RatsNCats

My boyfriend and I really like sashimi, but we didn't wanna have to pay expensive prices at the sushi bar for them, so we looked up some recipes online. They said that to make it, all you need is raw fish and rice. To make sure the fish is safe, it has to be frozen at or below 0 degrees F., and that was the only criteria. It seemed safe enough, so we went out and got some raw salmon from Safeway, and asked the guy behind the seafood counter what temperature the fish was frozen at, he said the freezers were set between 0-10 degrees.

A couple hours later, I was looking up some other stuff about sashimi (after we had already prepared and eaten the raw fish we'd bought earlier), and found out that it has to be frozen at -2 degrees, not 0 degrees, for 3 days at that temperature! I also found out that salmon (which is the type of fish we got) ALWAYS has roundworm larvae in it. I realized that we have absolutely no idea how long the fish was frozen for, and we also aren't sure if it was below -2 degrees the entire time.

My question is... how would we know if we had gotten infected? Also, what can we do about it if it turns out that we are infected? What signs should we look for, what sorts of things can we do? Obviously we'd have to go to a doctor at some point, but other than that, what can people tell me?

Thank you!

My husband has been wanting to try for a child for several months. He and I started dating when I was pregnant with my first, and now he's 2 years old and I feel like I'm ready to have another. We're stable, happy, and everything is going well. I've stopped taking my birth control, but haven't told him yet. Do you think that surprising him would be a nice thing to do? I know he wants one, we've talked about it, and I always came to the conclusion that I'm glad he's ready, but I wasn't yet. Now that I am ready, and I know through our discussions that we, as a family, are ready, does it seem morally okay to let myself get pregnant without telling him that I was planning to all along? I think he'd find it a nice surprise, but I don't want it to be a bad shock at the same time >.>

It started very suddenly when I was laying in bed one morning, after having slept a full night, and didn't get better no matter what positions I tried. It seems to taper slightly when I lean forward in a sitting position. It's in my upper-middle abdomen, just under the ribs. It doesn't feel like heartburn, and it's been pretty persistent for a few days. Hasn't really gotten better or worse, although it does throb slightly. Eating and drinking don't have an effect on it, and I almost feel slightly nauseous. My insurance sucks and I don't wanna have to go to a doctor if it's not serious, the recession hit me pretty hard so I can't afford to go talk to a professional every time there MIGHT be a problem. Any ideas? Thanks :-)

I have a 3 month old, and he seems to not like me very much. It used to be that I could cuddle him and hold him, and he would cuddle back. He's always been squirmy no matter who holds him. I'm very affectionate with him, and playful, and so is his dad (we're together, and take on parenting responsibilities pretty equally). Back when he first started smiling, he used to smile more often in response to me than anyone else, but for the past few weeks he hasn't smiled at me at all. I smile at him, and make noises, talk to him, but all I get is the occasional coo while he's looking in some other direction. His dad, on the other hand, will do the same thing (smiling, making noises, talking) and our son will coo and smile, and even giggle a little bit, and have a conversation back and forth with his dad. Tonight, I was breastfeeding him, and I saw him smile a little, so I decided to encourage it by smiling and talking to him, but he pulled of the breast and started crying. I tried twice after that to engage him, smiling and talking to him, and he did the same thing... pulled off the breast and cried. Once I stopped talking to him it was no problem to get him to latch and continue feeding...

I feel like a failed mom, it's absolutely devastating to think that my sweet little baby might not like me for some unknown reason. I'm every bit as playful and affectionate with him as his dad is, we spend equal amounts of time together, but now when he cries, unless he's hungry he won't let me soothe him even. He'll cry because he's bored and I'll pick him up, hold him, swing him in my arms, hold him up so he can see around the room, and he just keeps crying. His dad does the exact same stuff, rocking him, swinging him, holding him up, walking around, and he calms right down within seconds of his dad taking him.

What can I do? Is it just a phase, or is it possible that my baby just doesn't like me for some reason? It used to be that he liked me best of everyone, and I've always been loving and nurturing to him (I believe in attachment parenting, so he's given plenty of affection and cuddles).

Also, I don't know if this could be related, but he's stopped giving hunger cues. He used to smack his lips and root and bite at his fists, but now he'll be just sitting there looking around the room and suddenly burst into tears and then hungrily latch on to the breast as soon as it's offered to him (sometimes it takes a bit to figure out that that's what he wants, and even during the time when he's crying and we're still not sure what he wants he still doesn't show any hunger cues)

I'd like some reassurance that everything is normal, of course, but if anyone thinks there could be something wrong please let me know, I'm so worried and upset about all this! Thank you!

I had a baby 3 months ago, and for a while afterwards every BM I had was extremely painful. It was like I had thousands of shards of broken glass in my stools. I eat pretty dang healthy (only have meat three times a week, lots of fiber and water, tons of different colored fruits and veggies, I get pizza on Fridays but that's about the only real vice, and I know it's not a protein issue because I get lots of vegetarian protein from seafood and certain plants and grains), and it slowly got better but never entirely went away. Now it hurts moderately, even though my stools are a really ideal texture, and I am constantly itchy and sore down there. It stings a ton when I urinate, as the urine drips down there, and I use a squirt bottle with warm water to clean myself afterwards, and that stings like crazy, too! I had my boyfriend take a look, and he says there's a little white "loop of skin" towards the top of my anus (What he meant by "loop" is it's a half-circle shape, it doesn't actually disconnect from the rest of my skin at any part), but other than that everything looks as normal as he can tell. From what I know about hemorrhoids, they're usually a purple-ish color, and if they're painful then they're visible, and they usually look kind of like tiny grapes or cushions. This doesn't seem like it looks like hemorrhoids.

There's a ton of bright red blood whenever I have a BM too, to the point where whenever I wipe all I can see is blood, and sometimes I have to wipe several times to get it all.

I'm fairly certain I don't need to change my diet, and I've never had anything like this before (when my diet was poor a few years ago, I had IBS symptoms, but they went away when I got pregnant and did a complete dietary overhaul), and I have been doing all the typical hemorrhoids treatments like the squirt bottle and sitting in a bath... any suggestions as to what else it might be, and how I can get rid of it, would be awesome, thank you!

I'm breastfeeding my 2 month old, and I haven't been on any form of birth control since he was born. I have relatively severe bipolar symptoms, and PTSD thanks to some sexual trauma in my past. It took me a long time to be able to have sex with my partner, and even had a flashback during childbirth, so I can't have anything that needs to be inserted into my vagina. I also can't have anything that causes depression or any sort of mood-related side effects. Additionally, I am already overweight and suffering some health issues because of it, so I can't have anything that has weight gain as a side effect.

Basically, nothing that can effect your mood, nothing that goes into the vagina, and nothing that causes weight gain or water retention. Is there any form of birth control, whether taken daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, ect. that I can take with those conditions? Thank you!

I had a baby a month and a half ago, and ever since then my bowel movements have felt like they were full of broken glass, scraping up my anus as they pass through it and causing it to bleed.

I drink half a gallon of lactose free milk a day, about the equivalent of that in water as well, 4-6 cups of raspberry leaf tea, and I make sure I get a ton of fiber (also taking supplements). I thought maybe dehydration was the problem, but I don't see how it could be with the amount that I drink, and I really don't see how I could drink more than I already do without flushing out all my vitamins as well! Does anyone know what else could be causing the problem? I dread it every time I go to the bathroom now, because the pain is getting worse every time!

So I'm about 6 months pregnant, the baby's dad took off in the first trimester (all the pregnancy help websites keep telling me to go to him for support, but he's not really in the picture anymore), my family is still convinced I would've been better off getting an abortion (I didn't because I felt it was my responsibility to care for this life I'd helped bring into the world), and I'm 22 years old so it's not like I'm a teenager or anything. I graduated, had a job, took care of myself, until everything kinda crashed down around me.

Now I was the only person who got excited when the baby kicked, the only person who cared that things were going well, when I visit my family they still smoke around me and try to get me to drink with them, and it's just awful. I have no support in this, and I've been crying constantly lately (I never cried before this, even after baby's dad left, I didn't cry I was just angry) at the mere thought of how alone I am in this. I cry and cry because I know that everyone else's lack of enthusiasm is rubbing off on me, and I'm even starting to feel like I should've gotten an abortion. And I don't WANT to feel this way because I love this baby, but no matter how much I tell myself that it's getting harder and harder to believe... I took some advice and started going to therapy, but my therapist keeps telling me that my family are my support group and I should go to them, but as mentioned before, they're not exactly supportive... anyone know where I can go from here to make this a little easier on myself?

I have a cat that's about 4 1/2 years old, female, fixed... I've had her for about a year. She's always been really sweet, cuddly, loves attention and affection and likes to sit with me for hours while we read together or watch t.v. She would sleep next to me every night, and always came when I called to her.

Well, about a month ago I moved in with family, and she seemed to get along great with everyone. Her personality didn't change at all.

About a week ago, she started acting very strange. She started spending most of her time up on tables (she's on my computer desk right now), when she always knew before that she wasn't supposed to do that. Only, when I pick her up and put her back on the floor, she runs away and hides in the crawl spaces in the attic for a few hours. That's where she's been spending a lot of her time, hiding up there. If she's just out of my petting reach, and I call to her so I can pet her, she now just looks at me then goes back to whatever she was doing. She won't sleep with me anymore, and will only sit with me until I stop actively petting her. This is all very strange behavior for her, anyone know what could've caused the change?

What does that mean? I have an Asus Netbook (Eee PC) with Windows XP on it. The only things I've ever plugged into it are my ethernet cable (which is always plugged in), my USB mouse (also always plugged in), it's charger (yep, always plugged in), and my flash drive (not always plugged in, but there's certainly no software on it and it's hardware that the computer is used to so shouldn't need to be installed).

The other day, every time I logged into my account the message "Found New Hardware: Network Controller" would pop up. I'd click on it and it would start searching for the software for my new hardware, only it wouldn't stop searching. Hours and hours it would search, until I cancelled the process.

So far, no problems. Everything still works fine, I haven't had any trouble with anything regarding my software or hardware.

First off, what is a Network Controller? Second, how is it "new hardware" when it's a laptop that doesn't have ANY hardware attached to it, ever? And third, how do I get that message to stop popping up all the time?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

I have a cat that's about 4 1/2 years old, female, fixed... I've had her for about a year. She's always been really sweet, cuddly, loves attention and affection and likes to sit with me for hours while we read together or watch t.v. She would sleep next to me every night, and always came when I called to her.

Well, about a month ago I moved in with family, and she seemed to get along great with everyone. Her personality didn't change at all.

About a week ago, she started acting very strange. She started spending most of her time up on tables (she's on my computer desk right now), when she always knew before that she wasn't supposed to do that. Only, when I pick her up and put her back on the floor, she runs away and hides in the crawl spaces in the attic for a few hours. That's where she's been spending a lot of her time, hiding up there. If she's just out of my petting reach, and I call to her so I can pet her, she now just looks at me then goes back to whatever she was doing. She won't sleep with me anymore, and will only sit with me until I stop actively petting her. This is all very strange behavior for her, anyone know what could've caused the change?

I met this girl at a weekly get-together we'd both been going to for a while (for comic books) and I was sucked in, partially by her beauty and partially because she was into comic books! She told me and friends that she was pregnant, but I wanted to get to know her anyway, so I chose to pursue her. We clicked on many levels that I wasn't even aware two people could click on, and started dating. She reminded me regularly that she was pregnant, and didn't want to get hurt by me leaving her when things got hard, therefore she wanted to keep things as casual as possible.

Keeping things casual isn't exactly easy when we get along so well on a romantic level. She hasn't been with her ex for months, he was abusive and became even worse when she got pregnant so she left him. She recently had a talk with me that the pregnancy wasn't going to go away, and that in a few months there will be a screaming, pooping child involved in our relationship that also is not going to go away. She explained that she loves that child, and wouldn't trade it for anything, although admits that she would have wished for the entire situation to be different. She seems to have a good head on her shoulders, but I'm not really sure what I should do.

I'm not sure, yet, how I feel about her being pregnant, to be honest I've tried not to think about it too much since she's not really showing, yet. She's everything I would want to pursue, and more, and if it was just her and me I could see it becoming something beautiful and long-term. With the child involved, first I don't feel I should take any form of responsibility for it. She's told me that I wouldn't have to, as it's her responsibility, but obviously regardless of responsibility it's going to effect both our lives. She won't be able to leave it to go out with me, which means to spend time with her I'll also have to spend time with this child, at least for the first several months.

Men date women with children all the time, single moms find relationships with men who are not parents, and in a way I'm having trouble seeing how this is different. I suppose being there from the child's birth is a huge difference, but is it a good difference or a bad difference? I know I'd want to be there supporting her as a friend, and other than the title on the relationship, how is that different from a boyfriend? I can see myself in the position of being a part of their lives, but it's such a complicated situation. Has anyone else been here before? Is there anyone with advice for me and what to do? I'm falling hard and fast for this woman, and I need to figure out what I'm going to do before we both get our hearts broken.

My kitty is very affectionate and sweet, and this hasn't changed recently. She hasn't been lethargic, although she does make a strange noise that could be coughing (we got her about 6 months ago, she's around 4 years old, and she's always made that noise that sounds like a furball or maybe hiccups, the old owner said she's always done that and not to worry).

The strange behavior is that she hasn't been eating!

See, we used to feed her every time she came to pester us for food, which wasn't often so it seemed reasonable. Then she started gaining weight, so we limited her food. At first she lost some weight, then we started giving her a bit more and she's remained stable for a month and a half now. We feed her about 1/3 a cup three times a day, so she has breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Only now she only eats about 1/6 a cup every day. She'll eat about half of her breakfast, then come ask for more, but there's still some food in there. She'll keep coming to pester for more, and doesn't finish her breakfast for 2 days! We tried giving her all her day's food at once, but she still only eats a tiny bit of it, then comes to whine for more!

She has always eaten the same kind of food, and sometimes we give her kitty treats as a change of flavor (she gobbles them right up), so I'm just not sure what the problem could be... any ideas?