Category Archives: Health

See Monday’s Post

  
Thank you all for the advice you have given me about my headaches. I plan to try the essential oils. Many of the conventional cures for cluster headaches, I went with my doctor. I have a type called chronic cluster headaches because while they hurt in the same place as traditional cluster headaches and go in cycles, there is no relief during one of the cycles like in regular episodic cluster headaches. Also, I do take Verapamil every day, which has for the most part, lessened the intensity and frequency of the cluster headaches. I have been under a lot of emotional stress since my friend died and it caused the frequency to be more often.  

I’ve tried Imitrex as an abortive measure, and found that it intensifies the headaches. I think it is because it is a traditional triptan and it raises my blood pressure, thus nullifying the effects of the Verapamil. For the really bad cluster headaches I take a combination of Flexeril and Bupap or Flexeril and Norco (the Norco is much less effective than its predecessor Lortab). Either combination seems to work. The problem is that Flexeril, I need asleep for at least 10 hours or I am groggy and can barely stay awake, so I need time to go to bed and sleep off the cluster headache, which I did last night.

I completely understand why cluster headaches are called suicide headaches. The pain can be so intense that you really think death could be an alternative. While I have felt that way, I know the medications work and when I take my medication, the feeling of about 30 minutes later of the easing of pain is (almost) better than an orgasm.

I know for at least one person this post might seem familiar, but since I had a headache last night, I largely cut and pasted from our email the day before.


Head Exploding

  
Last night, just before I started to write my blog for today, I had an intense headache. Without a doubt it is a cluster headache because it has the usual symptoms. The guy in the picture kind of describes it. He’s sitting up because it’s too painful to lay down. He’s covering his eyes with his arm and pressing the back of his head where the other pain is located. I fucking hate these headaches.


Therapy

  

I’ve said before on this blog that I’ve been going to therapy. It was a way of trying to deal with the death of my friend. Well, yesterday I told my therapist that I wouldn’t be back. I had begun to dread going to see the therapist. I haven’t gotten over my friend’s death, but I also couldn’t keep dredging up such painful memories. I want to remember the good times we had and the closeness I felt with him. I do not want to continue remembering only his death and the pain I felt afterwards.

In therapy, we had also talked about my hidden pains, which was a realization that I found very helpful. The picture above reminded me of what therapy was like. When I look at this picture, the first thing I see is a nearly naked man. He is the center of the pictures focus. The yellowish light around him focuses your eyes there. Then you notice the darkness and the city lights beyond. That’s how I felt in therapy. It was mostly me talking and the therapist listening, which was what I needed at first. It was completely centered on me, but as I talked more, I didn’t want to keep going over the same difficult memories time and again without knowing of a way to,deal with the pain. I needed someone else in the picture to help me deal with the issues I was dealing with. I know there is a darkness surrounding me, but that there is an abundance of light beyond the class that holds me inside.

Once I realized that I absolutely dreaded going to therapy, I knew it was time to stop. The other thing that I realized is that it was after therapy that I was experiencing panic attacks. Honestly, I didn’t realize that until this afternoon. You see, I haven’t had a panic attack in nearly two weeks, and since I’d skipped therapy last week because of a headache, it had been two weeks since I’d been to therapy. I realized thought that talking about some of these issues and the dark cloud that seems to surround me that was one of the causes of my panic attacks. Last night, I had an attack so bad that I had to take a Xanax just to be able to calm down. Panic attacks are one of the worst things to me. I feel like I have not control when I have one, and they also cause a period of intense depression. The Xanax eases that ever so slightly.

So goodbye therapy. I may seek other types of counseling, but for now, I feel better that I won’t be going back. I needed there to be more than just me doing all the talking. I hate for the focus to be just me.

  


Catharsis 

  

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating. —Francesca Lia Block

The word “catharsis” originates from the Greek language and means to cleanse or purge. In psychotherapy, catharsis refers to the process of consciously experiencing deep emotions that have previously been repressed, thus moving them to the surface and allowing them to come out. I use the term in this sense of emotional cleansing or clearing — a release of pent-up emotional energy through experiencing and expressing emotions.

Back when I was writing research papers, ideas would swirl in my head after I’d gone to bed, and if I didn’t get up and write them down, they’d be lost in the morning but then haunt me the next night. The same is true when I’m writing a story or my novel. The same is true when I have emotional issues, like those surrounding the death of my friend. I was writing an email to a friend of mine yesterday and realized that if gotten way off topic, so I put that aside and decided to turn it into a blog post. Once it was written, I shared it with a few of my friends but ultimately decided that it was too personal. It was just too close to my heart. What I realized most of all about the piece was that it gave me a sense of catharsis writing it.

Yesterday, I skipped my counseling session. I awoke with a headache and that was a good enough excuse for me. I doubt some of you who are proponents of counseling will agree with me on this, but I was doing just fine before my friend’s death. I could express myself in two ways: my friend and my blog. If there was something I did not want to blog about, I had him to talk to. We were both able to be each other’s counselors in times of need. No, neither of us was trained, but we could be completely and totally honest with each other about everything. I have never had that with anyone else and it was not an immediate thing with my departed friend; it developed over time. When I need someone to talk to that is when I miss him the most. 

Therefore, I sometimes write out my thoughts as a way to deal with them. Cathartic writing is like releasing the gauge of a pressure cooker. It enables you to ventilate and let the steam out, providing all important emotional release. Some people are reluctant to express their feelings on paper because they have been told that it is self indulgent or they feel that what they see on paper will not be very pretty. Frankly, what emerges in emotional writing can be far from pretty. The good, the bad and the ugly all come pouring onto the page when you write in a cathartic fashion. Often it feels like the writing is full of wailing and moaning.

When you write for yourself, and only for yourself, in a personal essay, you allow yourself to express feelings and thoughts that you might not want or dare to tell anyone else. One of the things about my friend who passed away was that we texted each other a lot and we could say things that we might not have wanted to verbalize. I might have written about things I hated to admit even to myself, such as, “I don’t really much like being Mr. Nice Guy all the time,” or “sometimes I question my relationships,” or “I feel like running away.” No matter what I wrote to him, he was always there with an encouraging word. He never criticized me, but always encouraged me to be a better person.

Writing my feelings allows me to air them. I used to send these thoughts to my friend instead of writing them for myself as I find myself doing these days. And so, rather than pushing these feelings down inside myself now and clogging my emotional being with pent up frustrations, fears, and doubts, I acknowledge them and write them down. And in so doing, I try to honor my friend and the relationship we had. I can still acknowledge and allow these feelings to have their full run.

When I write honestly and unreservedly, not only about the events in my life but also about my feelings, I unburden myself of emotions that bog me down and keep me from accomplishing what I want to accomplish or of being the sort of person I’d really like to be. Sometimes these writings become a blog post, especially if I think it might help someone else, but sometimes they are like the piece I wrote last night and are just for a select few eyes only, but sometimes for only my eyes only. When I write something though, I generally want to share it with someone.

Even if I do nothing else with my writing, but write my honest feelings, I can hope to experience the benefits of catharsis: cleansing, a sense of purification, and relief.


Backache 

  
I went to bed early with a backache. 


Off Day

   
I’m not taking off a day from work, just from blogging. This cold is still kicking my butt, but hopefully it is getting better. So I’m leaving you with some pictures of the beautiful Mr. Colton Haynes.

 


Cold

  
I seem to have come down with a cold. It’s not a bad one. One minute I am able to almost forget about it then I will start coughing or swallow or feel the aching in my body or all of the above. Anyway, it seems to hit in waves and I was so tired when I went home, I basically went to bed. There was no need for that nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, fever, best sleep you ever got with a cold… medicine. I was in the middle of texting a friend while simultaneously writing this post when I fell asleep.


Hidden Pain

  
In my counseling session yesterday, my therapist brought up something that I found quite intriguing. I’d woken up with a headache yesterday. It should come as no surprise that I have been having them more frequently in the last two weeks. When I mentioned my headache, we talked about the causes of them, and I explained that they are caused by different factors: environmental, emotional, and dietary. I talked about how long I’ve been suffering from headaches, and he asked me how I handled them. I told him that for the most part, I just carried on and tried not to let them ruin my life. He brought up that I have a lot of “hidden pains.” My headaches are just one example of it. Rarely can someone look at me and tell that I have a headache. Only people who know me very well can tell on even rare occasions. You see, I try not to make a big deal over them. Yes, I have mentioned them on this blog more than once (an understatement), but I don’t want it to be something that defines me. I also don’t like to show weakness, so many times when I have a headache I don’t mention it. I go about my day and then when I’m alone and away from everyone that’s when I can deal with the pain.

My headaches aren’t my only hidden pain. I hid my sexuality for a very long time. My sexuality wasn’t something I wanted to be defined by either. While you hope that people will react kindly to finding out you’re gay, it’s not always the case. Someone that I’d always thought of as a friend (he is married to a friend of mine), once said to me after I made some offhand comment about a guy being sexy, “I don’t care if you’re that way, I just don’t want to hear about it.” As a whole this group of people knew I was gay and didn’t care, and it was one of the few times in Alabama that I could be my true self. After he said that, what I’d thought of as my safe zone shattered. I eventually stopped hanging out with this group because I realized that while they’d all acted like they accepted me, no one called him out on him calling me out. All the people I work with now know that I am gay. I never made it a secret, but at some point you do have to come out. To me that’s the worst thing about being gay, you have to continue to come out all your life.

I also hide my emotions. Southern boys/men aren’t supposed to be emotional. You can’t talk about your accomplishments because then you are bragging, unless it’s something manly like hunting or athletics. Accomplishments in academics and the arts just makes you a weakling and a braggart. Men, of course, no matter where you are must hide weaknesses. You most certainly have to hide emotional pain. I “fail” at this one too often. While I can usually keep my emotional pain hidden, sometimes the sadness bubbles over. With the death of my friend, it was hard to keep that sadness hidden, but I’ve suffered from depression for years, and I do my best to keep it hidden. My anxiety is the same way. I hide the magnitude of it often by making a joke of it. I always say that I fly Air Xanax because I have to take Xanax to be able to fly. If I don’t, then I have full blown panic attacks and generally burst into tears. So it becomes anoher pain that I hide, but with anxiety I just make a joke out of it so that no one realizes the magnitude of my anxiety at times.

Even though I may look fine on the outside, it doesn’t mean that everything is great. Often I feel ashamed if I can’t maintain poise and self-control at all times, even when I am alone. I hate the loss of control over my emotions or other pains. I have to begin to understand that it is human to break or to feel that I just can’t take another hit. It is okay to lose it once in a while. That is when I need my friends and family the most. My friend that I’d lost was one of the few people who I could be completely myself with. I didn’t have to hide my pains. The sharing of vulnerabilities, mess-ups, weak moments and despair with my friend who was a trusted listener helped. No matter what the problem was, I could get past hellish happenings, cease downward spirals and emerge from an abyss because he made me feel understood. Being understood is empowering. It’s right up there with being loved or respected. With my friend, I had all three. He understood me, he loved me, and he respected me. Now I have to learn to deal with these hidden pains by myself, without the tremendous help of my friend.


Headache and Sleep

  
I only got out of bed a few times yesterday. I had one of my bad headaches. It started Saturday night, so I took some medicine which relieved it for a while and let me sleep, but then I woke again in the very early hours of the morning and took some more medicine. Again that helped for a few hours but when I woke again, the headache was back, so I tried a different medicine. The other medicine did nothing, so I waited and then took the strongest medicine I had available. It wasn’t long before I was once again sound asleep. When I woke I was feeling better, but the feeling didn’t last long. I’m hoping that by the time this posts this morning, I will be feeling much better.


Interesting Penis Facts

  

Here are 10 fascinating facts you probably didn’t know about penises. With any luck, they’ll help you to appreciate them even more than you already do.

10. The etymology for the word “penis”

The word “penis” comes from the Latin word for “tail.”

“Penis” was not adopted into the English language until the 17th century. Prior to that, a penis was referred to as a “yard.”

9. The world’s largest penis on record…

The largest erect penis ever to be medically verified measured 13.5 inches long and 6.25 inches in circumference. It belongs to an American bisexual man named Jonah Cardeli Falcon. His penis is 9.5 inches when flaccid and 13.5 inches when erect.

But having the world’s biggest penis isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“When I meet people they find it hard to look me in the eye, they just see what’s in my trousers,” Falcon has said. “It’s become a real problem.”

8. The average penis size…

Don’t let Jonah Cardeli Falcon make you feel self conscious about the size of your dong. According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, the average American man’s penis is 5.6 inches long when erect.

That means there’s a whole lot of liars on Grindr, Manhunt and Adam4Adam.

7. Self pleasure

It is estimated by Men’s Health that 1 in 400 men are flexible enough to perform oral sex on themselves. Don’t ask us where this statistic came from.

6. Some babies are born with two penises.

Diphallia, also known as penile duplication, is when a child is born with two penises. It is a rare condition that affects one in every 5-6 million males.

Juan Baptista dos Santos is probably the most famous man to suffer from diphallia. (He also had a third leg.) He was born in Portugal in 1863. Both of his peckers were said to have been fully functional — meaning he could urinate and ejaculate from each.
Juan is said to be have been a man of “animal passion,” who would have sex with both of his penises, finishing with one, then continuing with the other.

Sounds pretty incredible. Just imagine the kind of three-ways he could have.

5. Yes, it’s possible to break your penis.

Penile fractures affect around 200 Americans each year and usually happens during violent intercourse, sexual acrobatics, or aggressive masturbation.

During an erection, the penis becomes engorged with blood. If the penis is bent in a sudden or forceful manner during this time, the trauma can rupture the lining of one of the two cylinders inside the penis, known as the corpus cavernosum. This is usually accompanied by a cracking sound, followed by severe bruising and swelling.

Sounds awful.

4. The brain is not needed to ejaculate.

The order to ejaculate comes from the spinal cord, not the brain. Who knew?

No wonder our timing is always off.

3. The volume, speed and calorie count of cum.

The average man shoots between one and two teaspoons of cum per orgasm. Each wad contains approximately seven calories, and each spurt propels through the air at about 28 MPH. It is believed that the average man will ejaculate around 7,000 times in his life. Clearly that number does not apply to gay men, who exceed that number by the age of 20. Also, it means that the average man ejaculates 13-15 gallons of semen in his life time.

2. Erections.

The average male has 11 erections during the day and anywhere between three and nine during the night. Nighttime erections are called “nocturnal penile tumescence” and usually last between 25 and 35 minutes each.

Erections keep the penis in shape. “It has to be essentially exercised,” says Tobias Kohler, MD, an assistant professor of urology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

In other words: masturbate, masturbate, masturbate.

Without regular erections, penile tissue can lose elasticity and even shrink, making the penis as much as 1-2 centimeters shorter.

So, again: masturbate, masturbate, masturbate.

1. Myths debunked.
Contrary to popular belief, you cannot gauge the size of a man’s penis by the size of his feet. A study from the University College Hospitals in London measured the penises and feet of 104 men and found no correlation whatsoever.

You also can’t tell the size of a man’s penis by the size of his fingers or nose, or by what kind of vehicle he drives. There is no scientific data that supports any of these hypotheses.

So stop looking at the feet of guys you meet to figure out who you want to sleep with at the bar. It’s useless.

But size doesn’t matter anyway, right?
Source: http://www.queerty.com/10-fascinating-facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-penises-20131123