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Tips for Writing and Drawing Amputees: Bandaged Stumps

When writing and drawing amputee characters, unless your character only just lost their limb, they don't need to wear a bandage over their stumps.

to be clear, eda's depiction in the show was fine, since she'd only just lost her arm and went (presumably) without any medical attention, but because the show didn't have much time to show her afterwards, I've noticed a tendency of the fandom to draw her wearing the bandage permanently, so that's why I'm picking on her for my example lol.

It's a bit of a trope at this point, and I think it comes from one of a few different places:

Amputees do wear bandages on their stumps, but usually only for the first 6-12 weeks post-amputation, sometimes longer if the amputation was a result of a burn. It's possible people saw this though and assumed it was permanent.

Most amputees wear a sock made of either cotton or silicone under their prosthetics to provide them with some extra padding. These socks, called liners, often stick out from the top of the prosthetic socket and could possibly be mistaken for a bandage from a distance.

Some amputees will wear compression garments for a few months to a few years after their amputations which could also be mistaken for a bandage from a distance. These garments are designed to stop swelling and reduce phantom pain, but they aren't bandages.

Stumps get cold easier because their circulation typically isn't as good as the rest of the body, so some amputees will wear socks over them even if they aren't wearing a prosthetic to keep warm, which again could be mistaken for a bandage from a distance.

This one is funny, but in my experience unfortunately, it's the most common: people think the end of an amputee's stump is just a perpetual open wound that never heals. Meaning to avoid "gore" it needs to be covered. I've met fully grown adults who believed this until I showed up to work/uni without my prosthetics or socks on.

People are uncomfortable with seeing an uncovered stump and so put bandages over it to avoid confronting their biases.

Some combination of these points.

But yeah, unless your amputee has only just lost their limb in the last few weeks, they don't need a bandage.

The ironic thing too, is that for most amputees, bandaging a stump is nearly impossible. I've been in and out of hospital since I was 1 year old and only ever met 3 nurses and no doctors/surgeons who could successfully bandage my stump in a way that the bandage would even stay on. This is because stumps are usually tapered in shape (meaning they are wider at the top, closer to the body, and thinner at the bottom), so gravity will pull the bandage off 9 times out of 10.

On a final note: it's ok to show your amputee's stump, it's not gore, there's no blood, it just looks like a regular limb that just stops early. In fact, if you are writing/creating anything for kids or that is likely to be seen by kids, I encourage you to show your amputee's stumps at least once. I used to work on a disability awareness program for kids, and I lost count of the amount of times kids were terrified of me, because they all expected my leg to be bloody and gory. For a lot of kids, I was their first real-life exposure to an amputee, meaning they'd never even heard of people like me, or they had seen an amputee on TV, but because the show went out of its way to avoid showing the person's stump, they assumed it must have been because there was "something scary at the end" that they weren't supposed to see (kids are surprisingly perceptive, they will pick up on stuff like that without you realising). And scared kids aren't good at articulating why they're scared, and would often say really mean or hurtful things to me. I knew not to take it personally and learned how to handle those situations, but not everyone is used to dealing with kids. For a new amputee (or anyone who's less confident in their disability), the kinds of things those kids would say could be absolutely confidence destroying. I never blame the kids, it's not their fault, but the whole situation could have been avoided if they had seen people like us before they had the chance to hear the wrong info. Good representation like this can be the difference between a kid crying, making throw-up sounds and calling an amputee "disgusting monsters" (all things I've had kids do/say) and them just being like "oh ok, cool."

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(Not a gif this time cause it has audio 🔊)

My sister loves to spam the "talk" button when playing with the goat 10/10 experience, accurate goat

every sound i used is from the game, song is Nudism(night version) by River Boy

patreon

Reference (Juncrow by falseknees), comic ver. of the video and gifs⬇️

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Bless Rumi for thinking that her being ashamed her Dad was a demon was on the same level as Jinu being ashamed he condemned his mother and sister to death. Totally different level of shame babes.

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A take at redesigning the Batfamily. 

(some explanation down below)

Weiterlesen

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HUNTRIX and SAJA BOYS‼️

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I've talked a few times before about Barbara's ingrained ableism towards Cass and how it repeatedly drives a massive emotional wedge between them but what's underdiscussed is that it's actually not totally one sided. Cass also lets her ableist assumptions about Barbara come between them as well. She's obviously someone who lives for the physical. It's her first language, it's how she processes the world and it's her only real way of expressing herself. It's inevitable that someone who was raised like that, as Cass was, to see Barbara who can't move or fight the way she does as kind of... broken. Even if not consciously. Barbara constantly tries to push Cass into going outside, talking to people, having fun, making friends etc because Babs doesn't really understand Cass' needs and thinks forcing her out of her comfort zone and into a "normal" life is what's best for her. She is wrong about that of course but the way Cass interprets this is as Barbara trying to live vicariously through her because clearly she must be lacking fulfillment in her own life.

Which is also totally and spectacularly wrong. Babs never sees herself as broken and doesn't miss her old life, she's extremely clear about that. Cass is entirely just projecting her own ableism onto her, exactly the way Babs does her.

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I wish depression were an emergency. I wish someone could take one look at how sick I am and go “oh my god, we need to get you to a hospital!” and then when we get there I get rushed into surgery and the surgeons say “it’s a good thing you brought her here when you did, this is a seriously advanced case” and then they put me under and spend the next ten hours pulling metres of long, sticky black strands of gunk out of my body, throwing it immediately into an incinerator so that it can’t infect anyone else. And then they could stitch me back up and I could rest a few days, and when I leave the hospital everyone can see how much better I am and they congratulate me saying “well done, you’ve been so brave, I’m so glad you’re ok. I love you.”

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i remember when i was a child internet safety was like "if you even hint at the country you live in, you're gonna get kidnapped and murdered", and nowadays it is encouraged or even necessary to give corporations every single personal detail if you want to use anything because if they can't sell your information they cry so hard they throw up

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Corporate media does not cover stories that PBS will. It's that simple.

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affirmations for writers: i know how to write. i have seen sentences before, and i know how to make one. i can identify up to several words and their meanings. i am not afraid of semicolons.

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today i learned that the finnish word for ‘hazardous waste’ is ongelmajäte, which can also translate as ‘problematic garbage’ and my roommate and i immediately agreed this is a word that belongs on tumblr.

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superman always has amnesia in fics. i want batman to have amnesia. and clark has to justifiably explain why he needs to be by brucie’s side. like, bruce naturally assumes he’s is his metropolis boyfriend and clark is not fast enough to come up with a believable lie before the batkids are like YES, THIS IS YOUR BOYFRIEND CLARK, HE WEARS KHAKIS AND TERRIBLE TIES BUT YOU LOVE HIM 

clark splits time being superman and batman (because nightwing can’t fill in) and oh god, bruce has a crisis because he has a crush on batman

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Post on my dash about medical debt reminded me of the time tumblr saved me two grand. I don't think I told y'all about it because I am out of the habit of posting everything I do on tumblr lol

So. Last December, I had a bad cavity filled, and about a week later, I woke up with half of my face paralyzed. Which, as I'm sure you can imagine, freaked me the fuck out. Fortunately I had some level-headed Discord friends who a) told me what Bell's palsy was so I could look it up and b) reminded me to call my dentist for an emergency appointment. Dentist was also pretty sure it was Bell's palsy, but urged me to go to the emergency room to get checked out, because one-sided facial paralysis is also a possible indicator of a stroke. And you don't fuck around with strokes.

Bell's palsy, if you, like me of 6 months ago, don't know, is a harmless paralysis/muscle weakness on one side of the face that can be caused by a variety of things. It usually goes away on its own after a few weeks but also you can speed up the process with steroids.

I was pretty sure I was not having a stroke, because I'm Red Cross first aid certified and I know the symptoms of a stroke, and while one-sided facial paralysis is one of them, I didn't have any of the others. Also, I had quit my shitty job in October, which meant I had a shiny new marketplace health insurance plan and hadn't even touched my deductible. But I called my parents from the car and they urged me to get checked out and promised to help me pay off the emergency room bill if I needed it, because they're good people and they love me even if they drive me crazy sometimes. So off I went to the nearest emergency room.

Emergency room staff also didn't think I was having a stroke, because I waited ALL AFTERNOON, periodically having a new person come up to me and ask me to smile, hold both arms out to the side, press down on their hands, and tell them what month and year it was. (They don't ask who the president is anymore. Hmm, I wonder why.) One guy had me drink a cup of water while he watched. I cannot stress enough that I did not have any medical tests other than a physical examination: no CT scans or MRIs, no IV drugs or blood draws, nothing.

I get diagnosed with Bell's palsy and given a prescription for Prednisone. And then they give me a phone number and tell me to talk to this person about administrative stuff. So I call, and the dude on the phone verifies my name and date of birth and insurance information, and then he says, "It looks like your copay today is going to be $2400. How would you like to pay?"

I am, to this day, kind of impressed that he didn't even stutter over that number, but I assume working in a medical call center drains your entire soul. At this point, it's about 7pm, and I've been in the hospital since 2pm, and I'm stressed because half my face doesn't work, and I know that I can't afford $2400 because I quit my shitty job with nothing lined up back in October. But, I still remember every tumblr post I've ever read about health insurance and the medical system and how you can negotiate down a bill. I am not looking forward to this process, it sounds like a pain in the ass, but the alternative is paying $2400, so I say the magic words: "Send me an itemized bill."

I kinda expected the guy to try and get me to pay up front, but he just says "Ok" and finishes up the process. I get discharged, go to the only open pharmacy at that time of night to get my Prednisone, have the pharmacist tell me the prescription isn't written right and he can't fill it, go home, and have a screaming sobbing meltdown because I have used up every single milligram of cope in my entire body. (I got my steroids eventually, and the Bell's palsy cleared up in a couple weeks.)

A few weeks later, I get the bill in the mail. I brace myself and open it...

$300.

Turns out, after going through insurance and processing and everything, they couldn't actually find $2400 worth of stuff to charge me for. Shocking! Who could have predicted!

I might have been able to argue it down even more, but I was fed up with entire thing, so I paid the $300 just to be fucking done with it. Sometimes the cheapest way to pay is with money.

What if I had paid that $2400 up front? Do I think they would have been like, "Oh, oops!" and refunded me $2k? Well, possibly, but I am not optimistic.

So, thank you to everyone who has ever posted about navigating the US healthcare system on tumblr. Because of you, I knew how to handle this situation even when I was tired and stressed.

Don't forget to ask for an itemized bill, folks.

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ten dollars is really the new one dollar

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