Because it’s happened to us on a trek, if you see abandoned clothes, stop and search for anyone nearby. Late-stage hypotherima causes a thing called paradoxical undressing where the person feels too hot and starts taking their clothes off.
for a little bit of an order for this if it isn’t obvious: Take any wet clothes off (including sweaty clothes!! underlayers can become soaked with sweat while working in the cold and lead to hypothermia later) BEFORE you wrap the person in warm dry blankets/clothing.
Also I cannot stress the ‘do not rub’ thing enough. If you have a frozen steak, let it thaw a little bit and then give it a good rub. Take a peek at it via a hand lens. You’ll see tons of little cuts/gashes. That’s from the ice crystals cutting into the flesh. NEVER rub the skin of a hypothermia/extreme cold exposed person to warm them up unless you want the same damn thing happening to their flesh.
Don’t warm the extremities (hands/feet) too quickly. Not only would it be extremely painful, but the vessels in said extremities opening too quickly can lead to shock (part of the direct heat issue).
This deserves another reblog
For writers, AND real life, as places get VERY cold with limited heating being allowed to the people…
Stay DRY, stay warm.
I have Raynaud’s Syndrome and I try to remember this kind of thing every winter. It’s a huge part of why I hate very cold weather.
My new mission in life is to impart this wisdom to as many people as possible
IT’S ALSO USEFUL IF YOU HAVE TMJ DISORDER
in both cases: always start on the lowest setting and wrapped in something soft!! if it hurts, stop!!
But, re: sinuses: look up a diagram of where they are, and when a spot feels particularly good or is particularly congested, hold it there longer. Definitely keep tissues handy for when it drains. Also it can help if your sinuses hurt like fuck but aren’t actually congested (which happened when I had covid), but the effect doesn’t last long.
Re: TMJ disorder: You can just push it against the joint, obviously; if your vibe has a small contact point you can REALLY dig in there (but again: stop if it hurts). But don’t forget the whole area around the joint, around your ears, and up your scalp. There’s a lot of muscles that tighten when your jaw is tight/stiff/in pain. Be especially careful when on a spot that’s just skin over a bone without a lot of padding.
vibrators can also help if you have restless legs syndrome! Especially ones with fancy pulse patterns. When my RLS is severe I tuck them behind my knees or wherever & can finally lie still & sleep. You might need to wrap them in fabric to avoid skin irritation ymmv. There was even a paper published somewhere called “counter stimulatory devices for RLS” that was hilariously vague about saying the word “vibrator”
Once again adding also useful if you have dystonia or any kind of muscle spasticity. I have cervical dystonia (neck spasms) and dystonia in my left leg that’s essentially like persistent Charley horse cramps from my neuromuscular issues and bought a Hitachi expressly for this purpose lol
A vibrator has been recommended to me to unblock clogged milk ducts for anyone that may apply to
I learned about the sinus thing and immediately bought a vibrator for that purpose. And yes, it DOES help with sinus headaches.
Jokes on them too, we know how to be petty bitches in reaponse to this. Sit through the fucking 5 second delay and continue to use adblock AND Firefox to spite them.
They realise that 5 seconds of waiting is still better than waiting for, what is it now, 30+ seconds of unskippable ads right?
Friendly reminder that you can add this to your ublock block list to get rid of the five second delay on firefox:
That post about death note being “everyone’s first anime” (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science
Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?
The US, Sailor Moon
USA and Naruto.
UK - Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Tenchi Muyo… I think that’s it.
I distinctly remember watching all of those when I was younger.
Poland, first FIRST anime was probably either Yattaman or Time Bokan. First when I had a vague idea of what anime was, Sailor Moon.
Poland. Probably Yattaman.
England. Inazuma Eleven
Italy, either dragon ball or one piece
Canada, a bootleg of the first Fullmetal Alchemist
Canada, butchered Gatchaman.
Canada, French language version of Captain Hardock (aka Albator).
Canada, and an odd assortment of Escaflowne, Gundam wing, sailor moon, dragon ball, and the studio Ghibli movies my grandma always bought for me ( kiki for the win!). I think there’s more then that but those are the core ones i vividly remember
“You called me. I’m sure I heard it. Your soul was screaming: "I want power. Someone help me. I’ll give anything, if someone would save me. Even my soul.”“
哀しみのベラドンナ | BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (1973) dir. Eiichi Yamamoto
Ok so, take this with a BIG grain of salt, because I may be a medical doctor BUT you need to know how much wound care training we get in medical school: none. Zip. Zilch. There may be medical schools where you do, but mine wasn’t a bozo factory and there was NO wound care training. Everything I know I learned from one of several sources: an intensive 2-day wound care course I did in residency (highly recommend), the local Home Health wound care nurse (highly recommend), a completely batshit insane old white male doctor who started our learning sessions by yelling Vietnam War stories at me (do not recommend), a hospital wound care nurse (highly recommend), and experience (oh god do not recommend).
The first thing you need to know is that wound healing varies dramatically across the course of a lifespan. Kids? Kids will heal. If they don’t, get their ass to a pediatrician because there’s something genetic going on. Young adults will heal. Middle-aged adults will heal. You know who doesn’t heal for shit? The elderly, and people with severe illnesses, and people with uncontrolled type II diabetes.
Your body needs several things in order to heal. It needs macronutrients, so you need to be able to EAT protein, fat, and carbs. If you are on total parenteral nutrition, aka TPN, aka IV nutrition, you are going to be worse at healing. If you are starving yourself, you are going to be worse at healing. If your body is desperately funneling all the calories you take in to surviving your COPD or cancer, you are going to be worse at healing.
It also needs micronutrients. If your diet sucks, you won’t heal. Take a multivitamin once in a while.
There are two CRITICAL skin components to healing: collagen and elastin. Guess what we stop making as we age. Promoting collagen isn’t just good for “anti-aging,” it’s good for NOT ripping your skin apart. Taking oral collagen is probably bullshit because your body is going to have to disassemble it to get it across the intestinal membranes to absorb, but it’s also harmless, and if your diet REALLY sucks, who knows. Give it a try. Collagen is made of amino acids; think protein.
Another absolutely crucial component is blood flow. As people age, they start to develop cholesterol plaques lining arteries that eventually pick up calcium deposits. This makes blood vessels less elastic, which is a problem, but eventually also blocks them off, which is a much bigger problem. If someone has the major blood flow to their feet decreased by 90% by arterial stenosis, they are not going to heal for shit AND their foot’s gonna hurt.
One component of blood flow I hadn’t thought about before going into medicine is fluid retention. The way your body works, blood exits the heart at a very high velocity, but slows to a crawl by the time it gets into capillaries, the smallest blood vessels in the body. Water is a very small molecule and can leave the blood vessel, especially if there aren’t big, negatively-charged molecules like proteins like albumin in the blood vessels to hold the water there. And we’re built for this–some water is supposed to leak out of our blood vessels when it gets to real little vessels. It gets taken back up by the lymphatic system and eventually dumped back into the bloodstream at the inferior vena cava. But if you aren’t making albumin–for instance, in liver failure–you may leak a LOT of fluid into the tissue, so much that your legs get swollen, tight, the skin feeling woody and strange. This isn’t fixable by drainage because the fluid is everywhere, not in a single pocket we can drain. And because it puts so much pressure on the tissues of the skin, it often results in ulcers. Congestive heart failure, liver failure, kidney failure–these are all common causes of severe edema, aka swelling due to fluid in the tissues. And they’re a real bitch when it comes to wound care, because we have such limited resources for getting the fluid back out, which is a necessary first step to healing.
Pressure is another common cause of wounds. Pressure forces blood out of those little capillaries, so you starve the cells normally fed by those capillaries, and they die. It’s called pressure necrosis. Very sick people who can’t turn themselves over–people in the ICU, people in nursing homes–are especially prone to these wounds, as are people with limited sensation; pressure wounds are common in wheelchair users who have lost some feeling in the parts of their bodies that rub against those surfaces, or diabetics who don’t notice a rock in their shoe.
So, if you’re trying to treat wounds, the questions to ask are these:
Why did this wound happen?
-Was it pressure? If it’s pressure, you have to offload the source of the pressure or else that wound will not heal. End of story. You can put the tears of a unicorn on that thing, if you don’t offload the pressure it won’t heal.
-Was it fluid? If it’s fluid, you have get the fluid out of the issues or else it won’t heal. You can sometimes do that with diuretics, medications that cause the body to dump water through the kidneys, but that’s always threading a needle because you have to get someone to a state where they still have juuuuust enough fluid inside their blood vessels to keep their organs happy, while maintaining a very slight state of dehydration so the blood vessels suck water back in from the tissues. You can use compression stockings to squeeze fluid back into the vessels, but if they have arterial insufficiency and not just venous insufficiency, you can accidentally then cause pressure injury. The safest option is using gravity: prop the feet up above the level of the heart, wherever the heart is at, at that moment, and gravity will pull fluid back down out of the legs. Super boring though. Patients hate it. Not as much as they hate compression stockings.
-Was it a skin tear because the skin is very fragile? This is extremely common in the elderly, because they’re not making collagen and elastin, necessary to repairing skin. If this is the case, make sure they’re actually getting enough nutrition–as people get into their 80s and 90s, their appetites often change and diminish, especially if they’re struggling with dementia. And think about just wrapping them in bubble wrap. Remove things with sharp edges from their environments. I have seen the WORST skin tears from solid wood or metal furniture with sharp edges. Get rid of throw rugs and other tripping hazards. I had somebody last week who tried to a clear a baby gate and damn near destroyed their artificial hip.
The next critical question: why isn’t it healing?
-Are you getting enough nutrients? Both macro and micro?
-Are you elderly?
-Are you ill?
-Do you have a genetic disorder of collagen formation?
Fix why it’s not healing and almost anything will heal. If you’re diabetic, find a medication regimen that improves your sugars and stick to it. If you’re anorexic, get treatment for your eating disorder. If you have congestive heart failure, work with your doctor on your fluid balance. Wear the damn pressure stockings. Prop up your feet.
If, after those two unskippable questions are done, you want to do something to the wound–apply a dressing, do a treatment–that’s a whole other kettle of fish. I’ll write that later. The dryer just sang me its little song and I need to put away the laundry.
Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way opened to it?
Ruthless Rhymes for Martial Militants. These
conservative cartoons
from ~1913
depicting angry suffragettes as brutal anarchafeminists were somehow actually supposed to make the subjects
look bad, instead of amazingly badass.
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