u/LoCoSadGirl1934

I'm in the midst of a relationship issue where gender dynamics feel very much at play, but I cannot articulate exactly what is happening. I know some of you will read this and just say "dump him" - but I'm trying to learn and grow from this situation and I'd like to be able to better understand what gender dynamics are happening. Any insight much appreciated:

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I’ve been with my boyfriend for three years. He is 39 and I am 33. I have a severe chronic illness which makes decisions around children complicated.

He is very committed to having children and has started testing his sperm. He’s making lifestyle choices to improve his sperm (for several months: abstaining from alcohol and weed, working out, eating healthy, etc). To be clear - he already had it tested and the results were very good - he just is trying to make them better... apparently. I have tried to be as supportive as I can of him even though we are both aware that I am not 100% committed to having kids the way that he is at this present moment. I’ve bought him supplements that I read were good for sperm health, I’ve listened to him talk about it and asked a lot of questions to understand better, I’ve routinely checked in about how he’s feeling, I’ve made him meals that were healthy, I’ve tried to help with stress management. He mentioned books about parenting that he wanted to read and I offered to read with him. But he has accused me of not being supportive of his process of… working on his fertility? 

I’ve told him that to get clarity on children I have other needs that need to be met (needs that are much more social/emotional): I need to see him more than one night a week (he had a very insane job and we have never in our three years together spent an entire weekend together), I want him to know my friends and family better, and most importantly I want us to talk about the social/emotional component of what it would mean to be parents together. I have suggested a popular workbook that we could work out of so our talks had some structure. He said he didn’t know if he could do that because it would require more/emotional capacity from him and he apparently doesn’t feel like I am being supportive enough for him to give that in return …??

I feel wildly confused that this person who ostensibly wants me to be the mother to his children, has not prioritized extremely basic bare minimum requests of mine. I would like to be on the same page as him about kids. But it’s like he wants me to just be all in without doing the steps I describe (to be clear: he in theory agrees those things are necessary, but it’s been years of no action/change). I have told him that even if I *was* 100% in on kids right now, these are still needs I would have. Beyond that - I know I deserve someone who is *enthusiastic* about meeting the needs I've vocalized. The vibe is that he "agrees" all of the things I've outlined need to happen -- but  it feels like a chore, another responsibility whenever he talks about it or whenever we navigate it.

I feel like the gender dynamics of it all are glaring and yet I cannot articulate exactly what they are.

His obsession with his sperm health feels strange to me in a way I can’t explain. He is taking it so seriously and I don’t want to make him feel bad about it - especially because I am actually grateful to be with someone who understands fertility is not just a woman's responsibility. But when he says I’m not being supportive he has explained that he feels alone in it; he wants me to praise him for the work he’s putting in, he wants it to feel more collective. But I am obviously not on the same page as him *right now* and he knows that. I feel like I don’t know how else to be supportive without being inauthentic to where I am at which I have repeatedly communicated directly, with care.

What am I missing? Am I actually being unsupportive? I feel like I'm losing my mind.

I get that all of our test results come back normal - most of the time - and they continuously use this as a reason for why we aren't immunocompromised. But myself - and so many on here - are constantly at risk of getting infected or unable to adequately fight off infections.

David Putrino even said (on Twitter, which I can't link to) that this study of immunocompromised cancer patients was very much comparable to Long Covid patients.

I'm so sick of them not listening to us.

I have been housebound in the same place for years. have been evaluated for mold so that’s not a big concern. but i just wonder if mustering up the energy to move might help me get out of this rut in anyway, or if that’s fantasy thinking

hi! I live a ways outside Seattle and have been trying to get into the long covid clinic at uw for over a year. I am wondering if it’s even worth the energy at this point given that I haven’t heard the best feedback about the clinic there, or that maybe they recently switched to more of a consult model so they don’t even really offer a whole lot?

if you’ve been or know someone who has, what’s your experience been like?

I posted something asking about people's experiences on this drug with titrating up. I literally put IN THE POST that I was NOT looking for medical advice, just other people's experiences. Then the mods removed it saying not to ask for medical advice. Diabolical. I've learned my lesson. Look forward to this post being taken down too.

EDIT: I’m not an idiot. I know 2.5mg is the standard starting dose. For folks commenting here telling me this… you likely don’t have the miserable experience of living with long covid me/CFS and MCAS. People in this patient population often have to be on very low doses of meds because we are so much more sensitive. what’s therapeutic for many is often toxic for us. I also said in my post that I cannot lose weight which is why partially I’m on a low dose. Im weighing the decision to titrate up. Some of the comments here are wildly insensitive - people even downvoted my post - I thought this was supposed to be a supportive sub?

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i started tirzeparide about 6 months ago for long covid and me/cfs. it felt like a miracle initially - headaches I’d been having all day for over a hundred days just vanished within the first week. I had energy I didn’t know was even possible. I started at 0.1mg (am very sensitive to meds, can’t lose weight, and doctor wanted to be cautious about reactions). I worked up to 0.5mg over this time (had to pause for a few weeks due to a foodborne illness).

I am feeling really defeated that I feel back to my old baseline. I don’t know if I should keep trying to scale up on this med or stop it. I know folks can’t give medical advice — but I am interested in anyone else’s experience with effects wearing off. And for people with long covid and/or me/CFS specifically I’m wondering if you’ve experienced this? my heart rate has also been higher than normal so I’m worried that even this low 0.5mg dose has worsened my POTS (I’m not on beta blockers).

Thanks for any advice. I’m so tired and just want to feel like a normal human again.

how is it going for you? I am on LDN and Tirzepatide - and supposed to try Ivabridine soon, but wanted to hear from folks who have found any relief with this combo.

hello! I have been on a low histamine diet for almost 18 months and began slowly introducing more foods around 12 months. avoiding dietary histamine wasn’t a cure for my health issues but I do strongly believe it made a big difference and helped reduce inflammation in my gut allowing it to slowly heal.

i started introducing foods that are histamine liberators (like bananas), but have avoided still the super high histamine foods (namely fermented foods, tomatoes, spinach, etc). wondering if anyone else has successfully added these back in, and if so what helped?

hi! I am trying to get more folks in my community/family to mask and find that linking to studies is one of the most helpful ways to do this.

is anyone aware of a website or... any place... where studies about masks are aggregated in one place? I'm looking for the following sort of data:

• evidence about how masks reduce the spread of covid (and other airborne illnesses)
• evidence about differences between cloth/surgical/kn95/n95 etc
• systematic reviews
• impacts masking had on the pandemic/covid waves when implemented

thanks!

It seems so obvious to anyone closely following recent Long Covid research that there are numerous biomarkers that (while they aren't definitive/established LC biomarkers) show obvious trends in people with Long Covid such as elevated pTau-181, elevated platelet monocyte aggregates (PMA) for neurocognitive symptoms...

I also think the quest for "a" biomarker is also flawed since it's so heterogenous. Why are they not just checking these things in everyone so they can start stratifying patients? I don't care if the biomarker isn't "established" - if any provider was willing to check it, it would help establish a baseline so I could understand if I am responding to different treatments (like if LDN is indeed bringing down neuroinflammation).

Every time I ask a provider about this they say there's no way to measure anything and then if I cite specific research and biomarkers like PTau-181, they refuse to order it. What is going on?? Has anyone had any success in getting a clinician to evaluate neuroinflammation in specific?

*I am not looking for remarks about "there's no way to measure it." It's flatly false. I follow loads of people leading Long Covid research who are challenging this assumption and begging clinicians to read the research and do more.