anonemouse

Oh, OUCH, leatha_g! You're making me itch and hurt just looking at it!

You'd think so, wouldn't you? Most of his patients were actually having RNY, not lap-band, and I think he just didn't feel like making new guidelines for his lap-band patients.

I wouldn't automatically assume that it's the band. Sometimes, our bodies just freak out and we become allergic to certain things. Try changing the soap you use, your detergent, lotions, perfume, etc. Of course, don't change them all at once, because you'll never know exactly what you might be allergic to.

Sounds like my type of gardening. I live in an apartment, so I can only do contianer gardening. Last year, I tried clematis, and actually got some blooms, but I never could get it to attach to my deck railing, so it eventually died. The only plants I have been completely unable to kill have been bamboo, some sort of vine, and a christmas cactus. Everything else? Dead in a week, it seems.

That's horrid. The rubber band is one thing, but making you inhale ammonia? That's cruel, and I can't believe anyone would really think they were helping you by making you do it. God, we have some real pieces of work in this nation, don't we? It's absolutely mind-blowing to me that someone can encourage that crap and then think they are "rightous" and "God-like". I don't understand how people can be so cruel. I mean, I am literally on the edge of tears, here. I just don't understand how people can act like that and believe that that they are the ones that are going to Heaven. It's torture.

Of course.

I definitely agree. I firmly believe that either all these so-called "ex-gays" are either lying to themselves and the people around them, or they were never gay in the first place. In which case, they are still lying to themselves and the people around them.

I have just gotten into the habit of staying up late, since I had to the week before I gave my seminar presentation in order to finish it (I'm horrible about procrastinating). And it's Friday, which means I can sleep late tomorrow. That cake sounds wonderful. It's been forever since I had a pineapple upside down cake. Now you've got me craving it!

That abbreviation crap really gets to me. I HATE it. I've told my classes that if they want me to respond to their emails, they better identify which class they're in, write with respect, and use proper grammar and capitalization. I don't respond to "can u tell me" or crap like that. That's one reason I never got interested in IMing people. It always took too long, because I always type everything out. It happens to be one of my pet peeves here on the board, too.

I think that as long as a kid's parents care about their kid's education, the kids will turn out okay. The ones that run into trouble, IMO, have parents that really don't care. Either the parents aren't educated and think "if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for them" or they don't have the time to really take interest in their kids' educations. I was never allowed to say "ain't" or "not never" or any crap like that. When I spoke to my parents, I had to speak properly. I don't know if that was because both of my parents had post-secondary degrees (three, in my dad's case) or what, but I was always told that in order to be taken seriously, I had to speak correctly.

You wanna know what's almost worse? Watching a graduate student do a presentation in front of a class (or worse, in front of the entire department's faculty and grad students), and pinpointing every single spelling and grammar mistake on his slides and listening to him mispronounce things. I mean, heck, even if you use "ain't" or "it don't" or "not never" (I live and go to university in Kentucky, can you tell?) in every-day conversation, you shouldn't be doing it in a presentation. And for Pete's sake, the geological time period was Silurian, not Siluvian.

It is. I usually have to take over as editor for any group papers or things of that nature that have to be done in my classes. I just really want to take the rest of them into a computer lab, sit them down at a computer, and say, "Look, this is what we call the spell-checker. It's very useful, but you shouldn't rely on it. Always try to have at least one other person (who happens to be better in the spelling and grammar department, hopefully) look over your work. If you don't want to do that, go sit in your 5th grade sister's English class. You'll learn a lot."

I can definitely understand. In the labs that I teach, sometimes I really feel like asking people if they have learning disabilities that they haven't told me about. Of course, there was the one guy that supposedly did have a learning disability, but I honestly think he was just dumb as a brick. Sometimes, it's all I can do not to just stare at them with a look of incredulity on my face. Like the one girl who insisted on tilting the top-heavy $900 microscope forward on it's base until it was at close to a 60 degree angle. I was very tempted to say, "Keep doing that, genius, and your parents are really going to be happy with you."

To be honest, with the exception of the "abortion information" sign (which I've never seen), all those signs (at least in my area) were for crisis pregnancy centers that couselled against abortion. In fact, the local crisis pregnancy group that did the sex-ed program that I went through in 6th grade were extremely anti-abortion, to the point where I thought that they went a little too far. They did, however, tell us about condoms, which is more than most sex-ed groups (at least, those that get federal funding) can currently say.

I definitely agree with that. I just wish more people took the time to do their own research, especially in cases of major medical decisions. I dunno, I guess I just have the "research mentality". I can't do anything without researching first. Even buying furniture, I have to research. Plus, I am automatically distrustful of other people, to a certain extent. It literally makes no sense to me that people don't research and that the completely trust their health care professionals to fully inform them. Of course, this all came out in my psych eval. :rolleyes

I don't want to sound heartless, but what I would say to people regretting having an abortion is, well, "get over it". Regret is a part of life. It doesn't do anyone any good to sit around and wish that you had done this differently or done that differently, because it's done already. You were an adult, you made an adult decision, now you have to live with the consequences. Wishing you had done something else doesn't change the fact that you did what you did. You can't look back and say, "well, if I had done this or done that, this would have happened (or this wouldn't have happened." Hindsight may be 20/20, but no one can see the future. All you can do is tell yourself that while you may have gone through with the pregnancy if you were in the same situation as you are now, you did what was best for you at the time.

I personally don't blame the doctors for a woman failing to educate herself. I think that as adults, we are all responsible for educating ourselves. I mean, look at the way we approach lap-band surgery, for example. With very few exceptions, we've had to rely on ourselves to become educated about the surgery and life after surgery. If we relies solely on our doctors and the professionals, most of us would be sorely uneducated about what we are facing. With any medical procedure, we have the responsibility to educate ourselves and not to rely on medical professionals to do that for us.

Thinking that women should have the choice to have an abortion does not mean that someone agrees with the practice. I mean, I don't know if I would have one, but I think that every woman should be able to make that choice for herself. To me and to most other pro-choice people, I think, it is a medical decision. The choice is what it is all about, not whether or not someone thinks that it's a wonderful practive.

Sorry, I must have missed that comment somewhere along the way.

To be honest, I really don't think that anyone wants to have an abortion. They might spout rhetoric all day long about wanting to, but that doesn't mean they really do, deep down inside. If they do, I'm quite sure that they have some other mental problems. No sane person wants to undergo a painful medical procedure.

Then why do you keep bringing it up, if you know that it is a wacky idea and that the majority of feminists don't agree? What bearing does it have on a conversation about whether or not abortion should be banned? Of course there are people out there with weird ideas. There are lots of them in every belief system out there. For example, the wacky snake-handling Christians. I wouldn't bring them up as an example of why we should ban all Christian religious ceremonies, simply because I know that they are an anomoly.

I don't think we do promote abortion as birth control. I think it is rightly seen as the last resort by most people. How many of that 81% got pregnant because they never used birth control? Sometimes, accidents do happen, even when you try and be as safe as possible. I mean, personally, I think it is stupid to rely on one method of birth control alone, especially when many women and their partners don't really know how to use those methods properly. I really think that it all comes down to education about safe sex, which this administration refuses to fund.

To be honest, I really don't care why someone decides to have an abortion. That is her choice, and I don't have any business sticking my nose in her medical decisions. I know that 99% of women who have abortions aren't having them for shits and giggles. Maybe some do. I would rather not prevent that 99% from having an abortion, just to prevent the miniscule number of women who may be having an abortion just to have one. In other words, your medical decisions are between YOU and YOUR DOCTOR. Not me. Not your mother. Not Carlene. YOU AND YOUR DOCTOR.

My mom went on it a few days ago and told me about it because she thought it might be something that I'd want to try. I haven't talked to my doctor yet, but I'd like to see about getting put on it. I don't know if they would, though, because I am only insulin resistant, not diabetic.

Most of us do. Part of the problem is that the current administration refuses to see that abstinence-only programs don't work. If I had my way, every single kid in the nation would have to go to a mandatory sex-ed class that actually educates them about sex and the potential dangers, instead of just telling them that "sex is bad, don't have it".