seriously will have the post someday. doing clinicals for my nurse aide class right now (=no sleep/depressed all the time).
pancho if you spend half the time STARTING A BLOG FOR MY BIRTHDAY that you spend having fights with people at other blogs, the BLOG FOR MY BIRTHDAY would already be here! don't forget your promise.
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I promised nothing! Other than that we'd find in 40 days, starting 35 days ago. And we will.
ReplyDeleteIt's waaaayy easier to respond to other people than say something on my own though. Plus I feel like I never have anything original to say ever.
Also isn't it kind of ironic to make a post about how you're not writing things and then tell me to write something?
Also nurse aide class? What kind of nurse (aide) are you going to be?
(I realize that if you actually answer all this you will be even less likely to do all the things you need to do)
there aren't different kinds of nurse aides. I would probably like to work in a psych unit for teenagers but I don't care that much.
ReplyDeleteI only have one day left anyway.
and now that I told you that you're never going to write a blog for me, are you
ReplyDeleteYou are not going to trick me into committing to whether or not I'm going to start a blog early.
ReplyDeleteThere are different kind of nursing certifications and as far as I know none of them are called "nursing aide certification." I wasn't sure if you meant a "certified nursing assistant," "licensed practical nurse," or something else I haven't heard of. But I'm guessing it's the first one since you're almost done.
I recommend not working anywhere that commits people involuntarily because they're evil. Or if you have to work there (and I guess someone does), try to find somewhere that's not evil after you have some work experience.
I know, but I'm not getting a nursing certification, I'm getting nurse aide which is like cna. but that isn't a nurse.
ReplyDeleteI also don't know if I think it's wrong to work somewhere evil. I don't think I could do it though. But people live there and they need someone there who's not evil.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding was that LPN's basically functioned as assistants to the registered nurse people though. And I've only read about this stuff so I don't know what they all call each other.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of your other comment, I think the problem with that is both that some things can't be justified by saying "it's my job" and that a not-evil person could generally do more good outside the context of allying themselves with an oppressive organisation. Also, people in involuntarily put in psychiatric institutions do not need for people to care for them in institutions, they need to be let out.
I don't think you could handle working at a long term psychiatric institution. I think you would like working a short term "crisis" one for adolescents more because it's mainly going to be suicidal teenage girls coming from really bad situations and there would be a chance to have a positive impact in some contexts. But you would also sometimes be frustrated by how little the system actually does for people. You wouldn't like sending people back into a highly abusive situation or into a situation where they might die, but that would happen sometimes.
Also, even if you worked at a short term one, these places often function as intermediary places before sending people to long term institutions. So in between the suicidal teenage girls from abusive families and group homes, you would have to find some way to justify to yourself taking part in condemning people to that (if you didn't find some way to justify it to yourself, I don't think you would be able to deal with it).
You would also eventually be asked to take part in things like strapping someone down and forcible injecting them with drugs against their will. As a nursely person you might even be asked to be the one doing the injecting. If you somehow got out of doing this (which is unlikely), you would still have to administer drugs to people who take them "voluntarily" under the threat of heavy coercion, possibly checking under their tongue afterwards. So again you would have to find someone to justify beating someone up, strapping them down to a bed, and then forcible injecting them with drugs against their will as being something that is okay to do to certain kinds of people or in certain contexts. If you didn't justify this, it would be very hard for you to deal with.
So these are the main things I can think of about that. It's probably worth mentioning that I don't really label these places as evil, mainly because I don't actually categorize even really harmful things that way, and that I would still work in a place like this if my other choices were being homeless and living with my parents indefinitely. You can also hopefully see why I don't like the idea of someone I really like taking on that kind of job- it's either going to be very hard for them, or they're going to learn to justify things that terrify me.
As a side note, at one point I wanted to be a nurse type person and work in a psych word for adolescents. I blame stockholme syndrome type things.
Oh, another thing is that I think these kinds of environments are especially bad for you. I have actually been thinking about this. My jazz teacher once mentioned that learning to improvise well involved a kind of character growth/personality change for most people and you had to learn how to go into things not knowing how they would turn out or if you would make maybe really bad mistakes. This is just one example of how I think learning to play music well is slowly changing me from the inside out and it is generally leading to me being able to do more things than I would otherwise be able to, even contexts that don't ostenably have anything to do with music.
ReplyDeleteI think working in these kinds of environment has been having something like the opposite effect on you and is making it progressively harder for you to do things. So I feel really bad for you, even though at this point you have been more financially successful than me (I do believe things will work out for in a couple years though*), and I'd like for you to break out of it somehow and experience something more like I am.
I know this is a really personal thing for me to say but this is the impression I get reading your blog.
*It helps that if I can get at least ~350 dollars a week I will count this as "working out."
Nurse aides can't give medication because, as I explained, we are not nurses. We do support staff things, like dressing people, feeding people, making beds, toileting, etc.
ReplyDeleteAlso I agree and everything, but I am not the president. If someone needs constant care and they/their family don't have money to pay for it, they can't be "let out" of a nursing home because they would die. There's not much I personally can do to change the fact that they're there.
If you want to reexplain how my bad brains are the result of--um, working at summer camp? for four months out of the past two years?--I would love to hear it, but I don't really understand it.
I mean being psychologically able to do things. Obviously you will never do some things well- we are similar in this regard. And if you want to say I'm totally wrong about this I don't mind and I'm not trying to insult you (reading things here actually helped me come to terms with some of the things I was doing).
ReplyDeleteI don't think most people in nursing home need constant care and I certainly don't think most people in psych wards need constant care. I'm absolutely certain most teenagers in psychiatric institutions aren't there because they need constant care.
I did say "might" about injecting people because I wasn't sure how it would work. But the way restraining works is that get a bunch of people to all gang up on the one person and over power them. If there was an "emergency" they would probably expect you to help- "counselors" even do this. This could literally come to the point to whether or not you're willing to help murder people, or at least help people who murder people or (if no one gets murdered where you are) send people environments where that's likely to happen.
http://www.charlydmiller.com/LIB05/1998hartforddata.html
Some people will tell you people only die under restraint if you do it "improperly." Other people will tell you that sometimes you have to restrain someone that way. Generally you have no way of knowing who is which.
A lot of this is psychiatry specific. I don't think nursing homes would be a good environment for you either, but I do acknowledge there are people in nursing homes who would die if they were taken out. (the money thing isn't really true though because it's generally more expensive to put someone in a nursing home than it is for them to receive care in an apartment) And I obviously know less about nursing homes because I haven't been in one myself.
Also I'm not trying to get you to justify anything to me, I'm just trying to give information you might not have thought about or been aware of. Do what you need to in order to take care of yourself.
ReplyDeleteI actually do know nursing homes are more expensive than receiving care at home, since I don't live under a rock, but that doesn't mean an individual person or their family can afford care at home because there's a medicare/medicaid bias toward institutions. I just have a problem with you saying, "people don't need to be cared for, they need to be let out." No shit, people shouldn't live in institutions. But implying that everyone who lives in an institution can just be "let out," when the whole reason why people get stuck in institutions is because other kinds of supports are totally underdeveloped or impossible to get, just pisses me off. Lots of people with various kinds of disabilities actually need support and/or treatment. People also need support in transitioning out of life in an institution if they have lived there for a long time. Where are they supposed to go when they're "let out?"
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, to return to the original topic, what am I as an individual supposed to do about this? Walk into institutions and pull the fire alarm? Where should I live and how should I feed myself while I am doing this?
I mean being psychologically able to do things. Obviously you will never do some things well- we are similar in this regard. And if you want to say I'm totally wrong about this I don't mind and I'm not trying to insult you (reading things here actually helped me come to terms with some of the things I was doing).
That's cool but can you explain what you mean? What work have I been doing that has led to what result? What am I not able to do now that I could before?
Anyway, with my certification I could work in various kinds of facilities. I might want to just work in an ordinary hospital. I just have a slight bias toward psych stuff because I like working with people who have bad brains, but I've never been in a psych hospital in my life, so I have no idea if that's a real likelihood for me.
I said "the people in psychiatric institutions don't need to be cared for in instituions." I meant in psychiatric instituions specifically and didn't say "psychiatric" twice because that would have seemed redudant to me. However, the vast vast majority of people in psychiatric institutions do not need constant care and thus could possibly be said to need to be in anything resembling an institutional enviroment. People are not put in psychiatric institutions to recieve care. I think before you start getting pissed off you should think about where I'm coming from and why I'm saying something. Of course I recognize that some people need help and support but that's generally not what happens in those places or there woudln't be entire databases devoted to how people were killed. I'd also say that people are generally not put in nursing homes to recieve support because that's hardly ever the easiest or cheapest way to support someone. Any support that happens is in spite of the overall environment.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you as an individual supposed to do? I don't know, except "whatever you need to do to take care of yourself."
I also ask that you do some of the things you ask other people to do when they're upset with you. You ask them to check to see what the other person is actually saying, to think about how their experiences might help shape their perspective relative to your own, and to take a step back and think about what they're saying before passing judgement.
When I say that people don't need to be cared for in an institution, am I really saying they should be given no support? Does that actually make sense? If I did really say that, do you think that I meant it and that that was what I was trying to say?
Also, when your reaction was "I wouldn't be doing some of those things, I would just be working as an assistent under the direct supervision of someone who does those things?" how do you think someone who has been institutionalized would react to that?
As to the "before" your summer camp job? Before that you were in school. Another environment that I don't think was good for you and certainly wasn't good for me. It's not good for a lot of people. And that's part of why I feel like I can relate to you, I feel like the first 18 or so years of our lives were similar in a lot of ways- something you're free to disagree with but that I can't help feeling. (if you really want me to say more about what I mean about how certain environments can make people/us more or less able to do things, wait a while and then email me and ask; I don't mind saying more about this some time)
Also, I have not actually told you to do anything. I know the certification will allow you to work in a bunch of different environments. So I tried to give you some information for you to take into account when making the decision about what kind of environment that would be. Whatever you decide I am going to try my best to be a friend to you, even though I know I am less close to you than you are to many people.
I am going to try my best to go to sleep, so if you respond again I won't be able to say anything for a while because I'll be asleep and then I'll be busy for however long I am.
Also, when your reaction was "I wouldn't be doing some of those things, I would just be working as an assistant under the direct supervision of someone who does those things?" I never said that.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry about what I've said. I'll read/talk about this more carefully tomorrow.
it's okay
ReplyDeleteI hope your last day of nurse aide class goes well.
(am still in busy mode)
Ick, clinicals. I have a number of friends who have talked about Clinicals.
ReplyDeleteI want to apologize here for what I said to Pancho. I was in a foggy mental state while replying to his comments (due the tiredness mentioned in the OP) and the things he was saying made me really upset. I often feel that some of my disabled friends think of me as other or as the enemy because I'm staff. When he said, "people involuntarily put in psychiatric institutions do not need for people to care for them in institutions, they need to be let out," I took that as him saying that I want disabled people to be imprisoned so I can take care of them.
ReplyDeleteBecause I had nursing homes on my mind, since I had clinicals in one (actually I was thinking about a particular resident I met on Saturday), I responded to him as if he was talking about people who live in nursing homes, when he was explicitly talking about "people involuntarily put in psychiatric institutions."
I should not have been talking to him at all. Everything he said made me feel like he was telling me what to do and assuming I was ignorant of the abuse of disabled people and likely to advance it. These are my own fears as a staff person (as they should be for any staff person), but I was too tired to think clearly and couldn't understand what Pancho was actually saying.
Now that I go back and read what he wrote, I see that he was actually being really nice throughout our conversation, and I was unable to see it.
I want to hug you, but that doesn't work very well online. If I was offline I'd probably be too shy to do it, though.
ReplyDeleteomgggggg best birthday present of my life!!
ReplyDeleteyou may met yet come to regret the horror you have unleashed upon the world
ReplyDeletealso I'm sorry you haven't ever gotten any good presents