Posts by Nicole James

Look, general anesthesia isn't something doctors just hand out like candy—it’s a serious medical intervention, and they won't go there unless there is an absolute necessity. For the kind of situation you’re describing, it's much more likely that they would suggest something like Xanax or Ativan—some kind of mild sedative to take the edge off. You really ought to have a direct conversation with your doctor about those kinds of options instead.

Henry Sanders30 said:Did you experience any side effects after your Head MR? For instance, things like memory loss or anything similar?

An MR absolutely carries no dangers or side effects—none at all. The only rule is that you can't have any metal on your person during the scan. A CT scan involves slightly more ionizing radiation, but even then, the dosage is still significantly lower than anything that would actually pose a threat to your health. Honestly, you get about the same amount of radiation just from taking a single transcontinental flight. Don't panic over nothing; you won't feel a thing, and you'll be perfectly fine. In my experience, the most unpleasant part of the whole process was drinking the contrast dye...

I’ve been through both CT scans and MR sessions more times than I can count. Because I was hospitalized and they tended to wake me up right when my body was used to crashing for the night, I ended up sleeping through every single one of my exams. Literally. I would just lie down on the table, and the next thing I remember is the nurse shaking me awake to say we were all done. Honestly, if you aren't dealing with intense claustrophobia, it really isn't anything to worry about.

The only way this gets dangerous is if you go running headfirst into a brick wall.

You really ought to check right away if Splico and Tarantino are just two different accounts owned by the same person.

As far as I understand, Valium isn't actually an antidepressant—it's a sedative. It carries a real risk of dependency, making it a pretty tricky medication that most doctors try to avoid prescribing for long-term use.

Some studies have suggested a slight increase in stomach cancer risk for people who stay on Prilosec for extended periods. It’s likely your doctor prescribed it because they noticed that specific throat irritation that comes along with reflux. That's basically just a health issue where acid travels back up from your stomach into your esophagus and throat—which explains why you've been feeling that irritation. So, while it isn't ideal to be taking Prilosec indefinitely if you can avoid it, leaving untreated reflux alone isn't great either—it can actually lead to permanent damage to your esophagus. In my opinion, it seems reasonable to complete a course of Prilosec, while being really mindful of your diet—things like avoiding milk and dairy before bed, generally trying not to eat right before sleeping, and maybe even propping your head up a bit higher at night—and then just seeing how things settle. It would definitely be a good idea to have a thorough conversation with a gastroenterologist about it too.

Maria Gray45 said:She told me that more than two years ago—back then—that I should stop taking it because it would cause rapid liver damage.

That is just incredibly unprofessional. Honestly, unless you are the primary physician managing your care or another specialist who has actually examined you personally, no one else has the authority to hand out medical advice like that.

Maria Gray45 said:I’ve been taking it for nearly three years now—there have been times when I actually forgot a dose, but honestly, I didn't notice any difference at all.
I keep reading about how you aren't supposed to just stop taking it without permission, but when I went in for an abdominal ultrasound, the technician told me I was basically just poisoning myself with it. So, I decided to take her advice and just quit.

🙂
There is absolutely no reason why someone who isn't your actual cardiologist should be giving you unsolicited medical advice regarding your prescription... It is beyond unprofessional.

Nancy Moore37 said:My thyroid levels are fine. It’s the panic attacks that cause this shortness of breath—it honestly feels like I’m having a heart attack. Have you ever dealt with anything similar?

Well, shortness of breath is a classic symptom of panic... Do you struggle with anxiety in general, perhaps? For me, I only really felt that tightness in my chest when I got scared by an arrhythmia—mostly because I didn't know what was happening to my body at the time. That’s why I’m asking.

Anyway, try not to worry too much. It is definitely a smart move to see a cardiologist—you should never mess around when it comes to your heart—but since your VA tests, EKG, and Holter monitor all came back totally clear without any red flags, there really isn't any reason to spiral into a panic.

Maria Gray45 said:What is the goal with the Bisoprolol 2.5 mg?

It helps stabilize things "downward," but if your body becomes accustomed to it and you suddenly stop taking it, the regulation can swing "upward." You really have to be careful with beta blockers.

The fact that your VA ultrasound came back clear is actually really encouraging—honestly, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't be losing too much sleep over it. That sensation of skipping beats can feel incredibly unsettling, but it isn't inherently dangerous. I remember having them myself during my last Holter monitor test—they were hitting somewhere around the 30,000 mark—and I turned out just fine. Is it possible that the fear of that skipping sensation is actually triggering a panic attack for you? Also, when was the last time you had your thyroid levels checked?

And please, stay consistent with your Bisoprolol 2.5 mg. If you happen to miss a dose, it could really throw your heart rhythm for a loop.

What do people mean when they talk about free will? Honestly, it sounds like nonsense to me. Who actually possesses free will? Does someone struggling with severe schizophrenia have it? Does a six-year-old girl—who is sold to some predator and subjected to unimaginable horror—have any choice in her fate? Or consider a child groomed from infancy to become a suicide bomber in the name of Allah; does that child really exercise free will? To my mind, "free will" is nothing more than a convenient, hollow excuse used to mask the reality that God is just as absent as any other imaginary entity we've conjured up...

Lisa Jackson7 said:I didn't see any kind of dilemma from DeVinci—not based on anything he’s posted in this thread.

Never heard of Meher Baba before, but I get where he's coming from regarding all those rituals—though honestly, I think you just need to find a balance... especially in this sense.

Religion without Spirituality | Spirituality without Religion Quote : if The essence of spirituality is The search to know Our true selves , then know that its a Life Long process , and perhaps IT requires many births and rebirths ( only god completely knows The true mystery of Our Soul and its evolutionary process of merging with Truth -> Religion without Spirituality | Spirituality without Religion Quote

If the essence of spirituality is the search to know Our true selves, then know that its a Life Long process, and perhaps IT requires many births and rebirths (only God completely knows The true mystery of Our Soul and its evolutionary process of merging with Truth -> Religion without Spirituality | Spirituality without Religion Quote Cut the act—you don't need to play-act some super deep, "enlightened" persona just because you're chasing personal nirvana. That’s just straight-up narcissism. You can't force meditation any more than you can force yourself to reach actual spirituality—it just doesn't work like that. Honestly, all you really need is just to stay awake to life—and more importantly, to actually be aware of who you are.

So, what’s the move after this? Simple—it's time to serve.

And there it is—the absolute grip religion has on people. Organized religion in all forms and tradition does a very good job aspiring The faithful into that. It sets the stage—gives us the structure and the groundwork we need to actually exist in this world and get to work. It's about being able to serve others. That’s how you actually serve the Creator—by showing up for the people around you.

People call themselves "spiritual" while totally ignoring the person cleaning their house for pennies—just paying next to nothing for actual hard work—only to drop thousands on some fancy trip to visit a random tomb halfway across the world. Or they'll skip helping hungry kids or the homeless right on their own street just to book another flight to join some "spiritual group." Honestly, that's sol nonsense in The Eye of Beloved, who cries at the suffering of humanity and laughs at the joyful heart of humanity.

don't you think gladden The Heart of that extremely poor of The humanity was much more important Than going on sol called spiritual travel ( another escape route for selfish luxury

Honestly, this is one of the best takes I’ve read on this subject. Religion without spirituality is just performing dry, empty rituals—do this, do that, blah blah blah—but then again, spirituality on its own can easily turn into nothing more than an excuse for narcissism.

If you're asking if this affects atheists—it doesn't. They aren't even on the train, so they aren't exactly traveling toward the destination. I mean, it’s not quite right to say they’re "wasting time" because honestly, some of them can be incredible people who actually live by the morals their religions preach. They might end up progressing spiritually—sometimes even faster than those followers who just go through the motions of rituals without any actual substance. In some future life, an ex-atheist will eventually jump on one of the trains.

Look, it’s not about whether someone lacks a purpose—whether they're an atheist, a believer, some guy from Alaska, or just works at State Farm, etc.
That's not how I see it.

You don't have to be religious to jump in and help out a charity or a non-profit; an atheist can be perfectly moral and still grow spiritually... honestly, comparing people on that level is just pointless.

But we aren't just talking about one person's spiritual journey—we're talking about the community. Eventually, the morality of a secular society is going to run dry—kind of like a crew on a spaceship who decides to just live off their emergency reserves, thinking they won't ever need a new source... because they're too arrogant to think they'll actually need it.

What exactly are you basing that assumption on? Especially when you consider how incredibly bleak the moral landscape can be in societies with a heavy religious influence—at least when measured against atheist moral standards, which rightly view things like murder, silencing people, or sexual assault as fundamentally wrong.

Casey Cook10 said:I guess they just do all this strictly to make sure there's zero chance of anyone being manipulated, you know, so we don't end up seeing those nasty headlines saying "they took organs from my living relative..."
The American transplant program has actually been quite successful, partly because they maintain such an honest approach, even though the law doesn't even force them to be that transparent.
And honestly, there are always certain individuals or groups who, for religious reasons or whatever else, just don't want to donate organs, and I think it's important that we respect the rights of their loved ones.

Kuzim, you're right—it makes sense. If they didn't handle it this carefully, the media panic would likely result in fewer people willing to donate than the actual number of organs available for use. But then again—and I say this somewhat jokingly—I feel like I might just rise from the grave to whack someone with an urn if anyone decided against my will that my organs should simply go to waste.

BTW, I’m actually currently on the waiting list for a new heart, so once more 🙂 to all the donors out there.

Justin Baker6 said:That’s just dreaming, not existing.

You can be lucid in a dream, which just proves we’re probably dreaming through this so-called "reality" right now anyway.

True existence only starts when you wake up from that retail trance once you've paid for your stuff.

But look, if you are dreaming, then there has to be something there doing the dreaming—regardless of what that thing actually is. Even if it turns out to be nothing more than a simulation running on some supercomputer, the mere fact that you are experiencing yourself means you exist as some kind of entity.

Lisa Jackson7 said:Think religious symbols in public spaces—you know, like stuff in government buildings—or having religious education taught in our public schools, etc.

In public spaces? You mean like putting Satanic imagery in the middle of a town square?

I honestly don't see how there could be any deeper connection between church and state than when the government hierarchy uses its mandate over the mandatory school curriculum to enforce the religious teachings of a specific church or denomination.

Justin Baker6 said:That isn't even a guarantee because our senses are nothing more than basic electrical impulses.

For all we know, we're just sitting in a chair at some high-tech simulation shop, paying for a cheap reality experience designed for the masses.

Maybe... there are a million other possibilities too.

But regardless, it still counts as existence in some capacity.

darkraven said:So, when you jump to the conclusion that a permanent shutdown also means losing consciousness, you're leaning hard on inductive reasoning. But here’s the catch with induction: the whole logic rests on the assumption that the future is going to mirror the past just because it always has. That isn't some absolute certainty; it's really just a "more or less likely" scenario.

Take this, for example: imagine you've been feeding a single chicken for weeks. Every single morning, without fail, that chicken gets fed. If that chicken actually had the capacity for logic, she might look at her track record and conclude that tomorrow morning, food will definitely show up again. But life isn't always that predictable. It could easily turn out that tomorrow morning, instead of breakfast, she ends up being sent straight to the butcher for meat production. It's a classic case of how inductive logic can lead you straight into a dead end.

Because of that flaw, the standard counter-argument to your point is usually that the mind might only be tied to the brain while we're physically alive, and once death hits, the two become independent. Personally, I don't find that particularly convincing, but hey, it's a valid point to raise. Induction is inherently messy, so we can't be 100% certain about anything. That doesn't mean the argument you're bringing up isn't persuasive—it totally is.

At the end of the day, we can't be 100% sure of anything, other than the fact that we exist in some capacity.

Amy Bennett said:In a universe without purpose or inherent meaning, any "morality" is, by definition, meaningless.

Claiming there is such a thing as "objective morality" is no different from claiming there is "objective art." Both morality and art originate from humans; you can't precisely define how they should look, and both vary wildly from person to person, culture to culture, and era to era. You can't define "objective morality" any more than you can define what falls under "objective art."
It’s pretty ridiculous to argue that traditional Christian morality is objective, just as it would be silly to claim Confucian morality is objective. It’s like saying Expressionism is objective art. There’s nothing "objective" about it.

Do you actually have an argument here, or are you just repeating the same point over and over? Your logic is basically like saying that because first graders sometimes get different answers to the same math problem, there is no such thing as a correct result in mathematics. You aren't demonstrating anything that proves morality or beauty isn't objective.

I assume that pedophile is following that traditional Christian morality?
I’ve already posted somewhere on this forum the statistics showing that the percentage of pedophiles within the Church is significantly higher than in the general population outside of it.
Oh, interesting—I looked for the post and saw it was deleted. 😍
The point was that in the general population, you have one child abuser per 200 people (ages 15-64), whereas among priests, it's one in 20.

You don't. I mean—I believe you could reach that conclusion if you were being extremely selective with your data, but when you look at the actual reality, there isn't really a massive difference.

What exactly are spiritual experiences?
If you mean "apparitions," "revelations," and things like that, there's zero evidence that people aren't just lying or experiencing hallucinations.
Hallucinating that you see God doesn't mean you actually see God; it just means you experienced something and identified it as "God."

That doesn't necessarily mean you didn't see God, though. It's like when you're walking down a street in Chicago and you spot an apple tree—that doesn't prove you actually saw an apple, it just means you experienced something and identified it as an apple. But maybe you *did* actually see an apple. Anyway, to answer your question—these are the types of experiences people describe as spiritual. It doesn't even have to involve grand apparitions or revelations; it can be something much simpler and more mundane. The point is that these experiences exist. You can certainly question their authenticity, but they aren't rare. That's exactly why religion is such a widespread and universal phenomenon. The fact remains that when people see, hear, or feel something, there is usually something there. Hallucinations and similar things are the exceptions. It seems absurd to reduce a universal phenomenon like religion and spiritual experience to mere exceptions and deny that there might actually be something real behind them.

That's a tough one. 🤣

People find all sorts of things undesirable, but that doesn't mean illness is just one of those arbitrary preferences.

Just because the universe lacks some sort of inherent, built-in purpose doesn't mean we humans can't evaluate specific phenomena or states in a particular way—and it certainly doesn't follow that after billions of years of shared evolution, those evaluations couldn't end up being remarkably consistent.

Amy Bennett said:In a universe without purpose or inherent meaning, any "morality" is, by definition, meaningless.

Claiming there is such a thing as "objective morality" is no different from claiming there is "objective art." Both morality and art originate from humans; you can't precisely define how they should look, and both vary wildly from person to person, culture to culture, and era to era. You can't define "objective morality" any more than you can define what falls under "objective art."
It’s pretty ridiculous to argue that traditional Christian morality is objective, just as it would be silly to claim Confucian morality is objective. It’s like saying Expressionism is objective art. There’s nothing "objective" about it.

Do you actually have an argument here, or are you just repeating the same point over and over? Your logic is basically like saying that because first graders sometimes get different answers to the same math problem, there is no such thing as a correct result in mathematics. You aren't demonstrating anything that proves morality or beauty isn't objective.

I assume that pedophile is following that traditional Christian morality?
I’ve already posted somewhere on this forum the statistics showing that the percentage of pedophiles within the Church is significantly higher than in the general population outside of it.
Oh, interesting—I looked for the post and saw it was deleted. 😍
The point was that in the general population, you have one child abuser per 200 people (ages 15-64), whereas among priests, it's one in 20.

You don't. I mean—I believe you could reach that conclusion if you were being extremely selective with your data, but when you look at the actual reality, there isn't really a massive difference.

What exactly are spiritual experiences?
If you mean "apparitions," "revelations," and things like that, there's zero evidence that people aren't just lying or experiencing hallucinations.
Hallucinating that you see God doesn't mean you actually see God; it just means you experienced something and identified it as "God."

That doesn't necessarily mean you didn't see God, though. It's like when you're walking down a street in Chicago and you spot an apple tree—that doesn't prove you actually saw an apple, it just means you experienced something and identified it as an apple. But maybe you *did* actually see an apple. Anyway, to answer your question—these are the types of experiences people describe as spiritual. It doesn't even have to involve grand apparitions or revelations; it can be something much simpler and more mundane. The point is that these experiences exist. You can certainly question their authenticity, but they aren't rare. That's exactly why religion is such a widespread and universal phenomenon. The fact remains that when people see, hear, or feel something, there is usually something there. Hallucinations and similar things are the exceptions. It seems absurd to reduce a universal phenomenon like religion and spiritual experience to mere exceptions and deny that there might actually be something real behind them.

That's a tough one. 🤣

People find all sorts of things undesirable, but that doesn't mean illness is just one of those arbitrary preferences.

In a broad sense, "disease" is just the label we assign to any bodily function that isn't working the way we'd prefer it to.