Thoughts, inspirations, writerly things. Fangeeking SPN mostly...plus Incryptid, Liad and etc. Heteroflexible poly cis female (she/hers). Age=likely older than you. NSFW mostly kept linked or below the fold. Header image by @remefla_draw- used with permission.
don't let this flop. monty python watchers what phrases have had the most impact on your lexicon. for me it's "what's all this then" and "other than that, perfectly normal"
There was an interesting situation at work recently. I'm gonna keep it vague for privacy, but basically the husband of a patient threatened to shoot hospital employees after he perceived they were ignoring his wife's situation. Which, looking at the case, people were like, yeah, this patient was in prolonged discomfort and had delayed care over multiple shifts due to factors that weren't malicious but were careless. Basically, the task that would have helped this patient was classic "third thing on your to do list." It had to be done, but it didn't need to be done urgently. The impact of not doing this task likely wouldn't be felt on your shift. The work of doing this task would require the coordination of a couple different people. Very easy to just keep pushing it back, and because it wasn't an emergency (until it was), it just kept being pushed back.
You could do a root-cause analysis of the whole thing (and we have) to really break down what happened, but ultimately the effect was the same as if the neglect had been malicious. I'm sympathetic to the husband, as were a lot of people in this situation, because, yes, hospital staff dropped the ball in a way that meant the patient was in unnecessary pain and discomfort with delay of care for over a day, despite multiple requests from patient and family to address the situation. The husband reacted emotionally to a situation where he'd felt helpless and ignored. Institutional neglect ground away at him until he verbally snapped.
And the way he snapped was to tell staff, "I'm going to come back with a gun and shoot you all for what you've done." Which is about as explicit a threat as you can get. Does he get to keep visiting the hospital after that? How do we be fair to him, to the patient, and to the staff? He probably didn't mean it. Right? But how do you ignore a statement like that? If he does come back and commit a shooting, how will you justify ignoring his threat? But does one sentence said at an emotional breaking point define him? How much more traumatic are we going to make this hospital stay?
A couple years back, I worked on a floor a few hours after a patient had been escorted away for inappropriate behavior--by the way, you can't imagine how inappropriate the behavior has to be for us to do that. I have never seen another case like this. That patient said he was going to come back with a gun and shoot nurses that he identified by name. This didn't come to pass. Whether that was because the patient didn't mean it or changed his mind or was prevented or simply was not mentally coordinated enough to follow through on the plan, I don't know. I do know that shift fucking sucked. I remember the charge nurse telling me that it wasn't our jobs to die for our patients. If there was shooting, she told me to run.
There was another situation recently involving a patient in restraints. I despise restraints. I think the closest legitimate use for them is in ICUs for stopping delirious patients from ripping out their ventilators, and that should still be a last resort. I discontinue restraints whenever I inherit them, and I am very good at fixing problems before restraint seem like the only solution. Having said that, I work in a hospital that uses restraints, and so I am complicit in their use. Recently I walked into a situation involving restraints with zero context for what was happening, just that there was a security situation involving a patient who had been deemed for some reason to lack capacity to make medical decisions. They were on a court hold and a surrogate med override, which means they cannot refuse certain medications. The whole situation was horrible, and I've spent the days since it happened thinking about every way I personally failed that patient and what to do different next time.
At one point, the patient called one of the nurses a bitch, and the nurse said, "hey cmon, that's not nice," and the patient replied, "if you were in hell, would you call the devil a nice name?" And yeah! Fair! It is insane to expect people who are actively being denied their autonomy to be polite to us as we do it.
Then there was another patient on the behavioral health floor who got put in seclusion. It's so frustrating, by the way, that staff put them in seclusion because it would have been extremely easy to avoid escalating the situation to the point that it got to. But the situation did escalate, and by the time the patient was locked in a seclusion room, they were shouting slurs and kicking the walls. Other patients were scared of the patient even when they were calm because the patient talked endlessly about guns, poisons, bombs, etc. When I checked in with the patient in the seclusion room, they called me a cog in a fascist machine just following orders. And I was like, yeah. Fair.
Another patient: one night when I was charge nurse, I replied to a security situation where a patient trapped a staff member in the room and tried to choke her. The staff member escaped unharmed. She told me later that the patient had been verbally aggressive to her all day, but she hadn't told anyone because she knew he was having a bad day, she didn't want to get him in trouble, and she didn't think anything was actually going to happen. She said, "Patients are mean all the time."
And another case: I had a different patient with the ultimate combination of factors for violent agitation--confused, needed a translator, was hard of hearing so the translator was of little use, in pain, feverish, scared, withdrawing from alcohol, hadn't slept in two days, separated from his caregiver who had also just been hospitalized--the whole shebang. He shouted at us that we were human trafficking him and could not be reoriented to where he actually was or that he was sick. I tried all my usual methods of deescalation, which I am typically very good at. I could not get him to calm down. He had a hospital bed where the headboard pulls out so you can use it as a brace during compressions. He ripped that out and threw it at the window, trying to shatter the glass. At that point, with the permission of his medical surrogate and with help from security, I forcibly gave him IV medication for agitation and withdrawal. He slept all night with a sitter at his bedside to monitor him. I pondered when medication passed over the line into chemical restraint, but I stand by the decisions I made that shift.
Last one: I had a different patient who was dying who had a child with a warrant out for arrest. We didn't know for what, and no one investigated further because no one wanted to find out anything that might prevent this person from visiting his dying parent. Obviously, "warrant for arrest" could mean literally anything, although it was significant enough that security was aware of the situation and wanted us aware as well, but I was struck by how proactively the staff protected his visitation rights and extended him grace. Everyone was very aware of how easily the wrong word could start a process that would result in a parent and child losing the chance to say goodbye to each other.
In the case of the husband who threatened a mass shooting, you'd be surprised how many of the staff advocated for him to keep all visitation rights. After all, the patient wanted him there.
Violence--verbal, physical, active, passive, institutional, direct, inadvertent, malicious--pervades the hospital. It begets itself. You provoke people into violence, and then use that violence to justify why you must do actions that further provoke them. And also people are not helpless victims of circumstance, mindlessly reacting to whatever is the most noxious stimuli. But also we aren't not that. You have to interrupt the cycle somewhere. I think grace is one of the most powerful things we can give each other. I also think people own guns. Institutions have enormous overt and covert power that can feel impossible to resist, and they are made up of people with necks you can wring, and those people are the agents of that unstoppable power, and those people don't have unlimited agency and make choices every day about how and when to exercise it. We'll never solve this. You literally have to think about it forever, each and every time, and honor each success and failure by learning something new for the next inevitable moral dilemma that'll be along any minute now and is probably already here.
I wanna add two more thoughts that I’ve had since writing this, or rather thoughts that I’ve realized I also want to articulate
One, the onus for breaking the cycles of violence is on the healthcare system. We hold almost all of the cards, we have the institutional power, we are the ones that get to go home at the end of the day, we are the ones interacting with difficult situations but not LIVING with them. Moral injury, moral distress, compassion fatigue, second victim syndrome—these are all very real and very painful experiences. But the answer to them cannot be embracing callousness and passivity.
Two, when I say “we will never fix this,” what I mean is that there will never be a time when we’ve got a system so good we get to stop trying. Sometimes we talk about some mythical utopian future where we’ve got everything set up so well that we’ve negated every human flaw, but we all know that’s not realistic. Every institution will always need to monitor its use of power. Every individual will always have to monitor their interactions with people they think are difficult or frightening or annoying. You set up the best systems you can and then you change it to evolve with the actual world it exists in. We talk a lot about how to create systems for patient safety, and hospitals have made genuine improvements to make certain mistakes very hard to do by accident. Ideally, that’s the same thing we’d do for psychological safety. Ultimately though, the final safety check is always you. Just telling people to be careful is a terrible safety plan, but you also DO have to be careful. You never get to stop being vigilant. You never get to stop trying. That’s part of what makes the work so exhausting, and part of why people stop doing it. I think acknowledging the difficult and endless nature of this vital and rewarding work is important for helping people keep doing it.
Stop just asking "is it normal?" and start asking "is it harming anyone?" Lots of harmful things are normalized in this society and lots of things considered weird or rare are completely harmless. Whether something is considered normal or common shouldn't be the deciding factor in whether it's okay
I’m not sure if you do nsfw words or phrases. But is there something you can post for the writers who need words for sex scenes? Ones that won’t make reader cringe or throw up? And ones that won’t sound repetitive?
110 "Beautiful" Words for Your Sex Scenes
A-E
Agitate - to move with an irregular, rapid, or violent action
Amatory - of, relating to, or expressing sexual love
Ardor - sexual excitement; extreme vigor or energy
Assail - to encounter energetically; to afflict in a manner that threatens to overwhelm
Austere - harsh and threatening in manner
Bemoan - to feel sorry or dissatisfied about
Bestrew - to lie scattered over
Carnal - given to crude bodily pleasures and appetites
Cavernous - suggesting a cavern; composed largely of vascular sinuses and capable of dilating with blood to bring about the erection of a body part
Coax - to gently urge by caressing or flattering
Compulsion - an irresistible persistent impulse to perform an act
Concrete - to become physically firm or solid
Constriction - the act or process of reducing the size or volume of something by pressing
Curvature - a curved surface of an organ
Delectation - delight, enjoyment
Deluge - a great flow of water or of something that overwhelms
Devoir - something one must do because of prior agreement
Dew - moisture especially when appearing in minute droplets
Douse - a heavy drenching
Ecstasy - rapturous delight; a state of being beyond reason and self-control
Enraptured - to fill with delight
Entreat - to make an earnest request; plead
Entwine - to become twisted or twined
Erogenous - of, relating to, or arousing sexual feelings; sexually sensitive
Exult - to be extremely joyful; rejoice
F-O
Fervid - marked by often extreme fervor (i.e., intensity of feeling or expression; intense heat)
Feverish - marked by intense emotion, activity, or instability
Flushed - tinged with red especially in the face (e.g., from physical exertion)
Flutter - to vibrate in irregular spasms
Foment - to promote the growth or development of; rouse, incite
Fragmentize - fragment (i.e., to fall to pieces)
Frisson - a brief moment of emotional excitement; shudder, thrill
Fuse - to come together to form a single unit
Gasp - to catch the breath convulsively and audibly (as with shock)
Gluttony - greedy or excessive indulgence
Harmony - pleasing arrangement of parts
Ichorous - of a thin watery or blood-tinged discharge
Immovable - incapable of being moved
Impetus - stimulation resulting in increased activity
Imprint - to mark by pressure
Impure - lewd, unchaste
Incantation - a written or recited formula of words designed to produce a particular effect
Intensity - extreme degree of strength, force, energy, or feeling
Inundate - overwhelm; overflow
Kindle - to stir up; arouse
Lecherous - given to or suggestive of lechery (i.e., inordinate indulgence in sexual activity; lasciviousness)
Levitating - to rise or float in or as if in the air especially in seeming defiance of gravitation
Licentious - disregarding sexual restraints
Lissome - easily flexed; lithe (i.e., characterized by easy flexibility and grace)
Luscious - sexually attractive; seductive, sexy
Mantra - a statement repeated frequently
Murmur - a soft or gentle utterance
Nectar - something delicious to drink
Nimble - quick and light in motion; agile; responsive, sensitive
Oceanic - vast, great
Overflowing - a flowing over; inundation
P-S
Palpate - to examine by touch
Palpitate - to beat rapidly and strongly; throb
Partake - to take part in or experience something along with others
Pearl - something resembling a pearl; precious
Pining - to yearn intensely and persistently especially for something unattainable
Piquant - agreeably stimulating to the taste; engagingly provocative
Plaint - wail
Plunge - to cause to penetrate or enter quickly and forcibly into something
Propulsion - the action or process of propelling (i.e., to drive forward or onward by means of a force that imparts motion
Pulsate - to throb or move rhythmically; vibrate
Rapacious - ravenous (i.e., very eager or greedy for satisfaction or gratification
Rasp - a rasping sound, sensation, or effect
Relish - enjoyment of or delight in something that satisfies one's tastes, inclinations, or desires
Repine - to long for something
Rhapsody - rapture, ecstasy
Ripple - to have or produce a ripple effect; spread
Salacious - arousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination
Silken - soft, lustrous; harmonious
Siren - resembling that of a siren; enticing
Slaver - to let saliva or some other substance flow from the mouth
Sluice - to drench with a sudden flow
Sob - to catch the breath audibly in a spasmodic contraction of the throat
Sodden - heavy with or as if with moisture or water; to be soaked
Stirring - marked by much life, movement, or activity
Sublime - to elevate or exalt
Succulent - full of juice; moist and tasty; toothsome
Succumb - to yield to superior strength or force or overpowering appeal or desire
Sumptuous - extremely costly, rich, luxurious, or magnificent
Supple - capable of being bent/folded without creases, cracks, or breaks; able to perform bending/twisting movements with ease
Supplicate - to ask for earnestly and humbly
Surge - to rise and move in waves or billows; swell
Surrender - to give oneself up into the power of another; yield
Svelte - lithe (i.e., easily bent or flexed)
Swirl - to have a twist or convolution
T-Y
Taut - tense; not relaxed; rigid, stiff
Tempestuous - marked by bursts of intense activity
Tenderness - sensitivity to touch or palpation
Throes - pangs, spasms
Thrum - to sound with a monotonous hum
Torrid - ardent, passionate; hot
Undulate - to move in waves; to rise and fall in volume
Unyielding - characterized by lack of softness or flexibility
Unyoke - to take apart; to force apart
Vehement - marked by forceful energy
Vigorous - carried out forcefully and energetically
Vitality - power of enduring
Voluptuous - conducive to or arising from sensuous or sensual gratification
Voracity - the quality or state of being voracious (i.e., ravenous; excessively eager)
Wanton - causing sexual excitement; lustful, sensual
Whet - to make keen or more acute; excite, stimulate
Winded - cause (someone) to have difficulty breathing because of exertion; panting, gasping for breath
Worship - extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to
Writhe - to move with twists and turns; intertwine
Yearn - to long persistently; to feel tenderness or compassion
Hope you use these words in ways that won't make your readers cringe or throw up, dear Anon! But it's fine if some of them do—as long as you are satiated with your own writing :)
romaincrisis
amandla
kianamaiart
gracieabrams
