Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: "Shock Rooms"

Shock can take physical or emotional form. Both can pose significant dangers. Although physical shock tends to be more serious in the short term, emotional shock can easily turn into chronic conditions such as PTSD or depression which can kill later. Also, either version can feed into the other. Responses to trauma vary along a spectrum of severity. Acute stress reaction is a normal response to abnormal situations which exceed the victim's coping capacity. Symptoms typically subside within a few hours or days. This is best treated by Emotional First Aid unless symptoms pose a threat to self or others, or interfere with everyday life, in which case professional care may help. Acute stress disorder spans a period approximately two days to one month after trauma, with symptoms serious enough to upset ordinary functions that aren't healing or seem to be healing slower than expected. Treatment at this stage may reduce the chance of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, a chronic form of trauma reaction. It is important to distinguish between normal response (which heals on its own), disordered response (which may need a little extra support), and a disorder (which typically requires professional care). Just like physical injuries, mental injuries can be mild, moderate, or severe and need different levels of attention.

Local-American advice is not to seek hospital treatment for emotional shock; the facility is not equipped to provide the soothing atmosphere needed for trauma survivors or people with a loved one in the hospital. In many situations, little or no treatment is available for mental issues at mild or moderate levels. People can only get help for severe problems. Unfortunately this has much the same effect on mental injuries as on physical ones: ignoring them increases the chance they will not heal cleanly and that serious complications could develop.

Terramagne does have a Shock Room alongside the Emergency Room at most hospitals. The SR provides a clinical setting for Emotional Trauma Care, just as the ER treats physical trauma. They have an assortment of private and ward therapy rooms for techniques that help traumatized people feel safe or let them burn off excess energy after a trauma. Some are like industrial-strength quiet rooms; others are padded rumpus rooms. Therapeutic video games such as Tetris help process experiences into new memories in a healthy way. A small hospital might have only a few treatment options, while a large one has many, just as they expand support for more types of physical complaints. Specially trained therapists provide immediate comfort care, followed by assessment and then arrangements for long-term care if needed. (Doing the assessment first, while the person is still overwrought, can make matters worse.) They can also teach people about self-care following a trauma. This helps tremendously in preventing the initial upset from crystallizing into long-term damage. Sometimes it works amazingly fast, although most of the time it takes longer.

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Happy Beltane!

Here's a nice post about Beltane. 

Monday Update 5-1-17

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Saturday Home Repair Progress
Saturday Yardening
Recipe: "Honey Cupcakes"
Friday Home Repair Progress
Poem: "Pesach Sameach"
Wednesday Home Repair Progress
Wednesday Yardening
Llewellyn Season is Open!
Good News

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: see also three_weeks_for_dw
Shock Rooms
Emotional First Aid
Officer Pink Recipes
Party Monitor Kit


Overall, the home repairs went well.  A whole bunch of stuff got fixed and finished.  Some other stuff is partially fixed, due to running out of time/spoons/materials or discovering partway through that it needed more work than anticipated.  (This is inevitable.  So's the running back and forth to half a dozen different stores.)  A few things turned out less than perfect, like buying new lights that were supposed to be bright blue-white that turned out a deep yellow, almost orange.  But perhaps we can find the blue-white bulbs later.  I have a working light in my closet, a towel bar that doesn't fall off if I blink at it, and other great stuff.  The situation is greatly improved.  \o/

At some point, I want to go through at least some of the stuff from the closet and sort the less-usable items into rag bag or charity disposal.  Now that I can see WTF I am doing in there.  In my copious spare time.  :/

There will be a Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, May 2 with a theme of "history written by the losers."  Please drop by then and give me prompts!


Poetry in Microfunding:
"A Hope and a Promise" belongs to Polychrome Heroics and has 6 new verses.  Saraphina enjoys a first aid lesson.  "Essential for Human Survival" belongs to Polychrome Heroics: Cassandra.  Groundhog and Cassandra talk about whether to set aside dangerous things for a while.  "The Inner Transition" belongs to Polychrome Heroics: Berettaflies.  Stylet turns himself in to Valor's Widow.

Weather has been soggy all week.  The front has blown through, though, so today it is just cloudy and cold with standing water everywhere from all the rain.  We kept getting "flash flood" warnings except 1) it can't flash here and 2) the only warning you really need is when it starts raining upslope.  The fields will flood.  If it's also raining here, it goes over the road.  Pretty predictable.  The birdfeeders have attracted doves, grackles, some sparrows, and a blue thrasher.  Currently blooming: daffodils, tulips, violets, anemones, dandelions, white spirea, honeysuckle, spiderwort, carnations, marigolds, petunias, lantana, million bells, snapdragons, zinnias.  Onion chives and peonies have buds, and so does something in the white garden.

Monday Yardening

Today I went out and cleared space to plant some morning glory seeds, then put those in the ground.

Although the weather forecast only calls for clouds, not rain, it is in fact still drizzling.  :/

On the bright side, a lot of the earliest planted grass seed is sprouting all over the streetside yard.  \o/ 

Bingo

I made bingo in the Month of Rainbows fest. \o/

Readers for "How To" Posts?

Someone recently mentioned wanting to get a friend to read my recent "how to" posts aloud.  I don't do podcasting, but I know that I have a handful of vision-impaired folks in my audience who rely on audio.  Would anyone like to read aloud my stuff like Emotional First Aid posts, and maybe ad lib descriptions of any images that aren't essentially linked to a description already? If you can post something like that in a publicly accessible place that I could link to, I'd be happy to swap you poetry for your time.  Look over the unpublished stuff and let me know what appeals -- I can estimate how long it took me to write, and swap time for time, or we can compare length, etc.