u/mimic-kitty

I’ve dealt with some amount of constipation my entire life, but for some reason, this year it’s just suddenly spiked into hell. Before, I honestly never even thought about it as a problem I had, more like a weird quirk. I got scolded for taking “too-long” bathroom breaks in high school, or for not going “fast enough” when my bowels decided the right time to go was when I needed to hit the road for something, and when I moved into an apartment that had weak plumbing, I just accepted I’d be making fast friends with my plunger. That was the worst of it. I truly, truly have no idea what changed since then, all I know is that something did, sometime around April or May*,* and now I’m so backed up I look like I’m perpetually starting my 2nd trimester, and I’ve got constant, constant reflux.

With my constipation, I’ve never had the urge to go but no ability to follow through, it’s usually just no urge at all, and that’s still the case with this. I just get more nauseous and lose my appetite the longer I wait. There’s always been some suspicion that my psych meds could be contributing? But I’ve changed meds and doses so many times, and the constipation has been so consistent, it seems like the baseline is already abnormal and they may or may not be contributing. Even during this weird escalation, I changed psych meds several times, but just got worse at the same consistent rate, no matter what I was stopping or starting or increasing or decreasing. The only correlation I can think of, is that it did start getting worse around the same time my vaginismus got worse… but it’s not like I have an explanation for that, either. My PT suggested the possibility of endometriosis? Buuut also told me I had basically no shot of ever knowing for sure unless they cut me open, so, it’s not like that helped… so, all I really have is a bunch of “maybe”s and “possibly”s and “it’s not clear”s.

I had hoped a GI could give me more answers, so I was able to get an appointment in August, and he told me to eat more fiber and just take some mild osmotic laxatives til things cleared. I did that. Things improved slightly, then got worse. The osmotics stopped producing more than one small movement (if that) when taken, and just started producing more reflux. I contacted the GI, he got back to me that day and said if I wanted, I could try adding a stimulant to flush things out. I took the stimulant. I had one tiny movement. And reflux pouring out of my nose for the rest of the night. That was it. So, the next day, I contacted the GI again. He took longer to get back to me this time, and he definitely started seeming more annoyed. He scolded me for how many tums I took to try and stop the reflux (it was as many as the package instructions said I was allowed, so, 15 spaced out over 24 hours), told me that’s why nothing was moving, and that I needed to be taking the osmotics daily. So I did that! I had soft but still tiny movements for the rest of the week, until the packaging on the osmotics told me I had to stop and I felt so nauseous I agreed. Contacted the GI, again… heard back eventually, he just said to try a bottle of magnesium citrate. He said nothing about what dose or form it should be in, and I was so frustrated at that point I didn’t want to figure that out, so I did not do that. I kinda just gave up.

It’s been a few weeks since then. Just continuing to have small, infrequent BMs. The nausea is hell. The reflux is hell. I can’t wear my own pants or even sit comfortably because my stomach is so stretched out, and I can’t even walk as much as I usually do cos then it’ll start to hurt and push all its contents back up my throat. No more advice from any of my doctors, though, because they only like to one thing at a time, so I’ve resigned myself to begging for that one thing to be “please figure out what the painful lumps growing on my chest and arms are” right now— boy, am I living the dream. (I did try to ask if the lumps in combination with the GI symptoms were concerning? But they said “no” like it was a ridiculous question, so that ended there.)

I can’t imagine I’ll get to the bottom of my bowel issues anytime soon. Certainly not within the year. But is there anything besides fiber and laxatives that I can do on my own to try and minimize the symptoms? Are softeners worth trying? Enemas? Trying to research all the OTC options on my own is so confusing. If my doctor has no more insights for me, am I just screwed?

I’d just really, really like to wear pants again. That’s all. Pajama day every day has lost its spark, I want to dress like an adult.

Hello again mantis reddit! Since the last time I posted, I’m happy to report that my little guy’s been eating great, but I’ve encountered a new problem… playing hide and seek with fruit flies.

I try to keep a close eye on them, but I swear, sometimes I’ll blink and the tiny little buggers will just vanish into thin air. So far, my strategy has just been to sit and wait to spot them again, then nudge them into the open with a toothpick or similar… but the waiting can take so long. And I have other things to do! My mantis already ate all her other fruit flies this morning, so I’m not terribly concerned if she doesn’t hunt down this last one, I just wanna find it so I can take it out and be done with it.

Is it a stupid idea to try and lure it out of hiding with a piece of fruit? Would that bother the mantis in any way? How do you guys deal with hiding flies?

I’ve struggled with MDD for a little over ten years now, but within the last year I feel like everything that ever gave me relief, just… stopped. I’ve tried everything. Every medication, every lifestyle adjustment, hospitalization, partial hospitalization, re-testing to make sure I have the right diagnosis, and recently I even started TMS, but god. I just feel like I don’t even have fumes to run on anymore, I have less than nothing left to give.

I don’t have the energy to do anything— work, hobbies, socializing, basic self care, sitting up is too much sometimes let alone getting up and moving, and I get nothing out of “just doing it anyway”. No relief, no reward, no restoration, not even food or sleep manage to scrape up any kind of reaction beyond ‘not speeding up the constant decline.’

I was working as a freelance illustrator when all this started, and I have projects I took on back when I thought I could at least get back to baseline that I could really use the money from finishing, but I have no idea how. How do you do anything? On the most basic level, how do you even start? I can pick up a pen but I can’t draw much more than a shaky, squashed-looking circle.

Every google search for doing things with depression seems to give the same advice of ‘Well, just do it, and you’ll feel better when you do!’ but I swear to god I just don’t. That’s a non-starter for me, it’s not possible. So how the hell do you do it? How do you make activity bearable when literally everything takes away and nothing gives back?

UPDATE: They must have known I was back on reddit worrying, because a few hours after posting this, they finally ate!! turns out instead of 30 minutes, I just needed to leave the prey in their enclosure for… three hours. I felt like I was sat with them supervising all night, but the little guy has a nice full belly now and all is well, so worth it :) Thanks for all the advice!

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Hello again! I was just on the forum asking about feeding advice for my new ghost mantis nymph a few days ago, but even after trying everything you guys suggested, my little guy just won’t eat. It’s been five days since I brought them home, but they just ignore, swat away or even run from everything I try to give them, live or dead, big or small, whole or cut up, left in their enclosure or placed in a smaller hunting cup or offered with tweezers or placed right against their mouth, I swear, I’ve done it all… not even sugar water had any appeal.

I started thinking it might be pre-molt after the third day, which they spent just hanging in place, but nothing happened, and by the next day they were up and about again like it’d never happened. They’ve been more active since then, which I think is a good sign, but definitely giving me some mixed signals!

I reached out to the vendor I bought them from to ask if they were due for a molt, but they never actually answered the question, they just told me to leave the prey in their enclosure for longer. Well, that’s what I started doing! But still no luck

I feel like I should give them space, but I’m just nervous because of how skinny they look. Their abdomen is flat as a leaf, but it’s near impossible to show in pictures because the edges are curved like a little spoon, and their skin is so dark they just turn into a tiny black silhouette on camera and the curve makes them look round. In person, I swear they look like they should be super hungry, but they just refuse to eat.

I’ll take whatever advice you guys have, I just wanna do right by my little friend, I’d be heartbroken if anything happened to them after I just brought them home

I adopted my first mantis at an expo this Sunday, a little ghost mantis I was told was roughly six weeks old, and size-wise looks like roughly an L4. I bought a tupperware of fruit flies to use as food (there weren’t many options for smaller bugs at the expo, and at the time the flies seemed like the safest bet), but the little guy just has no interest them. They won’t hunt, wether it’s in their regular enclosure or in a smaller feeding cup, and they seem so scared of the tweezers I think I have to rule those out as an option entirely, I’m sure the stress can’t be motivating them to eat!

I did place an order for housefly pupae pretty much as soon as I got back home, so I should have those in hand in a day or two, but I’m just nervous about how thin my little mantis looks right now. My only local, brick-and-mortar options for feeders in the meantime are crickets and mealworms, and the mantis’s vendor did include small crickets in their list of recommended prey items, but I’ve had some nasty pet store cricket experiences with previous pets and just worry about how clean I can count on them being, especially if I don’t have time to at least gut-load them first :(

I’m probably overthinking this, but my first-time keeper jitters have absolutely amped up to full power in the last 48 hours, and it’s just so hard to wind them back down! I’d really appreciate any input I could get from more experienced folks— are pet store crickets worth the risk just to make sure my mantis has a meal? Are pet store mealworms any more reliable, or even worth trying, would a ghost mantis even go for those?

They really are very thin, by this point their abdomen could probably pass for an actual leaf, otherwise I might assume they were fasting for a molt

Thank you so much for sticking out all my rambling, and for any advice you have to give, I really do appreciate it :,)