I’m not a doctor, but when my dog had a tooth infection the vet was pretty concerned. Teeth are close to the brain and eyes and if an infection spreads it’s bad.

And the hospital doesn’t want to keep you overnight, either. If they insist there will be a good reason.

Funnily enough, my original middle name is Michelle. I’ve spent 30 years not really liking it :)

I’m non-binary. My first and last names are fine. First name leans gendered but is technically unisex. I’m in the process of changing my middle name from a generic gendered one to either “Moxie” or “Miles”. This is because

• I don’t want to have to change my initials (smh)
• I feel no affinity towards my middle name
• Miles is best Sonic the Hedgehog character
• Moxie is best soda
• My middle name appears on few documents but my initial appears on many, so fewer things to update.

(Feel free to suggest other less gendered middle names that start with “M” or try to persuade me one way or another)

Re: email. True. And it’s a bit selfish of me to want to push pull him into using email, without his buy-in. I can suggest it (“hey, I checked and blah addresses are available. Might be nice to have a polite email address to give to your aunts. They’re great and send care packages with candy.”) But I shouldn’t do it for him.

Thanks :)

I definitely want to have a more direct relationship with him if I can. Before he lost his phone (and phone privileges) we texted, and that was good. Hopefully we’ll be back to texting once he’s up a stage in treatment :)

I wish he had an email address or something, but his online presence has always been spotty. He’s has a string of email addresses that aged like milk (think killadope69@yahoo and you’ll be close) that he’s abandoned. I’m tempted to sign him up for a generic firstname.lastname@gmail account, but that might be overbearing on my part.

The subreddit I moderate has had a poll going for the last 2.5 days.

• 1390 members.
• 75 poll respondents (5% of members)
• 7 commenters (0.5% of members)

It’s a disappointing turnout. Also, I’m one of those poll respondents and commenters. (If you remind me, I’ll post a link to the poll once it closes in 8 hours.)

Btw, shout-out to my work’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP). They got me in to see a therapist the day after I called. That therapist helped me deal with the acute anxiety from having the metaphorical rug pulled out from under me (paraphrased text message from mom: hey, you know how proud you were last month when your brother was sober for 6 months? That’s gone and you almost lost him to suicide and I only let you know a few days later. Also he lost his phone so all news comes through your estranged parent.)

And now I’m on track to finding a longer-term therapist. So that’s good.

I’m happy with my new username.