Author: kirkwallhellmouth

theshriekingsisterhood:

Things I’d like to see more of in media

characters wearing medical alert bracelets

characters taking medication with their meals

characters mentioning that they have a therapy appointment

characters with reminders to eat in their phones/calendars/planners

characters using stim toys

characters asking if an event is accessible

characters using noise cancelling headphones

characters who are disabled all the time, not just when the plot “calls for it”

characters who are disabled all the time, not just when the plot “calls for it”

spectacularuniverse:

I’ve seen this photograph very frequently on tumblr and Facebook, always with the simple caption, “Ghost Heart”. What exactly is a ghost heart?

More than 3,200 people are on the waiting list for a heart transplant in the United States. Some won’t survive the wait. Last year, 340 died before a new heart was found.

The solution: Take a pig heart, soak it in an ingredient commonly found in shampoo and wash away the cells until you’re left with a protein scaffold that is to a heart what two-by-four framing is to a house.

Then inject that ghost heart, as it’s called, with hundreds of millions of blood or bone-marrow stem cells from a person who needs a heart transplant, place it in a bioreactor – a box with artificial lungs and tubes that pump oxygen and blood into it – and wait as the ghost heart begins to mature into a new, beating human heart.

Doris Taylor, director of regenerative medicine research at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, has been working on this— first using rat hearts, then pig hearts and human hearts – for years.

The process is called decellularization and it is a tissue engineering technique designed to strip out the cells from a donor organ, leaving nothing but connective tissue that used to hold the cells in place. 

This scaffold of connective tissue – called a “ghost organ” for its pale and almost translucent appearance – can then be reseeded with a patient’s own cells, with the goal of regenerating an organ that can be transplanted into the patient without fear of tissue rejection.

This ghost heart is ready to be injected with a transplant recipient’s stem cells so a new heart – one that won’t be rejected – can be grown.

(Source)

From further down in the article:

“And the nice thing about this technology,” Taylor says, “is that it will work with any organ or tissue. So it’s not just about hearts.”

Kidneys, livers, lungs, pancreases.

They’ll be growing those, too.

Sign me up for a ghost pancreas if I’m still around by the time their able to implement this.

Sweetly Voiced™: Snickers

This is a really good explanation of why those all too present “Bob/John/Joe/unlucky-name-of-the week has X amount of candy B; he eats Y amount. What does he have? Diabetes, Bob/John/Joe/unlucky-name-of-the week has diabetes” memes that tend to clog the diabetes tag which, guess what, people who actually have diabetes like to use, because it is a life-altering chronic illness that impacts most aspects of their lives.

My general mental response to those (besides blocking the tumblr user who posted one) is to immediately fantasize about tackling them and putting them in a headlock.

Note that I am attaching a content warning to this because it does reference rape jokes in order to point out that laughing about a disease that someone had no control over developing as if the person brought it on themself is a form of victim blaming.

Sweetly Voiced™: Snickers

Sigh. Found the X-Files ep that messes up on diabetes. Too much sugar leads to HYPERglycemia, not HYPOglycemia. As a medical doctor, Scully should have known that,

Also, in the 1990s, the FBI (along with most other government agencies) would not hire insulin dependent diabetics as investigative agents. They were sued in 2009 for violating the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 over refusing to hire a man because of his diabetes.

This is pretty big instance of Did Not Do The Research.

Random thing that sucks about having type 1 diabetes (and which probably is also true for a fair number of other chronic illnesses):

When your best blood-drawing vein starts getting enough scar tissue to make it hard for the lab tech to draw blood. This especially sucks when the corresponding vein on your other arm is in a weird position for drawing blood.

insulinismylife:

“Diabetics shouldn’t have kids.”

“All of that sugar is why you’re diabetic to begin with”

“Constantly giving yourself shots is a disgusting way to live." image

The "you did it to yourself by eating too much sugar” is one of the most hideous pieces of bullshit ever. 1) Shaming people for their diseases/conditions is disgusting and is, in a way, a form of victim-blaming. 2) There are are INFANTS who develop type 1 (see ten-day old with an insulin pump). I can assure you those babies have not eaten too much sugar. 3) Far, far too many other things that can be added.

Also, the one time in my life that I have literally seen red happened when, back in the days when I still thought I would someday want to carry a child or two, someone I no longer talk to online basically said, of the chance that any child I might produce might also develop diabetes, “Why would you want to do that to a child?” followed by some cutesy sad face emoticon.

It is well for both of us that we were separated by a computer screen and several hundred miles, as if she’d said that to my face I would probably have hit her as hard as I could.

nobiliorpomis:

In honor of February Femfest, a New Mutants giveaway!

  • First Prize

First choice of one of the three New Mutant girls! AND a second custom Marvel lady of your choice!

  • Second Prize

Choice of one of the other two smallfriends!

  • Third prize

The remaining smallfriend!

Rules:

  1. You do not need to be following me.
  2. One like and one reblog each.
  3. The giveaway will end February 28th (11pm EST).
  4. The winners will be chosen by a random number generator.
  5. Will ship anywhere.
  6. Your ask box must be open for me to leave a message if you win.

Good luck!

These are so adorable! So happy to see the original New Mutants ladies get some love.