#|| staph her

[dilfsisko]

think i might've actually gotten a staph infection this time

[humbleboar]

My grandpa fell on Saturday and then again on Sunday and now hes in the hospital for that which is how we found out he also apparently has liver cancer and a blood infection and if he doesn't die from the infection he'll die from the cancer and I'm like. What do I do. In 2020 he fell and broke a rib and when they did a CT scan or whatever for that they noticed scarring on his liver and DIDN'T TELL HIM. Then a couple years ago he broke his clavicle and AGAIN they noticed some masses on his liver, but they couldn't see all of it on the scans and again DID NOTHING and like even if there was nothing they could really do for him bc he's old and frail, at least we could've had this time to come to terms with it instead of suddenly it being like hey! Ur grandpa will be dead either in a few weeks or a few months!

[notengoteclas]

[mistress-light]

On another note. I absolutely go feral how Cinta is just so freaking done with Aldacor's bullshit every time he mentions tHe gLoAmInG. Specially at the end, and I'm giffing that moment now. Her headshake is bloody hilarious.

[mino-diabolik]

"I've been looking for you all day, I don't want to hear that you're spending your birthday alone!"

... were the last words a certain redhead barked through the phone after demanding to know the location of her friend, before hanging up. The brief silence got suddenly interrupted by relentless knocks on the door of his motel room.

Upon opening, Scarlett waited on the other side, almost empty-handed and somewhat restless. Wearing her classic green dress for special occasions, it was almost like she came prepared. Because, not only that...

"Ah! I knew it," a slightly muffled voice greeted him, while the Ghoul not only held something behind her back, but also presented herself wearing a facemask, "...I won't kiss you until you clean yourself up, young man. I've been smelling your deeds from a distance, luckily something has been telling me that I need extra protection around you, so I didn't push my luck today, fufu," vague as her comment was, she offered a giggle, "anywho, it's a shame the blood on yourself is someone else's, but it still suits you."

It was noticeable how she was smiling under the mask despite all. While it didn't cover all the bloody smell, it did help considerably; Scarlett brazenly eyed Mystic up and down, as if she was holding herself back from pouncing on him just yet. In the end, her gaze softened with another sigh, as she brought her hands to the front.

She gifted him a bunch of what she would call mismatched tulips.

"Well, happy birthday, dear Mystic~ Aren't these beautiful? I couldn't wait to give them to you when I saw them."

Two-toned tulips were delivered in a neat bow to the Founder, her amethyst pair shone even more as her grin grew wider beneath the thick cloth. When she spoke again, she winked at him.

"May I steal a little of your time on this lovely night? Or... a lot?"

Of all the things Mystic had thought he would go through on a lonesome birthday, he certainly hadn’t considered the day would begin with Scarlett berating him through the phone and arriving at his room’s door. He stood on the threshold, watching the Ghoul’s rather off appearance. Not at all for the face mask…

At Scarlett’s comments, Mystic lowered his gaze to his clothes. “Oh,” he mumbled. “Shit. My bad.” It was an honest mistake. If he had known she would end up with him, he would’ve rushed under the shower. Most of all, he was exhausted.

The Founder received the bouquet of mismatched tulips with widened eyes. It took him a moment after Scarlett’s explanation to realize what they represented.

There was a long silence on his part. The muffle noise from thin walls on the rundown motel buzzed around them.

A tear dribbled over Mystic’s face and plopped over one of the blossoms. He tried to choke back his sob, so he held his breath. The waterworks broke immediately after. “You—you shouldn’t have…”

Days of tireless work, where he ended up buying a small cake from the corner store simply to do something for his birthday while he was away from home. This small touch was his breaking point.

Mystic sniffled, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Tha—thank you…”

[upthewitchypunx]

A few years ago when Jackie Cat's brother, OJ, passed from this world a friend of mine gave me a beaded bracelet to help with grief and it was such a sweet and lovely gesture.

My little sister is deep in grief after suddenly needing to send her best friend, Annie the swiftest rocket of a beagle-spaniel, from this planet.

my friend said their friend made the bracelet but doesn't think they make them anymore. Does anyone who follows this blog make such a thing?

[smiletimeisrunningout]

Things that embarrass Emma in verses where it applies:

her freckles, which she hides with makeup when she can (I do not support this)

someone who does something gentlemanly for her because she gets all flustered over that

a genuine, sincere, non flirty compliment even if it's about her looks and she's used to compliment herself

admitting that she over-worries about people when she doesn't think they want to hear it

forgetting to use her brain sometimes and like. kissing a guy without asking for permission/making an actual misstep she hadn't planned to shamelessly make because breaking norms is fine only if it's on purpose

[tcypionate]

every time i get annoyed by my cat begging for more food, i immediately remember when he was sick and dying and unable to retain weight and i become relieved that he's still here with me, asking for another bowl of food (despite having just finished the one i gave him)

[scientia-rex]

Saw a patient today who had been through a series of medical visits that epitomizes what I hate about multiple different kinds of care providers. Their VA dermatologist took a scoop out of them to remove a basal cell cancer. Fine. I’m not a dermatologist, maybe it needed those wide margins. (If it didn’t, going that deep should mean it was an excisional biopsy and they put in sutures to close it.) They gave the patient and his wife confusing instructions about wound care. They didn’t provide guidance around keeping it covered or moist. It got infected. His wife took him to Urgent Care. The UC doc took a swab of the wound and started antibiotics. They came to see me for a visit we scheduled ages ago for something else.

Here’s the thing. Wounds need to be kept at what I call the Goldilocks moisture level: not too dry and not too wet. If it’s pruny/white/mushy like it’s been in a bathtub, it’s too wet. If it’s cracking, it’s too dry. This is why you can’t say “cover it for X days and then leave it out.” That would be like telling someone with heart failure and lower extremity edema “take the diuretic for a week and then stop” without any instructions around dry weight, dizziness, etc. It’s more complicated than that.

This wound was too dry. No one had talked to them about keeping it moist. No one had even mentioned Vaseline.

No, they got a wound swab. Want to guess how good a wound swab is for an open wound exposed to the world? Pretty terrible. You can improve it a little bit by making sure you’ve removed some kind of layer and then expressing fluid directly from the wound with the swab, but it’s still bad. The only time I give a shit about what grows from a wound swab is when it was a) collected in the OR (as when the podiatrist gets a sample of osteomyelitic bone in a sterile environment) or b) when it grows pseudomonas. Everything else? I can figure out by looking at it. If it’s skin it’s probably either staph or strep. If it’s staph, it’s either MRSA or MSSA. If it’s MRSA, it’s making a lot of pus, it’s red, it’s hot, it’s painful. This wasn’t. So it was either MSSA or strep. So what are we going to do for systemic antibiotics? Probably the same thing we would have done anyway—Keflex.

And what’s the utility of systemic antibiotics in a skin wound? Not a lot, most of the time. This wasn’t cellulitis proper. It wasn’t red or hot or angry enough. A red border around the wound does not a systemic infection make. And if you don’t care properly for the wound itself, there’s no point in antibiotics, because it still can’t heal. Antibiotics can get where blood goes. Blood does not go into the slough that is the bacterial biofilm covering a wound.

So I sat there with gauze and saline and gently debrided the 100% slough off the wound. It’s yucky and it takes time and attention. It doesn’t get compensated. That’s why no one else had done it yet. The derm had blown it off as “it’s healing, it’s fine.” It wasn’t healing. It was developing rolled edges, where the wound edges couldn’t heal across the slough and so they started to curl back under themselves. If taking off the slough (and keeping it gone by MAINTAINING PROPER CONDITIONS) doesn’t let it heal, I’ll need to get him back in and rough up the edges with a Buck’s curette until it can heal.

Multiple professionals who should have known better tried to make my patient just go away, rather than heal him.

I’m pissed. I’m tired. I think I have a cold. I shouldn’t be doing the work the dermatologist or the UC provider should have done. And because of everything they’d told her, his wife was pissed at me for doing what was correct. “We’ve heard a lot of different things!” Yes, and I’m right. You’ll find out when the wound actually starts healing when we care for it properly.

The value of a model is in what it can predict. Wounds are great about making it clear when your model sucks.

[webslingingslasher]

ok this is random but😭

i had a dream the other day and idk why i didn’t tell you sooner bc it’s so you/trouble/us coded but i had a dream where i bit my man’s shoulder (im single) (hypothetical dream man) but i but it OFF and woke up crying like his flesh was in my mouth and there was blood and now i csnt jokingly bite my future bf bc i’m traumatised

oh my god. telling this to bf!peter im-

'wake up.' stiff pokes, your touch is swiped away. 'no.' you poke harsher, peter hisses around a breath. 'wake up.' he pulls towards the edge of his bed, you follow right behind.

'go away, i'm sleeping.'

'that's fine, i just need to tell you something.' peter lets out the most dramatic sigh you've ever heard. 'tell me.'

'i can't bite you anymore.'

two days ago you bit him so hard it left a perfect bruise in the shape of your mouth. when you saw it the next day, you cried and told him how sorry you were, peter said it was fine and it didn't hurt. it was kind of sad, peter had never seen you so guilty before.

'don't tell me you're still crying over that. it was an accident and i promise it doesn't hurt.' you frown, you weren't talking about that but you think that's where the idea came from.

'i just had a dream i bit you and like, i bit your arm off.'

peter rolls over, he's got two perfect arms. 'trust me, trouble. you've got jaws of steel, but they're not that strong.' peter's the one who brought it up, you point at the fading purple.

'i did that.'

'and it's still attached.' peter shakes his arm out, 'see? wanna give it a nibble?'

'no! no more biting. no biting ever again, i can't control myself, obviously.'

'it's a minor flesh wound.'

'for now! what if i gave you a staph infection?'

'you didn't give me a staph infection.'

'how do we know that?'

'because you didn't break the skin, trouble.' you stare at the mark, it haunts you still. your lower lip trembles, you hurt him. 'petey,' it's that broken voice, the one that makes peter feel like a teddy bear, the mix between bringing comfort and a sense of protection.

it's all it takes for him to scoop you into his hold. 'c'mere, give me a hug.' you press against him tight. 'i hurt you.' peter holds his lips to your forehead, you caused damage and he's comforting you.

'minorly. i’ve bruised you before, too. i didn’t beat myself up over it.’ you snort, he didn’t cry but he felt terrible. peter went in a little hard on sex one night, his fingertips bruised little marks into your hips where he held you. the next morning he kissed them over and over while he whispered apologies.

‘liar. you freaked the next morning.’ peter hums, he remembers. ‘of course i did. i bruised my girlfriend the same night i got her.’ you want to squeal, each time he says it feels like you take flight.

‘then you understand why i’m upset. i mortally wounded my boyfriend, the person i love most.’ you gasp, you hadn’t even thought of it like this, but it’s even worse.

you push back to stare into his eyes, your thumb brushes over the purple ring. ‘i hurt spider-man!’ you kiss over the bruise, you can’t believe you hurt your hero like this.

‘i almost bit spider-man’s arm off.’

peter rolls his eyes, ‘no, you almost bit your boyfriends arm off.’

‘spider-man is my boyfriend.’

‘peter was your boyfriend first.’ you hold up a finger, ‘technically- you told me you-‘

‘technically nothing. you’ve known peter for longer, that’s who your boyfriend is.’

you shake your head at him. ‘well, technically-‘ peter flips you to your back, you blink wildly at the sudden movement. ‘technically nothing. spider-man was collateral to get peter to be your boyfriend.’

you raise your eyebrows, peter hides his hands under the warmth of your shirt. ‘baby, i only said yes because i knew i’d be dating spider-man.’

peter pouts sympathetically, ‘i hate to tell you this, trouble. but… spidey is pretty upset about the impending staph infection. peter on the other hand… is strong and brave.’

you agree with him. ‘yeah! you’re the strong one, you can handle your arm being bit off. i mean, i’ll never bite you again, but you could handle it.’

‘trouble, as long as you’re the gnawing my arm off, i’d be fine with it.’ you pout up at him, peter thinks he said the wrong thing again and tries to backtrack.

you stop him. ‘i’m not sad, petey. i’m in love. you’d give an arm for me.’ peter gives you three quick kisses, ‘i’d give you anything.’

you murmur against his lips, ‘like being able to call spider-man my boyfriend?’ peter presses in harshly, you think he might’ve bruised your bottom lip in retaliation.

‘almost anything.’

[anandrettisimp]

Okay, so I need to do a bit of a ramble about one of the biggest couple goals in recent motorsport.

I am, of course talking about Will and Liz Power

Now you’ve gotta understand that they basically started at Team Australia/Walker Racing within a couple of months of each other with Will doing the last two races of the ‘05 Champ Car season and Liz joining as part of the PR team in February ‘06. They had met and interacted but it wasn’t an easy start for Liz.

You see, between Long Beach and Houston, which was to be the first race she would attend in person, her Dad, Bo, had a stroke and required quadruple bypass surgery. It was only at the last minute that she felt she could do the race only just making it in time for the team bus leaving for the airport.

Will sat beside her, making sure she was okay (apparently all he really wanted to do was hug her).

Eventually Liz was asked by team boss Derrick to befriend Will for two reasons:

He basically knew nobody

Australian media wasn’t happy that Australian driver at Australian back team wasn’t dominating series he had only just started in.

Part of the way Derrick sold this to her was by describing Will as a lost puppy but, at the same time, she wasn’t to date Will or she’d be at risk of losing her job.

Well within a couple of months they were dating because what do you expect when you take two people in emotional vulnerable situations and tell one of them to get close to the other.

It should be noted that around the same time Will had already asked mutual friends if Liz was seeing anyone.

Simon Pagenaud knew from the start and was even Will’s wingman from time to time and helped them hide the relationship while Liz’s family became part of Will’s rock in America. Liz’s mum Kathy is Will’s PA lady and basically the only person he trusts to buy and choose his outfits (cause left to his own devices you will know he is colourblind).

Of course it got found out but between how well Will was doing by the end of the season and how professional Liz had been in her role all was good.

Over time their careers would split, Will moving to KV Racing then Penske (with Liz being heavily involved in helping him prep for the interview) while Liz had stayed with Walker Racing until the end the going on to Dreyer & Reinbold Racing before calling time as she found it was too much to do PR at one team while your husband races at another.

And, honestly, if I was a racing driver’s partner I’d probably be in a similar state to Liz, murdering all the bottles.

Their son Beau, named in honour of Liz’s dad who had sadly passed away in 2007, was born in 2016 but after the birth there were complications which resulted in Liz having to go back into hospital in Christmas Eve, luckily she was able to recover.

Towards the end of 2022, as Will won the championship for a second time, Liz again was starting to get ill. Come January 2023 she had a fever of 106 and Will had to call an ambulance.

It turned out that she had a staph infection that had settled in her spinal column and the only way to save her was to do an operation.

She almost didn’t make it.

Will pulled out of the Daytona 24 but he almost retired full stop.

He had to be there for his family.

She got better though she was back in the hospital just before St Pete.

I think you had to be an idiot to not see that Will was off balance last year. This was a man who was doing everything he could to take care of his wife and then going to races by himself.

The support system that he has depended on since his first full season racing in America was gone.

For the first time since 2007 he failed to win a race.

It wasn’t until the final races last year, with Liz finally back that he relaxed. He even said he was just happy the season was done.

This year everything is back to normal or as normal as it could be after going through something like that.

But, most importantly, Liz is back.

There’s already been a couple of weekends, be it after practice, qualifying or the race where you can see Will come out of the car hot and all it takes is Liz being there a couple of words and he calms, ready to speak to the team and media.

We already know if Liz hadn’t gotten better when she had then we don’t have Will leading the championship right now because he would have chosen her and Beau over another season.

Heck, if he wins the championship this year I wouldn’t be shocked if he decides to end his career on that high so he can spend more time with the one who stood by him through it all.

[lunaetis]

me writing arlecchino on discord : can you not get turned on by someone being able to one-up you or challenge you ?

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

Mom's fever broke around 10 PM last night and her leg has slightly improved and certain parts of it are no longer red. Her blood sugar is elevated. The disease specialist said it might just be cellulitis and not MRSA as it is beginning to clear up. Staph Infections are bad in general but one is definitely worse than the other so we'll take the less worse one.

They've stopped the IV for meds. She's a lot more present.

[niobiumao3]

Havoc Marauder Interior

Someone made a post about this a while ago but apparently they de-activated so it is possibly lost to the mists of time. Here is what I put together for myself as a writing reference. Image heavy, meta heavy.

Last edit: 2024/10/29

Edits: Replaced garbage text layout with actual ship overhead. Realized the two concept art images face different directions. This likely explains the magical moving jump seats. Also added discussion of a cargo hold. Added discussion of ship dimensions (specifically length). Replaced old guesstimates with numbers from Dawn of Rebellion. Added commentary about the magical seat. Added comment about the belly airlock and updated the floor plan.

I think people under- and over-estimate the Marauder's interior potential. Given its overall size and intended use (transporting about 10-15 troops plus assorted equipment and providing air support in a forward area), there's not much room left for creature comforts.

Except the Batch aren't 10-15 people, they're 5, and the shuttle is referred to as modified numerous times. This leaves plenty of room to make assumptions and freeform. So, as to what we have actual, visual evidence for from episodes and concept art, here is a rudimentary floor plan:

An important point about the two concept art images: they do NOT face the same direction. The top image faces to the aft/back of the ship, i.e. the tailgun. The second image faces to the fore/front of the ship.

Number key:

1: We know this is where the ramp and door are located from War Mantle and Metamorphsis.

2: We know about this upper storage area from Cut and Run

3: The access to the tail gun has changed visual from TCW s07e02 and various TBB episodes.

4: Access to a floor hatch with a narrow, vertical 'airlock' can be seen briefly in Bounty Lost.

The Airlock

With thanks to @megmca for reminding me of this: there's a narrow, belly-hatch airlock. We see it briefly in Bounty Lost, when they attach to the escape pod Omega has commandeered and Wrecker brings her in.

For all of you wondering what airlock-access the ship has, this is it.

The Magically Appearing/Disappearing Seat

In Cut and Run we have this moment with Hunter and Omega, but in most other shots each of these consoles has only one seat (eg. Tech and Echo in prior frames). I think this is actually NOT a magically appearing seat. I think it's the other console seat, because I suspect they can be moved. I base this one this shot from Replacements:

That looks like a seat with a moveable base.

Obviously this is bad design for a ship which is doing barrel rolls and what-not, so I have to assume they're magnetically locked. Even if it is the same seat, in the shots right before that one above, Omega walks up and it's not in that space. So it's almost like the scene was longer and was shortened, and we missed a few frames of her or Hunter unlocking it and moving it over.

Meta Discussions

tl;dr: I think of the Marauder as a small fishing vessel or a van-conversion RV. You can put a lot into a small space if you get creative.

Bathroom I know the writers have made weird assertions there isn't one and omg they all smell gross from no hygiene but that makes zero sense. Soldiers are constantly under stress, they're getting injured, they need to stay clean when possible or they're going to get sick and die from a systemic infection in short order. Anyone who's glanced in the general direction of military history knows this. You can argue about clone expendibility all you want but the Batch minimally qualify in that regard, being Nala Se's pet project. Can you imagine losing one of them to a staph infection because there's nowhere for them to bust out some no-rinse antimicrobial soap or get their scalp clean? I'm not saying they'll be doing photoshoots in between missions (well maybe Hunter would ) but, come on. (And are you going to tell me Mr. Sensor Sensoria is cool with doing long hauls with 4 people who don't bathe? Just, no.)

But that much aside, anyone who's ever been in an RV, a commercial airliner, or a modest-sized sea vessel knows you can cram a bathroom into a tiny space. Yes, you're going to be spinning in circles doing things, but the benefits of a spot to clean up, manage waste, and tend to injuries far outweigh any other use of that area. So regardless of what the writers say, a transport without a minimal refresher (to use the SW term) is counter to the ship's designed use. It has to be able to accommodate Wrecker, of course, but in the end it can double as storage when not in use. There is zero reason to not have one. Added to this, we now officially have a length for the Marauder, which is 30.3 meters (see below). RVs which are 1/5 of that size have bathrooms. You're going to tell me the Marauder doesn't?

If nothing else, since the TCW episodes and the beginning of S1 have pointed to them going on extended deployments with long hops between stops, they're going to need one or constantly be handling waste in much less efficient and sustainable ways.

Added to all of this, it's specifically called a modified variant of an Omicron. We're probably meant to think this means 'Tech would like to fly faster than the GAR and ship engineers think is reasonable for a shuttle' but IMO it extends to changes like this as well. So, there's a refresher in there, feel free to choose a spot. Right across from the fold out racks is a good candidate because in most imagery it's just weapons storage, and there's an entire upper-deck space which you could use for that.

Galley Definitely not one of these. The Batch are eating rations any time they're not on Kamino. You can make an argument they (and all clone units) have cook kits for improvised eating in the field; in the Batch's case I suspect that's a given, as they'd just start doing it because who's going to stop them? Additionally, the sheer amount of rations you would need to carry around to feed Wrecker would be ridiculous. (Remember when Wrecker talks about never being full in S2E13? I feel like this is an indication they did and still do, in fact, have to improvise a lot of additional caloric intake. Hunter probably thought Cut and Suu's farm was a genius idea. 'Grow your own food! Wrecker will never be hungry again! Fucking incredible.' Then Tech got the ship impounded.) I think you can argue for one being added, like with the refresher. Do they actually need those weapons racks anymore? Definitely no. But, it's not on there by default.

Beds As you can see in the concept art above, there are at least 3 racks that fold out from the wall on the port side. They're at a minimum wide enough to accommodate Wrecker, they may also be long enough for him to not need to curl up (unclear because in this shot from Bounty Lost his knees are bent and he's hugging Lula):

Three is a weird number since originally there were four of them. I figure the options here are:

The pilot/copilot/second row seats all look 100% more comfortable than the racks. We actually see Tech sleeping in one, at one point, so this has actual evidence to support it.

It's war time, they're never all asleep simultaneously. Someone is always flying the ship or on watch.

The floor is in effect the same as a rack, arguably preferable as you can't fall off it in the event Something Happens while you're out. So, one of them might actually be ON the floor sometimes.

They're not really intended to sleep on the ship for extended periods, but narratively we're lead to believe they have, many times, and needed to make adjustments to it as a result. Notice how quickly Wrecker whipped up a bed for Omega? IMO, not the first time they've done something like that--they did it for themselves first.

Cargo Hold Based on that screenshot of Omega above and the below shot from Cut and Run, the 'hold' of the ship is actually a storage area overhead, running the length of the ship. In that shot above of the rack, there are a series of yellow rungs which imply you can climb up somewhere on the port side. This is probably alternate access to that same overhead storage space.

In Cut and Run we see Echo, Omega, and Tech hide in it, coming back out from a slide-open hatch:

Given Tech's height this is probably somewhere around 1.5m high.

We can be reasonably certain the hold isn't under the ship, or at least storage there is minimal, due to a couple of things:

In all instances where the hyperdrive has been pulled, it's under the ship on the belly, and takes up a reasonable amount of space. Eg., in Retrieval, here's a bunch of stuff which has been pulled from the ship:

In instances where they're working on the ship from the outside, like in Cornered, the sides and belly never have panels open which contain empty space unless the ship's hardware have been removed to reach something:

So, the cargo hold is probably that space on the top from Cut and Run. It doesn't have much room; reasonably speaking, the area with the weapons and sleeping racks was probably a cargo hold as well, they just converted it to a more general purpose area. (So IMO this is a stronger argument for putting a commercial airliner-style bathroom in place of the weapons racks, particularly once they bail on the Empire.)

Dimensions - updated 11/3/23 Dawn of Rebellion has a Bad Batch section, and indicates the Marauder is 30.3m in length, 36.65m wide (presumably with the wings extended, and 12.41m tall (this probably includes the central stabilizer).

I will edit this to update it as we get more pictures. Since the toys that I know of have no basis the show from an internal perspective I didn't include anything from them.

Image sources:

All screencaps by me. Use at will.

Marauder underlay

Bad Batch Concept Art, Marauder Interior

[tomatoluvr69]

Helene floods diary/blog entry 10/11/2024.

Mentions of severe disaster, death/child death, burials/funerals, and of course a splash of deep illness and ed. TLDR it’s very very hard here but I’m more or less ok.

Hi everyone :-)

Greetings from [Appalachian town absolutely shattered by Hurricane Helene floods]. Slowly crawling my way out of the indescribable wreckage. No idea when I’ll be back to work, but received word that every one of my students survived the storm, which is a huge, profound relief. I’ve changed my post-storm efforts from direct mutual aid stuff to burial. Lowered a stranger into her grave and then filled it in manually. No family could be present. There are more next week. Every single day is so hard. Drove with a friend who lives in [one of the hardest hit towns— this place is GONE.] to mourn and get some supplies— he was stranded in his home without information or ability to cook hot meals for over a week. I used to live on the outskirts of that town— I really cannot sum into words how disturbing it is to the core of a person to see places you know so well in utter, severe destruction, soldiers crawling throughout. It’s like trying to describe the color purple to a worm or something. These floods have changed me. Yesterday I went to drop off a load of hazard protection gear in Marshall, NC, where signs read, “WARNING: MUD IS TOXIC. May cause: Disease, Fatigue, Dysentery, Headaches, Lung Infections, Staph Infections. Please Decontaminate Before Going To Kitchen Or Eating.” And on our way back home through downtown (google the downtown, seriously. These are places I went in the before times, visiting with friends, buying groceries, going to friends’ gigs at a now-obliterated bar called Mal’s) we forgot to roll the windows up, until a cloud of dust hit our eyes and lungs. Feeling okay so far, but god only knows.

But my work at the ecoburial sanctuary feels like a respite. There are just a couple people at each burial, proxies for the decedent’s loved ones who can’t come in because of the severely damaged infrastructure and lack of places to stay. The entire city has been without water for over two weeks now. Power is an unreliable commodity, as is internet and phone service. I feel honored to have this opportunity, and grateful for a way to be useful— I was struggling with the executive functioning necessary to carry out my supply runs, to budget the donations and read the lists, then sort and organize drop offs. My brain is genuinely impaired from what I’ve seen. But I see the community at work and trust the people in my network to continue that work. To lower caskets and shovel earth feels better. On Wednesday, the day of my first burial, I went the entire day without the gaping, gnawing dread, sorrow, fear, and stress that’s been my constant companion.

There are learning centers cropping up around the city, schools still being out indefinitely, and the school I work for will likely establish one over the next few weeks in an outlying town that gains water service— likely a few makeshift classrooms in a disused church or fire hall, something like that. And I’ll rejoin as soon as I can, many of the staff having young children they’ve had to evacuate. I work at the elementary level, and I miss my students, I want to provide the stability of a familiar face, but I also sort of can’t fathom returning to work. To bury people is wordless, your body knows what to do. There is no thought required. I can let the boundless grief and sorrow pool within me, and ease it with every thrust of the shovel. It’s getting cool here in the mountains, but the days are still warm enough— crisp October skies, autumn foliage, all that stuff. A gorgeous time to be buried. I would do it every day for a year if I could. But life here is making awkward, creaking lurches towards normalcy, and schools are vital. So I’m soaking in this strange, sacred interlude while I can, laying a stranger’s flood-bloated remains to rest, lowering my head to the mourner’s Kaddish or Nicene creed, grieving tremendously.

Furthermore, the outpouring of support is drying up. You see disaster relief convoys leaving, meal distros shuttering, October rent coming due in full. You get screamed at in traffic, your roommate’s car gets rear-ended by an internet cable repair truck, in the midst of his mourning a family of four. Now comes phase two: the community is still shattered, but you’re expected to function as normal. And you cannot even shower or defecate at home. No one cares anymore what’s happening to Western NC/Eastern TN, and I understand, as I understood when a mass shooting killed 11 at a synagogue three blocks from my childhood home while I was away in NC, as I understand with guilt each time a distant tragedy lands and is forgotten— no one has the bandwidth for everything. It’s simply not possible. But it is surreal to stumble around a shattered world and know that you’re in an island. I already have given up trying to relay what things are like to people outside Helene. Maybe one day. But there aren’t really words for such a visceral trauma. The things I’ve seen will be with me, cluttering my dreams and thoughts, until I die myself. I’m uninterested in making myself heard. I’m alright and I’m not. What I can do for right now is try to feed myself and my community, try to make sure I visit a toilet at least every other day, and show up to the graveyard. I really will be okay. But it’s so surreal, and terrible. Please, for the love of god, if you can help it, never ever live next to a river, and don’t cross floodwaters. The homes, the family members, and the friends people here have lost. It’s unfathomable. I’m gonna try to track down a shower today. All you can really do is move forward. I feel like I’ve finally passed the stage where I was catatonic for hours at a time, which feels nice. I’ve been there before even pre-flood, but it’s so much harder to crawl back from when the things you need, like hygiene, sleep, routine, hydration, and healthy foods are all intermittently accessible and tremendously hard to acquire. But I’m trying now, which is something; I have the goal of two meals a day, two jugs potable water, two showers a week. I’m doing okay again. I’m in financial ruin, it’s really fucking hard. And my ED troubles are back with a vengeance— again, all the measures I have to combat this stuff are prohibitively difficult. I may have to finally cave and go to a grocery distro myself, just to get some healthy foods. Even though grocery stores are open, I am genuinely too traumatized to handle them right now. When im not proactive, which is often, im freezing cold and faint, hyperconvinced all foods are poison. There are times when I could get a hot meal at one of the distribution sites but I cannot eat it because of how triggering and uncertain it feels.

So it’s hard to take care of myself. But I don’t know that layering my trauma of my involuntary hospitalization from my teenage years over my flood trauma and food trauma is possible. And even then there’s no real way to get help right now. All the health centers are either closed or booked out indefinitely. So what, I’m gonna drive to Charlotte for care? Or get telehealth when there’s no place to even do a video call? It is what it is but hey, it’s not great. But I’m ok. Got some fruit and bread, made some rice. I have to remind myself I’m very sick, of course I can struggle with this flood more than, say, my well roommate out chainsawing roads in Swannanoa every day. But every meal really is such a struggle. I got a banana outside a church earlier while I was trying to find a water truck and now my next task is get some dinner. A normal person in my circumstances would be fully equipped to eat healthily by this point, we can refrigerate and cook now. But I’m unwell and it’s hard. But maybe I will let my friend pick up some stuff soon, some bananas and tofu and milk. It’s also hard because we have to use our extremely hard-gotten potable water to wash cooking dishes, so it’s hard to like batch cook a huge batch of dal which is what I usually do when I’m struggling to feed myself, because it means having to do another big water run a lot sooner. But this is a chronic condition and I know its contours, I’ll be ok, even though it’s severely challenging. I have got to work on invalidating myself less, and telling myself my chronic condition isn’t worthy of aid. But the guilt is too overpowering to take advantage of it. So many people lost their entire homes. And even though I’m in dire straits financially and have invisible disabilities and illnesses, I still can’t let myself receive help. But I have hard days and easier ones and if I’m proactive I know how to turn them into easier days. It’s just hard. It’s so much easier to lie in my bed and watch the light on the wall shift for hours. So I fall into that trap sometimes. Especially now that temperatures are falling into the forties and fifties at times, and my window got shattered, and I can’t eat so I’m cold all the time, it’s just so much more comfortable to lie in bed and then I get trapped lol.

All that sounds very grim but really, I’m okay. Part of me still really acutely yearns to get out of WNC for awhile but I don’t think I could be cut off from my community right now, and the closest person in my life is enduring tremendous grief (four people, drowned! Two boys under ten! Bodies found all the way in Tennessee!) and I cannot conscionably leave him, even if I’m struggling to manage my illness here, even if he’d urge me to go, I wouldn’t want that. We tried for a couple days in Durham and it was profoundly terrible in its own way.

So I’ll go back to the cemetery, and then I’ll go back to work at school, whenever that may be. And one day the shower and the toilet will be back, and the grocery stores will have safe foods I can eat. And I’m very acutely aware of all the people, especially in Gaza and Sudan and displaced by imperial interests from which I benefit, who will not regain that stability— my disaster is, at least, the whim of nature, theirs is manmade. I’ve been carrying the trauma of destruction & feeling grief for Gaza in an even deeper way. WNC will pull through, if deeply scarred— i at least have that consolation. It almost feels as if I’ve endured nothing at all. I’m incredibly aware that the water truck I can go to is provided by the same government bankrolling unfathomable death and despair of people in an even more brutally shattered world. The scale of trauma is just beyond imagination. My fury has only increased.

I hope everyone on here is well— I’ve really loved having this space over the past few years, it is such a tremendous mental respite even in antediluvian times, and I am anxiously awaiting having power and internet restored so I can regain that sense of normalcy as well. I fucking miss scrolling, yall. I’m at a Buddhist monk’s house to download some forms I have to fill out and wanted to blog a bit. Please everyone have a really nice hot shower for me and watch a good movie, have a glass of wine with a hot dinner. And give a few bucks to relief efforts in Gaza. WNC will rebuild, Gaza cannot. Much love, your favorite natural disaster survivor ❤️

[eulyin]

[Is it you?]

Cocolia loves Bronya n so does Bronya to her. It's just their latest circumstances weren't favorable. I think, Bronya misses her dearly...

(you can see this drawing as the time Bronya came back from Underworld to meet Cocolia. Or as one of her dream only //staph) --

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