*Thinks*

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I like speculating how technology will impact our lives, and right now I'm imagining lots of people wearing beautiful, sheer face veils to protect oneself from the creepy new stalker-specs.

Added bonus if they incorporate particle protection for things like RSV and COVID.

Like imagine the below image has a filter mask behind it...

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In honour of disability pride month:

If you ask a person to do something and they get an accessibility aid to do said task, don't assume that it's too hard for them and take the task away. That just makes people feel like they're not allowed to use the aid, and will try to do tasks without the aid.

Eg: I wear gloves to cut up acidic food because it makes my eczema flare up. When people see me put on the gloves, they're like "oh I forgot, let me do it."

No, I'm happy to do it, just as long as I'm allowed my accommodation.

I imagine this goes for many people with disabilities who use accessibility aids etc.

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I made a factual comment on a post (think "the sky can be pink depending on various factors") and so many people have been commenting: "well actually the sky can be pink depending on the following factors."

I know this is the piss on the poor website but it's hilarious and infuriating to see it in real time and in my notifications. Why are you telling me?! I'm the one that made the comment first!

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It's so funny listening to people complain that Jane Austen's works are serious and stuffy. Clearly you never read Mansfield Park and heard that the Thrush was going out of harbour.

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Once I delivered a baby whose intestines were outside her body.

I was quite a new midwife and I had a huge audience of obstetricians and paediatricians and paediatric nurses and gawkers.

And when I delivered the baby and she was wrapped, for her own protection, in glad wrap, I said:

"Can she come back to her mother?"

And they looked at each other and agreed that, yes, it would be OK.

So I took a few steps over to the baby and picked her up off the resuscitare, and put her on her mother.

And the mother whispered to her baby:

"I'm sorry I didn't grow you properly."

And that nearly broke my heart.

Never, be you young or new or whatever, be afraid to ask the question. I was young, and I asked if the baby could go to her mother. No one else, as experienced as they were, asked that in those crucial moments after birth.

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It's so funny reading articles about how (mainly USAmerican) actors use "method acting" as an excuse to act like an arsehole, when the creator thought of it a an early phase of his learning and turned his back on it, declaring it to be stupid, immature, and worthless (I'm paraphrasing)

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The fun thing about Alshepian is that the consonants are so emphasised:

I shall not suffer your

Selfish bandoliers

And garrolect thy foulest cellectome.

I mean how FUN is that to say?!

And the next verse is arguably more fun:

Belloctime, you shall not hale me,

While in that fallosyke,

They scraped it aike,

Aie, ye, we, and tan.

From Nights in Pale Yellow (modern title, we obviously don't know what the original title was).

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Tattoo people: if one puts emla or similar on the area about to be tattooed, does it have an impact on the quality?

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No one cares but I went into SVT and look at my heart rate...

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I wish more people knew about the Thursday Next series. They're full of time travel, excursions into fiction, competative and very violent croquet, vampires and werewolves, mindworms, religion, parenting, literature as a driving force of culture, dodos, battenburg cake, Neanderthals, The Socialist Republic of Wales, cheese smuggling, and PTSD. There's something for everyone and will broaden your horizon, whilst making you laugh and think.

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If you invite me into your home, I WILL set your oven clock to the correct time

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I absolutely lost my shit at work yesterday. I (midwife) had this woman who had been spurious labouring for WEEKS and needed induction/delivery for her mental health (I could list the reasons but don't want to for the sake of privacy) and had basically been promised that this woman could have an epidural and induction, but then a more senior doctor walked in and shut it all down, saying all the evidence showed 39 weeks was so much better for babies blah blah blah. I was so angry I had tears and wobbly voice and the woman had to comfort ME! I was so ashamed, the woman was the one in distress, not me! I was just so mad for her!

In the end we (the woman, her partner and me) fought so hard that they booked her for an induction in the morning, promising to reconsider epidural if the other analgesia through the night didn't cut it.

But the fact that we're putting the theoretical health of the as yet unborn fetus above the health of the woman just made me SO MAD. We smugly claim that we're so much more progressive than the US, and yet here we are doing the exact same thing. Sure it's not as extreme as waiting until the woman is actually dying of a ruptured ectopic, but it's related.

My woman no longer wanted to be pregnant, she was term, and the doctors WHO HAD NEVER MET THIS WOMAN were shutting us down.

Sure, we need to use our clinical judgement and advise pregnant people that though they're sick of being pregnant at 38 weeks that is better to wait until at least 39, but COME ON!

I am really hoping that when I get into work this pm that she's had her baby and on a journey to better mental health.

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We have got to get more normal about death.

I'm a midwife, so maybe my perception is different to the average nurse, but the other day I was helping in a room where a 91 year old lady was deteriorating. She had been refusing to let us call her family, and I was trying to get her to reconsider. I got her to talk about her family, suggested that maybe they'd be upset at her not calling them when she was unwell, giving my perspective about what i would hope my mother would do in that situation etc. It was all very light-hearted and pleasant.

This lady had an end of life plan that included no resuscitation, no intubation, no ICU etc. She was very frank and unafraid.

"Am I dying?" She asked me at one stage. It was a general question - no fear. She was just mildly interested.

I replied "I don't know, I'm not a doctor. But I don't love your numbers, so maybe?"

She gave a kind of "eh!" shrugging reaction, and a nurse who'd arrived to help butted in with "of course you're not dying! You're going to be fine! We just think your children should be here!"

And that was a total lie. I knew the doctors thought she was on her way out. So why lie? She was 91 years old, her husband had been dead at least 5 years, she was a faithful Italian Roman catholic lady she had a bunch of children and grandchildren, she had spent the morning cooking for them and she was ready to go.

Just be honest! In that case, I'm certain it was the kindest and most honest thing to tell her that we thought she was dying, so she should probably wake her kids up to come in and say farewell. She'd lived an amazing life, and dying, to me, is just the next part of that. Why infantalise the elderly and pretend they're going to go home like nothing happened?

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Sam Vimes, my beloved.

Sam Vimes, who was an alcoholic but found a reason and a purpose.

Sam Vimes, who was drawn from the bottle to a crime.

Sam Vimes, who stood up and became a leader.

Sam Vimes, who failed and would have given himself to the Gonne, but was saved by a myth disguised as a man.

Sam Vimes, who realised he was wrong and risked it all to uphold the humanity of what everyone else saw as a piece of clay.

Sam Vimes, who chose to chase a criminal and in doing so stopped a war.

Sam Vimes, who died in that other reality.

Sam Vimes, who killed a werewolf with his bare hands to protect the woman he loved and the officers he was upholding,

Sam Vimes, who wanted to beat a torturer to death but saw himself staring across the room and across the years and had mercy.

Sam Vimes, who saw a murdered (goblin) girl and said "NO"

Sam Vimes, who knew "perks" were part of life, and comforted the girl who had killed her family unintentionally with them.

Sam Vimes, who saved the blacksmith who wanted to defeat him.

Sam Vimes, who showed me that even though I saw myself as a failure, as fallen - I could still change and make change.

To Sam, and to Terry - thank you.

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Breasts are not exclusively female. And no, I'm not just talking about trans people. Everyone is born with breasts. They don't magically turn from "chest" to "breast" at some magical point in a person's life.

Babies are born with breast tissue. The only people who don't have breasts are people who have had them removed for one reason or another.

So stop treating them as a solely female or womanly thing. Trans dudes also breastfeed. Chestfeeding is a silly term and if people weren't so weird about breasts then it wouldn't even be a conversation we need to have.

[sweeetestcurse]

Planet Earth II: Episode 05 - Grasslands