The twins !!! 🐦‍⬛🪶🐻🏹

Several decades later my sister had an MRI, as a long shot, to try to figure out why she was sick and deteriorating with a number of symptoms that were close to being written off as anxiety. She was sent straight to the hospital for adult onset hydrocephaly. Two days later she had brain surgery to put a shunt down her neck into her stomach and drain the fluid out. (No, you cannot usually get brain surgery that fast. Yes, it was that urgent.) Recovery was long and squiggly but it happened.

I think of that boy every once in a while. The one who died. I have no doubt that treatments developed for people like him, and tested on people like him, saved my sister's life.

I've been type 1 diabetic since I was about one and a half, and was incredibly sick. If my mother hadn't also been type 1 and recognized the signs I likely would have died.

I was born in 1982. Insulin was first given to a patient in 1922, and he survived. Before that, type 1 meant death, often very slow and agonizing. Before insulin, doctors advised a super strict "keto" diet to prolong life, and it could work for awhile - up to a year, I believe. But it was a miserable existence as the body was literally eating itself as the blood turned acidic until the patient eventually died.

60 years. Only 60 years before my birth did that procedure work for the first time. That's absolutely nothing given the span of human history and I think a lot about the people who died from it throughout time.

But yes, people tried. Healers and doctors of all sorts tried all manner of things to allow these (mostly!) kids to live. The fact that it was accomplished at all is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I've been alive 42 years is fucking insane considering my body doesn't produce a hormone necessary for survival. If you think that doesn't blow me away on a regular basis you have another think coming. It's nothing short of a miracle.

Every medical advancement is. The amount of work that goes into it and the vast amount of luck necessary to get it right even when all the research and information is sound is just astonishing.

In 1930, having diabetes type I would basically mean being hospital bound, being woken every few hours for regular injections.

In 1965, you'd be able to live at home and get by with a very strict diet and a few timed injections. You'd struggle with chronical side effects. Having children wasn't done - passing on your genes would be immoral, and it might not even be legal for you to marry.

In the year 2000, you'd have a device clipped to your belt that would measure your blood sugar and distribute insulin, you only need to change the needle a few times a day. You might even be allowed to join in P.E. class

In 2025, you stick on two patches that do the same thing. They're synchronized through your phone.

He's lived long enough that three of his grandkids have been born with the same condition, and he's been there to assist with the recovery after the laparoscopic version of the same surgery he had.

He has a scar from collarbone to waist that's as thick as my finger--thicker, in some places. My nieces and nephews have scars so tiny you could mistake them for being from a particularly bad cat scratch. And their recovery was measured in weeks, instead of months.

pied piper 📕 (26.07.2019)

So after the two (so far) seasons of The Legend of Vox Machina I’ve discovered the first campaign of Critical Role kinda like I made my way through the Discworld novels: haphazardly, “ooh this bit sounds interesting”, “ooops I should probably watch/read this before I watch/read that”, etc. So now I’m well and thoroughly into it, having listened to the entirety of the last 16 or so episodes; I started from the top (I’m on episode 28) and having a blast listening to/watching these idiots flail around.

Anyway, one of the many, many things I love about it is the number of times Vax just picks up Scanlan? “I scoop up Scanlan and go piggyback style”, and “I start to creep further with [Scanlan] tucked under my arm like a football”, “I grab Scanlan by the scruff of the neck”, plus that bit in season 2 episode 12 in TLOVM… They made me laugh so hard and they broke my heart so bad. They’re adorable and I love them lots.

So here’s a sort of “4 times Vax carried Scanlan and one time Scanlan carried Vax”. ‘Cause, you know. That one time. Also that other time.

“A pair of twin amateur crytpid hunters with their loyal pet bear investigate a series of disappearances in the secluded town of Whitestone in search of who or what is responsible”