What You've Done Today - Don't do today, what you can get someone else to do tomorrow

[Guard Dog]

Vitamin C is something I'm supposed to be taking so it's cool. I'm actually supposed to take them with food but I just can't. Shortly after taking them I get so sick I wish the grapefruit juice would kill me. 

[Bartimaeus]

35 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

Vitamin C is something I'm supposed to be taking so it's cool. I'm actually supposed to take them with food but I just can't. Shortly after taking them I get so sick I wish the grapefruit juice would kill me. 

Okay, but just to be clear in case you did not do even a quick Google search, it's specifically grapefruit that can hurt/kill you. Not limes or lemons or most oranges, grapefruit. Grapefruit messes with metabolizing enzymes responsible for fully breaking down and flushing drugs, which means those drugs can stick around in you for a lot longer and in higher concentrations than they should, causing more severe side effects and/or possibly even overdoses. Here's a random excerpt from a random article that at least gets the idea across:

With most drugs that are affected by grapefruit juice, “the juice lets more of the drug enter the blood,” says Shiew Mei Huang, Ph.D., of the FDA. “When there is too much drug in the blood, you may have more side effects.” For example, if you drink a lot of grapefruit juice while taking certain statin drugs to lower cholesterol, too much of the drug may stay in your body, increasing your risk for liver and muscle damage that can lead to kidney failure. Many drugs are broken down (metabolized) with the help of a vital enzyme called CYP3A4 in the small intestine. Grapefruit juice can block the action of intestinal CYP3A4, so instead of being metabolized, more of the drug enters the blood and stays in the body longer. The result: too much drug in your body. The amount of the CYP3A4 enzyme in the intestine varies from person to person. Some people have a lot of this enzyme and others just a little. So grapefruit juice may affect people differently even when they take the same drug.

Although scientists have known for several decades that grapefruit juice can cause too much of certain drugs in the body, more recent studies have found that the juice has the opposite effect on a few other drugs. “Grapefruit juice can cause less fexofenadine to enter the blood,” decreasing how well the drug works, Huang says. Fexofenadine (brand name Allegra) is available as both prescription and OTC to relieve symptoms of seasonal allergies. Fexofenadine may also not work as well if taken with orange or apple juice, so the drug label says, “Do not take with fruit juices.” Why this opposite effect? Instead of changing metabolism, grapefruit juice can affect proteins in the body known as drug transporters, some of which help move a drug into our cells for absorption. As a result, less of the drug enters the blood and the drug may not work as well, Huang says.

Hope you make it through the medical issue you're dealing with. If it's chemotherapy (and I don't know that it is and nobody here needs to know if that's what it is...I've just had family and friends who have gone through it and have repeatedly said how awful it is, and how it makes it so they simply cannot eat), there's a strong possibility you do not want to be having grapefruit with it - everywhere I see seems to say "DO NOT MIX CHEMOTHERAPY WITH GRAPEFRUIT". If your doctor has okay-ed grapefruit, then okay.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[LadyCrimson]

Some people who go on low carb/sugar diets for long periods, whatever the reason:
"I can no longer stomach candy/cake/whatever, it's all way too sweet/rich" etc.

...I am not one of those people.

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, Azdeus said:

What Bartimaeus said, you really ought to double and triple check that your medicine doesn't interact with grapefruit. To my great dismay, most of mine has interactions so I've had to give it up, it's my favourite drink

add us to the list o' folks who will caution 'bout the grapefruit thing.

chemotherapy btw is not just 'bout treating cancer. is a number o' med issues treated by chemotherapy and not all is dire. can't speak to cancer treatment, but at least one o' those not cancer chemotherapy treatments is impacted by grapefruit in multiple ways 'cause even when one o' your meds is not immediate impacted by grapefruit, the testing you routine go through to check deviations and changes to baseline numbers may be skewed by grapefruit.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited March 24, 2023 by Gromnir

[Azdeus]

On a lil' bit different note, yesterday someone nicked our FM transmitter that we use in one of our tractors to listen to music, I can't stand listening to radio; Either you get **** music, or you get slightly less **** music and commercials. So I bought one today, and one can say that I threw away 30$ for nothing. It's so weak that unless I put my hand on the transmitter, it doesn't transmit powerfully enough to be picked up by the radio. I'm of half a mind to see if I can solder some other transmitter to it to amp up the signal.

[Bartimaeus]

31 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

add us to the list o' folks who will caution 'bout the grapefruit thing.

chemotherapy btw is not just 'bout treating cancer. is a number o' med issues treated by chemotherapy and not all is dire. can't speak to cancer treatment, but at least one o' those not cancer chemotherapy treatments is impacted by grapefruit in multiple ways 'cause even when one o' your meds is not immediate impacted by grapefruit, the testing you routine go through to check deviations and changes to baseline numbers may be skewed by grapefruit.

HA! Good Fun!

I just hope it's not chemotherapy period. My gosh, I hope that stuff is just about completely retired in favor of something far less nasty and more effective someday, and the sooner the better. I have...less than great memories of seeing what it does to people. I also have little desire to suffer through it myself in my middle or old age... I do not believe I would cope well.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[ShadySands]

I still shudder about taking my mom to chemo, that stuff messed her up so bad. I had a couple of cancer scares in the past few years and I wasn't sure I'd go through it if I had to.

[Gromnir]

on the off chance gd is suffering from ______________, am gonna avoid describing how miserable and soul crushing is having to endure the symptoms or treatment o' ___________.

...

we were engaged during our last year o' law school when we discovered we had a condition which had a high chance o' leading to significant health problems at some point in the future. ended the engagement 'cause from experience we knew how hard is such health problems on family and close friends. US health care also means even minor medical issues may financial devastate a family, and that sorta pain is disproportionate felt by lower-middle and lower income families. 

we don't wish serious health problems on even those we dislike.

tangential related, we got our urgent ortho surgery referral today and scheduled an appointment.

may 16.

am only imagining what a not urgent time frame woulda' entailed.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited March 24, 2023 by Gromnir

[Azdeus]

1 hour ago, Gromnir said:

on the off chance gd is suffering from ______________, am gonna avoid describing how miserable and soul crushing is having to endure the symptoms or treatment o' ___________.

...

we were engaged during our last year o' law school when we discovered we had a condition which had a high chance o' leading to significant health problems at some point in the future. ended the engagement 'cause from experience we knew how hard is such health problems on family and close friends. US health care also means even minor medical issues may financial devastate a family, and that sorta pain is disproportionate felt by lower-middle and lower income families. 

we don't wish serious health problems on even those we dislike.

tangential related, we got our urgent ortho surgery referral today and scheduled an appointment.

may 16.

am only imagining what a not urgent time frame woulda' entailed.

HA! Good Fun!

I remember last year around this time I got an MRI for my shoulder, to see if it could be fixed surgically, getting the MRI itself wasn't any issue, but it took four months before they decided that it'd take to long to find someone to look at it, so they snailmailed it to Spain for someone to look at the images. Took a total of 6 or so months after the MRI to get the results -.-

[majestic]

Went to my ophthalmologist for a checkup today. The same doctor as usual, the experience was vastly improved though, by the simple fact that she decided to go fully private, meaning she no longer has any contracts with our regular, public insurance companies. Instead of health insurance paying the checkup, you pay the bill yourself, and then hand in the bill and get reimbursed up to a certain amount (for me and my really bad eyesight that is going to be roughly 80% of the bill, for others, much less), with the rest potentially covered by any additional, private health insurance.

In the past the waiting time was like an hour, sometimes even more when some acute case came in. Last time I had to wait hours just to see the doctor, in spite of having an appointment, because someone came in with glass splinters in their eyes. I mean, yeah, I get it, that does take priority over a regular check. Today though, I was ten minutes early, got to the checkup immediately, then got eye drops (for dilation, looked like a junkie afterwards) and a complete ophthalmoscopy.

Took 20 minutes. Well, aside from being half-blind, nothing's noticably wrong. Pupil dilation is back to normal too, and none too soon, everything was uncomfortably bright. To think people used to use atropine eye drops for beauty effects in the past (it is how belladonna allegedly got its name - pretty woman). What a stupid idea.

[Sarex]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

Went to my ophthalmologist for a checkup today. The same doctor as usual, the experience was vastly improved though, by the simple fact that she decided to go fully private, meaning she no longer has any contracts with our regular, public insurance companies. Instead of health insurance paying the checkup, you pay the bill yourself, and then hand in the bill and get reimbursed up to a certain amount (for me and my really bad eyesight that is going to be roughly 80% of the bill, for others, much less), with the rest potentially covered by any additional, private health insurance.

In the past the waiting time was like an hour, sometimes even more when some acute case came in. Last time I had to wait hours just to see the doctor, in spite of having an appointment, because someone came in with glass splinters in their eyes. I mean, yeah, I get it, that does take priority over a regular check. Today though, I was ten minutes early, got to the checkup immediately, then got eye drops (for dilation, looked like a junkie afterwards) and a complete ophthalmoscopy.

Took 20 minutes. Well, aside from being half-blind, nothing's noticably wrong. Pupil dilation is back to normal too, and none too soon, everything was uncomfortably bright. To think people used to use atropine eye drops for beauty effects in the past (it is how belladonna allegedly got its name - pretty woman). What a stupid idea.

Even going private I sometimes wait for an hour because they overbook things, but I still remember going as a kid and waiting the whole morning for a 20 minute exam...

[Gfted1]

I got my second Shingles shot yesterday and my arm is a little sore. Those fatcats raised the price too since last November, from $205.99 to $218.99! Thank the FSM my insurance picked it up.

[Bartimaeus]

Northern lights were a pretty ludicrous display last night. It's not usually very strong where I am, but it was as though the heavens dumped a dump truck's worth of green-purple puke everywhere.

[Sarex]

7 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Northern lights were a pretty ludicrous display last night. It's not usually very strong where I am, but it was as though the heavens dumped a dump truck's worth of green-purple puke everywhere.

You get northern lights that far south?

[Bartimaeus]

4 minutes ago, Sarex said:

You get northern lights that far south?

Not usually anything more than very faintly, but last night was a real...oh, that's what they're supposed to look like! moment.

[Malcador]

Did taxes, and can now afford Popeye's for dinner

[LadyCrimson]

^ actually reads thread

...I remember reading the warnings re: my statins, when they gave them to me (I don't take them now), and thinking it seemed weird that it was grapefruit juice specifically mentioned vs. just juice in general. Didn't think about it too much at the time since juice/fruit has too much sugar in it anyway. But I guess now I know why.
...i just pop C vitamins every other day, plus cabbage/broccoli and other non-fruit sources.

[Gorth]

My mother died last night. I'm, way too far away from Denmark to participate in any funeral arrangements, so I'll have to follow it from afar.

Before anyone says condolences or similar, I mourned the death of my mother 3 years ago, when I realized, that she had for all intents or purposes that mattered "died" back then and no longer recognized my dad or any of her children. Her brain had deteriorated almost to a vegetative state long before Covid was a thing, so I'm sort of "over it" and resigned myself to the fact that she was "dead" back then and knew I would never speak to her again. It was just the empty shell of a body that got the memo a few years late. I might still get drunk tonight and pull out some old family photos

[Gfted1]

Condolences, anyway.  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 minutes ago, Gorth said:

My mother died last night. I'm, way too far away from Denmark to participate in any funeral arrangements, so I'll have to follow it from afar.

Before anyone says condolences or similar, I mourned the death of my mother 3 years ago, when I realized, that she had for all intents or purposes that mattered "died" back then and no longer recognized my dad or any of her children. Her brain had deteriorated almost to a vegetative state long before Covid was a thing, so I'm sort of "over it" and resigned myself to the fact that she was "dead" back then and knew I would never speak to her again. It was just the empty shell of a body that got the memo a few years late. I might still get drunk tonight and pull out some old family photos

Take care my friend.

[LadyCrimson]

Even if we have already done our mourning process, it doesn't mean there aren't/can't be echoes of it at times, especially maybe in this case.

So condolences, hugs, have a good drink and sifting through all the memories, and rest well. Cheers.

Edited March 25, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Azdeus]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

My mother died last night. I'm, way too far away from Denmark to participate in any funeral arrangements, so I'll have to follow it from afar.

Before anyone says condolences or similar, I mourned the death of my mother 3 years ago, when I realized, that she had for all intents or purposes that mattered "died" back then and no longer recognized my dad or any of her children. Her brain had deteriorated almost to a vegetative state long before Covid was a thing, so I'm sort of "over it" and resigned myself to the fact that she was "dead" back then and knew I would never speak to her again. It was just the empty shell of a body that got the memo a few years late. I might still get drunk tonight and pull out some old family photos

Jag beklagar din förlust.

[Sarex]

My condolences.

[Gorth]

Thanks guys. I mostly dealt with it in a couple of years ago. Didn't really get (much) drunk yesterday. Did sift through a lot of old memories though. My dad saw it coming a few weeks ago, so he had taken care of the practical details. I'll go visit Europe next year and we will catch up with a family get together, he, me and my two brothers.

Other than that, it was a nice Friday, spending much of the day in a place called Australia Zoo north of Brisbane (a place founded and originally run by Steve Irwin aka "The Crocodile Hunter"). After that, my friends and I went to the beach for a swim. I had almost forgotten how salty ocean water is

[Azdeus]

Went home a couple of hours early from work to see if me and my father could snap some photos of Venus, Jupiter, Mercury or Mars, and against what the forecast said earlier... clouds.