This is the mindset I have to keep myself in while working in medicine. I can’t save every patient. Some of them will die in my care, but that won’t stop me from trying to help the next one.

These are incredibly important reports to publish and spread awareness of…but I kind of wish I hadn’t read them today.

As a Minnesotan, I’m disappointed to be losing our governor. He’s done great things for our state, but I’m hopeful that the Lt. Governor who will be taking his place will be a good replacement.

Walz’s ascension to the ticket leaves questions for Minnesota. Under the state Constitution, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan would become governor if Walz resigns, but he’s not on the ballot in Minnesota this fall, meaning he could wait until after the November election to step down. Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Nation, would become Minnesota’s first woman and first Native American governor.

Mine does that sometimes, but there’s plenty of times when it’s just being a glitchy pile of garbage. I’ve got a fully updated pixel 8 pro and a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek, but sometimes they just don’t like to talk to each other correctly. It’ll also do this fun thing where it just fails to turn on the mic for phone calls until I reboot the phone and the car before reconnecting them.

If Android Auto is active, it blocks me from opening Google Maps on my phone and I have to mess with the touchscreen interface a bunch before it offers to let me use my phone’s keyboard while stopped. It would be less annoying if the voice search option and the search interface on the car’s touchscreen was less bad.

Yes! I fucking love buttons and dials! And maybe Android Auto can just heckin’ let me use my phone keyboard when I’m stopped.

Bullets are a lot more expensive than bandages most of the time.

(Edit: that is not to say that this is a reasonable allocation of resources in this situation. The appropriate ratio would be zero bullets and a couple dozen new, fully equipped hospitals and several hundred well-stocked kitchens.)

A social hobby that gets her out of the house might be the ticket here. Maybe look into your local community centers and whatnot to see if there’s something like a couples dance class that you could do together or yoga classes. Having ways to socialize that are not food-centric goes a long ways towards building better habits.

I grew up in a mostly (75% or so) Hispanic neighborhood and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word “gringo” in a non-derogatory tone of voice or context. And perhaps sympathy was not the correct word to have used there. I think “empathy” might better convey what I meant as it is my assumption that you are trying to convince people to see the situation from your point of view. Asking someone to empathize and/or agree with your viewpoint does take some diplomacy in many cases, and demanding evidence that is likely not in a language the commenter speaks is not going to be very helpful. While Mexico is an important country with a large population and substantial global economic impact, any news about Mexico that reaches the US in English is unlikely to present the internal politics of the country in a nuanced or detailed way.

That is something that has the possibility of being immensely helpful, provided the cooperation of a substantial portion of the Indian population and the entirety of the Indian government. I truly wish there was something that could be done about from where I stand, but the problem is extremely ingrained and, in some ways, endemic to that culture.

I’m very disappointed that this person deleted all of their comments because I am quite curious to know what bizarre arguments they were trying to make based on your responses.

I took a look at your previous comments and noticed that you seemed to largely be arguing about points of opinion rather than fact. Also, my Spanish isn’t great, but referring to people you disagree with as “gringos” and complaining about political discussions is not going to win you a whole lot of sympathy for your position.

Sometimes working on one’s mental health can go a long way towards improving aspects of physical health like weight issues. I’m almost positive that there will be a lot of places with the same problems, but there might be mental health/meditation retreats in safer areas. I’m pretty sure there’s at least a few that will take their patrons out to the Redwood forests in California and plop them down in the nice environment with some solitude for self-contemplation. (I attended such a thing a decade and a half ago, but I don’t know if it’s still there.)

I was sweaty as heck and completely winded by the end of it, but the notion that you are currently responsible for a person’s life and brain with their family in the hallway outside makes for good motivation.

I’m still intensely proud of myself for the one time I caved a guy’s sternum in and he woke up to complain about it.

I was an ER tech at the time and he coded in CT (it’s always in CT). So there was a nurse riding the gurney doing compressions while they brought him to the resuscitation bay where I took over compressions. I cracked his sternum on the third compression because, despite having about 75 pounds on me and being on top of the guy, the nurse hadn’t cracked a rib or gotten perfusion. Unfortunately, someone had lost the CPR stool in the resus bay, and I was the only person tall enough to do compressions, so I did it for the full 11 minutes or so of the code in full isolation gear (because Covid). On the second round of amiodarone and defibrillation, he woke up and started fighting the tube that had been placed a few minutes prior. The first thing he said when he came to was that his chest hurt.

He was awake and talking to his family a couple hours later when I took him up to the ICU after all the admission paperwork and whatnot was done.

Fun fact: you can get narcan to carry as a first aid measure from almost any pharmacy, and many local health departments host narcan trainings and give it out for free. Giving someone narcan when they don’t need it won’t do anything at all, so the worst you’re doing is nothing, and the best case scenario, you can save a life.

That was my thought too. A portal hypertensive crisis following exertion leading to rupture of varices. I can’t think of much else that would present like that besides maybe Ebola Zaire or something, but that would have a noticeable prodrome and “coffee grounds” in the emesis.