what's happening to our borad TMI

Does sound like dry air to me - maybe get a humidifier for at night too?

my answer to this problem has been the following regiment all winter long: neti pot for each nostril in the morning, same at night, singulaire, loratadin, fexofenadine, tea throughout the day and TWO humidifiers at night (one during the day), three time daily application of PONARIS (this stuff is awesome), twice daily gargling with saltwater.
It's still not great but I haven't had a sinus infection or green sludge in three years.

I used olbas oil in hot water in basin, towle over head and deep breaths kind thing last week and I guess I wasn't ready cos upon first inhalation that shit went through the top of my head and I coughed/snorted a massive glob of blood/sputum/snot right back into the basin about three inches from my face, said fuck this the lot went down sink ive been glaring at it since tho I'm sure done right its a positive cure-all

alcolol in the neti pot with hot water/salt is a winner

I can't really do a neti pot bc it washes junk into my ears and increases the number of ear infections I get (which is already plenty). We run a humidifier in the kid's room. I guess I could get one for our room. Is there a kind you don't have to empty and dry out every day?

You're supposed to empty and dry it out every day? I guess that's why mine has been smelling

Ew. The one in Ivy's room is a Crane teardrop cool mist deal and it gets pink mold on it if I leave water in it. Also scrub it out once/week and rinse it with vinegar. It's a huge pain in the ass.

humidifier emptying/cleaning is the worst but yeah, that's gotta happen or else you get mold and it's counterproductive.
neti washes into my ears too but i combine the post neti refractory period with a series of stretches for my chronic plantar fasciitis that involves hamstring stretch jackknifes with my head rolled from side to side. It takes like five minutes to drain the water out but I get it all. I know i am hella old man with all this complex ablution shit but I used to get crazy laid out for a few months a year with sinusitis and infections and as arduous and frustrating as this nonsense is, it works. i dig it might not be for you; we all have these weird IRL series of tubes in our skull and i gather that the slightest tweak in the makeup or mucous production in there can totally skew the benefit. This took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out tho' so i proselytize when i can.

I thought I had a pretty intense routine but it is barely visible in the shadow of forks'

I think I've only had sinus infections in the last few years following travel, usually a combo of tiredness + air travel + time where I'm not able to fix up my sinuses properly

I respect the routine forks. I think I'll start with putting nipple butter up my nose and go from there.

i am fairly certain that i would have a college diploma if not for my goddamn sinuses. i missed a lotta classes. I could also blame Diablo II tho'.
i wanna really rep again for Ponaris here; I read about it through Lena Dunham of all people and it is super helpful. Give it a try.
http://www.amazon.com/Ponaris-Nasal-Emollient-30-Ml/dp/B000NB5BFA

I could blame my roommate playing Diablo II until 4am every night for really fucking up my lifestyle

Ponaris looks a lot like a Vicks Vaporub you put inside yr nostrils!

it's kinda like nose grease i guess. it's lamb's oil and 7 secret herbs and spices that deals well with dried up sinuses.

also: sorry i stopped you from graduating

I gradumatated, I eventually put a wall between him and the clicking

between _me_ and the clicking, that is

I will check out this nasal emollient.

I have to clarify though that it's not a sinus problem. It's all in the nostrils, kind of towards the back but definitely reachable by fingers.

i've been spared that horror. ponaris might help there tho'.

i love any small market medication in continuous use since the 50's; it's like legit snake oil

I'll tell you what I love putting inside my nose when it feels dry is Burt's Bees peppermint chapstick. That shit fixes everything.

otm

I'm late to this but vaseline, people, vaseline.

I ended up blowing the nipple butter out of my nose about five minutes after I put it up there. It felt to weird and wrong and bad so I decided to just have a bloody, boogery nose instead.

I'm not sure u aren't MVP material right now tbph

yah, that's the issue with creams and salves. TRY PONARIS carl ag.

NO.

i don't have this blowing salve out problem, i guess i only put in a little?

So I have IBS and went to the dr for it for the first time in the fall. It hasn't gotten any better and is, in fact, a lot worse so I'm going for a follow-up on Thursday. The thing is, the last time I was there I did something dumb and I'm embarrassed to go back. He gave me a gown and said to get undressed etc. so not knowing how much to take off and being used to mostly getting that kind of instruction at the lady doc's I took off everything and then he came back and prodded on my belly for a while while I was pubes up like "Hi, have you met my bush?" It was kind of mortifying! I totally could have left my underwear on. :( At least I know for this time and I know he's a doctor etc but it was . . . awkward.

looool

no matter how much i try to remember that they are doctors or nurses or whatever i am always a little embarrassed, plus those hospital gowns are just ridiculous to wear

i had a stomach virus once and they needed a bowl sample, i was sooooooo mortified to have to shit in a bowl and give it to the nurse. she was rad though and was like "you can tell a lot about a guy from his shit"

"bowl sample"

lol stool sample obv

worst flirtation

Lol!

He did stick his fingers up my ass so if we were gonna get that close then I figure he could handle a glimpse of vulva BUT STILL. I will know better this time.

Bah I endured a six-month long ordeal to attempt to find out what was wrong with my guts that required, among other indignities, me to poop in a plastic bowl at home and bring samples into a lab and everything about it was mortifying. The worst thing was that at the end of it all, the gastro was just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't know man. Maybe you just need a vacation, which made me burst into tears, to which he responded, "Do you always react so emotionally to things?" He was an awful, awful man.

oof fuck that guy that's horrible

Yeah and the entire time he was pushing me to take major doses of steroids as a diagnostic tool to determine whether I had some kind of IBD, which I didn't and still don't think is the problem, while I was like "Can I try I don't know, cutting out dairy first?" instead of jumping the prednisone train to side effect city? I switched to a different gastro so I could continue to get my beloved GERD medication and declined to mention any other problems. My entire IBS (it's probably IBS, I'm guessing) management plan is to get a raise so we can afford an apartment with two bathrooms.

Anyway, ENBB, good luck and I am interested in hearing how things go!

"Maybe you just need a vacation, which made me burst into tears, to which he responded, "Do you always react so emotionally to things?" He was an awful, awful man.

― from batman to balloon dog (carl agatha), Tuesday, March 10, 2015 12:17 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

KILL KILL KILL

Thanks, CA. I am too! The last time I went the guy was like well we often prescribe SSRIs for IBS since it's thought to be stress related blah blah blah. I've been sick for months now. There just has to be something they can do. I swear to god if he tells me something like that I'm going to burst into tears too.

If it happens, I will be spiritually at your side, yelling at that asshole and/or validating your feelings.

awww ty! <3

i did five(?) years of chronic and incapacitating mystery stomach cramps (that hospitalized me on and off for a week and a half, did CAT scans, MRIs, an endoscope, a colonoscopy, loads of blood tests, visited five specialists (including a dietician, a biofeedback trainer and a proctologist), took four years of lithium derivative pills, tried a dozen OTC pills, saw a psychotherapist for three months, fasted, cut out various potentially damaging food types, etc etc and finally discovered a year ago that the problem was pretty definitely greek yogurt. since cutting it out of my diet, I've not had a single episode. I probably spent 10k on this and untold emotional and mental damage and it was fucking Fage.

omg

that's insane!

oof, that's meze

i'm pleased it's apparently dealt with (knock wood cross fingers pray a little) but i feel like an idiot when family and friends ask if my "stomach problems" have gotten better and i have to be like uh yeah it was yogurt go figure. given the pain and impact it had on my life, i wanted to point to a bezoar or something

I had henoch schonlein purpura for 2 months in undergrad, and every gastro or internal medicine person kept telling me it was IBS or stress related abdominal pain. But we'd be like 'but I have purple spots on my skin and my feet are swollen. the internet says this is henoch schonlein purpura.' Finally, a dermatologist diagnosed it as such from a biopsy, and she even wrote a conference paper about it. smdh at those doctors who'd look down upon dermatologists.

so fascinating forks. i know extremely little about stomach/intestinal issues but i would've thought that yogurt and other fermented foods would help beneficial gut bacteria to flourish and thus alleviate some problems. obv there are tons of different causes for gastrointestinal shit though

obviously so did I! And nobody ever questioned it. I started eating greek yogurt daily when it started getting popular in the US: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=77&threadid=71070
(maybe the ailing was comeuppance for insensitive threadtitle?)
anyway, i never made the connection because it was really just breakfast! and who could fault yogurt!
But one day last winter i went out to a greek restaurant and we ordered a huge thing of sweet greek yogurt for dessert and i ate half of it and it devastated me for three days.
so i put two and two together and stopped with all yogurt. And the pain stopped! I really really really miss yogurt. but man, i was ready to do exploratory surgery. it was a huge shift.
it also taught me how fucked up chronic pain can be. totally does away with optimism.