Just to expand on this post about calling 911 and asking for a pizza to secretly ask for help:
The post is based on a Super Bowl commercial, which itself was based on a Reddit post that’s never been verified as true.
There is no actual pizza code with toppings and shit that dispatchers are trained in. If you come across someone who has heard of the commercial, they might understand. If you come across someone who’s never heard of it, they might think it’s a prank call and hang up on you.
A piece of actual advice to help you in this situation is to dial 911, then hang up without speaking, then turn the phone off. 911 will attempt to call you back, and when they’re unable to reach you, they’ll dispatch a unit to your location under the assumption that you need help and your call was interrupted. This will work 100% of the time, whereas the pizza trick will only work if the dispatcher has heard of the commercial/urban legend.
Also, the toppings thing was a complete and total fabrication and whoever wrote that should be ashamed of themselves, tbh.
If you’re on a cell phone, the dispatcher DOES NOT KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. You do need to find an excuse to give them your address, and ordering food is the best excuse. A 911 dispatcher will not just hang up if they think you might be prank calling them, they’ll ask you if there’s an emergency and you can say “yes,” and say your address and whatever else you need to say to keep your cover (like a pizza order). This doesn’t rely on any code, it relies on the fact that 911 dispatchers are trained to send a unit no matter what—as long as they know where to send it.
This is actually a huge problem with 911 dispatchers, they DO NOT KNOW YOUR LOCATION
It seems like a basic thing you would expect an emergency service to be able to figure out, but they DON’T, THEY CAN’T, UNLESS YOU TELL THEM
When I was in a car accident and had to get my mom to the hospital last year, it took 5 minutes just for me to confirm with the 911 dispatcher that they knew where I was, and even then I watched while they whizzed past the street where we were waiting. The most crucial thing first responders have to know in the case of an emergency is where you are. Don’t skip this information, please.
STOP REBLOGGING THIS FUCKING GARBAGE POST. IT IS 100% FUCKING BULLSHIT AND CAN AND MOST DEFINITELY WILL LITERALLY KILL.
DO YOU NOT SEE WARNING LABELS THAT SAY “DO NOT INDUCE VOMITING”? THEY AREN’T FUCKING AROUND. YOU CAN FUCKING BURN THEIR ESOPHAGUS BY CAUSING VOMITING, CAUSE CHOKING, DROWNING, OR MAKE IT WORSE!
AGAIN DO NOT FORCE ANYTHING DOWN ANYONE’S THROAT. THEY. CAN. DROWN.
IF SOMEONE IS LOSING CONCIOUSNESS ALL THE CHIT CHAT IN THE WORLD WILL NOT PREVENT IT AT THAT POINT THEY ARE IN SERIOUS DANGER.
“Buuut i don’t wanna take them to the hospital!!!”
WELL SUNSHINE GLAD YOU’D RATHER HAVE A DEAD FRIEND THAN A LIVING ONE BUT YOU’RE IN LUCK
CALL FUCKING POISON CONTROL. THEY ARE NOT THE COPS. THEY WILL HELP YOU.
AND IF THEY SAY GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL YOU GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL. NO EXCUSES. 0. NONE.
I have seen this shit cross my dash SO MANY TIMES so PLEASE fucking reblog this and prevent some well meaning idiot from accidentally killing someone they love!
“A clinic in Ohio recently started screening women for the ground-breaking procedure, which would allow women to transplant their uterus into a woman who doesn’t have one.
The transplant could be conducted on a woman ‘born without a uterus, or who had it removed or have uterine damage’ – this would make trans women eligible for the procedure.
A 26-year-old woman who is undergoing the screening process told The Times: ‘I crave that experience.
‘I want the morning sickness, the backaches, the feet swelling. I want to feel the baby move. That is something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember.’
Dr Christine McGinn, a plastic surgeon, told Yahoo News: ‘The human drive to be a mother for a woman is a very serious thing.
Bear in mind that ambulance companies aren’t diverting EMTs away from a heart attack or traumatic amputation to answer your call. They’re much more likely to be diverting EMTs from:
Sitting in an ambulance station or a random parking lot playing Words With Friends and/or developing elaborate company-wide romantic intrigues
Sitting in a hospital EMS room doing giant stacks of paperwork no one will ever read while trying to make dinner entirely out of saltines and condiments
Routine transports of people who have to travel by stretcher, who maybe are not happy to be late, but are hardly going to die from it
Transports which are technically emergencies, but are stuff like vomiting or a sprained ankle where the urgency factor is more like “yeah, you should get that seen” than like “STAT CODE RED CODE BLUE CODE POLKA DOT STAT STAT STAT.”
So if you think you might need an ambulance, call one. You are not going to single-handedly take down the EMS system by daring to use it.
I’m reblogging it but I would be that person wondering “Do I need this enough” until I died.
I have legitimately done this. Please, take care of yourselves.
Furthermore, guys, we have dispatch. Dispatch makes sure that we’re all where we need to be, so you’re not taking an ambulance away from someone who “needs it more.”
Let dispatch worry if an ambulance needs to be somewhere else. You just worry about taking care of yourself.
Like, dispatch is GREAT, every EMT I know will fight you on behalf of dispatch, and it’s their full time job to make sure the ambulances go where they’re needed. So if you need one, trust me, dispatch is making sure everyone gets the attention they need.
The generic Adrenaclick will cost $109.99 for two doses, compared with $649.99 for the same amount of drug in an EpiPen. That’s good news, both for financial and safety reasons: STAT reported last year that some parents and institutions had begun filling up syringes with epinephrine as a cost-cutting measure, a DIY solution that could pose great risk to the children who may have eventually needed injections. A more affordable alternative will help ensure safer epinephrine injections.
That’s assuming, though, that the people who need these devices know exactly what to ask for when they’re sitting in their doctors’ offices. Otherwise, they’ll still be stuck with the overpriced product. Here’s why: The mechanism by which Adrenaclick injects the drug is slightly different from EpiPen’s mechanism, so the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the two are not therapeutically equivalent. That distinction is important because it means a prescription for an EpiPen cannot be filled with Adrenaclick. If you want the cheaper option, you have to have an Adrenaclick prescription.
You must ask your doctor for an Adrenaclick prescription!
I also found a coupon from Impax on 0.15mg and 0.3mg epinephrine injection, USP auto-injectors, which appear to be the generic version of Adrenaclick; these coupons cover up to $100 per pack for 3 packs of these injectors (6 total injectors).
This is the best news! My son is allergic to tree nuts (pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, etc). We have only one set of non-expired epi-pens, and they’re at his school. The set we have at home is a year out of date because, surprise, we didn’t have the $1200+ to drop on two sets at once… because for whatever fucked up reason, my insurance is one of the ones that doesn’t cover it.
Another woman utterly failed by our society’s devaluation of women’s reproductive health.
We can’t wait around for male doctors to decide what we need to know.
This is why we need to take control and educate ourselves about our own bodies.
and here’s some comments i saw under the post. why is this a pattern?? why is this a recurring theme?? why is this information not common knowledge? what the fuck are doctors doing??
This is news to me so let’s share it so people will know!
Gross tmi: but i passed a pretty big clot after having my daughter. It was about the size of a baseball. It actually hurt worse because while 15 hours of labor opened my cervix, i passed the clot in 30 minutes. I knew it was a possibility because of my midwife and reading, but everyone Ive told after this (mostly other pregnant women) were shocked that this could happen.
In our culture, it’s much more common to do deep research about what family cars we want to buy than we do about childbirth when we ’re pregnant.
Tmi: I passed a huge clot after birth in the bathroom of my hospital room and called the nurse sobbing because I didn’t know it was normal. She treated me like an idiot, but NO ONE told me it was a possibility. And the pain associated with healing for the first couple of weeks after birth was worse than the labor imo. Again, I had no idea. They didn’t tell me a thing besides “sitz bath regularly and change your pads.” Before discharging me from the hospital.
I was most definitely told about this in school. Fucking hell, 4-6 weeks of bleeding? My periods were/are bad enough, why the hell don’t we get told this?
I didn’t know it could last so long, wtf? Is the bleeding inevitable after birth?
Bleeding is inevitable after birth - your uterine wall is shedding a fuck ton of lining. It can last from three to six weeks (possible longer) and it tapers off.
More TMI - I passed a MASSIVE clot after my fourth birth. At this point I already knew this could happen - it’s normal. What I DIDN’T know, was that I had caused it.
My post birth contractions were so bad after the birth that it felt like full transition labor. And they don’t give you anything for the pain. So I used a hot water bottle, without the nurses knowing, and it caused me to bleed even more. I lost so much blood that by the first time they sat me up to go to the bathroom, I fainted. It took three more tries until I could sit up.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the next morning I passed a clot the SIZE OF ANOTHER PLACENTA I KID YOU NOT, and I know what is and is not normal. So I called for the nurse and through the door told her I had passed a huge clot, and her response was - “It’s not big. I know what big is.” She hadn’t even looked. So I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, no. It’s big, I’m telling you.”
So, sounding extremely put upon, she asked me to open the door. I did, and after a long pause she goes, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little big.”
YOU DON’T SAY.
The point I’m trying to get across is that this shit is so common - women not knowing this stuff is so expected, and it keeps getting reinforced. People don’t expect you to know anything, don’t teach you anything, and then make you feel like you’re totally ignorant and a burden for your lack of knowledge when THEY WON’T SHARE.
Fucking learn EVERYTHING you can when it comes to childbirth, girls. It is the single most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And if you missed something, that’s okay. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more in control of your situation you’ll be.
A few post partum tips:
DON’T use a hot water bottle - lol.
ONLY pads - NO tampons. Tampons can cause severe infection, not to mention, you probably don’t want to be shoving anything up there any time soon.
If you’ve had stitches, sitz baths DO help relieve the pain. Another great pain reliever? Dampen some pads and freeze them. Let one thaw slightly and use it on top of another pad. This will help with the pain as well as reduce swelling. Change the pad out as soon as it’s thawed completely. This REALLY helps on the first couple days after giving birth.
If you pass a clot, don’t sweat it. Even the one I passed, which was fucking massive, just required that we keep an eye out to make sure it didn’t happen again. If it does, talk to your doctor.
Take a pain killer half an hour before nursing. Because YES - your uterus is contracting after you give birth, to get back to its original size, and nursing causes much stronger contractions. Taking nursing-safe painkillers won’t prevent the pain, but it will reduce it.
Buy disposable underwear for the first few days after birth. They will get VERY dirty. Or use your ratty old pairs that you’re ready to get rid of. Double up on pads - line them all the way up your ass-crack. I am so serious. And wear dark pants.
Pee in the shower. You do NOT want to wipe down there right after birth because ow. Peeing in the shower lets you just rinse afterwards. Especially if you’ve had stitches, peeing in the shower, with the shower-head rinsing AS you go, keeps stinging to a minimum. And fuck everyone else - keep on peeing in the shower until you feel ready to move back to toilet paper. Middle of the night and need to pee? Get your pants off - get in the shower and just go.
This is just a few things, but PLEASE feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions about ANYTHING childbirth/pregnancy/nursing related. I have four incredible kids. I’ve done it all - c-section, vacuume birth, episiotimy, stitches, with an epidural, without an epidural. I’m here.
More tips: GET A PERI-BOTTLE. If you have a hospital birth, they’ll probably give you one. If not, you can pick up any kind of small squeeze-y bottle (or even an empty, CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN spray bottle if it comes to it). It’s like a little portable bidet. Use it after you go to the bathroom, then pat dry. This way you don’t have to climb into a shower every time if you don’t want.
IME bags of frozen peas in your underwear with proper covering (you don’t want to get frostbite) are the best sort of cold compress.
Those contractions during nursing? They are v v important. They shrink your uterus, helping your body get back to normal faster (and helping you pass blood quicker). They hurt. Keep drinking red raspberry leaf tea (which hopefully you drank during your third trimester). It should help not only with the contractions, but with your milk supply as well. Take a nursing-safe NSAID if you can.
REST. I know this is especially hard for people who are already parents, for poor folk, for people with a ton of responsibilities in general. This is when you call in the cavalry, if you’re lucky enough to have support. FRIENDS AND FAM of birthing persons, leave the parent alone with their baby. Do a load of dishes. Pick up. Check to make sure the parent has their baby supplies handy (as in, within reach). Bring them food. The more they rest, the faster their body heals, and the shorter the bleeding period will be. If it tapers off and then ramps back up, YOU’RE DOING TOO MUCH. Slow down. This is the perfect time to learn that, as a parent, you can’t do it all. Always prioritise your kid. If there’s one time you’re allowed to just let shit go, it’s during your babymoon. (Google is telling me babymoon now means a trip you take with your partner before you have your baby. What. No. “Babymoon” means the first week after your birth. When the hell did that switch happen?) REST. REST. HOLD YOUR BABY. SLEEP. NURSE. EAT. This bonding time is imperative. You and your baby deserve this time.
….I know I keep reblogging this but people keep adding super important information.
I feel like no one tells women this stuff because if a woman was even a little on the fence about having a baby before this would kinda make them run for the damn hills.
…..you are correct, typing.
300% EXTRA SURE I’M NOT HAVING BABIES.
peri bottles, witch hazel or anti-pain anticeptic spray are your friends. Also passing large clots after birth is a WARNING SIGN. Bigger than a half dollar is a sign that you have not passed your entire placenta (this is most common in hospital vaginal births where the mother is not allowed to naturally birth the placenta and instead has it ripped out by the doctor) if there is any placenta left in your uterus you can get extremely ill. This happened to both myself and my mother in law
WOW I didn’t know any of this and I’m terrified of what more I’m unaware of about my own body :( Honestly when will we fucking abolish this taboo about the female body…
I had pretty great sex ed in school (lots of contraceptive information, and totally acknowledged that teenagers might have sex) and all of this is news to me.
And, as a 28-year-old person with a uterus, I’m extremely appalled I’m just learning this.
Long, but very important information, even for those who don’t plan to have children, because you will almost certainly know someone who will, and you might be able to to help them. Or at least increase your level of empathy for them.
even if you dont plan to have kids this info is really important to know. Uterus havers should know what their body does and why.
I appreciate that this site has info on the differences between heart attacks in girls and in boys, but like
As a trans girl that’s been on hormones for almost two years now, I have no idea what to look for lmfao
All trans people, regardless of their gender, should make themselves familiar with how heart attacks typically present in women. ‘Masculine’ heart attacks aren’t exactly subtle. On the other hand many, many women end up dead only for the medical examiner to discover that they’ve had multiple heart attacks in the past that weren’t recognized or treated.
It doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with the way that heart attacks typically present themselves in both men and women and to seek emergency medical attention if you experience symptoms of either. Even cis men should make themselves aware of the different ways that heart attacks can present themselves.
Just… if you have any of the symptoms of a heart attack seek medical attention right away from an emergency room. Don’t blow it off because it could be the difference between life and death.
ourjamesvata asked: Hey. Sorry to bother you, I see your post about healthcare in POC and women. I'm a med student and I struggle to find resources about that (specially in my language -french-). My school book dont say anything about that. Do you have any tips ? Thanks
Mmmmkay, I don’t really have time right this second to do an appropriately thorough scouring of the internet to find some books or resources for you–which I will do when I’m not writing a thesis, because I should have some resources to reference–and I’m not supremely comfortable giving out how-to-medicine advice, but I will tell you a couple things that have helped me.
The only thing that really works: ask someone. Just do it. Find a doctor or an EMT or whoever is on hand who you trust to answer you, and ask them outright. It works best if you have a justified starting point, something like “Okay, so if that’s how I check for cyanosis on a fair-skinned person, how would I check for cyanosis on a person with dark skin?” (You check the inside of the lip, by the way.) Or “How should this intake procedure be different if my patient is trans?” Or “Should I ask any additional questions about vaccinations/previous illness if my patient is a traveler or immigrant?” Or “What if my patient has a pre-existing disability?” Or “Does this chest examination need to be conducted differently if my patient is a large-chested woman?”
Be polite while you’re doing the asking. More often than not, it’s a problem the other person has noticed too, and it’s not that individual’s fault that humanity has spent 2000+ years screwing itself over on this subject. Also, these questions make people uncomfortable, and being rude will decrease your odds of getting an answer.
Listen to non-doctors in the affected populations. If a woman you know has a laundry list of complaints about not being listened to by a doctor, assume she’s not being histrionic. If you know a black guy who says he was fucked over by the EMTs after he was sideswiped by a car or fell from a ladder or spiked a 105 F fever (40.5 C), he doesn’t need an MD to know he wasn’t treated as well as he should have been. If you know a trans woman who was repeatedly referred to as ‘he’ in the hospital, take note. Decide not to be that kind of doctor, and then pay attention to how you act.
Listen to the nurses around you. First of all, that’s a good general rule, the nurses probably know more than you and nurses are treated terribly by a lot of doctors. Behind every successful doctor is a whole host of nurses who probably haven’t been thanked.
But moreover, nurses spend a lot of time with the patients, and they’re the ones who field complaints about the doctors. They’ll know who gets fucked over and who doesn’t, and they know all the secrets to the medical trade.
Be attentive to your patient (unfortunately this is the ‘learn on the job’ part of the answer). If a woman expresses discomfort with the normal proceedings of an examination, listen to her. If a patient prefers name and pronouns not matching those on their legal documentation, adhere to their request. Be aware that there are some conditions which are more common in people of specific ethnicities–for example, black women have a higher incidence of breast cancer and a lower statistical chance of having it caught by a doctor than a white woman.
Ultimately, I’d say decide what kind of doctor you want to be. If you’re already asking this question, that’s a good start, and telling about how you’ll act as a doctor. Be self-aware of how you act with patients of various genders, ethnicities, etc. In a perfect world, it would be the responsibility of the medical school to teach that behavior and ensure that all the students were able to treat people other than the cis white able-bodied male ‘standard patient.’ This is not a perfect world, and that means it’s on you.
I…feel like this was pretty unhelpful and round-about, but I hope it at least gave you a starting place? I think you’re doing great because it occurred to you to ask this question, keep it up.
