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Made another creature.

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Reblog if it’s ok for your mutuals to tag you in posts they think you’ll like even if you don’t talk often.

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The Woods, Chapter 1: A Lot of Bad Things Happen in Rapid Succession

pg 7

Dogy :)

first/prev/next

masterpost

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some bad day art from me forgetting all of my meds yesterday (cw for impalement, head injury, implied non-con a little? Its not particularly explicit)

soz kevin, i needed a guy to harm

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meows

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i keep getting fines for “excessive water consumption” it’s not my fault that the basement prison cells all need their own toilets and showers. and like the prisoners are not pulling their weight AT ALL. all they do is sleep and be scared of the rats all day instead of painting with the easels i provided so the fines are really putting a financial strain on the household. if i didn’t need them for their plasma i would have killed them all already because this is nottt as financially lucrative as i thought it would be

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would you?

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Whumptober still giving me ideas!

Look at him all cute and ✨ muzzled ✨

Handlers started doing their best to humiliate him, after they got humiliated by losing half their guards to a single wounded unarmed soldier.

It took a long time to break this one, he was fiery!

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Gentlemen, This is No Humbug

Heh. Heheh. Here I thought I was on a DEA list with the Truth Serum post…

[Due to the possibly dangerous/sensitive nature of this post, I’m going to remind everyone that everything on my blog, including this post, is meant as a writing reference and should NEVER be used in real life.]

So you’re in a pickle. You’ve got a character who really needs surgery and, well… lets just say the circumstances are not ideal. Maybe they’re in a remote village in a developing country/war zone with extremely limited access to medicine. Maybe they’re in a long-post-apocalyptic world where hospitals and pharmacies have been entirely looted. Maybe its even the late 1800s. I don’t know your characters lives.

But what’s an author to do? You’ve got the basics of low-resource surgery down from this post, but you’re scrambling on one extremely important point- the anesthesia.

Where the frickity-frak are you going to find a quality anesthetic in the 1800s, during an apocalypse, at this time of night?

I’m going out on a limb here and say you’ve probably heard of something called ether. And maybe you just recoiled reading that. Ether? Isn’t that stuff really ineffective and dangerous and laughably out of date?

Actually… no. Not really. Ether has been used effectively for over a century. Its relatively cheap, reliable and besides a couple of unpleasant (but not particularly dangerous) side effects, surprisingly safe- even in the hands of those with minimal training. Not only that, but it is CURRENTLY the most widely used inhalation anesthetic in the world. Bet you weren’t expecting to read that today.

I mean, a clean operating room, anesthesia machine, choice of medication and trained anesthetist will beat it hands down, but you gotta work with what you’ve got.

But, wait. Do my characters even have access to it? They’re chilling in the apocalypse, remember? The answer is still a surprising probably.

OBTAINING ETHER

In the early 1800s, it was used as a recreational drug. In the late 1800s, it was used as an anesthetic and a recreational drug. It might not have been overly abundant just everywhere, but it existed.

Today, its a lot more abundant. Medical-grade Diethyl Ether comes in special brown bottles (light causes it to significantly lose potency) and is relatively expensive. Industrial-grade Diethyl Ether is exactly the same stuff with significantly less insurance attached to it, meaning its a heck of a lot cheaper. It just comes in 55-gallon drums and must be carefully transferred to smaller bottles before use. There are many other varieties of industrial ether available as well. All of them work, but some may have more severe side effects or less anesthetic power. In industry, it is used as a solvent.

“Those looters may have torn that hospital apart, but damn if they forgot all about the local paint factory.”

Also, if they’re really desperate but have some time and knowledge of chemistry, Ether can be made with ethanol (strong drinking alcohol) and sulfuric (plumber’s) acid (can also be obtained from a lead-acid battery). Here’s a video. You’re writers- get creative.

EDIT #1: Ether is really flammable and if not stored correctly (in sealed cans or dark bottles, away from heat, oxygen and flames) it has a tendency to explode. Your characters should be really careful.

USING ETHER

Once acquired, Ether can be administered most easily and safely through an “open-drop” technique by someone with little medical training. The open-drop method involves a wire mesh mask covered by disposable cloth. the ether is dripped from a bottle onto the cloth, and the patient breathes it in through the mesh. This can be improvised using a small kitchen strainer or molded piece of screen as the wire mesh mask and a rubber band to hold the cloth in place. It can also be made by cutting the other end off an empty aluminum can and draping the cloth over the hole, but that’s getting real desperate.

The person handling the ether should drip roughly 12 drops/minute for the first minute, 24 the second, 48 the third, 96 the 4-15th minute, 50 the 15-30th, and 20-30 every minute after that. The bottle doing the dripping must be glass- plastic can react with the Ether and melt.

Typically, general anesthetic is a mix of a hypnotic (unconsciousness-inducing agent like propofol), an analgesic (painkiller like fentanyl) and a paralytic. Ether, conveniently, works as all of these things at once (to a usable extent), and so is the only drug needed. It also has the advantage of being difficult to overdose on- unconsciousness can be achieved way, way, way before overdose becomes a problem. No intubation is necessary (at optimal dose Ether does not depress respiration), and while helpful, supplemental oxygen is not even completely necessary. Ether does not impact heart function.

So, you might be thinking- why doesn’t everyone just use Ether? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier, safer and cheaper? Well, yes, probably. But Ether isn’t pleasant. First of all, it smells like gasoline. You like the smell of gasoline? Me neither. Your poor character probably won’t either. If that wasn’t bad enough- it takes forever to knock someone out with Ether. Like a solid 20 minutes. It’s also somewhat irritating to the lining of the mouth, nose and throat- not to mention that during this intervening time between starting to breath the anesthetic and actually passing out, the patient may be very anxious, panic, or vomit. All in all, its a pretty sucky 20 minutes (note- pre-op medication with a benzodiazepine (anti-anxiety drug) can shorten this period of time and make it a lot more pleasant).  Side effects upon waking up from Ether include profound nausea, vomiting and drowsiness.

Also, everyone involved is going to smell like Ether for a while.

EDIT #2: If IV equipment is available (I was earlier assuming it was not, given the circumstances I randomly came up with at the beginning, but you may be using this info for other reasons), Ether IV solution can be prepared by injecting 50mL of Diethyl Ether into a 1L bag of an IV solution called D5W (5% dextrose in water). That needs to then be cooled to 4C, then shook for about a minute. Characters should give about half of it as quickly as possible (after which the patient should be anesthetized), then allow it to flow just enough to keep the patient in the ideal level of anesthesia for the duration of the operation. This method reduces side effects both at the beginning and end considerably, but sacrifice’s Ether’s natural paralytic function (not really important unless patient needs bowel surgery).

There are reasons other drugs were invented to take Ether’s place, but if its what you’ve got, its what you’ve got.

And it works pretty well compared to the alternatives.

R E F E R E N C E S

Iserson, K. V. (2012). Improvised medicine: Providing care in extreme environments. New York: McGraw-Hill Medical.

Follow @macgyvermedical for more like this!

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Caretaker is a creature that feeds on others’ pain - not in the sense of causing it, but in the sense of truly eating that pain. They visit from time to time, when things are particularly unendurable, and leave whumpee blissfully numb. Whumpee has such an unfortunate life…no one has ever fed Caretaker so well. And whumpee has never experienced such an effective painkiller.

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Caretaker finds whumpee bound and gagged, unable to move and whimpering for their attention. Caretaker skids to their knees and pulls whumpee into their arms.

Whumpee, with their arms behind their back, can only press their face hard into caretaker's shoulder.

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Whumptober day 14 - Left For Dead

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Evening Silence by Boris Groh

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friendships end. relationships end. fictional man whos doing even worse than you is forever