Oh Lady Gaga, tight, low-rise PVC is no one's friend.

Holy shit, Jilli. I was unaware you had Lyme. I just wrote an essay about my old neighbor's experience with Lyme and what happened when she tried to treat it with raw bison liver and meditation.

I solomnly swear I will not follow that sort of path to treat the damn Lyme. Yeah, I was diagnosed in ... November? December? Around then. I also have a bonus of CFS and cat scratch fever. So I'm on some hellacious antibiotics, vitamin shots, and a massive handful of supplements every day. I'm not thrilled about it, but having a diagnosis is better than not knowing why I felt like crap all the time.

OMG, was reading a Washington post parenting chat, and the "expert" was antivax!! I just about plotzed.

Yeah, there is no schadenfreude in dead children. There's no "I told you so."

It just makes me profoundly sad.

I get irrationally angry about alt med. I've been having horrible stomach problems and ended up in the hospital thinking it was my appendix about to burst I was in such intense pain. Five bazillion tests later concluded it was IBS. The doctor suggested fiber, peppermint oil, Prilosec, and an appointment with a dietician. Peppermint really does help, and he said they don't know why. I have this odd feeling that I'm in placebo-land, but I'd sacrifice a chicken if I was in that kind of pain again and someone told me it would make it stop.

I get how fear and pain can twist your perspective.

Allyson, my IBS has led me to a vast sea of knowledge about it. If you're interested, I'd be happy to share.

OT was written in Hebrew. NT was written in Greek, not Aramaic.

True, although there is a small portion (bits of Ezra, Daniel and a couple of other places) where Aramaic is used.

I'm an atheist, Wallybee is a Christian, Ryan was just baptised as a Lutheran. The Christians I've known best are my parents and my wife, and I'm a big fan of what I've seen in them. (Not to mention my own time as a Christian, I took it very seriously indeed).

That said, I agree with Allyson, tommyrot, TB et al about the harm that closed-minded forms of religion -- and this isn't at the fringe of religion -- have caused. I find it's the closedmindedness rather than the religious belief that's the problem, but at this point it's inextricable.

Like I said, Ryan's been baptised as a Lutheran. This is a pretty open-minded church. Wallybee still finds their Bible studies frustrating as they do little more than push the party line, and I've been wryly amused by some occasional comments along the lines of "Obviously you slept with that girl from your reunion the Catholics/Baptists/insert-church-not-beginning-with-an-L is wrong, and probably insulting God".

The usual qualifiers apply, being religious isn't synonymous with being closed-minded, nor vice versa. Nonetheless, I will take a poor view of anyone at church who wants to tell Ryan that his atheist father should be looked down on, preached to, dismissed, scorned or pitied on the basis of religious belief.

Allyson, there's a couple of articles about alternative medicine in the latest Economist: [link] [link]

(My favourite quote: "The world’s advertising-standards offices should thus crack down on bogus claims—including the idea that there is such a thing as “alternative medicine” in the first place. If it works, it is a medicine and should be regulated like one. If it doesn’t work, it isn’t a medicine.")

That would be awesome, Steph. I find the whole thing embarrassing. And painful.

Steph is an excellent resource for dealing with IBS. I know that, in my experience, once I was diagnosed it got better. I assume because I wasn't feeling the same level of stress over what it could be and also because I wasn't as scared. Still totally sucks sometimes but I haven't landed back in the ER, so it's some level of win.

Totally understand. The doctor thought it was an ulcer, and so did I. My eyes were watering with the pain. I was eating so many Tums, which was actually making it worse.

That would be awesome, Steph. I find the whole thing embarrassing. And painful.

The pain can be unfuckingbelievable. It's been bad enough to keep me home from social events, or make me leave early. I've had it mostly under control for the past couple of years, so this is what I've learned/what has worked for me:

1. Oatmeal. Seriously. Possibly more than anything else, oatmeal helps tremendously. (Somewhere Wilford Goddamn Brimley is pumping his fist in triumph.)

2a. Relatedly, fiber fiber fiber. Shoot for 30 grams a day. (I put applesauce and ground flax seed in my oatmeal. It's fiber-tastic.) BUT if you haven't been getting that much before now, increase your fiber intake gradually, because sudden increased fiber is a recipe for pain and weeping. t edit Cass turned me on to these chewy fruit bar things from Trader Joe's -- sort of like a fruit rollup, or hippie fruit leather -- that have 6 grams of fiber in them. That's an awesome way to get fiber on days I haven't gotten enough. (I don't, actually, have oatmeal every morning, so sometimes my fiber intake sucks.)

2b. If you take a fiber supplement, the best one is Citrucel (or its store-brand generic equivalent, which would be methylcellulose). It doesn't cause gas and bloating (apparently some fiber supplements -- FiberCon, Metamucil, etc. -- cause a lot of gas and bloating, and since IBS already causes that, you don't want to add to it, AMIRITE?).

3. A good probiotic is your friend. Unfortunately, different people are going to respond differently to the different ones out there, so it might take some time to find out which one works best. I tried a few different ones before I settled. Some people like Align. Some people like Culturelle. My go-to probiotic is Enzymatic Therapy's Pearls. And they also make an "extra-strength" version of the Pearls, called Pearls IC (for Intensive Care), with more strains of bacteria: [link] I took the Pearls IC for a few months before switching over to regular Pearls, and it helped a lot.

4. Believe it or not, charcoal helps with gas and bloating. There's a product called Charcocaps that my doctor recommends, but I take the Nature's Way brand of charcoal: [link] It really, honestly helps.

HOWEVER, with charcoal, it can remove things like medication from your system (that's why when someone ODs, the emergency room doctor pumps them full of charcoal; that said, the amount of charcoal in the charcocaps is way way way less than the OD amount). So the recommendation is to take charcoal 1-2 hours before or after taking medication.

5. About the only prescription drugs that do anything (and they aren't awesome, but they do help) are Bentyl (generic name: dicyclomine) and Levsin (also called Levbid; generic name hyoscyamine). When my IBS flares up I take Bentyl 3 times a day.

6. If you have painful cramping, lying down with a heating pad on your tummy helps. And if you don't have time to lie down, sticking one of those ThermaCare heat thingies in your undies, like you would for menstrual cramps, works pretty well. That got me through a bad flare when we had to take the nieces and nephews to a movie and dinner.