Chetzemoka

joined 1 year ago
[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they provide a ton of transport services that are not emergency-related. If a person is completely bedbound, then any and all trips to the doctor need to be handled by an ambulance service that can provide a transport stretcher (a heavy duty collapsible stretcher with straps on it like a seatbelt) and personnel to transfer the person between their bed and the stretcher.

And we call the ambulance service when we discharge any patient from our hospital to a short term rehab facility, even if the person can move themselves from the bed to the stretcher. Just because it's transfer between medical facilities.

And if we transfer someone to another hospital with a higher level of care, we have to specifically request an emergency ambulance instead of a transport ambulance.

So those services are a lot more complicated than people realize. But in any of these situations, the patient shouldn't get an exorbitant bill because of some insurance company shenanigans, which is all in- vs. out-network stuff is.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 1 points 11 months ago

Iirc, it was like $0.10/message? So yeah, the brats were costing me money lol. And I was definitely on a T9 flip phone, none of this internet nonsense.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah but I didn't get my first cell phone until 2003 cause all these young kids I hung out with at work wouldn't stop bothering me about it lol. "We want to text you!" Brats.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Harpsichord. Almost forgot about that one. when Tori Amos breaks out the dual piano/harpsichord, great things happen.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Cello. No idea why. Yo-Yo Ma slays me.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Likely underlying neuroinflammation. We're learning more and more about the role of neuroinflammation in psychiatric conditions. It's well-known that a lot of psychiatric medications have anti-inflammatory effects, and there have always been competing hypotheses to the monoamine hypothesis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8490908/#:~:text=The%20neuroinflammation%20hypothesis%20of%20depression,proinflammatory%20cytokines%20and%20several%20metabolites

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6953590/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2017/jul/10/how-do-antidepressants-actually-work

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

"number of conflicts across the globe is at an historical high, and on the rise"

I really wish they had cited a source for this. I wonder what historical period their source is considering.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 22 points 11 months ago

I'd miss you guys. I've jumped in on conversations on your instance a couple of times and it always seems like a nice place

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 5 points 11 months ago

You are correct, and we actually also use them on people who are not actively dead, but are having a bad heart rhythm that is causing intolerable symptoms.

The shocking dead people to resuscitate them thing, the part that everyone is familiar with, is when the ventricles of someone's heart have started quivering in a chaotic rhythm called ventricular fibrillation or vfib. If someone is experiencing vfib, they're actually dead because vfib invariably degrades into full stop flatline very quickly. Shocking someone in vfib briefly stops their heart in hopes that it will reboot itself into a rhythm that is compatible with life.

But the right atrium can also fall into fibrillation. You've heard about this on TV (if you're in the US); we call that afib. Afib is compatible with life, because the ventricles are the main part of the pump and can continue to beat even if the right atrium goes a little haywire. But often that beating isn't very effective and people will experience low blood pressure and shortness of breath. And the right atrium isn't clearing blood out of itself effectively in afib, which can cause the blood to clot in the heart and lead to a stroke if a piece of clot breaks off.

So, you may be thinking to yourself, wait, ventricular fibrillation we use a defibrillator, so what about atrial fibrillation, and that is correct, we can use a defibrillator to shock someone in afib, reboot their heart, and hope they go back into a normal, more effective rhythm. (We do mildly sedate people before doing that lol.) Sometimes that works, sometimes we have to just control afib with meds and we have to keep them on blood thinners to prevent a clot in the heart.

And lastly, there's a more complicated heart rhythm called Supraventricular Tachycardia or SVT that sometimes also responds to being shocked. We try a couple of other treatments first for SVT, but shocking can work. And again, people are mildly sedated for that.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We still have the same infection control protocols to prevent spreading an illness from an infectious patient to other patients that we've had since before the pandemic. That includes wearing a mask (and usually gown, gloves, face shield) when in a room with an infectious patient. We're just not wearing masks in the hallways and break rooms anymore, and it's caused some outbreaks among staff.

One significant contributing factor to this is the ridiculous American expectation that people should work unless they can't stand up anymore, and if you take a day off, it comes out of your vacation time or it's possible that it could be unpaid. We incentivize people to ignore mild symptoms of illness that result in them arriving to work in the early infectious stages of illnesses. We need to change that, to encourage people to stay home even if they mostly feel well, but suspect they're coming down with something without it eating into their already scarce PTO.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's difficult to communicate with an elderly person whose hearing aid battery has failed (or who refuses to wear them). Communicating with them while wearing a mask is nearly impossible. It honestly complicates their care, and we did it through the entire pandemic.

When my hospital lifted its mask mandate, I thought I would wear a mask forever. It wasn't discouraged, left totally up to us. But then one time I pulled it down because I couldn't communicate with a patient. Then I did it again. Eventually I was routinely pulling it down to talk to people, and I thought why even bother?

Naturally I continue to wear one if someone is diagnosed with an actual respiratory illness. But the ease of communicating with the people who compromise the majority of the patient population in a hospital is my primary barrier to going back to wearing one all the time.

One thing we need that would really help is better protections for sick workers so people don't try to skirt the rules and talk themselves into coming to work in the early stages of an illness.

[–] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 16 points 11 months ago

There are many many other classes of medications for depression. SNRIs, tricyclics, mood stabilizers, bupropion is a completely different mechanism of action, even drugs that were originally developed to be antipsychotics are used off label.

I agree with others who have suggested that you should see an actual psychiatrist. Other prescribers just don't have the same training and experience as a psychiatrist with a medical doctor license. There are lots of medications available.

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