Apytele

🤣

If you're happy you're happy (<3 from another RN)

Psych nurse protip: "I wanna be able to give this my full attention so we're gonna put a pin in this and circle back." Then you literally just leave, possibly mid-sentence if they're really that hyperverbal. Some acutely manic patients are so hyperverbal that I have to take their temperature under their armpit because they literally cannot keep their mouth closed around the probe.

Eh. You can get a vibrat~~or~~ing back massager from the home goods section in Walmart for $6.

That said all that serotonin is gonna make it HELLA hard to orgasm.

I became a nurse with a personality disorder, although I've had two full years off DBT for it. I find most things in life are a lot less about what you can do and a lot more about what you're willing to do. Go in understanding you're going to have to work twice as hard for them to see you as half as good and you'll be fine.

A few months ago a patient was mad I wasn't stopping the ghosts from raping his butt all night every night (I'm not even slightly kidding), so he snatched me up bodily and shook me around a little. I got loose pretty quick and my coworkers showed up and he got a looooot of drugs. Went to the urgent care for some muscle relaxers to keep my back from seizing up from it (not the first time this has happened, and won't be the last), took a nap, went back to work next Monday.

Employee health thinks it's bizarre how touchy I am about my back while not giving a fuck emotionally but like. The difference between this and my childhood is that my mom can't stop me from going to the doctor to keep CPS off our backs (it was my sister doing the hitting, my mother was just a rug sweeper).

He actually apologized when I came back to work. He had been too paranoid to take the meds initially (and we didn't force any until he got aggressive) but once he was lucid he regretted it. Honestly even when he was psychotic he was still a sweet dude he was just terrified of the ghosts that were raping his butt all night. Thankfully, hallucinations are like THE symptom of psychosis that all three generations of antipsychotic work well on so a lil haldol easily told those ghosts to go on somewhere.

well this is the last time I spend 30 minutes customizing and formatting patient education materials to focus on a specific medication someone asked about

I didn't auto generate it. I wrote it and used a tool to format it for clarity and to help me avoid excessively clinical language. I have ADHD and when I get to really talking about this stuff I have a tendency to create unorganized text walls full of words like pseudoparkinsonianism and oculogyric crisis (two things abilify is a lot less likely to cause than thorazine).

You asked what it was for and why it might have been prescribed, so I actually worked kinda hard to make a specific patient education snippet that introduced the rudimentary concepts then specifically focused in on the medication you asked about. I tried really hard to avoid a giant text wall of anecdotes about my ten years of professional inpatient psych experience and 15 years experience taking antipsychotics personally. I reread it several times to make sure that all of it was still accurate even after having the medical terminology simplified.

I took time out of my evening to create personalized patient education material for you for free. You're really ungrateful and I really regret trying this hard to help you.

I've spent my whole adulthood working in hospitals. They're shitholes, every single last one of them. Do every single thing you can to never be in one.

Drink water, plain water. Eat whole grains and leafy vegetables. Treat red meat like a dessert (and if you're morally opposed to meat, make sure you're still getting all your essential proteins). Find a physical activity you enjoy and do it at least three times a week. Either join an organized religion or specifically curate a group of people you do a weekly activity with who will come check on you if you suddenly stop showing up. And while you're at it pick a mindfulness activity that you either enjoy or that brings you peace (prayer qualifies but so can yoga or a lot of other things). Avoid nicotine and alcohol at all costs. Go easy on the weed, and avoid anything more interesting without guidance from either a medical professional or some kind of traditional expert on those substances. And if a competent doctor listens to your specific situation and tells you to do or not do something I've mentioned, listen to them instead of me.

Decide who you would want to speak for you on your death or near-deathbed. Choose people both trustworthy and level-headed who will put your wishes over their own emotions. Choose multiple people, because it's not unlikely that any one person will be in the car wreck with you. Talk to those people about what you want to happen or not happen so they can best carry out your wishes. Sign some kind of legally binding paperwork that cements them as the decision maker, especially if your first choice is not the default the state would choose (parent, spouse, sibling, adult child, etc). You can write whatever you want then to do on the paper, but the chosen person will have the right to override it if they think you would want them to. So sign the paper but don't forget to TALK to them about it.

And good luck because while this will give you the best odds, the universe might also just decide to fuck you in particular anyway.

If you wanna log your logs the old fashioned way with just a spreadsheet:

Date / time

• Small / medium / large
• Bristol Scale
• color
• could also add odor or discomfort if you're worried about that

On a second spreadsheet in that workbook, keep a food diary, because that's gonna provide a LOT of context (and you might discover some ways to be nicer to your tummy).

Imma pull a classic middle of the road ...thingy. Sometimes people use "I don't talk politics" to mean "I'm personally happy with how this part of the system is working so stop complaining" which is kinda shitty when they're not the one on the ass end of it. It's also cool to just have some crochet groups where the biggest drama is that I hold the hook like a knitter. Gotta decompress sometimes. Have the strength to do both and all.