There is no device that would be able to keep a heart alive for weeks unfortunately.
Non existent.

I bet you got to that conclusion after you didn't find anything about it during a 10 minute search on google. XD Maybe it isn't existent where you live, but they do have it in some hospitals here as far as I've been told. It's not untypical that research results don't go around the world when they're profitable enough. About a lot of things, people aren't even being informed. If that wouldn't be the case, there'd be top class first world medical ressources available all over the world and nobody would have to worry about dying from something as small as catching a flu anymore. But it isn't like that. Things like certain medications, methods and procedures as well as devices sometimes never make it across the border in any way or form. Medicine is one of those big businesses every country handles on their own for the most part and sometimes, some things end up being well-kept secrets. Ask Azai for reference if you want, I'm pretty sure she'll be able to agree with most things I just said (she works in a hospital).

last edited at Jun 22, 2016 10:28AM

Kisa
You misunderstood the main intention of my message. I never said it hurt to have this thread here and I wasn't saying this thread shouldn't be here, because people already know about Pulse and ways they can help. I was saying, that sensitive topics like this are basically like opening a buffet for trolls and that, if Casusby didn't want to stress out his already very, very few moderators, maybe he should've thought twice about creating this topic, seeing how technically it wouldn't really have been necessary in the first place, cause the vast majority on here already knew about Pulse and ways to help due to the big social media networks, news etc. In that sense, it's a good thing people don't care about this thread on here, because otherwise you could've bet shit would've hit the fan in here in no time at all. Compassion can be shown in other ways - ways that wouldn't potentially put the mental sanity of those assigned with the mod job at risk.

tl;dr: Think before you do. That's all I was saying.

last edited at Jun 22, 2016 6:20AM

@Su hmmmm hotel beds are the best (well if its a nice hotel that is) you should get Lin to put you to sleep. XD wait is Lin with you?

She was, yeah. But seeing how we shared a room with her ex Jenny and her brother Leo, two people I have tons of respect for, there's no way how I would've let her "put me to sleep." ;D I'm just glad I'm not the one having to drive right now. -.- And since Leo is a driving instructor, I can just relax since my baby is in good hands and try to doze off a bit once we get to the autobahn.

just came home from getting my ass handed to me in jiu jitsu -___- everything hurts. Its my 7th class and its only getting better. XD

Ah, the joy of martial arts training. Embrace the pain. It'll only make you tougher, physically as well as mentally. ;D Even though it might not be needed that much mentally in the case of jiu jitsu since it's more of a defense art, but anyway. Few more weeks and you'll get up after taking a hit like nothing even happened. ^^

You would think that by now I'm used to sleeping in surroundings that aren't familiar. I never had problems sleeping in a hospital. I almost never have problems falling asleep at a friend's place either. So I have no fucking clue why my brain just can't shut off in a hotel bed (that's fucking comfy like a cloud to top it off!) and just go. to. sleep. DAMMIT! DX -.- At least it's just one night. Still. So annoyiiiiiing! DX

last edited at Jun 21, 2016 7:24PM

Gordon

Off topic, but...your avatar. Yes. Just... yes.
Kay, that's all. XD

last edited at Jun 20, 2016 5:01PM

To be perfectly honest though, even though I get what Casusby said about him deciding what does and doesn't belong here, I don't think there's anyone here, who didn't already know what had happened at Pulse when the thread was opened. Shortly after the news went around the world, so did news about all the things that were started to help in various ways. I guess what I'm saying is that creating a forum thread about the topic on a site with minimal moderation wasn't only unnecessary in a practical sense, but also pretty much risking the opening of what could've been a gigantic can of worms a person with mod experience just couldn't have missed. Or in other words: He should've seen it coming. Topics like this attract trolls like shit attracts flies and it's common knowledge that these buggers don't care about rules. They troll until they get banned and if they had fun they'll make another account and return. If even someone like me could see where this could have gone after just a few posts in here, it must've really been painfully obvious. In fact, I'm guessing the only reason why this thing hasn't gone mad already isn't mainly because him and you, Nez, try to keep things under control, but simply cause, judged by the number of posts made in here until now, people just don't care about this thread (which only backs up what I had said before, actually: it's kinda unnecessary to have this here. There's nobody who doesn't know about Pulse or would need the extra notification. FB, tumblr, twitter...it's everywhere.)

last edited at Jun 21, 2016 4:16AM

So people are busy with taking my stupid question seriously, but nobody is bothered by this:

Hi girls...

I mean, when was the last time Thia's shown up here with a simple greeting instead of making a flashy entrance via wall of text and questions about stuff and a quick summary of what he's been doing lately? In fact, I don't think this ever happened. o.o...This is rubbing me the wrong way yo.

Thia

Dude. Everything okay? o.o

Random question time!

If somebody aggressively cuddles another person without their consent, but clothes remain on and hands don't go to private parts of the body, do you think that would still be considered sexual harrassment or (attempted) rape? o.o

Dofu

Pickles with nutella sounds downright ominous lol

You should really try it thought! It's like french fries with ice cream or strawberries with balsamic vinegar: sounds disgusting, tastes heavenly! o.o

Do you know when you're going to propose?

I actually wanted to do it on that bigass welcome back party my family and friends are throwing for me next week, but seeing how Lin is more of a mess than I thought she'd be, it'd kinda would feel like too much of a gimmick to me to do it then. Like a cheap way of wanting to make her feel better. :T So I dunno when exactly I'm gonna do it, but I know I'll be doing some demon slaying before I ask her the big question.

Our mothers really want us to pick a date and location already. I think so they know how long they get to fuss over every detail... things to look forward to.

Lol, I think that's typical mom stuff to do. XD My mom has pretty much already planned half the ceremony for us. -.-

Thiaguinho size wall of text

We should totally make that a thing, actually. o.o Whenever one of us is about to explain something in great detail or just post a long rant about whatever, we go "I'mma pull a Thia now and say this: ** -insert wall of text- ** "

That aside, NEWPY! :D jump-tackle hugs (note: a jump-tackle hug is like a glomp, but with moar power, which means moar luuuv. In my mind, this makes perfect sense. XD)

last edited at Jun 19, 2016 12:58PM

Btw, littleyuri, I still wanted to say I LOVE that finished version of your picture. (* __ *)
All those creative people I meet on here... No, shut up, I'm totally not envious! DX

Dofu

Sorta how I feel about visiting any country though.

Lol, come to Germany! :D There is literally nothing to see here, but our food is awesome! Never go eat any traditional, local dishes in Hamburg (or the entire North, actually) though. -.- The ideas they have about fish dishes range from tame and fairly uninteresting to downright perverse and that's coming from a person who eats tomatoes with honey and pickles with nutella. So ye be warned. Them northmen be crazy aye. (._.)

Alvis

Also, dofu It was definitely a grim reminder for the LGBT community.

It may have been a grimm reminder, but we, as a community, will definitely yang in there. We've gone through so much progress these past few decades, so I'm hopeful that things can only get better. It's just that I guess that the message of things not being blake and weiss is a slow traveling one and will take a while until it reaches even the last person. Yes, those were terrible puns. But if you got them, it means you have awesome taste in anime. XD

I came into thread very late this year, so I don't actually know medically what you were going through and why-but I'm glad you're better!

Thanks ^^ I'll give ya a quick summary of what happened, just cause I told the others in the thread as well and I never made my condition a secret.
So basically, ever since I was around 15 years old, I've been suffering from a combination of some pretty nasty heart diseases. (I always say "around" 15 cause we only just realized it when I was that age, but the doctors said judged from the scarring of the heart muscle, I may have actually been sick ever since I was a baby, but the symptoms were never strong enough to really suspect anything.) Anyway. When I was 15 years old, I went through a quite incredible growth spurt (18 centimeters in not even a full year!), which is when the problems started. I have a genetic disease (with a ridiculously complicated and long name I never bothered to remember), which caused my inner organs to not be able to keep up with my growing. So while my body had suddenly gotten a whole lot bigger, my organs couldn't keep up. I had to be hospitalized for a while. After about a month in the hospital, the doc gave me the bad news: My heart hadn't grown a single millimeter ever since I'd gotten into hospital while my other organs were making notable progress. I was put on meds, that made my heart beat faster and harder so it could still sufficiently support my body and at least support the other organs in their growth while doctors tried to figure out how to help my heart.

That was when we found out the hard way, meaning by me having a nasty heart valve spasm directly followed by a heart attack, that, courtesy of my maternal grandfather, I also had a heart valve defect. :D By then I was convinced, that fate had a pretty dark sense of humor. So, what followed after my first staredown with death was a team of cardiologists running around with their hair on fire as they tried to find out how they could keep me alive. They figured I need specially made medication, that makes my heart pump fast and hard enough to support my body, yet not pump too hard or too fast in order to not overwhelm my heart valve and make it spasm again. Tests were run, labs were contacted and some time later, they had meds for me. They worked for a while...until my body decided to troll me again and become allergic to one of the components in the pills. Allergic reaction, another heart valve spasm, hospital again. That's pretty much how it went from there. They performed a whole number of checks and tests on me only to find out, that my condition was so specific and intricate, that they didn't think any of the traditional ways to deal with heart diseases would show any notable positive effect. So more med cocktails were put together for me. And after some time, I always ended up having either allergic reactions to them or not responding to them anymore, meaning I got sort of "immune" to them and they lost their effect.

This went on for about 3 years, until I was 18 and grew a few centimeters again. My inner organs were slower than my bones and muscles once more, but overall it wasn't too big of a sitch this time. My heart still remained the same size. I was 181 centimeters tall with a heart, that barely had 2/3 of the size and weight a body of my size would need. Back to hospital, more tests, more pessimistic results, new meds. Then, 2 days before my 19th birthday, the cardiologist in charge of me called me and asked to meet him and to bring someone I trust, cause he would be giving me some tough news. I took my mom and met him. That's when he told me that he's decided to put me on the waiting list for a heart transplant and that he really hopes the new meds would be able to support me until I got one. I asked him to be perfectly open and honest with me and tell me what my chances are. He told me that, if I had another allergic reaction to the meds or would become unresponsive to them again, they were really running out of ideas for what cocktails to mix up for me. He also told me that for several reasons (me being young, very tall for a woman, having a quite rare blood type and also not being the person with the top priority on the waiting list), my chances of finding a suitable donor heart in time were pessimistically low. He looked me straight in the eyes with an expression as if he was already giving up on me and told me that if no heart would be found in the next few years, it'd be quite the miracle if I managed to reach age 30.

Time passed, lots of things happened and someday I guess God decided I had taken enough of his shit, so he turned things in my favor for a change. About 3 months ago, I had gotten the call that a suitable heart for me had been found. So I was called to the hospital again, test were run and they said I had to gain weight and get fitter cause I had to be in my best physical shape for the transplantation. Until then, they'd keep the heart alive in that black fake body container thingy they had. (Basically, it's some kind of device where the heart can be kept alive for weeks by pumping some sort of liquid around in a circuit mimicking a simple version of an actual body's circulatory system, nutritions, body temperature and everything. o.o) I was put on new meds to prepare me for the surgery, and guess what? I had an allergic reaction to them! :D That reaction was so severe, that it caused a heart valve spasm, which was so bad, that the entire heart valve bruised as a result. So, on May 10th, I went to see my cardiologist in hospital again. He checked me and when a sonography revealed, that my heart valve was seen as nothing more but a bruised up, big, black, blotch on the screen, my doc just went "Well. Time to cut you open."

He feared the severe bruising could've led to another heart attack, which would've eventually ended in cardiac arrest. In short: I would've kicked it. So New Pump Day (that's what I had nicknamed the scheduled day of the transplantation) came a lot earlier than expected and even though I had been absolutely shitting my pants, it all went well. I was in hospital for 3 weeks until the surgery scar had healed enough and the new heart didn't show any signs of losing its function. My body also didn't show any signs of rejecting the heart, so I was sent to cardio rehab for 3 weeks, which officially ended yesterday morning. So now I'm here, flipping off fate, God and Death, about to propose to the woman who's been the pillar to hold me up throughout those angsty years and looking forward to one hell of a life with her. X3

.... stares at wall of text I just created Uh huh. So much about a "quick summary." But I really tried to cut it down to the most important things. DX

last edited at Jun 19, 2016 11:40AM

Just updated the first post in the FF-unite thread. And with that, it's now officially in everyone's own hands. ^^
Huh. What a plot twist. XD

http://halmoniswag.tumblr.com/post/146092242457/how-to-send-messages-to-ssamba-on-naver

Awesome! Thank you for that. This'll make things a whole lot easier, especially since I was about to say, that it would be a while before I could write the letter, since I came home today to be greeted by a bunch of pressing issues I'll need to attend to the next few days. -.- Now we can just all send our messages to her personally whenever we have the time. ^^

proceeds to leave thread forever apparently

Forever? Lol, Johnny hasn't been here for a few days. Maybe he got stuff to do or something. XD Some people in here don't show up for literal weeks and we don't assume they left forever. Having a life. For some people, that's actually a thing. XD

That aside, hi. Nice to meet ya! :D

And also

I'M HOME!!!

I feel like it's been years since I've been chilling on the couch with my dog while watching re-runs of Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother. God, this feels so fucking good.

Yeah, I drive a cherry red Chevrolet Silverado. ^^ Not to insult German cars, I mean it's proven fact we're big on making some of the highest quality cars in the world, but when it comes to muscle cars, pick ups and trucks...let's face it: Americans just have way more style with those. v.v
Lin and me actually did a road trip in the first year we were dating, but it wasn't anything too big. We went from Berlin to Hamburg and then from Hamburg to Cologne and from Cologne to Munich and then all the way back home to Berlin again. So basically we did a whole country trip from the east to the north, from the north to the west and from the west to the south. Here, for orientation:

We avoided the autobahn and express ways of any sort as much as possible so we could just have a chill trip and actually see stuff. That's what road trips are all about, after all. ^^ Overall, we were on the road for 6 days and we stayed in each city for one day, so it was a 9-day adventure. 9 days of just us. gets nostalgic Man. We are so doing that again in the future! XD

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 4:33PM

There are just so many things that seem worth checking out in the US! The big cities with all their skyscrapers and monuments, the wilderness, the peaceful, pretty suburbs you see in teenie movies all the time. For a long time now I've also had that weird dream of wanting to drive my Chevy down a lonely road through the Rocky Mountains. Or to take my mom and her biker friends and tear up the asphalt for a few days, just going wherever, eating cheap road diner food and spending nights in barely average motels. XD I dunno. I want adventure and I want it to involve the sound of powerful engines! XD

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 3:56PM

I don't really want to think about it, to be honest. It creates a sort of rage in my gut that is hard to swallow and get over, so...topic change! :D How is New York? I've always wanted to go there at some point, but I've never really been sure if it'd be worth it. o.o

dofu
Don't remind me. >.< I wanted to throw the radio out the window after hearing that story. [oversharing part deleted] (Ugh, I need to learn to think these things through from the start. DX) Some people are just downright bastards, there's no other way to say it. Hating and going so far as to assaulting and even killing perfectly innocent people just because they're a little different. Mankind can be so utterly disappointing at times. >.<

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 3:00PM

Uhm...so how exactly did we go from realizing that my initial plan would've undoubtedly ended in failure to changing plans to writing a summarized letter of our messages and asking Maepkllm or mint-leaf, who have already volunteered to help, to translate it so we can send it to Comico...to reintroducing my initial idea as an option and trying to make that one work? o.0 We're moving in circles here, people.

Book idea
Since I'm the one who started all this, I don't want to be the pessimistic one here, but the reality is that time is not our ally in this case. Ssamba mentioned she is awaiting chemotherapy. Once she starts it, and who knows when that will be, she will spend an overwhelming amount of time in the hospital. Who knows if she'll have enough energy to browse the net or read messages etc. Trust me, I've been in hospital when my body decided to give up on me and the only things I really felt like doing most of the time was sleep and eat. The book idea is a nice one, but it's not effective for what we're trying to do here.

oliver
The thing is we have literally no way to find out if Ssamba speaks English. I'm not expecting a response from her to our messages. That woman is in a bad place right now and if there's anything I learned from dating a psychologist for 3 years, it's when people are grieving, they're usually busy with themselves and don't find a lot of energy to deal with things aside from their own demons. So no response from her, considering her physical and mental condition, wouldn't necessarily mean she doesn't understand our messages to me. Like I said before, time isn't our ally in this case. And I'm not really up for sending Ssamba a bunch of english messages she may or may not understand, only to maybe find out she actually didn't understand them and going to back to square 1, meaning looking for a translator. I want to definitely get through to her without wasting more time than necessary. So I'm against putting so many eventualities and maybes in the plan. :T

How did they get the mice out of you?

They didn't. Mice are organic material and a human stomach can digest meat, so...they left through the back door after a few hours. ^^;

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 2:12PM

Oh my god..you actually swallowed mice?

Yep. Two of 'em furry little suckers. I digested them like a maverick! X3 #TeamSavageKids anyone? No? Okay, worth a try... XD

Also, that story about the motel is creepy AF. So Martian is right: always check under the bed. Sheesh... >.<
God, that reminds me of that story about that murdered asian girl they found in a Hotel's water tank a while ago. There were was rrreally creepy surveillance footage of her apparently trying to run away from someone in the hotel going viral in the net a while ago. I think her name was Elisa or Elizabeth or something like that.

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 2:10PM

It was really cool!! xD The one I saw was about 6m or so, the big guys didn't show up that day. The locals told me that there's one about 12m long o.o...

That is so cool! DX I'm envious. We don't have cool animals like that in Germany. :T Then again, we generally don't have a lot of cool stuff in Germany. sighs

Hahaha parents are cruel sometimes -.-...I remember when I was a kid, I accidentally swallowed an orange seed and my parents told me that a huge tree will grow inside of my stomach -__-."...

Haha, my parents should have actually told me something along the lines of that when I was a kid! May have saved me a few visits to the hospital. I ate everything when I was a toddler. o.o Everything. Okay, I didn't eat it per se, but I put a loooot of stuff into my mouth. The craziest thing I actually did eat though were 2 live baby mice I found on our attic (fur and everything.) When I found them, I figured they were small and weak compared to their siblings, so they probably need some more time in the belly to grow more. See, back then I didn't know that much about how babies are made and whatnot. My mom kept telling me children live in their mother's bellies until they're strong and big enough to come out and left it at that, so for all I knew that meant they came from their mom's stomach and giving birth probably means mommy is sick of the baby in her stomach and vomits it right out. Of course, this process could be easily reversed, so when mommy barfs out her little prince or princess and decides "Nope, you aren't ready yet," she'd just swallow the baby right back down and the "pregnancy" would continue. I never asked if I was right about that. It sounded perfectly reasonable to me as a kid, so I just figured that must be how it's done. XD Anyway, where was I? Right, the baby mice. So these baby mice looked really weak to me and I wanted to help them. Their mom ran away when I tried to grab her (Good for her too, seeing how I was fully intent on shoving her own children down her throat and into her stomach). So I thought "Well, they can just grow in my belly then." And thus, I very carefully put one after another into my mouth, made sure not to bite down and swallowed those poor things whole. XD Miraculously, I didn't choke. And when I could feel them moving around in my stomach, I was so happy that I ran to my mom and told her I was pregnant (I was 4, btw. XD) When she asked me what I was talking about, I told her what I had done. My dad was a wheezing, curled mess on the floor in an instant. Mom however didn't really find that funny, so the next day I had my very first proper sex ed lesson...which later on lead to my teachers at pre school being very, very concerned for me when I went around and started teaching everyone words like "penis", "vagina" and "semen", but that's another story. XD

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 1:54PM

Not really, but it was the first time I have ever been that close to a giant fish. xD

That must've been so cool! :O How big are they? Like a bus maybe? Or bigger?

I'm all alone so i should not talk about ghost stories or read them lol...

Not a ghost story, but I have a friend, who only sleeps with socks on (even in the summer!) and she thinks it's partly just a habit, partly maybe some leftover pieces of a childhood trauma, cause back then her parents had told her, that if she sleeps with her naked feet sticking out from under the blankets, the hungry stray dogs of the city might jump into her room through the window and gnaw her toes off in her sleep cause they'd be mistaking them for sausages. o.o; I mean really now, why not just be straight forward with this? "Cover your feet when you sleep with the window open, otherwise you might wake up having a cold." The thought of being sick is unpleasant enough for most kids, so they usually heed those kinds of warnings. Why come up with a story about feral stray dogs that jump in your home and bite your toes off? >.< Srsly. The shit some parents do yo. shakes head

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 1:09PM

Hah, I loved the episode where Yang tried pulling Blake's attention away with a laser pointer~

That scene was hilarious. XD I also loved it when Blake went completely OOC over a bowl of noodles with tuna. XD I generally tend to love every episode with a good dose of Blake/Yang interaction though. I ship them so hard. XD Seeing Yang so broken after the whole Adam incident and Blake's leaving just killed me inside. God damn, the feels! DX

It's getting more and more quiet here o.o...

Well, people are getting pretty busy these days. Even our gay ship captain dofu doesn't really have time to come here anymore. XD shrugs As long as we don't let this thread die completely, it'll be fine I think. o.o

last edited at Jun 17, 2016 12:58PM