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Med school exams be like

Question: a patient presents with [very specific set of stereotypical symptoms] ...

Me: YES I KNOW THIS ONE I'M SO GLAD I STUDIED IT

Question: ... and is diagnosed with [syndrome]

Me: oh no

Question: given the likely treatment, what entree should they avoid during their birthday meal ten years from now?

Me: ...

studydiaryofamedstudent

I keep showing of this thing, but gosh I’m in love. Its a daniel wellington Petite classic!

pusheen

zainyk

A few months ago while I was visiting Japan with Matthew, my sister in law sent me a message asking me if I would help out with a school project that my niece had been assigned. She would send me a picture of a character, Flat Stanley, that the school had asked relatives of the kids to take pictures of in front of landmarks they found on their travels. I was happy to oblige.

It was a happy time for me, I was as I am now, deeply in love with Matthew, someone no one in my family knows about, someone whose existence I hid from the people I love most because for them to no about him would mean them learning about me something I have kept hidden my whole life. My life had changed drastically in the preceding year and a half and I had grown tired of the lies, i had convinced myself, now that I knew myself, that I had found myself, that honesty had to be the natural progression of the path that had led me to love.

I decided that the pictures I would send would be of flat stanley in front of Tokyo landmarks, but the one holding stanley would not be me but Matthew.

The project was a hit with my niece and her appreciative parents as well as the school who proceeded to decorate the classroom with my pictures. No one mentioned Matthew and I assumed they thought he was just a friend.

I have failed to come out to my brother many times over the years, even though I have been pretty sure he knew everything. I moved to the north of England and continued my travels, with Matthew in tow. The reality of my failure was still the cause of great turmoil to me. After all if i couldn’t even speak to my brother who i know to be an understanding and liberal man, then how could i possibly finish my journey by being myself with the rest of my family.

I came back to london this week having been in Spain living a blissful existence deeply in love and surrounded by beauty and once again i thought I would be able to do it, i thought i had to do it as Matthew would require some comfort in knowing I wasn’t weak and my love for him is real and our future together would be lived in the open.

I asked my sister in law if i could stay over one night this week so I could spend time with the kids, whom i miss very much. It turned out that the night, last night, that i stayed over my sister in law would be out leaving just me and my brother and three sleeping children. I thought it would be the perfect chance. Just the two of us alone in the kitchen.

I could not do it. I stayed outside in the garden sucking on nicotine, he sat in the kitchen but something seemed off, he was clearly waiting for me to say something as he does in his quiet and brilliant way. I could not do it. Before i knew it the night was over. I went to bed distraught and upset that again i had failed like i had failed for 20 years. Terrified that the man i love, the man with whom i am moving in tomorrow, would be lost because I am a coward. Despite all the change in my life, despite the iron rod being placed in my back, despite all the enlightenment I had achieved I could not do it. I am a coward.

I slept 2 hours and woke up to take the older niece to school with my sister in law.

When i returned home, my brother was in the kitchen with my middle niece. I said good morning to her and him.

Kiki looked at me.

“Uncle Zain, when are we going to meet auntie…uncle Matthew?”

It took me a second to understand what was happening. For a split second denial and lies flooded my brain and I looked at my niece and I could not lie to her.

“How do you know about Matthew, Kiki?”

Her two parents standing behind me with smiles on their faces and love in their hearts said in chorus, two words:

“Flat Stanley”

On the verge of tears I looked at them, my brother staring at me, happy and I could lie no more.

“Its true, I’m gay”

My brothers answer:

“It’s about bloody time”

He had known i wouldn’t be able to lie to Kiki, he knew that this would be a soft way to get me to open up, my brother is a smart man. It worked. They had known for longer than I thought, and they knew looking at those pictures of Matthew that I was in love.

They want to meet him, we are coming to London to stay with them in August so he can meet the kids, at my brothers request.

My whole life I never thought anyone in my family would know what the entire world already knew. Now it is out there and it is out of my hands into the mouths of babes.

Today was one of the most important days of my life and it all happened by 9am. The rest of the day has been a haze.

I am scared, I am exhilarated and tomorrow i will move into a home with the man i love. I am 34 years old and I feel my life is just beginning.

Thank you flat stanley.

meanwhileonwednesday

I think, instead of telling kids ‘don’t do drugs, they’re bad’ we should show them the opiate withdrawal patient I had the other day

25 years old, in jail for god knows what, cops bring him in with a lac to his forehead from banging it on the wall repeatedly. He is already handcuffed so we put him in an isolation room, with sliding glass doors. Because he is in custody we take everything but the bed out of the room.

Patient is screaming the whole time he doesn’t want to be there (same bro) with blood everywhere from the head lac.

5min later, I hear this sickening crash, I’m pretty sure someone has just run head first into the glass doors, because mate I’ve done that before those curtains are assholes, so rounding the corner I see blood all over the glass door, patient still screaming he wants out but is now banging his head on the glass.

It takes 4 security guards to hold this guy down, he is absolutely losing his shit, screaming and flailing and has no idea whats going on. Calling out for his mom, for Neil (???), for a sandwich, doesn’t know what day it is or just refuses to answer we can’t tell, pupils 4mm and sluggish but thats how it was when they brought him in, so security cuffs him to the bed so he can’t hit the wall.

Fastforward 10 minutes and he has dislocated/broken his wrist trying to get out of the bed and to the door, he has puke and stool everywhere, refused to take the ativan so we gave midaz, but that didn’t touch him.

This guy screamed from 2-7, we maxed out what we could give him for benzos and he was extraordinarily agitated and wouldn’t settle and was only in the beginning stages of withdrawals. It was terrifying, but the thing that got me was after screaming about how we took the 20′s (from his underwear??) he was quiet for a minute, I thought ‘shit the midaz finally caught up with him and now were gonna need to intubate’ but he then screams

“I don’t want to do this anymore, I don’t want to be on drugs anymore, I want this to stop, I want to be clean, please someone help me”

And thats what got me. This guy was 25, had his whole life ahead of him, but got caught up in drugs and it was going to kill him, and he wanted out, but withdrawals were so bad that it was easier to keep using.

Fuck telling kids don’t do drugs. Show them what its like to try to stop, how all your friends die from OD, how you are one phonecall-not-made away from death yourself, how you get to be tied to a bed in the ER and your nurses need to apologize to other patients because you can’t stop screaming and just shit yourself and puked the cookie I gave you and your body is on fire.

Don’t just tell them not to do it, because that doesn’t work, show them what its like to try to stop, because sometimes fear works better than facts.

Note: Throughout the day we gave him 4 of ativan, 27.5 of Midazlolam and 12 of haldol, and this guy still was still agitated and screaming and 100% inconsolable, and by that time the doc was like ‘we can’t give him anymore, but lets transfer him out before he crashes’. It was a fucking time

noenee-art

Black Cats need more love!

Available On Redbubble!

noenee-art

On the lead up to October, have some vamps

thesonofhypnos

noenee-art

Don’t worry they’re safe (and grounded).

occidio-blog-blog

te5seract

Energy flow, spring storm & Japanese Zen by Hidenobu Suzuk

striderepiphany

This is the funniest joke I’ve ever made

raindyops

favorite exo non-title tracks

katebishopofearth

Wtf...WTF CLARKE AND NIYLAH I DONT UNDERSTAND??!??? It came out of nowhere??? -100 anon

“Oh no we absolutely need an explicit f/f sex scene otherwise no ones going to know Clarke is bi”

the-writers-society-deactivated

Are These Filter Words Weakening Your Story?

After putting my writing on hold for several weeks, I decided to jump back in. I expected to find all sorts of problems with my story–inconsistencies in the plot, lack of transitions, poor characterization–the works. But what began to stick out to me was something to which I’d given little thought in writing.

Filter words.

What are Filter Words?

Actually, I didn’t even know these insidious creatures had a name until I started combing the internet for info.

Filter words are those that unnecessarily filter the reader’s experience through a character’s point of view. Dark Angel’s Blog says:

“Filtering” is when you place a character between the detail you want to present and the reader. The term was started by Janet Burroway in her book On Writing.

In terms of example, you should watch out for:

To see

To hear

To think

To touch

To wonder

To realize

To watch

To look

To seem

To feel (or feel like)

Can

To decide

To sound (or sound like)

To know

I’m being honest when I say my manuscript is filled with these words, and the majority of them need to be edited out.

What do Filter Words Look Like?

Let’s imagine a character in your novel is walking down a street during peak hour.

You might, for example, write:

Sarah felt a sinking feeling as she realized she’d forgotten her purse back at the cafe across the street. She saw cars filing past, their bumpers end-to-end. She heard the impatient honk of horns and wondered how she could quickly cross the busy road before someone took off with her bag. But the traffic seemed impenetrable, and she decided to run to the intersection at the end of the block.

Eliminating the bolded words removes the filters that distances us, the readers, from this character’s experience:

Sarah’s stomach sank. Her purse—she’d forgotten it back at the cafe across the street. Cars filed past, their bumpers end-to-end. Horns honked impatiently. Could she make it across the road before someone took off with her bag? She ran past the impenetrable stream of traffic, toward the intersection at the end of the block.

Are Filter Words Ever Acceptable?

Of course, there are usually exceptions to every rule.

Just because filter words tend to be weak doesn’t mean they never have a place in our writing. Sometimes they are helpful and even necessary.

Susan Dennard of Let The Words Flow writes that we should use filter words when they are critical to the meaning of the sentence.

If there’s no better way to phrase something than to use a filter word, then it’s probably okay to do so.

Want to know more?

Read these other helpful articles on filter words and more great writing tips:

Filter Words and Distancing Point of View

The Reasons Editors reject Manuscripts

Filter Those words and Strengthen Your Writing

med-engr

Medical school

Where every professor, in every lecture says

My specialty is the best and most important

Regardless of what specialty you go into, you are going to see a patient with this disease / you need to know this / this will be important

dxmedstudent

3. I, a god, don’t need to remember other specialities. But you, a mortal, must have a good knowledge of all other specialities AND a particularly excellent knowledge of mine.