togivemybest

[togivemybest]

345k+ new cases of covid today in india!! in a single day!! twitter and instagram are our healthcare system rn!! we're short on icu beds, oxygen cylinders, covid vaccines and drugs!! we have no slots in cremation grounds to respectfully do the last rites needed for our dead!! patients are dying outside hospitals because there are!! no!! beds!! patients are dying inside ambulances!! and the states that are claiming to have enough resources rn are on their way to have a shortage of the same!! healthcare workers are being stretched thin!! we're all facing an acute mental health crisis rn!! meanwhile our central govt is doing too little too late!! after spending months doing election rallies and giving a green light to religious festivals (with millions of attendees) up until last week, they've finally decided to wake up and start paying attention to the covid crisis and it!! is!! not!! enough!!

if you would like to help, check out this publicly sourced document that is collating and constantly updating mutual aid fundraisers. please please amplify and donate to even any one of these causes!! especially people outside of india: your money matters! as of 24th april, 2021, 1 USD = 75 Indian rupees, 1 euro = 90 INR so your money is extremely valuable and it will save lives!

[togivemybest]

So, India is dying.

Look, I know a good number of you are from the US and things aren't amazing there either, but my country is literally on the brink of collapse. So I'd love it if we could talk about that for a minute.

If you can't do anything else, please just read and reblog.

A second COVID wave has taken out the healthcare system. There are no more hospital beds. There's an oxygen shortage. There's a critical vaccine shortage. The Central Government has thrown its hands up and is passing the baton to the State Governments to do what they can.

There are over 16 million covid cases. A record 330,000 new cases reported yesterday - comparable to the US at its peak. 187,000 dead as of today.

There is no plan.

Mass cremations are taking place. The cremation grounds are running day and night and they are short on wood. People are watching their loved ones die while waiting for a hospital bed, and then they're unable to give them the proper burial rights.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. Patients are being confined, two to a bed. They're the lucky ones.

We are on the verge of people dying in the streets.

This is the second-most populous country in the world. The largest democracy. A country that encapsulates over 15,000 years of recorded human history and has endured everything from famine to invasion to colonisation.

We might be at the end. This might be the thing that does us in.

People are dying.

People are dying.

People are dying and there is no plan.

More good news? Variants are popping up. A double mutation strain has shown up. It is resistant to current vaccines. This will not go away. This is the devastation they warned of when the anti-maskers were out protesting the minor inconvenience of covering their face in public.

My country is on the verge of an emergency state. Our government has failed us. This is as dire a situation as it ever could be.

Look. I don't do much with my life. I write fics, some of you have read them and that's pretty much it. I spend my days with my head in the clouds because that's where I like to be.

But two days ago, my grandmother tested positive, had to be taken to hospital and the ambulance caught fire.

She barely made it to the urgent care she needs.

So, here I am, using whatever meager platform I have to cobble this request together. Because I have to do something.

If you can, donate.

Or spread the word.

Help. Please.

[togivemybest]

[togivemybest]

i thought you guys would find this thread i wrote interesting

[togivemybest]

Thiss❤️

You do not have to look beautiful while walking down the streets. You do not have to look beautiful while eating. You do not have to look beautiful while talking. You do not have to look beautiful while laughing. While doing sports. While having sex. While singing. While dancing. You were not born to look beautiful, my love. You are here to enjoy, to feel, to live. There is no point in worrying what you look like when you are doing things you actually enjoy because that joy will be taken away by the fear of not looking good enough. Again, it is not your purpose to look beautiful, darling. Your purpose is to fall in love with life, to laugh until your belly hurts, to express your feelings, to sing from the top of your lungs, to dance as silly as you want to - without worrying about your appearance. For all that matters is that your soul is beautiful and happy.

[togivemybest]

🤍

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

Robert Frost

[togivemybest]

A Guide to Planning Systems

It’s important to have a system of getting things done, whether it’s tackling tasks as the day progresses or having a carefully planned schedule for every single hour of the week. How can you create an effective personal planning system that suits your needs and preferences?

Mentioned in this post:

Attention Management: How to Take Control and Live Intentionally

Energy Management: A Human-Based Organization Method

Flexible Time-Blocking: A More Breathable Way to Get Things Done

The ABCDE Method: Accomplish Tasks More Efficiently

My other posts

N.B. some categories include a few examples but they are no means limited to the ones listed here, e.g. there may be methods of organizing tasks other than the five listed here.

[togivemybest]

[togivemybest]

You are. Epilogue 03

Just keeping that story going!

#pascalcampion

[togivemybest]

Hey, unpopular opinion, apparently. But people don’t just “have pain for no reason” doctors say this all the time (especially to women and chronically ill people) and the truth is, Thats literally not possible. Even if your pains are psychosomatic (a word I hesitate to even use because of the way its used so often) there is a reason you are having those pains whether its mental illness, abuse, etc. If your doctor consistently tells you that “well some people just have pain for no reason” get a new doctor. That’s a doctor who is not going to give a shit what your actual symptoms or experiences are.

[togivemybest]

✨ how to deal with failure: a brief guide for the completely done and utterly fed up student ✨

first of all, recognise - and i don’t mean just read, internalise it - that failing is okay. you’re not dumb, you’re not unworthy of taking the class, you might’ve not even necessarily had the wrong approach; you did, however, in any case, have bad luck. and that can be changed. it absolutely can be changed and you do have the time to adjust your studying so you can make up for the misstep. it’s gon be okay buttercup <3

1. vent to a friend/sb you’re close with

i personally attacked my bestie, talked to a few other ppl, and it helped get some of the frustration out. it’s also important you learn to speak to yourself how you would to a friend - you certainly wouldn’t tell them they’re a failure and won’t come back from this, would you? what you actively tell yourself shapes your subconscious thoughts.

2. catch up on the self care you’ve neglected when studying

get a long shower to wash the exam off, eat your meals slowly, get enough sleep (!), clean your room (unburden The Chair™ - srsly, do your laundry - and vacuum, change your bedsheets perhaps?)

3. make a study plan for the retake

be sure to make it realistic and flexible so you don’t end up inducing more stress (helpful posts: 1 2 3 4 (not mine)), try to finish all the topics at least 3 days before the exam so you can spend the last days refreshing your knowledge and preparing mentally instead of cramming.

4. reflect (critically) on your studying so far

is there anything you can do to get more out of your time? quality over quantity is super important when it comes to revision; try implementing more active recall into your study sessions (some posts you can consult on this topic: 1 2 3 (not mine), what is active recall?) and spacing them out more; try to avoid cramming as it increases your stress levels and isn’t as affective with committing information to memory. also, if you asses you could use some help, reach out! ask a friend, get in touch with your professor, seek advice online… getting help = showing readiness for improvement = mature and very welcome!

5. schedule self-care time

when you’re making your study plan, remember to also think of your mental and physical health ● you can space out little acts of self care throughout the week (i.e. take a bubble bath every sunday, schedule a weekly video call with your best friend, allot time to spend with your s/o, do a quick workout every day,…) ● or have a ‘mental health day’ for a whole day each week (i.e. on saturdays, only do things you enjoy - spend the day reading/drawing/binging netflix/baking/…); i personally like to space my self care throughout the week and go for a walk with my best friend every two weeks or so. i’m not kidding, schedule your ‘me’ time into your planner. write. it. down.

6. sleep

i’ve mentioned it already but it’s so important it deserves it’s own bullet point - remember to also take good care of your brain. it is, after all, the organ working the hardest here. a whole day of studying, doing chores, talking to people, etc. has your synapses firing away like crazy, so sleeping is vital for them to recover and come back stronger the next day. give them time to cool down, process the information you’ve gathered throughout the day and store it somewhere you can access it later. seriously. an important note here: there isn’t a single amount of sleep that is optimal for everyone - some people work best on 6 hours of sleep, some can’t go on less than 9. dedicate yourself to figuring out what works best for you and learn to plan your wake up time. ● option no. 1: get into the habit of going to sleep and waking up every. day. at. the. same. time. - a good routine is even more vital in these times when time doesn’t even matter bc we literally don’t go anywhere ever. ● option no. 2: if your uni/work schedule doesn’t allow you to establish a daily routine, try using sleepyti.me to calculate when you should wake up to feel most refreshed :)

hopefully these points can serve as a base/reference for your academic rebound <3 i wrote them up after straight up skipping the grieving-this-is-unfair phase of failure and just being left with a slightly-pissed-but-definitely-fed-up-with-this-class feeling. it dawned on me that i surely can’t be the only one facing this, so i decided to share this and hopefully help you guys out as well:) keep in mind: your worth has zero correlation with your grades, you’re a bad bitch and will not stop bc life tried to knock u down - here’s a quote i like: when life knocks you down, calmly get back up and very politely say, “you hit like a bitch”. after that, u can follow these steps and flourish x

[togivemybest]

😂😂

remembering that one test where i got the question right because i am too dense

it was a practical test. OSCE practical tests in med school are torture. they lock your whole class up in a room to wait, then take you out in groups of five. watching your classmates form a line and be marched out of the room feels like waiting for your moment to be sacrificed to the old gods.

the room was on the highest floor of the building and there were some guardsman-type people who stayed inside to make sure we weren’t looking at our phones, even though we had to leave them behind and even though we go through metal detectors to enter confinement and every time we went to and back from the bathroom. 

the guard people let us talk among ourselves and study, but they always went “get away from the windows” if we approached, and i could never quite figure out if they were worried about someone morse-coding us the answers with a flashlight one building away, or if they were scared we were going to jump.

OSCE is basically an oral test: you stop by the door and there’s a little clinical story on the door, followed by a few questions. you have two minutes to read the case. the case is very long. the questions are very vague. a high pitched bell rings and signals you should enter the room. inside the room there’s a professor and you have to verbally relay the answers and sometimes execute the proceedures the question asked of you. 

the professor has a little checklist, a list of the things you’re supposed to say, and if you say them all you get all the marks, and if you don’t, you get a zero for that checklist point, and this corresponds to around 40% of our final grade. because the questions are very vague - eg ‘how would you handle the case and what would you prescribe’ - it’s very easy to miss things and forget them. 

you have to say the exact things on the list. i mean the EXACT things. it is a nightmare. sometimes the professors are really generous and they look at their checklist, then look at you with this exhausted dead-inside expression and go “You forgot to say where you’re treating the patient.”

and I’m very grateful for the hint, but also very frustrated, because I SAID I’M DOING A SURGERY, OF COURSE IT’S IN A HOSPITAL, WHERE ELSE WOULD I DO A GODDAMN SURGERY

so i give them an equally dead-inside look and go “I would like to hospitalize the patient” and they tick the fucking thing on the fucking list this is the worst fucking way to evaluate literally anything i hate it so much 

sometimes, though, the professors are dicks and they infer that although you said “perform a surgery”, you didn’t say where, so you obviously meant it in the middle of a shopping mall or on top of a moving truck, where surgeries are usually performed. therefore you deserve a zero.

each OSCE question is timed and lasts five minutes. when time runs out, the bell rings again to signal you should move to the next question. we can hear the bell from the confinement. i need you guys to understand that this is torture. i always volunteered for the first groups because staying in confinement hearing the bell ring for over an hour made me want to cry. students sneaking each other anxiety pills were common. 

me and my friend had a ritual that we always walked out the door humming summertime sadness by lana del rey. our very own cthulhu sacrifice hymn. for good luck.

anyway so I’m doing this OSCE examination and for some questions they bring actors to pretend to be patients, while the professor stares at you talking, in silence, like some sorta edward cullen in a whitecoat peeping you in your sleep, ticking things on the little list. it is about as miserable as it sounds. 

this question had an actor, and the actors are just kids from theater school who need some cash so i sympathize with them. the question was about an elderly lady who needed a liver transplantation. 

the actor was supposed to be the lady’s son, which gave me anxiety, but not as much anxiety as if the actor was pretending to be the elderly patient, because that happens sometimes and the cognitive dissonance of those benjamin button situations throws me off.

so i walk into the room and the guy immediately starts crying which means they have instructed him to cry in order to further emotionally destabilize me. “try to destabilize the student” is a legitimate bit of instruction they receive. 

i will not be destabilized. i am as stable as an optic fiber internet connection in the silicon valley. my self esteem is as high as that of a businessman who decides to run for president. i can absolutely do this.

i am having a terrible time

i introduce myself and try to calm the guy down.  

“My mother is sick, doctor, she’s going to die.”

that is a lie. his mother is probably fine. he is an actor. this awareness makes me upset. “I promise you we will give her the best care.” 

i comfort him with the lines i memorized from what my upperclassmen told me of their previous tests. then he asks about the liver transplantations and how they are done. 

“We will evaluate your mother through certain criteria and then place her in a queue for available livers. We’ll notify you when a donor shows up and we can do the next steps.” 

the professor makes a tick. i can see him making a tick. this does very little to calm me. 

“I can pay, though.”

“All transplantations are done through the public system, sir. There’s a single national queue, and the entire process is covered by universal healthcare.” 

he asks me details about how the queue works. I explain to him about the CHILD and MELD scores. he asks more questions than a regular patient would, because he is an actor, and those questions are pre-determined. the professor makes ticks. i am trying to keep track of the five minutes of terrible time.

“I have money,” he insists. “I know that helps.” 

i am very stressed with this situation. if he is insisting on saying he has money, it means i have not responded correctly to this point of the question. “It does help.” I say. “You can hire nurses to help you out at home, for instance! This kind of dedicated professional aid makes recovery a lot easier.” 

the actor pauses and turns to the professor. the professor shrugs and makes a tick. the bell rings, giving me the extra corporeal experience of having my skeleton startled out of my body.

i absolutely fucking flunked this disgraceful question. this is fine. i can keep my cool for the next one. i am very good at keeping my cool under stress, and then breaking down twice as hard after, which is useful but not healthy. 

i finish the test. i meet up with my friends to have our traditional post-OSCE smoothie. we look like we’ve just been through a series of harrowing psychological aggressions, which we have. 

“Question three was about a heart attack,” my friend says, and I nod. “But I forgot to say the patient should not eat until further notice.” 

i did not forget to say this bit of information, but it infuriates me because it is pointless. no one is going to feed a patient in the middle of a heart attack because we are busy trying to stop the heart attack. 

“What about question four?” my other friend says. “The one with an actor. How did you guys respond to his attempt to bribe you into skipping the line for his mother?”

wait

WAIT

HIS ATTEMPT TO WHAT

[togivemybest]

i can’t talk shit about the pirates of the caribbean films as if elizabeth swann becoming pirate king didn’t hand my entire ass to me and make me the gay i am today

[togivemybest]

I really really want every workplace to acknowledge the importance of ventilation. Every workplace I know has people full in sanitation theater mode wiping down every surface constantly meanwhile windows are closed and no one’s wearing masks correctly. The illusion of safety from seeing people cleaning constantly without actual safety is what is fucking me up. there’s so many people who don’t even realize how profoundly dangerous these environments are.

[togivemybest]

Beta-blocker Overdose

A patient came in after taking a 60 day supply of 25mg Carvedilol. He presented with a heartrate in the 50's, and a blood pressure, well, also in the 50's. 50/30 was the lowest. He was drifting in and out of consciousness, so we pushed atropine, the first line drug for bradycardia, to no effect.

You know it's gonna be fun when you call poison control, you tell them what's going on, and their first response is "ooooo that's not good." Poison control recommended Glucagon, 5-15mg IV push followed by a drip of 5-15mg every hour. This comes in 1mg vials, so we had to mix and draw up a lot of these vials. (See below)

He did respond. His pulse was now around 80, and we kept his blood pressure between 95 and 105 systollic. He was placed on a drip of 10mg/hr. I feel sorry for the pharmacist that had to mix the bag of 30mg of Glucagon. Central pharmacy also told us they only had 6 more glucagons in stock after making this bag, so if he wasn't better in 3 hours, we would have a problem.. but that was a problem for ICU to handle (I love you, ICU nurses)!

Glucagon has inotropic effects that bypass the beta blockade, this allows it to increase heartrate and blood pressure even in the presence of beta blockage. Glucagon also counteracts the negative effects of the beta blockade on a patients blood sugar.

A very interesting case with an interesting management strategy.

[togivemybest]

Jaskier.exe has stopped working

[togivemybest]

Day 13 of the studyblr community challenge

13|10|2020

how calm is the sea

More reasons to love my home city Bombay ❤️❤️

✨do i have any studyblr aesthetics

I don’t as i honestly am scattered brain while posting and i like to keep it as i see it while i work🌸

But honestly i love how some posts on studyblr have absolutely beautiful pictures and they have motivated me to get shit done ✅