u/CawfeePig

Here is my cats symptom timeline in a nutshell. She's 14 and named Margot.

S couple years ago I started noticing her vision was declining and her eyes were getting cloudy. I chalked this up to old age, not realizing how this can be serious in a cat (although I did mention it at vet appointments and they always said nothing was wrong).

Last Halloween, she threw up about 20 times in one day, so I took her to the ER and they diagnosed her with pancreatitis. They gave her some fluids and pain meds and sent her home. I went back two days later after some more vomiting and they repeated the process.

Maybe a month later I took her to an eye specialist who doagnosed her with massively high BP (which they never checked at the ER). Total vision loss in right eye with full retinal detachment, partial retinal detachment in left eye, and some hemorrhages. They put her on daily amlodipine. She has had a few checkups since then. No vision improvement, but hemorrhages are gone and retinas has reattached.

The problem now is she has lost 3 pounds this year and is now incredibly skinny. She just doesn't want to eat. I've done bloodwork at my normal vet that is normal other than showing early kidney disease. We tried mirtazapine and cerenia without luck. She won't let me give her elura.

I finally got so freaked out that I took her to an internist at the ER. She said she has stage 2 kidney disease but hasn't lost much muscle mass yet (which is hard for me to believe because she has gotten so bony). She put her on 50mg of fluids 3x per week and said this would potentially flush out some toxins and increase her appetite. That was about two weeks ago and it has not helped her appetite at all yet.

She has another vet checkup soon which the internist ordered to recheck some blood work. I am just so worried and don't know what to do. Her whole life she has only ever wanted hard food (won't touch wet) and now literally all she will eat are her Friskies Beachside Crunch treats. This has always been a daily treat for her and she still eats these voraciously a few times a day.

I have tried about four types of hard food, including her prescription renal food, and she won't touch any of it.

I use one playlist called Main Feed as my queue pretty much, and I've never really messed with priority settings. I recently just made two shows low priority though and set them to download the one oldest unplayed episode. I basically did this because I am working through the archives and now it functions like a normal subscription. I listen to an episode and then the oldest one I haven't heard yet downloads and goes to the bottom of the list. Perfect.

BUT...

I will often drag shows around as I listen. If something on Main Feed looks good at a particular moment, I drag it to the top of the list to play. I like keeping stuff in order, so I don't want to listen to an episode from the middle of the list.

I just did this with one of my low priority shows, and half way through listening, a new episode of a different show downloaded. Instead of going to the bottom of the list, though, it went to the top. Did it do this because it saw a low priority show at the top and it thought it had to go above that?

I am so close to having this work the exact way I want it to but I feel like every time I make a setting update, it breaks in a new way.

This is a feature I have wanted in a podcast app forever, and I only recently learned it was added to overcast at some point. It doesn't work for me though.

What happens is I select the option for a show I am working through the archives on, and at first it looks like it works. It downloads the oldest episode I haven't heard. But if I close out of the app and open it again, it started to download every episode I haven't heard.

I think this might be because I have previously downloaded every unheard episode for these shows I'm trying to catch up on, and then I deleted them to try this 1 oldest episode feature. So maybe the app thinks all these episodes were manually added? Is there a way to remove them from the apps memory in that way? Is that even what the problem is?

There is that stat at the bottom of settings that tells you how much time Smart Speed has saved you. I know people online used to say it wasn't accurate, but I'm wondering if the app updates over the last few years have ironed it out in retrospect. I've been using the app for about a decade and am genuinely curious how much time that feature has saved me.

Some classes feel pretty similar. With them saying it will be the biggest roster ever, I wonder about classes like these potentially existing in the same game. I know all we can do is speculate, though.

I'm finding mixed stuff online. If I take a starting dose of nortriptyline long term, does it carry the same risks of dementia and cognitive side effects, especially if it works and I take it for life?

I primarily want to try this for sleep and IBS, but amitriptyline also helped me gain some weight I needed and I would hope this would do the same.

I just can not shake the long term cognitive side effect risks of this drug, even though it helped me sleep and made my stomach a little better at 10mg for 4 months. Can anyone help me contextualize the risks of dementia and cognitive impairment on this drug at low doses, but also taken long term? I'm under 50 but i would like to take it for life.

I realize going to the internet with questions like this is tricky because there is a bias toward negative experiences in places like this, but I'm trying to gauge if this would be a terrible decision for me or not.

For context, I have tried lexapro and amitriptyline for the same reason. Both made my stomach slightly worse for a couple weeks after stopping but it was tolerable and didn't last longer than a couple weeks. If that's all this would do, I can handle that again.

I went on this drug for four months a couple years ago for IBS. It unfortunately didn't help my IBS but it helped me gain weight and get to a much healthier weight. Unfortunately I've lost all of that and more again.

I'm considering going back on, but the reason I stopped in the first place is all the research out there about long term cognitive dangers. I don't know what to do. How do you justify this?

I recently discovered the app Thru that lets you set and hike virtual trails, and it is exactly what I was looking for to keep myself motivated, but the developer mentions on his website that it uses AI art and code, and I am really doing my best to avoid that. Are there any other apps like this that don't use generative AI?

I have a LOT of scene breaks in my manuscript, and I would like to set an overall word goal. Idealy by manuscript, but if not then at least by chapter. But I can only see word goal options for scenes, which is not at all intuitive. Surely I'm missing something, right?

Not sure how hard it would be to incorporate something like this, but I'd love a big color spectrum to choose from for the theme options.

I really liked the identical, downloadable images we could get for artists, albums, songs, playlists, and stations in 2024. For whatever reason they only included artists, songs, and albums last year. Maybe I missed something.

I really like seeing and sharing my most played radio stations, because I have weirdly been using AM for terrrestrial radio more than on-demand music this year. I really hope they bring this back.

I just discovered this app and am currently trying to decide if I should use it for radio outside Apple Music (currently I have a note on my phone with radio stations I like that link to their streaming pages on Apple Music.

I noticed it hasn't been updated in a while and I'm curious if the developers are still at all active in maintaining it.

I have IBS-D that presents as frequent, urgent bowel movements. Usually 4-8 a day, even on a good day. Lots of times they are formed like the ideal Bristol Stool Chart level, although sometimes it's less so. The main issue seems to be frequency for me, and it has been for most of my life now (I'm in my 30s).

I have had a lot of tests and tried a lot of different things to treat this without any insight or luck. 5 or 6 years ago, my gastro doctor recommended I try bile acid binders as a therapeutic trial to test for bile acid malabsorption. I got the colestipol tablets, immediately told her they were too big to swallow, and she prescribed the powder version instead.

I was told to take this before bed each night for a few days to see if it helped, and she said most people whose IBS is really BAM notice a change almost immediately. I think I took it for two weeks, and if anything, it only made me worse.

A few months later, I wanted to try again. She said it might be worth trying taking it with lunch and then again before bed. When I did this, it constipated me for a day or two and then I was back to my normal, if not more aggravated symptoms, so I stopped again.

I would have given it longer if the powder wasn't a mess to take. I also got discouraged by the fact that it damages your teeth and would be incredibly inconvenient to take for the rest of my life.

I was reading about BAM again today, and saw that apparently, you aren't supposed to take it before bed, but rather with your largest meal. Now I'm wondering if another trial would be worth it by taking it with dinner.

1. Could BAM be my issue, given my symptoms? I generally don't have "greasy stools."

2. Would it be worth trying it with my dinner meal if taking it before bed didn't help me?

3. Is there some easier way for me to take the pills? I know welchol is an option, but those are also massive and I think I would struggle with them.

4. Could I end up doing more harm than good taking this stuff if I don't actually have BAM?

I'd also just love to hear if anyone has had success with this and what your experience was like.

I went to a new dentist today and they brought up the possibility of Invisalign, which is something I have considered before in the past. I have some crowding on the middle top and bottom teeth. The hygienist said it would probably take about 9-12 months, which surprised me, because my crowding looks worse than a lot of the pics I've seen on here. The dentist came in and said it was pretty standard crowding and "nothing difficult," and said the 9-12 month estimate was accurate.

Now I'm reading posts on here about much longer times that go over a year. They also didn't mention anything to me about rubber bands which I'm seeing a lot of on here.

Do dentist office frequently underestimate the amount of time this treatment would take?

I have one playlist where all my download go, and sometimes I notice that the latest episode of a show hasn't downloaded yet when it should have, even if I drag down to refresh. I will go to the shows page and drag down, and then the episode will show up, but it seems weird that o have to go to the show page.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this may only happen with This American Life for some reason. It feels like every two or three weeks that I have to go hunting for the new one.

I have IBS-D, and after many years of many things that haven't worked for me, I'm considering giving mirtazapine a try. I'd like to try it for at least a few months at a low dose, but I'm a little worried about eventually stopping if it doesn't help me and having withdrawal that makes my stomach symptoms worse.

Back when there was a physical toggle switch for silent mode, I would flip it off before going to bed so that if someone called in an emergency, it would wake me up. Otherwise, my phone was always on silent.

Now that I have a 17 Pro, the best use of the action button for me is the focus modes, but I think I misunderstood how they worked. I've had my Sleep Focus mode set to silence everything except for calls from my Favorite contacts, which would be perfect, but I'm just now realizing it doesn't actually ring out loud. It just blocks everything except for calls, and the calls are still only on vibrate.

Is there a way to do what I'm looking for with focus modes alone?