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The first thing every giraffe does is fall 6 feet.

@hollyevolving / hollyevolving.tumblr.com

The second thing it does is get up.

im going to post old cat images now

ceiling cat

monorail cat

long cat

the OG can i haz cheezburger cat

the lesser known graphix cat

invisible bike cat

my planet needs me cat

cat with the gat

Good lord we need MOAR of the original LOLCATS (or cat macros, as they were originally known)

This post is missing Keyboard Cat!!!

a small selection of those i still have saved on my laptop to giggle at

this post made me curious abt a titan of old and am devastated to announce that the lolcat bible is no longer with us

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”

I searched and searched for the post this graphic was from, and the OP deactivated, but I kept the graphic, because my BFF does the same thing, uses her imagination to come up with the worst pain she can imagine and pegs her “10″ there, and so is like, well, I’m conscious, so this must be a 5, and then the doctors don’t take her seriously. (And she then does things like driving herself to the hospital while in the process of giving birth. Probably should have called an ambulance for that one!)

So I found this and sent it to her. Because this is what they want to know: how badly is this pain affecting you? Not on a scale of “nothing” to “how I’d imagine it’d feel if bears were eating my still-living guts while I was on fire”. 

I hate reposting stuff, but I’ll never find that post again and OP is deactivated, so, here’s a repost. I can delete this later, i just wanted to get it to you and I can’t embed images in a chat or an ask. 

This is possibly why it took several weeks to diagnose my fractured spine.

Pain Scale transcription:

10 - I am in bed and I can’t move due to my pain. I need someone to take me to the emergency room because of my pain.

9 - My pain is all that I can think about. I can barely move or talk because of my pain.

8 - My pain is so severe that it is difficult to think of anything else. Talking and listening are difficult.

7 - I am in pain all the time. It keeps me from doing most activities.

6 - I think about my pain all of the time. I give up many activities because of my pain.

5 - I think about my pain most of the time. I cannot do some of the activities I need to do each day because of the pain.

4 - I am constantly aware of my pain but can continue most activities.

3 - My pain bothers me but I can ignore it most of the time.

2 - I have a low level of pain. I am aware of my pain only when I pay attention to it.

1 - My pain is hardly noticeable.

0 - I have no pain.

It’s also really important to get this kind of scale to people who have chronic pain, because chronic pain drastically lowers your perception of how “bad” any kind of pain actually is, and yet something like this pain scale is extremely user friendly. 

For example, if someone asked me how much pain I’m in at any given time, I’d say hardly any, and yet I’m apparently at a chronic 2.5, and it only goes up from there depending on the day. 

There’s also a similarly useful “Fatigue Scale”

I haven’t been below a 5 on this scale for 4 years 

Here’s the fatigue scale

Fatigue scale image desc:

10: can barely move; can’t talk

9: can barely move; can talk

8: can move, but can’t do much more than watch TV

7: can watch TV and play a game on my phone simultaneously

6: can do work on my computer lying in bed

5: can get around the house, but definitely couldn’t go out

4: can run a light errand

3: can get in my 10,000 steps, making my fitbit happy

2: can do three or more activities in a single day

1: going clubbing!

See also the Mental Health Pain Scale by Graceful Patient:

Mental Health Pain Scale transcription:

MILD

1 - Everything is a-okay! There is absolutely nothing wrong. You’re probably cuddling a fluffy kitten right now. Enjoy!

2 - You’re a bit frustrated or disappointed, but you’re easily distracted and cheered up with a little effort.

3 - Things are bothering you, but you’re coping. You might be overtired or hungry. The emotional equivalent of a headache.

MODERATE

4 - Today is a bad day (or a few bad days). You still have the skills to get through it, but be gentle with yourself. Use self-care strategies.

5 - Your mental health is starting to impact on your everyday life. Easy things are becoming difficult. You should talk to your doctor.

6 - You can’t do things the way you usually do them due to your mental health. Impulsive and compulsive thoughts may be hard to cope with.

SEVERE

7 - You’re avoiding things that make you more distressed, but that will make it worse. You should definitely seek help. This is serious.

8 - You can’t hide your struggles any more. You may have issues sleeping, eating, having fun, socialising, and work/study. Your mental health is affecting almost all parts of your life.

9 - You’re at a critical point. You aren’t functioning any more. You need urgent help. You may be a risk to yourself or others if left untreated.

10 - The worst mental and emotional distress possible. You can no longer care for yourself. You can’t imagine things getting any worse. Contact a crisis line immediately.

These are so important! SO SO IMPORTANT SHARE THIS AND SAVE IT TO SHOW YOUR DOCTORS!

I want to come up with a burnout/overload scale, but I'm too burned out and overloaded. Well, shit.

Oh yeah this the ONE!!

I make $18/hr and yes. It's poverty wages.

"But like... that's like so much more money than I make. Stop complaining."

No.

I won't stop complaining.

Just because your poverty wages are worse than my poverty wages doesn't mean that I don't have the right to be mad about my poverty wages. In many parts of the country you can't even afford an apartment at $20/hr. Including where I live.

Not to mention the cost of medication for my disabled ass. Every wage looks a hell of a lot different if you have to spend hundreds to thousands a month on your life saving medication.

Minimum wage should be $30/hr. Period.

-fae

Minimum wage should scale with the cost of living for an area actually. In places where the cost of living is astronomical, even $30 an hour wouldn't cut it. In San Francisco, a true living wage would be closer to $70 an hour. It would be a major incentive to regulate prices on damn near everything, but housing especially, because companies definitely don't want to shell out that much in wages.

[ID: a tweet from @1anjohn that says: $15 an hour is poverty and I think we need to say that loudly because right now companies use it as a badge of honor]

All rent and mortgage rates should be tied to the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25/hour in the US.

And we should revert to the 1980s guideline that these should not be more than a quarter of a person's income.

7.25 x 40 = 290. Given a 4-week month, $290.00 is a quarter of what a person making federal minimum wage would make in a month of working full time, before taxes.

Therefore, no monthly US rent or mortgage payment should be more than $290.00/month.

And the only way to increase monthly housing fees should be to raise the federal minimum wage.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Mmmm medication :) I love you medication. Modern medicine makes my life so much better. "Ohh you're so young maybe you'll want to taper off..." no thank you, I will keep taking the pills that resolve my symptoms :) thank you pharmacology I love you

THE PITT 1.08 • 2:00 P.M.

It wasn't just in the US that black people started the EMT services. In Britain, the Harrow and Wealdston train crash in 1952 was the worst peacetime rail disaster in UK history(112 dead, 340 wounded). A United States Air Force medical unit was among the first responders, and while most ambulances at the time(including this incident) just picked up anyone injured and rushed them to the hospital, the USAF people recognized that things were so bad this should be handled like battlefield medicine, treating and triaging on-site. 7 doctors and, crucially, 1 nurse, Abbie Sweetwine made up the USAF medical unit.

While ambulances were rushing off with "walking wounded" who had made it out of the accident first, the more seriously injured were still being dragged from the wreckage. The doctors who had rushed over with whatever they happened to grab treated those on-site. Meanwhile, Lt. Sweetwine handled triage and recorded what treatments had been performed by writing on the patients with lipstick and directed the returning ambulances which patients to take back to hospitals next. This was crucial for saving lives, and when the various UK organizations were figuring out how to make sure this sort of disaster didn't happen again, the role of ambulances as actual medical providers rather than as a fancy taxi service was one of the big realizations. It wasn't a wholly new concept, but news articles and pictures showing doctors on-site, crucially with Abbie Sweetwine following up with patients and covering basic care, gave a solid basis that the NHS could model it's Paramedic system after.

And Abbie Sweetwine was black. This was almost unheard of for the time, a black woman serving with the USAF, and the impact of a black woman being lauded for heroism throughout the UK on your average Joes cannot be overstated. She basically just did her job, continued doing it for the next few decades, and retired to her home state of Florida with some unusual medals on her wall, but she also changed a country and that's not something most people can say.

(source, please click through for a better writer than me tackling this)

Source: noahwylle

I love a woman with a loud ass laugh. I love a cackle. I love a guffaw. Love when a bitch laughs so hard it scares the dog. Be unapologetic in your joy.

Part of the reason for my hyena spots tattoo is how loudly I laugh.

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.

  1. I think people want to help the environment in small but tangible ways, which is hard right now because of.. well... because of The Horrors. And being able to say 'wow! I helped this creature cross a dam' makes you feel good.
  2. I also think that most people can relate to a small, helpless creature trying to get from one place to another and there's a FUCKIN WALL in the way.

But to come back to point 1- Citizen Science fills a hole in the soul that wanted to go out on adventures and discover things when we were younger, but the study of it was hard or we didn't have the money or our schools were garbage. But you don't have to have a degree to do things like... press a button or download and use an app, or count or transcribe notes.

Anyways- here's some Citizen Science links if the Fish Doorbell makes you feel happy and you yearn for more ways to help scientists do stuff:

Zooniverse is a website that hosts information on many citizen science projects

Most people want to help and are looking for ways they can do good.

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