u/8sbmb2

This is just a venting post but if anyone has advice or experiences to share, I’d love to hear.

I was referred to a POTS clinic in November last year, the one in Cornwall U.K. had closed so I will need to travel a fair distance to another county. My GP told me that the wait was around a year.

I had a couple of questions for the clinic and the cardiologist emailed me back himself directly to say that the wait is more like 2yrs, so I could be looking at 2028. They are clearly overwhelmed as the clinic he runs is covering multiple counties, but I was very grateful for his candid and polite response.

At 44 I feel like being much older leaves less time to find answers and the older you get especially as a woman, the less interested doctors are in assisting your ailments. Over the past 10yrs I have experienced first hand the misogyny that sadly exists within the medical industry.

For context, I am diagnosed with MCAS/HIT, CFS, Long-Covid, hypermobility and ADHD combined, but also have suspected SFN.

I did consider taking out some form of credit and going private for POTS/Dys. I wonder if there are any places anyone could recommend, especially in the West Country area would be helpful. I don’t know if I can wait 2yrs, but of course private is incredibly expensive.

Any advice welcome or if anyone just wants to share their own experiences please do. Thanks all. 🩷

I’d been trying to find ways to remove mites from bees and my method originally was using some very long very thin tweezers. This was difficult given all the little hairs on the bees bodies. An idea popped into my head about these little desk hoovers. The bee was actually very good at sitting still and letting me hoover. The suction could have been a bit stronger but I think with some modifications to the pipe part, it might be more effective. This was just a trial to see if it even worked. Managed to get about 7 mites off this way, although I made the mistake of giving sugar water too early which made the bee very active. I placed the bee on some flowers and it was very happy and lively and flew away after taking some nectar. I will try this method again after mods have been made and share the results, but I’m happy with the result so far. I found with this set up I could suck the mites up if the syringe was directly over the mite itself so I need to maybe shorten the pop and syringe for better suction. I also managed to grab some with tweezers so all in all a fairly successful effort. 😊🐝

The ants were treated to the leftover sugar water. Nothing goes to waste. 🙃🐜🐜🐜

The long wait.

Mini Hoover Mite Remover.