All About Me!
Hello! and welcome to my blog! If you're new here my name is Ariella Deleon. I'm a 20 year old woman living with a rare disease called a Urea Cycle Disorder.
I was born with this condition and will most likely have it for the rest of my life. Now what IS a Urea Cycle Disorder you might be wondering? Well allow me to explain!
A Urea Cycle Disorder is a Genetic Metabolic Disease that is characterized by a deficiency of a vital enzyme responsible for removing Ammonia from the bloodstream. In a healthy body the enzyme I am missing would safely remove the toxin Ammonia without any issues. In my case however, My body isn't capable of removing Ammonia on it's own which can and has led to countless stays in the hospital. There are 8 subtypes of a Urea Cycle Disorder (UCD) and mine is one of the most common types known as OTC.
Ammonia is a byproduct of Protein. Yep! protein! Because of my disease and my inability to get rid of Ammonia this means I have to live by a very strict and LOW protein diet. On top of a strict Medical diet I also have to take Ammonia Scavengers daily. They help my body break down the little protein I do eat and help with getting rid of Ammonia I can't get rid of myself.
So how serious is this disease? It must just sound like something a diet and meds can fix right? Wrong.
In cases where Ammonia builds up in my body it turns into what we call a "Hyperammonemia episode." Ammonia effects the brain. When Ammonia levels rise too high they can cause brain damage, coma, or even death. There's never a 100% chance treatment at a hospital can get Ammonia levels back to normal. In fact, I've personally lost two of my baby brothers to this disease.
In a Hyperammonemia epsiode there's a lot happening to the body. When Ammonia levels are barely elevated I may not feel symptoms at all. However, When Ammonia levels are greatly elevated that's when things get dangerous. During a high Ammonia crisis I can become very combative and physical. I've thrown things, cussed out nurses, and tore my IV's before. I also lose my motor function, it becomes very difficult to walk and use my hands. I become very confused and disoriented (I act as if I'm super high or drunk), and I also become unable to stay awake (I will fall asleep, be awake for a few minutes, and repeat the pattern.) On top of all of that it greatly effects my memory as well. There's a lot I have no memory of from past high ammonia episodes.
All of this is mainly due to the impact Ammonia has on the brain. When this happens to me I'm not able to think or act clearly. Which is why having a caregiver is crucial for me as without one I wouldn't be able to safely get treatment during an Ammonia spike.
So how does this effect me?
Living with a UCD has been hard. I spent a majority of my childhood at home or in the hospital. Due to my weak immune system I didn't attend school. Therefore I never made any friends. I never went to sleepovers because finding people my family could trust to stick to my medicine schedule and diet needs was hard. It wasn't until I hit my mid teens that I finally started to stabilze. I went from being on 12G of protein to now being able to take 30-35G a day (more than double.) While I may be stable as far as not having any high Ammonia spikes for awhile, I still have to be very careful on a daily basis.
This disease causes me to be easily tired. I'm not able to be very active. I can't be out in weather above 80 degrees. My muscles are weak due to the lack of protein. My memory isn't very good. I get frequent headaches and stomach pains. I have to visit a Genetic specialist often. There's a lot I still have to manage on a daily basis even without being in the middle of a crisis. The thing is too with this disease, you can do EVERYTHING right and still get sick. Despite medication and proper care Ammonia can still spike when you least expect it. Which is a huge reason why I've dedicated my time and energy into creating this place for other people with a UCD + any other people with a rare or chronic condition.
Life is short, Nothing is for certain even if you're a completely healthy person. In my years of carrying anger towards myself for my disability I've learned to embrace it and love myself as I am. I'm grateful to have a body that does what it needs to to keep me safe. I'm grateful for the community that surrounds me and I love every part of it.
While my condition may not be curable at this moment in time. I plan to continue providing resources, advice, and encouragement for others here. I want to create and educate the world about this rare invisible disease and give tools to other patients that might make life easier. If you're looking for content surrounding any of these topics then I advise you stick around for awhile! Furthermore, thank you for taking the time to read this section and give my page a visit.
You can find other ways to contact me within my "Where to find me!" buttons.
Hope to see you around! - Ariella
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HMMMMM bakugou being just. the absolute picture of sin.
he works overnight and comes home early in the morning, around 3 or 4 am or so, and you greet him and give him a kissy and ask how it all went. and even though it's still dark outside and he's been working for twelve hours—he's still coming off patrol, right ? so he's still got some energy left, and he eats something and takes a shower and winds down as you fall back to sleep.
and it's not until much later in the day that he wakes up, early afternoon, and you're kind of tiptoeing around so that he can get his much-needed rest. you slip into the closet of your bedroom for something and you think you're gonna get in and out without a sound, but his hearing is so attuned to just about anything and everything at this point.
so rough and raspy, he grunts out, "what're y'lookin' for?" and you whip around real fast and he's just—
half sitting up in bed, bare back leaning against the headboard. an arm behind his head, so that his bicep is tense and round and stone-solid. stretched like that, his obliques are more prominent, taut and rippling up the side of his ribcage. he must have gotten hot while passed out, as he usually does, because the comforter is all askew; one of his legs is bent, the fine hair a dark gold in the waning day; the other is hanging off the bed, lightly swinging as he watches you, and the blanket has come down enough that you can see the bulge of his thigh muscles beneath his stupid tiny black boxer briefs.
and he's just so. man. in every single way.
(his hair is flat on one side, too, and his eyes are still a little puffy from sleep—but you think that adds to it, all in all)
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Pt2 to this post
'Is something wrong?' Nancy asks, not long after the two of them have taken their familiar spots on the hood of Steve's car. They're basking in what might be the last warm sunlight of the year, looking out over the quarry, at a safe distance from the edge.
It's become a tradition the two of them share, ever since they reconnected back in March. It calms them both, to just sit here and take in the view, no one around but each other. Nancy is one of the few people Steve can share a comfortable silence with: sometimes they sit here quietly for what feels like hours, side by side, listening to music or to nothing but the birds singing around them. But they also have their best conversations here: it's the place where Nancy entrusted him she wanted to break up with Jonathan; it's the place where they talked about their shared past and decided they would always love each other as friends; it's the place where they finally talked about Barbara in a way they couldn't when they were younger. It's where Nancy talked about the ghosts still haunting her and Steve talked about how lonely he sometimes felt.
Steve huffs. 'How did you guess?'
'When you frown, you always do it with your whole face,' Nancy notes. 'So it's hard to miss, really.'
Steve glances at her side profile. There's a serenity to her features that's still relatively new. It means she's healing, slowly learning how to be happy again. It means she stopped waiting for the end of the world and started believing in a real future again. It makes Steve proud of how far they both have come.
'I had a fight with Eddie,' he confesses. 'And with Dustin, I guess.'
'What happened?'
He sighs. 'It's complicated.'
'Wanna tell me about it?'
The look in her eyes is kind and inviting. Steve hesitates. He wants to, but he doesn't know if he can. It's a risk. It's scary.
But he can't imagine Nancy Wheeler ever being careless with his secrets. He can't imagine her judging him, can't imagine her being as small-minded as most people in this town.
He was planning on telling her anyway, because things had been going so well with Eddie lately and – no, he shouldn't think about that right now. But maybe it would actually be nice to talk about it with Nancy.
'So, um...' His throat feels tight and his hands are sweaty. 'I recently discovered some things about myself. I-' The words get stuck somewhere on the way to his mouth, and he clears his throat.
Nancy doesn't push, but only gives him an encouraging nod, waiting for him to find his voice again.
'I found out I like boys,' he finally manages to confess. 'And I need you to know that – that that doesn't mean that what I felt for you wasn't real. It was. I loved you, and now I fell in love with a boy. And-'
'Steve.' Nancy's hand suddenly covers his, causing him to finally jerk his head away from the view over the quarry, to focus on her face again instead.
Her eyes are wide, and she squeezes his hand.
'You don't have to explain yourself to me,' she tells him. 'We're good. But thank you for telling me. For trusting me with this.'
Steve heaves out a relieved sigh, and Nancy smiles; it's that genuine kind of smile which reveals all kinds of dimples and soft lines across her face.
'We might be more similar than you thought,' she tells him, a faint blush spreading over her cheeks.
'Really?' Her words make his breath catch in his throat. He squints at her, trying to see her in this new light. 'Are you saying what I think you're saying?'
She shrugs. 'I don't know. I'm not sure yet,' she admits. 'Still figuring things out.'
'Take your time, there's no rush,' he tells her. 'But...' He bumps his shoulder against hers. 'When you're done figuring it out, talk to me, okay?'
She nods. 'Okay.'
For a while, it's quiet between the two of them. Some kind of raptor circles high above them in the sky. They both follow it with their eyes until it disappears among the tree tops west of the quarry.
'Is it Eddie?'
Steve blinks dumbly a couple of times.
'Wha- what?'
'The guy you were talking about. The one you fell in love with. It's Eddie, isn't it?'
'Jesus, Wheeler, what kind of sorceress are you?' Steve exclaims.
Nancy laughs again. 'You're not being as subtle as you think,' she tells him. 'The two of you have been hooking up for a while now, haven't you?'
Steve huffs dramatically. 'This is unfair. You know everything; I can't even tell you my own secrets anymore!'
'So what happened?' Nancy asks. 'You said you had a fight with him?'
'It's fucking stupid,' he sighs. 'Dustin was getting way too excited about the fact that I was gonna be hanging out with you, so I told him I was seeing someone. Next thing I knew, he was telling Eddie all about how I was seeing a girl.' He waves his hands around to make annoyed air quotations. 'I wanted to tell Eddie it was a misunderstanding, but Dustin was there, so I couldn't out us just like that, and he looked so betrayed and heartbroken... He didn't wanna listen to me.'
Steve sighs; he still can't manage to forget that look in Eddie's eyes when Dustin delivered the big news. 'I wish I would've talked about what I felt for him earlier. I should've been honest when I had the chance, y'know. But I was afraid he wouldn't wanna label what we had, that he wouldn't feel the same way – and now we're in this whole mess. God, he must hate me right now, Nance.'
To his surprise, Nancy gives him an unexpected slap against his arm.
'Ouch, what the hell was that for?!'
'What are you even doing here with me, Steve? You should've gone after him, tell him how you feel!'
'I tried, obviously, but he didn't wanna listen to me!'
'So make him listen! You're in love with him, he obviously feels the same way about you, and you let him leave to wallow in a broken heart he doesn't even need to have!' She rolls her eyes and slides off the car, adding something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like an exasperated 'Boys!' before she pulls Steve off the car as well. 'C'mon, time to get your ass over to the trailer park. Right. Now,' she says through gritted teeth. And, well, Steve knows better than to argue with a determined - and truthfully quite terrifying - Nancy Wheeler.
Read the last part here
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(I only put people on this list who explicitly asked to be tagged. That's really no problem, I love to do that so dw about asking, but I got a lot of relatively vague reactions to the previous post that i'm not gonna dissect and interpret, bc I don't wanna clog anyone's notes unwanted. So just to be clear: i consider it a huge compliment if anyone asks for a tag but please do it clearly if you do!)
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I need everyone to know that speedsters are allergic to nanobots.
No, seriously. They're allergic to nanobots.
Speedsters have absolutely insane metabolisms, which means that they have an absolutely insane immune system. They don't get sick. Ever. Their immune system works at warp speed and takes out germs the second they enter their body. Call germs 'the Rogues' because they're getting tackled by super speedy blurs before they can even think about causing issues.
Okay, so they have a great immune system and don't get sick ever. What does this have to do with nanobots?
Great question! When nanobots are injected into a speedster's body their immune system sees them as a threat. Only problem? It doesn't matter how fast or efficient their immune system is, their body can't destroy a bunch of tiny metal robots.
Because their bodies can't fight off the nanobots they start to display typical cold/flu symptoms instead. Vomiting, fever, runny nose, coughing, being tired, ect. The nanobots aren't causing this reaction. Their own immune system causes this reaction. The fever is the bodies attempt to kill off the 'germs'. The vomiting, runny nose and coughing is the body's attempt to expel the 'germs'. They feel tired because their body is putting everything into fighting off the 'infection'.
In a normal person the nanobots wouldn't even be an issue because they'd be able to avoid detection. They can't avoid detection in a speedster body because their immune systems are dialled up to 500 out of 10.
As a result you get instances like this:
(Inertia had injected Bart with nanobots and Bart had a reaction)
Just an FYI for people because this is extremely fun and versatile information. Especially because none of the speedsters are really aware of this and it doesn't kick in right away. I could totally see a situation where a mission requires nanobot injections and mid mission the speedster goes down out of nowhere. It's also great if you want to do a stereotypical sick fic or something and want to get around that pesky speedster immunity.
Anyway, it's fun information so I thought I'd share
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