dhominis

[dhominis]

For another example: if your gynecologist says "vagina" when they should say "vulva", that might be a red flag about their knowledge and competence. A doctor probably shouldn't be using colloquialisms in a professional context. If a random person under no expectation of professionalism does the same thing, it's not a red flag; in fact, it would be downright inappropriate to impute a sinister motive to that person.

#unintentionally reblogged op; I agree with evo and not op #generally good if doctors communicate info to patients in an accessible manner! #use of accurate clinical terminology sometimes interferes with comprehension #(hi guys! I still exist and sometimes open tumblr! and apparently accidentally reblog posts!)

[dhominis]

we had an argumate bug in June 2017 as well! tumblr has priorities

Does the new dashboard just randomly not show some posts?

#breaking unintentional hiatus for this. #:( #is this a bug or a feature? yes

[dhominis]

“imposter syndrome”

18”x24”

Oil on canvas, 2020

#delightful!! #snakes

[dhominis]

Idk whats riled up Twitter (probs tiger king let’s be real) but if I see one more “friendly reminder that if you support ANY zoo or aquarium, you’re trash :)” I’m gonna have a stroke.

#i do not have a well-formed opinion on zoo/aquarium ethics but #í got one guy on my enrichment team and unfortunately for me he's ME' #is the best line. god. same #people are people

[dhominis]

@ the sender of “be honest, are you autistic?” if someone WERE autistic and HADNT said anything about it.... you can infer..... that they didn’t want anyone to know in the first place

everyone wants clear labels these days but personally that’s something that’s never really interested me; the nature of the thing is more important than what you call it or group it with and you choose labels based on traits, you don’t choose traits based on a label.

[obligatory acknowledgement that people can find labels helpful and they serve a useful purpose in succinctly compressing complex concepts as an aid to communication, even if I think that in common practice today and specifically here on tumblr people obsess over them to a counterproductive degree]

#argumate made a good post! #endorsed for all intents and purposes #if you're argumate you're valid. #tho people often derive a lot of benefit from categories/labels and that deserves more than lip service #...and labels e.g. autism tend to be useful for predicting not-obviously-correlated areas of weirdness! #'wait my inattentiveness and executive dysfunction mean that my emotional lability may be unusual?' #is this a bug or a feature? yes

[dhominis]

...was there any legitimate reason to do this? no. am I smug? fuck yeah. the thing where I tell the phlebotomist or nurse that I have one specific shitty vein that will blow, but they insist on using that specific vein anyway, and it blows (shock! awe!) and they have to stick me again in the vein I already told them would work better and I have a big hematoma for a week? didn’t happen!!

8/10 overall, didn’t need an ego boost but I got one :^)

can draw blood from myself one-handed now, so yeah, you know, I guess that’s how quarantine is going

#fuckers always try for the cephalic vein. #median cubital is lovely and resilient and large and has never blown! #cephalic looks... okay. but it's worse and they very often blow it. no idea why it's so compelling #anyway there's a little bruise but I always get a bruise from venipuncture #not infrequently I get a bruise from leaning on something for a few minutes #that is -- as the kids say -- how it be! #blood cw #medical cw #needles cw #personal #news from meatspace #original post

[dhominis]

can draw blood from myself one-handed now, so yeah, you know, I guess that’s how quarantine is going

#...am displeased with my fine motor skills #obvious response is to train necessary skills aggressively and get ridiculously good at them #n.b. I also do regular two-handed non-recreational phlebotomy and have the supplies/knowledge to do this safely #personal #original post #news from meatspace #needles cw #medical cw #blood cw

[dhominis]

WHO is going to have a subtextually homoerotic swordfight with me that stems from our major unresolved sexual tension

#this post is always a delightful experience

[dhominis]

I still exist!

It’s been a while. The Tumblr experience is, unfortunately, not as compelling for me as real-life social interactions. My brain seems to value online/text-based interactions at some small fraction of in-person interactions. This is annoying and I wish it didn’t do this, but I do get that reward system payout far more easily from hanging out with random coworkers than from interacting with perfectly-selected-for-compatibility online people.

I have generally been getting enough social interaction that online interactions are negligible improvements -- several months of having a fully adequate amount of social interaction with people I (variously) like, respect, appreciate, and love. This was wonderful! During this time, online interactions made a negligible contribution to my general wellbeing and I stopped. (Well, was lurking Tumblr because it’s interesting, and still doing online interaction w/ people I know in meatspace for the purpose of maintaining in-person relationships.)

And I sort of predicted this during the Tumblr porn purge and subsequent exodus of ‘18, although in retrospect I wasn’t as sufficiently socially connected in meatspace as I thought then. Unexpectedly moving across the country and away from my in-person social contacts probably had something to do with that.

Anyway. Internet-based communication is generally much less fulfilling qua social interaction than in-person interactions. My brain starts parsing texting as close to social interaction for people I know very well, and that’s nice. Phone calls and video chats are intermediate. Phone calls with people I know in person are social interaction, although less so than in-person stuff. Video chats are... better if they’re high-quality, but otherwise it’s like trying to watch prerecorded video clips and responding to them, and I do not parse that as social interaction. 

I spent a solid several months having a fully adequate amount of social interaction with people I (variously) like, respect, appreciate, and love. This was wonderful! Then I started voluntarily self-isolating before the NYS shutdown, because I work in an ICU and have direct contact with COVID-19 patients. (My hospital has told staff w/ confirmed unprotected exposure to COVID-19 patients to come to work until they have symptoms, because we don’t have the staff/testing resources to quarantine/test them, although we still don’t really know how likely asymptomatic transmission is.) I live alone. So... self-quarantining very effectively besides work and very infrequent grocery store trips.

And for the foreseeable future, I can have “real” social interaction for 36 hours per week. Yay. I’m an extrovert, apparently; this is possibly not the best time to realize this. (In theory I could have figured this out earlier, what with the going to bars and dance clubs and kink parties and hanging out with friends most days and being with my primary partner and her family any chance I could get, and those things being rather beneficial for my mental health. But, well, you know -- easy mistake to make.)

Anyway, hello Tumblr people, I’m stuck working only three 12-hour shifts a week and not having any other social contact for the foreseeable future, how’ve you all been? Holding up?

#personal #news from meatspace #original post #covid 19 cw #long post cw

[dhominis]

Heh, this was back when I was working in the remote cardiac monitoring unit. Since then: transferred to the ICU, eventually realized that SCP Misuse Of Hospital Computers Person is one of my new coworkers.

Life updates, generic thoughts on critical care experiences under the cut.

he’s the most extremely online person I’ve ever met in normie spaces. I am pretty sure most of our coworkers think he’s just generically weird (also true!!). at work, I am not obviously An Online Person, and there’s always a moment where I’m laughing at his weird meme references slightly harder than the others. every time we’re working together, he calls me king. he just got into med school; this is faintly ridiculous. he might be renting my apartment if it’s open in a few months and he decides to go to the local med school; this is also faintly ridiculous.

Moved out of my parents’ house a year ago this week. This is one of the really nice parts of being a free person -- having texture to my life. Plot threads from eight-ish months ago coming together. Before, I never really seemed like a fully fleshed-out person. I wasn’t detailed enough. A character with the educational and medical history all filled out, but not much else.

Sometimes the really mundane stuff strikes me; I’m talking to someone and I mention some experience I’ve had and my brain goes oh my god I know people, I’ve had experiences. Hasn’t gotten old yet. Life is so good.

I got into nursing school. Will start in the fall. Not sure where yet -- depends on where else I’m accepted, who’ll take my transfer credits.

This morning we withdrew care on a fifty-something-year-old with no major medical history before the past, oh, two days. Those are difficult. Not like it’s okay when someone dies after a long period of decline, though. But that you get inured to over time; you get used to the (justified and unjustified) hostility, you get used to all manners of bodily fluids, and -- in the same way, even if these aren’t anything like the same thing -- you get used to sick people dying. Doesn’t make it any better, but it makes it easier for us. We just... don’t see many previously healthy young people dying here.

It was a shitty day. Today was the first time a patient punched me, and that was an extremely mild form of shittiness. Spent four-ish hours on a one-to-one assignment with him, who wanted to get out of bed -- no!! -- and also pull all his IVs out. I’d done this for five or six hours yesterday and he’d already hated me by the end of that shift. I do not blame him. He’s delirious and doesn’t totally know where he is, and I’m the asshole who keeps telling him he can’t stand up and walk; presumably I would be just as combative in his situation. So by the time I left work tonight we were both thoroughly pissed off, both for pretty good reasons.

(and on the way down to the parking lot, thirteen-ish hours after I’d arrived, I thought oh, I still love this job. somehow. this is the right place for me. eventually I will get a few years of bedside nursing in and go to grad school and then earn-to-give ridiculous anesthesia money, but this is more than I ever would’ve expected to love a job.)

...I’m happy. I’ve been so consistently happy, and even when I’m not happy at the moment I’m just basically confident and content. It’s been like this for a while now. Things are good.

someone at my workplace left an SCP page up on one of the computers. who. who was this. i am going to track you down and befriend you

#meanwhile I have not been extremely online. hi guys!! #personal #news from meat space #original post #healthcare tag #death cw #long post cw

[dhominis]

#laugh rule #healthcare tag

[dhominis]

wow I have not been on tumblr lately

so many good things!

I got accepted to nursing school for next fall. Don’t have an official admission decision yet, but the admissions coordinator told me earlier today I’m getting in.

(It was funny, actually -- I called her to confirm that they’d take my higher-level math classes instead of their algebra prerequisite, since I took algebra in... elementary school and so it wasn’t on my high school records, and she was looking at my application and just got gradually more audibly impressed, and eventually just told me I’m at the top of their applicants’ usual distribution on pretty much every metric and I should expect to get an official acceptance letter pretty soon after the application deadline. I was not expecting this. I was expecting to spend several months having anxiety about getting into nursing school.)

I’m buying a house. I’m buying a house soon. My attorney ordered the title a few days ago and as soon as he actually gets this we can set a closing date. This will be late January or early February.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway.

My health insurance is so bad. Aaaaaa. But they finally decided to cover the Adderall after months of fighting with them, which is pretty nice and convenient since I am way more calm and reasonable and flexible and sociable on the Adderall. Yay!

(And now I am going to hoard controlled substances as much as possible, because it’s likely that I will on a regular basis run out of meds and then have to spend two to five days trying to convince my insurance that yes I still do need this maintenance prescription. Lordy.)

My partners are amazing. I love my job so much. My brother is... taking steps to move out of my parents’ house, and everything is kind of awful for him right now, but for the first time there is reason to believe that his life will get a lot less awful. I got to spend many hours with a REALLY GOOD DOG last week. (Oh my god she’s so good --)

this is a really good part of my life.

#news from meatspace #vik buys a house #healthcare tag #personal #original post #adhd #happyblogging

[dhominis]

What a delightful world we live in, where little dragons evolve again and again across time, space, and phyla

#good kitties #art #aestivation #inverts

[dhominis]

#yeah

[dhominis]

Also:

“I see you’re sick/sad! Let me do my best to distract you from that so you can stop thinking about it and feel better!”

“You’re really excited about this thing and I don’t understand it but I’m trying to be excited about it too because you love it!”

#i do overlapping/nonidentical subsets of these with each of my partners #people are people #<3 #long post cw #save

[dhominis]

Warren Zevon - My Shit’s Fucked Up

#...is 'mood' passe? still. mood. #(n.b. I'm good! my shit is not more fucked up than usual)

[dhominis]

We will never know their names.

The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it - victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done - humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.

It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow.  In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).

Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.

For a long time, there was no hope - only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.

In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.

It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it - but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.

An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.

A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.

And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.

At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.

The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.

The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.

They found none.

35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.

This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world - was destroyed.

You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day.

#40th this year <3 #people are people #this is one of the best things we've ever done. love you all. #long post cw