PANZERCAT

In today's society, chronic illness is viewed as a personal failing

clatterbane:

When I recently read the phrase, “I’m embarrassed to be sick,” it made my stomach clench and my breath catch. That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling: this vague sense of social unease even with close friends, a reluctance to be seen or even talk to people–especially those that knew me before I became chronically ill.

At the age of 55, after a lifetime of seemingly unrelated physical complaints and inexplicable pains that kept worsening, I was finally diagnosed in 2012 with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic flaw which leads to defective connective tissues. This results in chronic pain and many other health problems, as body parts aren’t held together properly, joints dislocate spontaneously, tissues stretch or tear, lose elasticity, and wear out early.

All of this hits uncomfortably close to home.

Also:

In our competitive society, chronic infirmity or illness is viewed as a personal failing rather than the random stroke of fate that it is. If my pain and disability were temporary, I would get sympathy and accommodation, but incurable suffering makes most people uncomfortable. They become impatient and distant, and I detect an undercurrent of belief that I must have done something to deserve this – something they can avoid doing.

If all the people not yet affected by chronic illness acknowledged all the undeserved pain in this world, they would be forced to confront their own vulnerability to the same forces. Instead, we all prefer to believe we have the power to prevent such disasters in our own lives. Sometimes I even catch myself thinking, “If you’re so smart, why did you let this happen to you?”

Yes totally that.

I get so sick of the smugness people have about their own health. Like they did something to cause their health relative to those of us who are sick. Like people with chronic illness just didn’t eat our Wheaties, as Billy Golfus once put it.

I understand it is a defense against a terror of becoming ill. But it hurts people who actually are ill. So I start to lose sympathy with that terror.

Someone once pointed out that things haven’t changed much since a time when most people saw illness from a religious perspective, as a sign that the ill person had sinned in some awful way and was being punished. People still treat illness as just as much a moral failing as back then, just usually from a more secular point of view. That’s one of the reason fat people are so hated, it’s all tied in with the view that fat is unhealthy and fat is caused by the sin of gluttony and we are causing our own unhealthiness so we deserve whatever crap we get from society, even when that crap leads to our death. There’s a reason that people use health to justify their hateful behavior towards us. Because ill health (real or presumed) is still a sign of sin, and sinners are fair game.

Meanwhile healthy people are so often congratulating themselves. Taking credit for their own health. When much of their health has to do more with genetics and environment than their own actions.

A lot of the alternative medicine community, which is very popular for some reason, puts forth the idea that you can will yourself healthy. Some practitioners even go so far as saying that every disease is a sign of some psychological conflict that you can get rid of with positive thinking. Cancer is blamed on a certain personality type, the cancer personality.

It’s all a mess. I have to go. But I could write more for ages.

The above criticism of the so-called “natural health” community is one of my biggest peeves with that approach to “medicine.” People often ask of treatments like reiki and positive thinking, “well, what’s the harm?” And along with cost and a waste of patient time and energy, well. The cost is the toxic nature of some modalities, that pervasive message that if only you clap your hands and believe real hard, you’ll be healed; that if you don’t experience any benefit the problem is obviously with you.

(Source: inspirecommunity)

omgitsbricey:

f-e-a-r—-n-o-t:

doctorcanon:

cmcross:

No, you don’t understand.

This actually happens.

We got a 16 year old boy on our unit once, because Pediatrics was full, and it’s about 1 in the morning and all the nurses are at the nurses station having a break and we’re all talking and having a laugh and then all of a sudden this kids heart monitor just goes CRAZY.

So we call the code and I grab the crash cart and about 6 of us just take off running down the hall and we bust in the room and this kid is just sitting there with his hand around his junk looking MORTIFIED.

So we just sort of backed out of the room quietly, walked calmly to the stairwell, and had a total and complete hysterical breakdown.

It was the funniest shit ever.

Omigod so many nurses have told me stories like these.

DON’T JERK OFF IN THE HOSPITAL

haha well…. i would say this is depending on a few factors, but the largest ones are:

-lead placement

-the relative vigorousness of the masturbatory process

like, if you BRUSH YOUR TEETH when on tele, if the leads are in a certain way, the rate will suddenly read as v-tach or v-fib (both life-threatening rhythms). Nurses who are used to tele wind up pretty good at reading false from real signals, but most of the time patients on tele are on floors that aren’t actually cardiac.

I’ve had several patients who do nothing at all on tele other than have their heart rate speed up moderately (as would be expected, and sometimes people just tach up when they’re talking to their mom, etc) and I’ve walked in on them accidentally.

If jerking it helps you heal, by all means, you know? You’re not like, suddenly not a human cuz you’re in hospital. Just don’t be an ass about it or anything, I guess, and do be sorta aware that it might make nurses come in if you ARE on tele, ahaha.

(Source: textsfromwhedonverse)

and speaking of

a while ago i got a sparkly gold star that i get to clip to my badge at work. it sounds even more silly than it looks which is sayin something, but anyway it means that I was (on my unit) The Most Mentioned By Patients For Providing Exceptional Care (TM???) in the first financial quarter of the year!!!

I guess it sunk in for reals tonight because i was up on another unit as a float and someone high-fived me for having it and THEN asked what it meant (because it is… silly big…) and tHEN TOOK BACK THE HIGH-5 BECAUSE, QUOTE, “oh well whatever that’s no surprise” oooohhh nooooo

float rns: the awful truth: we suck when out of our specialty :/

me, assessing someone just up from pacu: huh. sorry, give me a minute here.
patient: what's wrong?
me: dude, i'm a cardiac nurse.
me, finally unclamping bra: usually we just cut these things off.
patient: sounds like you guys have a lot more fun!
me: you have nooooo idea.
patient: you have no clue how much i needed a scar impression tonight, oh my god.

sometimes I get it in my head to look up medical procedures or medicines which seem somewhat like intuitive leaps to figure out why someone first attempted or researched treatment x.

about 50% of the time it’s not very interesting at all and 25% of the time it’s some person getting this idea in their head and proving it hilariously (see: h pylori) and then i always forget that like 25% of the time it’ll really bum you out like the story of coumadin which i just read tonight

spoiler alert: a dude tried to kill himself with rat poison, and when doctors saved him with vitamin K they thought HEY LET’S MARK THIS RAT POISON UP AND SELL IT :(

Ugh

The moment when you finally get a break and you still just hear alarms going off constantly because they are IMBEDDED IN YOUR MIND

somehow i think the demographic of “nurses who dress in drag as aliens” is awfully small but it’s nice hallmark made me a card anyway

(this totally made my day—and reminded me that i never know when nurses’s day is, which is understandable—so all the thanks to kim and marty!)

whenever you wonder how someone first decided to perform a cardiac catheterization, friendly reminder that a dude in the twenties just decided to do one on himself with a foley catheter, despite the prevailing belief at the time that a foreign object in the heart would result in instant death.

additional fact: he did so against direct orders and with the assistance of a scrub nurse who only promised to help if he performed the procedure on her, and not on himself.

bonus fact: he pretended to anesthetize her and actually just… did it to himself instead while she was tied to a table„„

triple fact: he walked down to x-ray with the nurse with this foley in his arm and kept advancing it there, and nearly bled out

unsurprising finale: he was fired

Someone you know ill? How not to say the wrong thing:

stophatingyourbody:

wheeliewifee:

When Susan had breast cancer, we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan’s colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn’t feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague’s response? “This isn’t just about you.”

“It’s not?” Susan wondered. “My breast cancer is not about me? It’s about you?”

The same theme came up again when our friend Katie had a brain aneurysm. She was in intensive care for a long time and finally got out and into a step-down unit. She was no longer covered with tubes and lines and monitors, but she was still in rough shape. A friend came and saw her and then stepped into the hall with Katie’s husband, Pat. “I wasn’t prepared for this,” she told him. “I don’t know if I can handle it.”

This woman loves Katie, and she said what she did because the sight of Katie in this condition moved her so deeply. But it was the wrong thing to say. And it was wrong in the same way Susan’s colleague’s remark was wrong.

Susan has since developed a simple technique to help people avoid this mistake. It works for all kinds of crises: medical, legal, financial, romantic, even existential. She calls it the Ring Theory.

Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma. For Katie’s aneurysm, that’s Katie. Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma. In the case of Katie’s aneurysm, that was Katie’s husband, Pat. Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order. One of Susan’s patients found it useful to tape it to her refrigerator.

Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, “Life is unfair” and “Why me?” That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring.

Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.

When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn’t, don’t say it. Don’t, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don’t need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, “I’m sorry” or “This must really be hard for you” or “Can I bring you a pot roast?” Don’t say, “You should hear what happened to me” or “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” And don’t say, “This is really bringing me down.”

If you want to scream or cry or complain, if you want to tell someone how shocked you are or how icky you feel, or whine about how it reminds you of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately, that’s fine. It’s a perfectly normal response. Just do it to someone in a bigger ring.

Comfort IN, dump OUT.

There was nothing wrong with Katie’s friend saying she was not prepared for how horrible Katie looked, or even that she didn’t think she could handle it. The mistake was that she said those things to Pat. She dumped IN.

Complaining to someone in a smaller ring than yours doesn’t do either of you any good. On the other hand, being supportive to her principal caregiver may be the best thing you can do for the patient.

Most of us know this. Almost nobody would complain to the patient about how rotten she looks. Almost no one would say that looking at her makes them think of the fragility of life and their own closeness to death. In other words, we know enough not to dump into the center ring. Ring Theory merely expands that intuition and makes it more concrete: Don’t just avoid dumping into the center ring, avoid dumping into any ring smaller than your own.

Remember, you can say whatever you want if you just wait until you’re talking to someone in a larger ring than yours.

And don’t worry. You’ll get your turn in the center ring. You can count on that.

By Susan Silk and Barry Goldman April 7, 2013

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407,0,2074046.story

Thank you, SarahCate for sharing!!

It is often challenging to know how to respond when someone around you is having a hard time, this simplified guide will help you know what to say, and who to say it to.

- Stacy

Okay, WHY IS THIS NOT IN EVERY ALLIED HEALTH CARE TEXTBOOK? I have been looking for a better way of articulating, “no, your fifth cousin eight times removed who told me ‘I just need sleep’ does NOT need to be awoken at 0400 for a phone call from Dallas” for years.

This is wonderfully simple and terrific! Definitely saving it to show off to patients (and their occasionally TOO well-meaning families).

stfuconservatives:

Designer creates world’s first line of lingerie for women with colostomy bags

The designer said he had friends who were nervous about being naked with a new partner because of their situation. So this guy made stoma plugs that look like cute accessories, not medical devices. That fabric flower in the photo above is actually serving a health purpose in addition to being adorable. The designer also found a way to redesign the colostomy bag so that it doesn’t bulge under clothing and has a vent for gas - again, big deals for people who live with them every day.

laughingsquid:

Friends Make a Woman Hospitalized with Short-Term Memory Loss an Informative FAQ

dying i wish everyone did this/everyone with short-term deficits would be helped with it

Death by Fandom: Message to my teenage followers

nekosmuse:

starrla89:

I will be 40 in a week. I am sitting here drinking wine and alternating between checking my dash and playing Candy Crush on Facebook. Contrary to how it may seem, I have an actual life that involves me being in charge of a large group of people and earning enough money to support myself with…

I can’t even tell you how much I agree with this post. My life didn’t get good until I hit like 35. I can’t even tell you how much better it gets. All those fucks you stop giving man? It’s awesome. And the wine? Fucking appreciated. I just want to roll around in this age forever.

I’m only hitting 30 this year, but I can endorse to any teen-something followers I happen to have (which… I dunno, I had the old habit of getting older pals online when I was like FIFTEEN in fandom so I dunno how old all y’all are) that yep. It gets better. I have a for real career that involves stress and stuff, sure, but I also get to dictate my own health decisions (or lack thereof) and can pretty much spend a whole three days in bed eating pizza when AND IF I want to do so.

And as far as my career goes, I can only foresee it getting better as I get more experience. Even after an annoyingly understaffed night like the last, I can safely say I friggin love my job (which: note to teen readers, I didn’t stumble across until I was 27 or so. In high school I thought I’d be a journalist, and I first went to college to be a lawyer), and with more clinical work it definitely gets easier (though you do tend to be given more responsibility).

night badger don’t leave meeee

how to tell your nurse is on third 12-hour shift

Heart failure education edition

1. “It’s like, one of those… man. What’s the word. It makes all the vessels, like… dilate? Well, it’s an opposite-land vasoconstrictor, you know.”

2. “I know it sounds freaky to hear that your heart’s only pumping 60%, but when you think about it, it’s not like anyone’s gonna have their ventricles empty 100%. Probably your heart would implode.”

3. “Well, I don’t know. What are the ingredients of pickles? Cucumbers and vinegar and a metric ton of salt, right?”

4. “Remember, if you gain two pounds in a day, it can only be water. Or pickle brine.”

5. “Processed foods: that’s how they get ya.”

6. “What’s odd is, we only really develop that taste for sodium later in life. When you give it up, it does take time for your taste to acclimatize to different flavors, but after a while your palate does adapt. I mean, have you ever tried to feed a baby sodium bicarbonate? It does not go over well.”