Anyone loved by Levar Burton and Mark Hamill…

The man was irreplaceable.

If the gabapentin helps, have you looked at pregabalin? My doc suggested it and it’s like a super gabapentin. Much more effective, less side effects.

It’s been a huge help for me… Made the difference between active and not active most days.

Steroid epidurals also helped me a lot, but your needs might vary.

Too bad they can’t do it by mental age… There’s some middle and late age toddlers that need removed from socials.

My doctor and I suspect a childhood injury initially, but absolutely degenerative over time after the fact. My symptoms had largely been just pain for most of my life, but 2014-2016 saw them start to affect walking and hand use.

The thought was that youth masked things, but middle age caught me 😄

Woah… I’ve caught myself sitting like that unconsciously for years and kept thinking it was bad lol… That position is my go to on bad days. Never thought about it actually putting things into a good state.

Excellent.

The years of misdiagnosis and useless treatments are the worst. I now have a set of docs that I am literally afraid of losing as these actual listen and dig into the why… The listening! So damned important.

My primary guy is amazing and kept going until we found. I went from age 14 until 35 before finding this guy, and he’s the first to actually believe me.

I almost accidentally killed myself on ibuprofen… Pain so bad I lost track of how much I was taking since I couldn’t sleep and almost killed my liver. Blood pressure spike well into the stroke ranges…

Glad you found a good one who got you fixed up.

I went through a severe disc intrusion, 68‰ central spinal compression.

Full treatment was anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, followed by a few years of on/off physical therapies and some follow-up steroidal spinal nerve epidural shots for pain treatments.

I note this is likely a more extreme case than you describe, but it might give insight into potential risks or perhaps unexpected things to look forward to.

My issues went untreated for close to about 20 years after onset of first neuropathic symptoms.

Initial symptoms:

Arms burning/pain from any position angled over shoulder height.

Headaches and neck pain, frequent.

Weakness in left arm and hand.

Later these turned to outright muscle spasm in shoulders and neck. Everything became more painful.

Started losing reliable use of left hand and would lose balance and use of left foot. Lots of aching pain in left thigh.

This was around time of diagnosis, consider baseline for me.

I attempted many months of various physical therapy and drug treatments. Some stalled things getting worse, none resolved things. Important to note, I had nerve damage by this time to the central canal.

A neurosurgeon performed a Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion, removing the bad disc layer and using a structure to bond the associated spinal bones C5 and C6 together, including a titanium plate and 2 screws.

I woke up in the recovery feeling better than I had in literal years.

That said, this surgery took place in 2016. I’m still recovering from the nerve damage and muscle death caused my the initial injury.

From the immediate pressure release, I was back to my baseline function within just a few weeks. Surgery related stuff resolved quickly for me.

I slept better than the previous 20 years. Absolutely worth it for me.

I mainly needed physical therapy exercises to keep the neck and shoulder areas stretching out since the muscle trauma can cause tightening.

Since that time, I’m still recovering from the associated nerve damage from the initial compression, but it’s still an amazing night and day improvement.

Aside from the main surgery itself, the things that made the biggest differences for me:

Steroid epidurals: neuro anaesthesiologists can isolate areas inflamed in the region and can target painkillers and steroids to hugely improve many symptoms, often permanently. Not simplest, but easier than surgery and has also helped me with some associated shoulder stenosis greatly. Takes pressure off nerve damage to allow healing and pain relief.

Tizanidine: prescription muscle relaxer. This one functions a bit different than Robaxin / Soma / Valium, and was a life saver for years before they identified the stenosis itself. It was the only relief for the tightness or cramping I’d experience in neck, shoulders, left thigh and calves.

Swimming and cycling: done in low intensity, these have been the most successful exercises at rebuilding the muscle deterioration in my central and lower back. I use a pedal-assist style ebike that let’s me focus the work based on pace and heart rate, with it taking the brunt of harder hills.

Stretches!!! While the strength stuff from PT matters, the stretching stuff matters 10000x more! Needed to work with the therapist to figure stuff that wasn’t in the books etc… Strange angles to isolate the areas specific to my injury. Once we dialed in what I should try to feel from a good stretch, I’ve been able to catch the bad stuff as it starts early pretty often.

Good luck on your treatment, whatever you choose. I hope you find real relief.

Feel free to DM me if you have specific questions or if I can help. This is a lot to digest, and I’m happy to offer clarity.

I bet I can name a few different bumper stickers that car likely has

Like the ideas so far.

My requests/thoughts:

Option to integrate or remove the bottom icons with the other rows… When setting sizes they don’t match up.

Love the rows themselves, fits my preferences well. Especially the arrangement haptics!

Disable the media players option? Maybe dynamically expand from a single icon when in use? Dedicate to a specific media source?

Widget picker is a bit of a mess, option to sort by application?

So far really liking what it is. Keep at it please!

Been on variations for a couple years… So far the best I can tell you is to be willing to try the others before giving up.

I’d have progress with one, plateau, then bump to a variant and it would surge.

Careful planning with my doctor going really far with this!

The various GLP drugs all have different stats and some work better than others depending on your body.

Currently on ozempic. It’s moving slowly but seems consistent in effect… The loss isn’t very obvious yet (3 months) but I do note a substantial decrease in desire and capacity. While trulicity was effective to a degree, it leveled off early for me. Trulicity has done well for my girlfriend, and her A1C has dramatically improved.

My case is use in combination with getting out on a bicycle, then long term the bike will be my check once stopping the GLP.

Don’t fear the higher doses. As long as you are careful with your dose timing, the GI disruptions can be managed and they do settle down a bit. If you bump up and find too much issue, your doc should be good with dropping back a notch. Find the most effective one for you but don’t push for never hungry.

Most importantly, don’t run yourself crazy with this. Calorie tracking is less important. The better goal might be to just work at habit forming… Pay closer attention to the other sensations toward getting full and react sooner. The meds for me primarily amplify that moment between “that’s enough” and “ugh just a little too much”.

Some basic sense as to what is high caloric density vs portion will go much further than counting exact calories in the long run, unless you plan to obsess over calculators forever. It’s good to establish an understanding of what is in your foods, but you don’t need to know how many feet between Chicago and New York to drive there. Approximation and regular cues to monitor yourself are more practical.

Even for some of the titles I’ve not been big on, I really am looking forward to seeing what they do. Love Death and Robots is still a favorite, so this hits all the spots.

Outer Worlds 2 will be a personal eyes glued… Obsidian is one of my favorite groups so working together with this team could do powerfully good lore.

Not a huge fan of 40k, but have enjoyed some varieties from it. The styling in the clip was spot on from my memories of Space Marine.

This just looks good enough on eye candy alone to hook me in, but I expect there’s going to be a bit more underneath and I absolutely I’m here for it.

This was one of the best things I’ve watched in a long long time. Thank you for sharing. I was 2 years old when this was recorded, but much of her talk resonates as urgently current and valuable.

For others who might be interested in similar, Douglas Englebart and his team discuss many similar aspects of looking forward toward where we are headed, through the lense of history.

“Choose interesting jobs”

THIS! A MILLION TIMES THIS!

The absolute best career choices I’ve made, in hindsight, were always from the interest in the work or quality of whom I was working with.

Took jobs for less pay, even turning down much higher offers, to choose the gig that was in the area I wanted to expand in.

Never accept just based on “it’s a few bucks more”. Unless it’s twice the pay AND you have something else to gain from the role, always grab the better experience or less stressful spot.

Came for this gif…

Err… From?

Leaving with leaky… Uhh… Yeah.

… Looks like the recent images from inside my sinus’.

Less boogies though.

Full Throttle (any of the LucasArts really…).

Descent Freespace

Not super old, but Shadowrun Returns games.

Wait I’ve seen this movie before… There’s vampires there.