Depression can be a touchy subject. Controversy enshrouds almost every aspect of the disease, from what causes it, to whether the standard treatments for it actually do any good, to whether it’s even a real thing. The answer to that last one, of course, is that if you’re feeling it, it’s real. And while it’s [...]
Muscle cramps are the worst. I’ve never actually had one, not that I can remember (and according to everything I’ve read, I’d remember), but because I have a fully functioning imagination, I can say this to those of you who get muscle cramps: I’m so, so sorry. In fact, I’m so sensitive to the plight [...]
I’m well-acquainted with heartburn. As a lover of food, alcohol, and almost all other things consumable, I have often inadvertently acquainted my esophagus with my stomach acid. I also have asthma, and apparently asthma and heartburn have some kind of mysterious evil partnership. I’m lucky, however, in that my heartburn is usually relatively mild. It [...]
Anyone who’s ever had vaginitis—and that’s a sizable majority of those of us with vaginas—knows exactly how much fun it is: none. Actually, a lot less than none. To deal emotionally with vaginitis, you need to have fun in the bank. The vagina is an important and sensitive part of a woman’s body, and when [...]
Ah, bacterial vaginosis: the basis of all those jokes my guy friends told in college. You know, the ones involving tuna. And vaginas. Right. Anyway, those jokes always made me vaguely paranoid. I was pretty sure my vagina didn’t smell like fish, but who could be sure? It’s not as if my nose and my [...]
If you have a cat, you have cat hair. It’s kind of like, if you have a baby, you have poop. It doesn’t mean you stop loving the baby and give it away. You just deal with the poop. Same goes for cat hair. So although it’s true that the only way to completely eliminate [...]
I don’t have a problem with back pains, but my fiancé does. The poor guy’s back is like one of those topographical maps with ridges stamped into the paper where the mountains are. And it’s a map of a mountainous region. Not long ago, we brought home the World’s Most Expensive Bed, hoping it would [...]
Crabgrass. If you have a lawn or garden, chances are you’re familiar with it. You may even have figured out by now that it’s among the most tenacious of weeds. It quickly claims any open spaces in your lawn (even small ones), and if left unchecked, crabgrass can outcompete desirable turf grass for resources, spreading [...]
I never gave slugs much thought until I was 15 and my dad moved from Minnesota to Oregon, where slugs are practically part of the culture. They’re hard to ignore, anyway, since they’re roughly the size of chipmunks and often leopard-spotted and/or bright yellow. But even in Minnesota, where slugs are usually only an inch [...]
I think my fear of ghosts took hold when I was a kid and spent a lot of nights at my grandparents’ Civil War-era farmhouse. There’s just nothing like an old house with a dank cellar, a seldom-used second story, picture-window views of dark fields, and a few volumes of ghost stories on the bookshelves [...]
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