Phallopenia, if you will.

I like that you mentioned we pick and choose who we remember and for what. Do you know why we don’t read in elementary school about the person who discovered that the universe was mostly made of hydrogen? Her name was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin if you’d like to look her up and come up with any hypotheses as to why.

I often feel the same working in mental health, especially with medically complex patients who have lost their own legal-medical decision making rights.

There’s the obvious high stakes ethical debates like if someone has a gangrenous limb that will kill them should you force them to have it removed. But there’s a lot more common / lower stakes examples I run into more often. Say someone has a dietary restriction that not following will likely cause great harm. Say they can’t swallow effectively (more common than you think, especially with strokes). This person is demanding a burger. It’s more likely than not that they will choke and die on that burger. Do you let them have the burger? You could argue that a sane person would obviously choose life over a burger but I might argue that American culture in particular makes the ability to consume burgers enjoy life more important than lengthening it (not entirely true, OP is probably one of the few people here who wouldn’t be shocked what people put elders through in the name of extending life). In the end its a complex debate with a huge amount of individual nuance that I don’t claim to have all the answers to.

I can tell you that I kinda wanna go work hospice where I don’t even have to ask any of those questions and can just give them the fucking burger.

My brother in whatever the fuck this is, I’ve gotten more out of tarot card reading than any therapist I’ve had in the past few years.

Teeth. Teeth right the fuck now. And if somehow there is nothing wrong with them see if your insurance will cover a flouride coat to keep them that way.

Oh and literally every cancer screening possible. Get your butt checked, your nuts checked, some dermatologists will literally check every inch of your skin. Tell your doctor about every bad habit you have and see what else they’re willing to look for.

Because they have 50 more people to see in the next 7 hours and some dipshit wasted their time scheduling them to drive out into the middle of fucking nowhere to see some dude that’s already told the last 6 people he doesn’t need them and 90% of people (even in the mental health field) don’t have enough insight into their own thought processes to correctly target their frustrations. I don’t even nail it every single time but I’ve generally speaking had good results by just making sure to always “punch upwards” so to speak.

It probably really helped people who learned to type on a typewriter make the first changeovers, and now it’s what everybody learns to type on for the most part so it hasn’t budged. I’ve noticed at work that my gen z coworkers often struggle to type out a solid nursing note (most of them learned to type on a phone screen) so I wonder if this is maybe an opportunity for more of those alternative layouts to start taking hold as typing becomes a less common thing people need to learn early on.

Oof I was way off! See this completely changes what I’m looking at for me! Looks like the racoon is much more similar.

I trim my cats claws every few weeks, she gets a treat for every paw she sits still for. I can tell she needs it done again when she can’t knead on me without it feeling prickly. It’s been a minute this time because I think I misplaced the trimmers. For a while I had to restrain her in one of those mesh bags, which was an upgrade from an old towel, but at this point she’s learned there’s food in it for her and she’s very food motivated, so as long as I’m firmly holding each paw and go quick it’s pretty straightforward. Haven’t had to use the sack in years.

I accidentally traumatized the dog at a young age because I had difficulty visualizing the quick through her darker claws, so we’ve been having a groomer do them for a while to help her understand that it doesn’t usually hurt before I try again. She thrashes and howls every time I try (she’s part husky), so it’s also important to have someone who knows exactly how to snatch her up and get it done quick.

I wish domestic housecat was on here as a scale example most people would have seen in person but I would think the smallest lynx bobcat or the fox is maaaybe comparable if perhaps a bit larger?

Edit: I had meant to say bobcat, not that it made me much closer. Sounds like the raccoon is much more comparable.

Shit rolls downhill; profits roll up. Source: fellow nurse.

My psych unit is having a pretty severe pants-in-the hall deficiency tonight and I’m definitely not getting paid enough for any of it.

Nothing directly for any individual, but you can host, moderate, and / or participate in more apolitical hobby spaces.

One of the biggest ways delusions keep a hold of people is by disconnecting them from supportive / positive social relationships. The deeper down the rabbit hole they go, the more people they argue with, and the less non-delusional friends they have. Try to figure out what those beliefs and social groups replaced, then get them back into supportive social groups around that. Often it’s a hobby like gardening, book clubs, cars, sports, hiking, etc.

That’s why all of this took off so hard during COVID, people got ripped away through all of those things and Russian disinformation bots were right there and ready to replace that sense of connection with a sense of being part of a larger movement. Sometimes it’s spiritual or religious groups which has been difficult because so many of those groups have just become completely overtaken and become vehicles for the delusions, so we also need to work on ways for people to express their religion and spirituality in non-delusional ways, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The short version is: make the delusional stuff subtly less accessible (encourage them to get away from the computer and TV) and try to get them into other positive activities that connect them with other people and help them move their focus away from the delusions without directly confronting them.

When confronted directly delusions tend to integrate the new information into the existing belief system so two examples here would be that maybe the study was flawed or only referring to a specific type of signal or specific type of brain cancer but the more likely option is just deciding that this is more proof that the system as a whole aims to deceive them.

Source: am psych nurse and was trained long ago to never try to talk someone out of a delusion for the exact reason that it tends to just make them stronger (I answered somebody’s question about what to do instead down below if you’re curious).

I feel like this is something I knew but didn’t know was something that had actually been studied. I’ll tell a lot of science concepts and stories from history and mythology that normally bore people but I’ve always had a habit of telling them “drunk history” style so I’ll be telling people shit like,“And they didn’t invite discord to the party because why the fuck would you but you also can’t just not invite her because that’s how you piss a bitch off.” and “and Paris, being a dumbfuck who doesn’t know how to think with his upstairs brain-” and honestly I was already somewhat like that but spending a bunch of my formative years on tumblr really honed it.

No, they were nice like that to the male students. I was female presenting at the time so it was just a fucking tank of piranhas. The sexism for the men doesn’t really seem to start until you’re working ortho, psych, or ER and everybody starts looking at you like you’re a damn hoyer that transforms into a battle mech optimus prime style.

I flunked out of nursing school despite the content itself being fairly easy because I didn’t know how to deal with mean girl shit yet. I passed the second time by just doing whatever they told me to until I graduated. In particular, I remembered some advice from years earlier from an older roommate who had just gotten back from their coast guard training. They said their goal had been to go as long as possible before the instructor even knew their name. Honestly that’s been a pretty great strategy for me when I’ve needed to escape abuses of power ever since; keep your head down, do whatever they tell you to, don’t draw attention to yourself, then book it the first chance you get.

Depakote is an absolute motherfucking horse pill and a really wild patient often ends up on 1.5g (which is THREE horsepills) or more and a patient that wild often doesn’t want the depakote so I’m stuck trying to convince someone who doesn’t want to stop feeling like Jesus and Superman’s love child into choking down these fucking golf balls (I’m exaggerating but the point is they’re the biggest pills I administer by a long shot) and they don’t even make injectable mood stabilizers so the courts can order backup injectables but they’re usually benzos or antpsychotics which can help but won’t really do enough and they can order it as a syrup which helps with cheeking but tastes nasty (but I do usually get a laugh asking if they want some salt and lime with it) and it’s just… ergsdhcktdfnaajkfdv

Anyway the nurse trick is to give it with a spoonful of something thick like applesauce, pudding, or yogurt. It can help with the taste but more importantly thicker substances are easier for your pharynx to control as part of the swallowing reflex (we actually have beverage thickener on most nursing units for this exact reason). You don’t even need to crush most pills (you’re not trying to hide it, you’re just giving the throat something easier to direct down the correct pipe) just plop them on top of the spoonful and you’ll be able to swallow them much easier.

When coaching new psych nurses on the care of violent patients:

“Don’t be scared. NEVER be stupid.”

I’m wouldn’t interpret that word choice in terms of intrinsic human value, I would interpret it as a facet of class warfare. Mate selection isn’t even the only way in which social status screws men over; we don’t send rich people’s sons to the front lines of the wars they start either. Actually now that I think about it I wonder if those things are related; the bourgeoisie playbook has always heavily featured using masculinity as a way to push men towards violence for their own benefit. It used to be killing people in other countries, and now it’s shifted more towards keeping people scared to step out of line in their homelands (although it’s always been at least a little bit of both, and moves in waves). They need us to want to kill each other in some way or other, this is just one facet of that strategy. I forget who it was recently that actually said (a little too publicly) that if they don’t get us all back under control soon they’ll never be able to send us to war again.