u/Grouchy-Seesaw-865

TL:DR has anyone had a retinal migraine cause permanent vision changes or is my retina specialist gaslighting me?

I have had migraines my whole life. Like, my earliest memories are waking up with a migraine and throwing up in bed. As I got older they transformed into complex migraines with aura and ultimately to hemiplegic status, now fortunately well managed thanks to zepbound, ajovy, and ubrelvy in my late 30s. However, three months ago I woke up to what seemed like was going to be a migraine aura, with a blind spot about the size of four digits on my credit card if held at normal "reading distance" (my best description). I waited for it to change to colorful zig zags, to grow and move, for any other symptoms to appear, but nothing happened. It also notably was only in one eye. The blind spot didn't grow or change or move for hours, so I called my eye doc to ask to be seen that day in case there was something wrong with my eye.

They did a battery of exams and tests, and found no issue. They sent me to get an MRI, nothing. They sent me to a retina specialist, who DID find a spot on my retina that is in the right spot to be causing a blind spot in that location (it's just up and to the left from my focal point. For example when reading this text, the word up two rows and two or three words to the left of where I'm looking is gone). He had no better explanation for what it might be and chose to diagnose it as a retinal migraine. I disagreed, knowing visual migraine issues are not permanent. However, I am but a lowly HR masters graduate and not a Harvard educated ophthalmologist, so I let it go for the time being. I agreed to come back in three months for another scan under the assumption the blind spot would be gone AND the spot on my retina would be gone. That followup is in two weeks and the blind spot is completely unchanged.

Is this doctor wrong like I think he is? Has anyone had a retinal migraine that actually caused permanent vision changes, or is he using my history of migraine as an excuse to not do more research into finding the true explanation?

Help! I lost my soul kitty at the end of last year. We have two other cats (5 and 11 y/o) who seemed to be missing a piece of themselves after (as were we) and we have the means to adopt another animal, so a few months after soul kitty passed we adopted a 6 month old kitten. The introduction phase was stressful as usual, but they graduated from that and have been able to *mostly* peacefully coexist ever since.

The issue that's come to a head recently is: the kitten picks on the 5 year old, who is smaller than she is, relentlessly. Not all day long, but around peak cat times (dawn/dusk/when she's hungry and trying to get attention....) she will stalk and chase and tackle this poor girl and usually clamps down on some of her back fur and walks away with it in her mouth. She's not breaking the skin, but my older cat screeches and is obviously unhappy. She runs away from the (now one year old) kitten which kitten LOVES and sees as an invitation to bully her more. Now, when only the kitten would do this it was manageable, we separate them as needed, give them each love and attention, redirect, and they can go back in the same room with each other within a few minutes. Over time these incidents were becoming less common. We thought were were over the hump.

But within the last week, my oldest cat has seemed to get confused about who the aggressor is. He has typically intervened only when his long time sister is obviously in need of backup, which I interpreted as him being protective. He would NEVER treat her the way the kitten does on his own. But he has also started stalking and chasing her to the point I shot out of bed last night to the sound of a fight, initiated by him. He's never done this in his entire life, even to cats he meets on day 1.

I obviously am just scratching the surface for the sake of the length of this post, but I am at a loss. We thought we could work through the aggressive play on the kittens part, but if our older 20 pounder is getting involved, this really puts my 5year old in a dangerous position. When we separate the kitten from the two older cats, they go back to their peaceful nature immediately. It feels as if the kitten's aggression is rubbing off on the oldest cat and that gives me heavy anxiety.

We feel like we have tried everything and are at a decision point now. We can't realistically keep them separated forever, our house is not set up for that. But the thought of rehoming the kitten also breaks my heart. On the same token, nothing has worked: positive reinforcement, reintroduction, timeouts, redirection, literal HOURS of play every day, pheromone plug ins, puzzle games, we feel like we have tried it all. Has anyone been in a similar situation? What did you do?

I am a newish supervisor to a team of five who, under previous leadership, had not been held accountable for anything in about ten years. I received multiple complaints recently about the communication skills (or lack thereof) of one of these direct reports. This individual has plans to retire in the next few years, has been a supervisor before, has a reputation for being difficult and stubborn, and has said to me straight up that they are challenging me on everything because "that's what you do when there is new leadership."

As a first time supervisor I went to my own leadership for advice on how to handle the situation, as I thought two formal complaints (coupled with my own similar negative experience and the negative experiences of others on the team related to her communication) should be formally addressed, but I did not think it would be appropriate to go straight to a verbal warning with HR. I wanted to give her an opportunity to turn things around without putting anything officially in her file.

We have the conversation, and she is immediately defensive, visibly angry, places blame elsewhere, but ultimately cools off enough to thank me for my honesty and says she will make a genuine effort to improve her communication. I send a followup email after the meeting to recap my recommendations and start the paper trail in case I need it, but hoping I don't.

She sends a slack message the next day asking if I always send recap emails (she knows I do not) to which I explain no, not always, but for this special discussion about a broader goal to improve communication, I felt it appropriate to recap with an email so we are both aware of the expectations moving forward and to ensure mutual understanding. She did not respond.

Remember how I said she has stated she is purposefully challenging me on everything? Well since this conversation things have gotten even worse. She is working late without prior approval (required in our company), being passive aggressive in our group chat, nitpicking everything I say publicly, not reading or responding to my slack messages for over 24 hours, intentionally not involving her team members in conversations they should be a part of, and at the end of the day, sends me an email *telling me* (not requesting approval) that she will be logging out early on Monday because she worked late today. Flexing hours is fine but again, with prior approval, and I didn't think it should need to be said that if you are on the late shift monday (last one there!) that you could login late that day, but not arbitrarily leave early!

I am struggling to maintain my cool and to not overreact to the childishness. She has decades on me and obviously knows exactly what she is doing, so I'm trying not to feed into it. But I also don't want to be a doormat. How do I decide what to correct her on vs what to let slide, knowing she is already feeling sensitive about the performance management conversation we already had? Ultimately she is an adult and should behave as such, and technically I could address every little thing she is doing that are in varying degrees of unprofessional or even insubordinate, but I also don't see myself as that person. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and hope she cools off in time, but am I just being naive?

I would love to know how others have handled similar situations. We do highly specialized professional work, and we work remotely.

I recently stepped into a supervisor position after two years at this company in a team lead role on the same team. Our team is one of five teams in a larger group that meets weekly for major progress updates (1 hr), I have 30-min 1:1s with all six of my directs either weekly or biweekly (at their preference), and we have a 15-minute individual team meeting with just the seven of us once a week. This is the meeting I am struggling with. I believe it was originally scheduled for an hour under the previous supervisor but since no one ever shared anything (them included), it's gradually gotten shorter and shorter. I WANT this team to feel like a team and improve these relationships but I don't know how.

Much of the work they do is repetitive, they all have assigned tasks to handle daily and these never change. There are some special projects throughout the year, but not many, and some recurring tasks that happen quarterly or annually that are discussed at the weekly meeting with the larger group, so mostly they are clocking in, completing their tasks, answering emails, and their work is done. Since the few special projects or recurring tasks are discussed in other spaces, when I bring them up in the smaller team meeting I basically get eye rolls. I still personally feel like it's valuable to recognize the work the team is doing, celebrate wins and progress, and keep others apprised of ongoing tasks.

1:1s were challenging in the beginning too. I've been successful in getting them to open up a bit more individually, but in the group it's like everyone is either too shy to brag about a success or ask for help from more than just myself, or simply think it's a waste of their time to mention anything. Some claim their workload is so heavy they don't have time for meetings, which I've assessed and believe this is instead an excuse. It's really been bothering me. Some suggestions I've read are things like icebreaker questions or calling on each individual person for a status update. I don't see either of these working well with this group. I like the idea of asking each person one thing they are most proud of and one thing they are most anxious about from the last week, which is another suggestion I received, but I think that's more suitable for a 1:1.

I am open to any and all suggestions for how to bring this team meeting back to life. On a team where there truly won't be many regular (weekly) updates on projects, what can we focus on as a team to build morale and trust and teamwork?