🤣

If you’re happy you’re happy (<3 from another RN)

Eh. You can get a vibratoring back massager from the home goods section in Walmart for $6.

That said all that serotonin is gonna make it HELLA hard to orgasm.

I became a nurse with a personality disorder, although I’ve had two full years off DBT for it. I find most things in life are a lot less about what you can do and a lot more about what you’re willing to do. Go in understanding you’re going to have to work twice as hard for them to see you as half as good and you’ll be fine.

A few months ago a patient was mad I wasn’t stopping the ghosts from raping his butt all night every night (I’m not even slightly kidding), so he snatched me up bodily and shook me around a little. I got loose pretty quick and my coworkers showed up and he got a looooot of drugs. Went to the urgent care for some muscle relaxers to keep my back from seizing up from it (not the first time this has happened, and won’t be the last), took a nap, went back to work next Monday.

Employee health thinks it’s bizarre how touchy I am about my back while not giving a fuck emotionally but like. The difference between this and my childhood is that my mom can’t stop me from going to the doctor to keep CPS off our backs (it was my sister doing the hitting, my mother was just a rug sweeper).

He actually apologized when I came back to work. He had been too paranoid to take the meds initially (and we didn’t force any until he got aggressive) but once he was lucid he regretted it. Honestly even when he was psychotic he was still a sweet dude he was just terrified of the ghosts that were raping his butt all night. Thankfully, hallucinations are like THE symptom of psychosis that all three generations of antipsychotic work well on so a lil haldol easily told those ghosts to go on somewhere.

I’ve spent my whole adulthood working in hospitals. They’re shitholes, every single last one of them. Do every single thing you can to never be in one.

Drink water, plain water. Eat whole grains and leafy vegetables. Treat red meat like a dessert (and if you’re morally opposed to meat, make sure you’re still getting all your essential proteins). Find a physical activity you enjoy and do it at least three times a week. Either join an organized religion or specifically curate a group of people you do a weekly activity with who will come check on you if you suddenly stop showing up. And while you’re at it pick a mindfulness activity that you either enjoy or that brings you peace (prayer qualifies but so can yoga or a lot of other things). Avoid nicotine and alcohol at all costs. Go easy on the weed, and avoid anything more interesting without guidance from either a medical professional or some kind of traditional expert on those substances. And if a competent doctor listens to your specific situation and tells you to do or not do something I’ve mentioned, listen to them instead of me.

Decide who you would want to speak for you on your death or near-deathbed. Choose people both trustworthy and level-headed who will put your wishes over their own emotions. Choose multiple people, because it’s not unlikely that any one person will be in the car wreck with you. Talk to those people about what you want to happen or not happen so they can best carry out your wishes. Sign some kind of legally binding paperwork that cements them as the decision maker, especially if your first choice is not the default the state would choose (parent, spouse, sibling, adult child, etc). You can write whatever you want then to do on the paper, but the chosen person will have the right to override it if they think you would want them to. So sign the paper but don’t forget to TALK to them about it.

And good luck because while this will give you the best odds, the universe might also just decide to fuck you in particular anyway.

If you wanna log your logs the old fashioned way with just a spreadsheet:

Date / time

• Small / medium / large
• Bristol Scale
• color
• could also add odor or discomfort if you’re worried about that

On a second spreadsheet in that workbook, keep a food diary, because that’s gonna provide a LOT of context (and you might discover some ways to be nicer to your tummy).

Imma pull a classic middle of the road …thingy. Sometimes people use “I don’t talk politics” to mean “I’m personally happy with how this part of the system is working so stop complaining” which is kinda shitty when they’re not the one on the ass end of it. It’s also cool to just have some crochet groups where the biggest drama is that I hold the hook like a knitter. Gotta decompress sometimes. Have the strength to do both and all.

me too actually!

It is but one of the older versions that eliminated the “eat the whole map” mode that was the best mode. Also I can’t get it to load the second level so idk if there’s even any other map types (my second favorite is the office but it’s even a bit too easy.

I feel like they almost understand the role of immigrant labor and cheap imported goods in devaluing domestic labor, but they’re misdirecting their anger towards victims of Human Trafficking Lite™ and overseas slave labor instead of towards the corporations that don’t want to pay full price for domestic labor.

Hole . io (spaces otherwise it’ll create a link). It’s an ad and transaction ridden garbage game but it’s so satisfying and nothing else in that subgenre has graphics that cute.

Trepanning, or as it’s now called, craniotomy, is where a section of the skull is removed / bored through. It’s mostly done for cerebral edema where there’s pressure inside the skull and on the whole brain (it can even fatally herniate the brainstem which means shoving it out through the bottom of the skull like a play dough extruder).

It’s wild to think that there was actually a reason ancient cultures did it. They way overused it and for the wrong things during certain time periods and it was horrifying that they were doing it without anesthetic, but I’ve also heard that it results in a basically instant return to orientation. So the few patients it would’ve worked on would have gone from deliriously speaking in tongues (I know it’s not any real language but that kind of confusion does at face value sound like something that would require an exorcism) and would suddenly just… wake up. Possibly with a spray of puss out of the wound.

There’s a lot of old timey medical stuff we still do, it’s just now we do it with anesthetic and sterilization. Medically sterile maggots are used to clear out dead and infected wound tissue and some surgeons who work on structures with delicate vasculature like hands will use leeches to prevent swelling from blocking off bloodflow to the area while it heals. I’ve spent most of my career working at places that do electroconvulsive therapy (again, under anesthesia) for severe treatment resistant depression and catatonia (like so bad they can’t move or eat and need to be turned, cleaned and fed with a tube), and one time I worked with a patient who had had a frontal lobectomy (used to be called a lobotomy) for a severe seizure disorder that wouldn’t respond to medication.

Anyway Gage’s case was more on the subject of localized trauma and what injuries to the brain a human can survive. In particular it began our understanding that frontal brain injuries are usually much more survivable than ones to the rear, but that they can effect personality and in particular emotional and impulse control.

This is funny because I do actually have a strong background in psychiatry which has a fair amount in common with both neurology and psychology and Phineas Gage’s case is actually a pretty famous one in regards to the historical evolution of all three of those fields.

yeah it read plainly as a reference to me but people also tell me other people don’t know the kinds of things I do a lot of the time.

Honestly I’ve found the effects are more personal. I like interacting with the sh mods more; they’re a good combo of decent morals but also playful irreverence. They don’t get on me for honest jokes, but they’re also very willing to be like nah buddy it’s time to log off for a few days when they need to. (Hubs prefers the Twitter format if anybody knows a masto instance with similar vibes)

Oh hi I’m a psychiatric nurse!

Most important: Pick the three people you trust most in the world, put them in order of who you want making decisions for you the most (you also need to consider who will be the most level-headed & put your needs before their own emotions), then talk to your doctor about what paperwork you need to sign for that. Then talk to those people at length about how you want to die and what would make you feel the safest and happiest day-to-day until it happens. Think about what routines have brought you peace in your life, what things you do for fun / relaxation, what kind of music you like to listen to, etc.

If you’re up to it, I also highly recommend Wellness Recovery Action Planning. It’s more designed for people who are more likely to recover, but it’ll give you a template to go off to communicate your day to day needs in a written format for your legal decision makers and healthcare professionals to make you feel safe and comfortable as you progress through these next few stages. It’ll also have some spaces for you to mention any specific triggers (a lot of the time we find out someone has PTSD from sexual assault after a trip to the bathroom unexpectedly turns into a cage match and it would be nice to get a heads up instead). And if you do this have a special section just for music; it’s the part of your brain that’s likely to keep working the longest. Make two playlists, one to dance / have fun to, and one to relax / sleep to.

I wouldn’t fuss too much on the gun thing unless you already have one / have been used to having one for most of your life. If you were never a gun person before you’re unlikely to randomly just go out and buy one.

Good luck and I really hope you’re able to find trustworthy people to make decisions for you because without them to actually carry out your wishes, literally anything else you decide on now is completely moot.

it was wild when my mother who hated everything else about Obama was like “I do have to admit that he seems to be a good and faithful husband.”

Honestly it’s not even the CPR that particularly bothers me, it’s the intubation and the stuff after. I’ve worked with so many patients who don’t have a lot of working neural tissue left and their family just has them medically tortured for years because they want to see them blink occasionally. Next time I update my documents I think I’m going to add that if my family wants something to happen to me that I have to be held down for, they have to be in the room. If they can’t stand to watch / listen to me while it happens, they’ve no right signing off on it.

I feel the same way reading the Bible. Even as early as Genesis I was like damn Abraham I already don’t understand why you tried to pimp out your sister-wife ONCE so why did you KEEP DOING IT? Somebody recently commented that they find the Bible boring and I was like you need to find a modern translation because if you can even vaguely understand what’s actually going on that shit is WILD. Turns out humans have always been crazy AF and personally I actually find that kinda comforting. Makes a lot of modern shit seem less unmanageable. Another great example is the whole Onan thing. It’s wild that somebody decided to make it about masturbation when if you really get down to it it’s a story about a dude who thinks he’s being slick by obeying the letter of the current law to (literally) screw his widowed sister in law out of her rightful property and THAT story is TIMELESS.