfect example of how aimless wandering hurts the patient, and how an attending needs to realize when a path is counterproductive and leading nowhere.