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ysabetwordsmithThese are the content notes for "With a Warm and Tender Hand."
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand."
-- Henri Nouwen
Special thanks towe_are_spc for checking the vision-impaired details in this poem.
Supporting a friend's health may apply to mental or physical issues. Here are tips for both a client and their health buddy. You can also hire an appointment companion if you don't have a suitable friend or relative. Note that the advice on preparing for a doctor's appointment would help if it were permitted to work, but in local-American practice, it is a vicious bait-and-switch. In a standard ten-minute appointment, there isn't time to give the doctor that much information, let alone get answers to questions or work on a problem together. In Terramagne-America, the system is much saner, and one of the improvements is that the receptionist routinely asks questions to determine how long of an appointment you're likely to need so you don't run over. Best practice is to book extra time for crime victims and other people whose trauma may take longer to work through. They also have better paperwork, which means you can write down once what your permissions are and have that attached to other forms instead of having to re-sign the same concept over and over. It saves time and paper. This infographic offers ideas on how to handle a triggering appointment.
Everyday living skills for blind people include orientation and mobility. Use all remaining senses to observe the environment. For sighted folks, here are instructions on how to walk with a blind person. Anyone can learn to do it, but doing it gracefully requires practice. In T-America, most hospitals and some community centers have a basic "seeing-eye human" class on how to lead, although the advanced version is usually available only at hospitals or colleges. There are complementary instructions for following a guide person.
Act Up! -- a magazine about exercise, sports, and vigorous hobbies including things to do, places to go, latest breakthroughs, safety equipment, and where to learn more.
Health Sleuth -- believe it or not, a health magazine for mystery fans; about half news and diagnostic nonfiction, half fiction including fantasy and science fiction about solving health problems; soup-friendly source of discovery updates.
Taxxi -- a tactile magazine with heavy pages embossed or otherwise embellished with patterns to feel and things to do, including both Braille and raised letters; more expensive than most magazines, but extremely popular with children and other tactile people.
Some magazines in L-America offer Braille editions. In T-America that list is a lot longer.
Science News: Magazine of the Society for Science and the Public (SNW)
26 issues/year
ebraille (BARD), press braille
Excerpts of reports on current programs in science, medicine, and technology.
Touchy-Feely is a series of picture books with Braille text for vision-impaired travelers. Each book showcases a number of attractions within a given area. There are series that cover the fifty states, national parks, tourist-friendly countries, major cities, and so forth. They have a large-scale map and often regional maps showing the location of sites. Then the contents are organized geographically to help readers imagine where sites are in relation to each other. Each entry includes a variety of features such as a site map, an illustration of the destination, and a description of its highlights. These books are widely distributed through tourist offices, gift shops at famous locations, and libraries. They're also stocked in waiting rooms that have a lot of vision-impaired clients.
Tactile graphics can teach map skills. Various formats include road maps with lines, raised images of monuments, and terrain maps. These are good ways to keep vision-impaired people busy in a car or waiting room.
California attractions include roadside attractions, museums, native culture, beaches, parks, and other places. The Tull family has explored many of these.
Expensive Braille
In L-America, Braille books are ruinously expensive. Regular books typically run $50-100 while college textbooks cost around $500 ... or about ten times the standard cost. In T-America, more Braille materials are available because people spread out the cost. The government contributes a lot, but so do interested organizations. For Touchy-Feely California, all the featured locations chipped in to help produce and distribute copies, because they'll benefit from readers visiting them.
See an area map of Merced, California.
Stanislaus National Forest spans four counties in the Sierra Nevada region of northern California. It features spectacular volcanic and granite formations, along with rafting and kayaking on several rivers. In Terramagne it was closed to grazing due to cattle damaging the features; the environment has since recovered pretty well, although educational signs point out some of the visible damage to the rocks as a cautionary tale.
Forestiere Underground Gardens is among the best sites in Fresno. Covering 10 acres, it includes bedrooms, a kitchen, a fishpond, and many other features. Beautiful plants adorn the stone walls. It is a popular vacation spot for mobsters and supervillains, who are very careful to be discreet.
The Children's Discovery Museum ranks among the best things to do in San José. Hands-on exhibits encourage children and adults to explore and create things.
Trauma-informed care takes steps to avoid upsetting people sensitized to threats. See a comprehensive guide to implementing it. More colloquially, start with "Don't be a dick." Client-centered care offers principles compatible with TIC. Health facilities in T-America are supposed to have some staff trained in these techniques, because so many people have survived some sort of trauma.
Disability etiquette includes special aspects for caregivers. T-America expects client-facing health workers to know at least the basics, and those who regularly work with disabled clients
Sizeism includes height discrimination. Short men suffer the most. There are ways for them to cope. Follow etiquette for interacting with short people -- and never pick up anyone without consent unless it is an absolute emergency.
Crime victims need special help to cope with the stress of the offense and the paperwork that follows. Here is a guidebook for helping crime victims. T-America does better at this.
The window of tolerance describes a person's range of functionality. Understand how to work with it. This is especially crucial if you or someone you know have issues that make functionality challenging to maintain.
A haptic tablet helps visually impaired people with computer tasks. In T-America, HappyTac is a popular software system that covers a range of devices from standard to adaptive equipment, incorporating their individual haptic feedback features.
Health complaint forms may include a written or checklist format. This is a sample followup form. The HappyTac version uses a fairly simple checklist type of complaint form, then has an option to connect with the patient's contact information so that a staff member can call to follow up regarding exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.
T-America offers a variety of training for people with vision loss and those who care for them. The basic information on vision impairment covers partial and temporary issues. The more advanced material includes blind navigation, household safety, and other independence skills. The basic version of support is intended for those who might have occasional contact with vision-impaired people and includes tips on how to describe things usefully and guide someone through a cleared path. The more advanced material includes classes for family or close friends of vision-impaired people, and for professionals who work with vision-impaired clients; it features things like more comprehensive guidance skills for open areas and enabling techniques so that blind people can do more for themselves. Plenty of people pick up the basic certifications because they look good on a resume.
In T-America, certifications directly related to vision loss (e.g. seeing-eye human) come standard in Braille. The same is true of programs aimed at educating vision-impaired people, like first aid for the disabled, so they can read their own cards. You can get these either in combined Braille/text or two separate cards. On a wallet-sized card, the Braille version typically has room for the skill title, person's name, and contact information for verification. It loses a lot of the small details because Braille has to be bigger than print, but you can get those details via phone or internet. Certifications that are relevant because vision-impaired people are frequent consumers (e.g. trauma-informed care) have Braille as an option. Outside that, you may need to take your cert to your local print shop or place an order with a low-vision supplier online to get a Braille version. These are usually clear and you just put them next to your text card. You can even get certification wallets where some or all the display frames are empty in the middle to allow easy reading of Braille.
Here are some guidelines for trauma-informed care, emotional first aid, and mindful conversation.
Trauma history assessments can help provide better care. Here is a Trauma-Informed Care Assessment and its instructions. Pips had a decent childhood except for the one big issue that made him leave his family: they don't appreciate who he really is, and he can't abide that. His adult experiences contain many violent events, but that's due to his work, so they don't bother him much. The main issue from the past that's relevant at the moment is how his manifestation of superpowers and some people's response to it has left him protective of his eyes -- which is normally quiescent, but has been reactivated by the recent assault. That's the one that affects his care today, because all the staff will have to help him climb up the wall of consent to access services that he urgently needs.
The Acute Stress Disorder Scale is designed for use shortly after an upsetting incident. Note that tests like this can easily give false positives or other distorted results if the person has another health condition which is not accounted for in the test. As Pips explains, he's had several things on the list of trauma symptoms, but not because of the trauma -- things like daze and irritability are because of the super migraine. The trauma didn't cause them directly, it triggered an episode of a previous disability. The fact that Pips is sensitive about his eyes in general is also a previous issue, which is normally not a problem for him now, but was triggered by the trauma. The part that's particular to this traumatic event is that it happened while he was off-duty and it completely blindsided him. That, he's having trouble coping with. Joshua's suggestion of asking the police department's in-house counselor for help is very astute, because this issue closely parallels something that many officers experience, so they same techniques should relieve it. What Nurse Draves does, in having Pips use different marks to indicate different causes, and make extra notes for clarity, can turn a useless or worse-than-useless tool into a very helpful one indeed. But you have to think of doing it and be allowed to do it. This only works on paper, unless you have a sophisticated scoring program that can handle adaptations -- say, the caliber of forms offered by a Kraken-authored health nexus. This hospital is not that good, but does have paper, which works just fine.
The UCLA PTSD Reaction Index offers evidence-based assessment some time after an upsetting incident. Here is a scoring worksheet. T-America does much better at offering are for people who meet some but not all criteria for a serious problem -- in the interest of fixing it before it becomes serious. This is a simple trauma screen for PTSD.
Pips finds it useful to track his headache symptoms when they flare up, but at present his condition is really well controlled. It only bothers him is when something interferes with his adaptive equipment, supplies, or practices -- like Mark Hastings breaking his glasses when the sun was in his face. So this isn't something that needs medical attention beyond recalibrating the new glasses; once Pips gets those on tomorrow, he'll be fine as far as the headache issue is concerned.
For reference, Pips has maybe 1-2 soup migraines a year, sometimes less, and it's usually work related like a sonic or light based attack. Once it happens, a headache would last for days or weeks if untreated, but he has treatments to stop that, so the treated duration usually means he's passed out in bed for 8-12 hours and mildly hung over for a day or few. Light and sound triggers tend to cause sharp, piercing pain; others like a blow to the head are more inclined to cause throbbing. Light triggers bring on weird visual and other sensory effects, and all of them can bring cognitive malfunctions. The severity is usually high enough to be disabling. The primary trigger is light and other visual input, which is what the glasses control. Sound is a less common trigger, along with sufficiently violent motion. Associated features include photophobia and sonophobia. He doesn't seem to have the food triggers common to ordinary migraines, probably because this is a soup thing. Reducing noise, sleep, and a dark quiet environment all help. Pips also relies on blue chamomile and prescription medication during a headache, essential oils like lavender and peppermint for aftercare, herbal teas and dietary supplements for maintenance.
This was the only form I could find that screens for medical trauma, and it doesn't cover medical abuse, malpractice, or similar issues; medics generally don't want to hear about those. But it does give an idea of some things that people may find traumatic which can then impair their ability tolerate medical care later on. Normally this isn't an issue for Pips now, but when his abilities first manifested, he was miserable for months and nobody knew how to help for a while and some people were shitty about it. So he may be fine with reasonably competent caregivers, but a nasty one will rile him right up. His ability to snap into correct distrust is fast and accurate; his ability to return to correct trust is also accurate, but slower -- only somewhat slower than average.
The parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems govern much of human reaction. The flight-or-fight response raises heart rate among other things. Once activated, adrenaline takes about 10-20 minutes to break down. Relaxation techniques can help restore parasympathetic balance. There are worksheets on processing trauma, how the problem developed, subjective units of distress, identifying triggers for anxiety, triggers and coping for depression, body map of emotions, support system, core beliefs, self-talk, storytelling, blame, challenging worries, challenging unhelpful thoughts, what to let go of, emotional suffering, your strengths, how you want to be treated,
This list of trauma healing goals offers people a path to recovery.
For self-care there's a check in sheet, activities list, and planner.
Journaling can help process trauma. See page 1 and page 2 of the prompts.
The Achievement Closeness Enjoyment Log is a self-care guide that goes along with mood tracking. These belong to a self-help course.
10 Minutes to Let Your Mind Wander is one of a set of printables on mindfulness.
Emotional regulation is an important skill. Explore a workbook about it.
This is an example of a crime victim treatment form.
Clean bulking is a way to gain muscle without gaining too much fat. Clean foods with high protein make for good meals. Smoothies work too.
Follow the steps to cleaner eating with some do's and don'ts. Here is a shopping list.
For the clean eating cookbook see Breakfast page 1, Breakfast page 2, Lunch page 1, Lunch page 2, Lunch page 3, Lunch page 4, Dinner page 1, Dinner page 2, Dinner page 3, Desserts page 1, Desserts page 2, Desserts page 3.
A Medical Binder helps caregivers organize information. In this case, the hospital has a standard package of binder and filler that they offer to clients for organizing informative handouts, test results, care plans, and so forth. Staff can print out information from an appointment in the same format to put in the binder. The printables include all kinds of record pages on contacts, insurance, bills, medical history, appointments, questions, hospital visits, vision care, dentistry, supplements and medications, food sensitivities, blood pressure; along with divider tabs, cover and spine. It also comes with folders, labels and other stickers, an elastic organizer, and a zipper pouch for storing loose items.
There are nonverbal signs of pain. I looked for ways to tell when someone is having a migraine, but couldn't find specifics. Often a migraineur is unwilling or unable to say what's wrong. In this case, Pips was clinging to a wall, tense, whimpering, barely able to speak or move -- obviously in mortal agony. Joshua took one look and knew something was seriously wrong, even before Pips explained what it was. Sometimes what people need most is for someone to notice when they are not okay. Step up and offer to help.
Native American herbs include remedies for headaches. Here is an anthropological study about headache and migraine in native cultures from Central and South America. Teaberry, also known as wintergreen, is good for headaches and other migraine symptoms. Because it also fights fatigue, it can help clear migraine fog. It's available in tea, tincture, gum, and oil extracts.
The Master said, “If a ruler acts correctly, he can govern without issuing
orders. If he acts incorrectly, his orders won’t be followed.”
-- The Analects of Confucius, 13:6
Nutri-U is a T-American restaurant chain that sells everything in official nutritionist portions. They're typically smaller than the serving size listed on boxes or the portion size that people will take if serving themselves. Here are some sample sizes. That's perfect for children, senior citizens, and other people with modest appetites. People who want more can either order multiple servings of the same thing, or fill a platter with many different foods. They also cater to all the different dietary needs such as high fiber, low fat, no salt, kosher, halal, allergen-free, etc. This restaurant attracts a lot of parents with young children, retirees, and people on special diets.
A healthy plate is one way to dish up a balanced diet.
Whole grains include ancient grains, farro risotto, herbed brown rice, quinoa, and 7-grain rolls. Joshua has the ancient grains, while Pips has a 7-grain roll.
Nutri-U offers a fat serving of sliced avocado, mixed nuts, packet of nut butter, olives, oil-and-vinegar salad dressing, dark chocolate, or an egg. Joshua chooses olives, and Pips the dark chocolate.
The restaurant provides a protein serving of Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, tuna salad, grilled salmon, pan-seared beef steak, grilled chicken breast, tofu cubes, chili, green lentil dal, 15-bean soup, bean salad, or soba noodles. Joshua goes for steak, and Pips gets a cup of chili.
Vegetable options include steamed sugar-snap peas, roasted rainbow carrots, rainbow vegetable bowl, riced veggies, mixed greens, butternut squash noodles, zucchini pasta, green soup, tomato soup, mesclun salad, garden salad, heirloom tomato salad, romaine lettuce salad, strawberry spinach salad, or Green Goddess salad dressing. Joshua picks the garden salad.
Nutri-U offers fruit servings in the form of fruit salads (apple salad, tropical salad, melon mint salad), cooked fruits (grilled peaches, baked apples), and fresh fruits including apples, bananas, grapefruit, oranges, strawberries, and blueberries. Joshua gets the melon salad, and Pips takes an apple.
Beverages (Joshua mint water, Pips hot water)
Various healthy beverages include mineral water, flavored waters, coconut water, fruit juice, vegetable juice, whole or skim cow milk, almond milk, soy milk, coffee, kombucha, iced tea, and hot water with a selection of herbal tea bags. They also have strawberry-basil lemonade, cucumber-mint water, mixed fruit juice, and mixed vegetable juice.
Terramagne-America likes to spread prosocial and educational ideas. One way of doing this is through paper placemats at restaurants. These are often double-sided, either with a restaurant menu or promotion on one side and educational material on the other, or with child and adult versions on the two sides. In addition to informing people about a topic, this also encourages social interaction by offering an interesting and constructive topic of conversation. See the Gifts of Imperfection placemat.
Eating can be a real challenge for people with vision loss. Read about locating techniques, eating and pouring. Pips actually has excellent skills, but he is tired and frazzled right now. So he chooses things that are easy to eat: everything is a finger food except the chili, which is simple to scoop up. Follow the tips for serving and assisting blind people.
Food sharing is a bonding activity which conveys affection and intimacy. Feeding people may be associated with romance or parental caregiving, but it's not restricted to that. It's also an excellent way of bonding with survivors of abuse or neglect and showing friendship.
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand."
-- Henri Nouwen
Special thanks to
we_are_spc for checking the vision-impaired details in this poem.Supporting a friend's health may apply to mental or physical issues. Here are tips for both a client and their health buddy. You can also hire an appointment companion if you don't have a suitable friend or relative. Note that the advice on preparing for a doctor's appointment would help if it were permitted to work, but in local-American practice, it is a vicious bait-and-switch. In a standard ten-minute appointment, there isn't time to give the doctor that much information, let alone get answers to questions or work on a problem together. In Terramagne-America, the system is much saner, and one of the improvements is that the receptionist routinely asks questions to determine how long of an appointment you're likely to need so you don't run over. Best practice is to book extra time for crime victims and other people whose trauma may take longer to work through. They also have better paperwork, which means you can write down once what your permissions are and have that attached to other forms instead of having to re-sign the same concept over and over. It saves time and paper. This infographic offers ideas on how to handle a triggering appointment.
Everyday living skills for blind people include orientation and mobility. Use all remaining senses to observe the environment. For sighted folks, here are instructions on how to walk with a blind person. Anyone can learn to do it, but doing it gracefully requires practice. In T-America, most hospitals and some community centers have a basic "seeing-eye human" class on how to lead, although the advanced version is usually available only at hospitals or colleges. There are complementary instructions for following a guide person.
Act Up! -- a magazine about exercise, sports, and vigorous hobbies including things to do, places to go, latest breakthroughs, safety equipment, and where to learn more.
Health Sleuth -- believe it or not, a health magazine for mystery fans; about half news and diagnostic nonfiction, half fiction including fantasy and science fiction about solving health problems; soup-friendly source of discovery updates.
Taxxi -- a tactile magazine with heavy pages embossed or otherwise embellished with patterns to feel and things to do, including both Braille and raised letters; more expensive than most magazines, but extremely popular with children and other tactile people.
Some magazines in L-America offer Braille editions. In T-America that list is a lot longer.
Science News: Magazine of the Society for Science and the Public (SNW)
26 issues/year
ebraille (BARD), press braille
Excerpts of reports on current programs in science, medicine, and technology.
Touchy-Feely is a series of picture books with Braille text for vision-impaired travelers. Each book showcases a number of attractions within a given area. There are series that cover the fifty states, national parks, tourist-friendly countries, major cities, and so forth. They have a large-scale map and often regional maps showing the location of sites. Then the contents are organized geographically to help readers imagine where sites are in relation to each other. Each entry includes a variety of features such as a site map, an illustration of the destination, and a description of its highlights. These books are widely distributed through tourist offices, gift shops at famous locations, and libraries. They're also stocked in waiting rooms that have a lot of vision-impaired clients.
Tactile graphics can teach map skills. Various formats include road maps with lines, raised images of monuments, and terrain maps. These are good ways to keep vision-impaired people busy in a car or waiting room.
California attractions include roadside attractions, museums, native culture, beaches, parks, and other places. The Tull family has explored many of these.
Expensive Braille
In L-America, Braille books are ruinously expensive. Regular books typically run $50-100 while college textbooks cost around $500 ... or about ten times the standard cost. In T-America, more Braille materials are available because people spread out the cost. The government contributes a lot, but so do interested organizations. For Touchy-Feely California, all the featured locations chipped in to help produce and distribute copies, because they'll benefit from readers visiting them.
See an area map of Merced, California.
Stanislaus National Forest spans four counties in the Sierra Nevada region of northern California. It features spectacular volcanic and granite formations, along with rafting and kayaking on several rivers. In Terramagne it was closed to grazing due to cattle damaging the features; the environment has since recovered pretty well, although educational signs point out some of the visible damage to the rocks as a cautionary tale.
Forestiere Underground Gardens is among the best sites in Fresno. Covering 10 acres, it includes bedrooms, a kitchen, a fishpond, and many other features. Beautiful plants adorn the stone walls. It is a popular vacation spot for mobsters and supervillains, who are very careful to be discreet.
The Children's Discovery Museum ranks among the best things to do in San José. Hands-on exhibits encourage children and adults to explore and create things.
Trauma-informed care takes steps to avoid upsetting people sensitized to threats. See a comprehensive guide to implementing it. More colloquially, start with "Don't be a dick." Client-centered care offers principles compatible with TIC. Health facilities in T-America are supposed to have some staff trained in these techniques, because so many people have survived some sort of trauma.
Disability etiquette includes special aspects for caregivers. T-America expects client-facing health workers to know at least the basics, and those who regularly work with disabled clients
Sizeism includes height discrimination. Short men suffer the most. There are ways for them to cope. Follow etiquette for interacting with short people -- and never pick up anyone without consent unless it is an absolute emergency.
Crime victims need special help to cope with the stress of the offense and the paperwork that follows. Here is a guidebook for helping crime victims. T-America does better at this.
The window of tolerance describes a person's range of functionality. Understand how to work with it. This is especially crucial if you or someone you know have issues that make functionality challenging to maintain.
A haptic tablet helps visually impaired people with computer tasks. In T-America, HappyTac is a popular software system that covers a range of devices from standard to adaptive equipment, incorporating their individual haptic feedback features.
Health complaint forms may include a written or checklist format. This is a sample followup form. The HappyTac version uses a fairly simple checklist type of complaint form, then has an option to connect with the patient's contact information so that a staff member can call to follow up regarding exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.
T-America offers a variety of training for people with vision loss and those who care for them. The basic information on vision impairment covers partial and temporary issues. The more advanced material includes blind navigation, household safety, and other independence skills. The basic version of support is intended for those who might have occasional contact with vision-impaired people and includes tips on how to describe things usefully and guide someone through a cleared path. The more advanced material includes classes for family or close friends of vision-impaired people, and for professionals who work with vision-impaired clients; it features things like more comprehensive guidance skills for open areas and enabling techniques so that blind people can do more for themselves. Plenty of people pick up the basic certifications because they look good on a resume.
In T-America, certifications directly related to vision loss (e.g. seeing-eye human) come standard in Braille. The same is true of programs aimed at educating vision-impaired people, like first aid for the disabled, so they can read their own cards. You can get these either in combined Braille/text or two separate cards. On a wallet-sized card, the Braille version typically has room for the skill title, person's name, and contact information for verification. It loses a lot of the small details because Braille has to be bigger than print, but you can get those details via phone or internet. Certifications that are relevant because vision-impaired people are frequent consumers (e.g. trauma-informed care) have Braille as an option. Outside that, you may need to take your cert to your local print shop or place an order with a low-vision supplier online to get a Braille version. These are usually clear and you just put them next to your text card. You can even get certification wallets where some or all the display frames are empty in the middle to allow easy reading of Braille.
Here are some guidelines for trauma-informed care, emotional first aid, and mindful conversation.
Trauma history assessments can help provide better care. Here is a Trauma-Informed Care Assessment and its instructions. Pips had a decent childhood except for the one big issue that made him leave his family: they don't appreciate who he really is, and he can't abide that. His adult experiences contain many violent events, but that's due to his work, so they don't bother him much. The main issue from the past that's relevant at the moment is how his manifestation of superpowers and some people's response to it has left him protective of his eyes -- which is normally quiescent, but has been reactivated by the recent assault. That's the one that affects his care today, because all the staff will have to help him climb up the wall of consent to access services that he urgently needs.
The Acute Stress Disorder Scale is designed for use shortly after an upsetting incident. Note that tests like this can easily give false positives or other distorted results if the person has another health condition which is not accounted for in the test. As Pips explains, he's had several things on the list of trauma symptoms, but not because of the trauma -- things like daze and irritability are because of the super migraine. The trauma didn't cause them directly, it triggered an episode of a previous disability. The fact that Pips is sensitive about his eyes in general is also a previous issue, which is normally not a problem for him now, but was triggered by the trauma. The part that's particular to this traumatic event is that it happened while he was off-duty and it completely blindsided him. That, he's having trouble coping with. Joshua's suggestion of asking the police department's in-house counselor for help is very astute, because this issue closely parallels something that many officers experience, so they same techniques should relieve it. What Nurse Draves does, in having Pips use different marks to indicate different causes, and make extra notes for clarity, can turn a useless or worse-than-useless tool into a very helpful one indeed. But you have to think of doing it and be allowed to do it. This only works on paper, unless you have a sophisticated scoring program that can handle adaptations -- say, the caliber of forms offered by a Kraken-authored health nexus. This hospital is not that good, but does have paper, which works just fine.
The UCLA PTSD Reaction Index offers evidence-based assessment some time after an upsetting incident. Here is a scoring worksheet. T-America does much better at offering are for people who meet some but not all criteria for a serious problem -- in the interest of fixing it before it becomes serious. This is a simple trauma screen for PTSD.
Pips finds it useful to track his headache symptoms when they flare up, but at present his condition is really well controlled. It only bothers him is when something interferes with his adaptive equipment, supplies, or practices -- like Mark Hastings breaking his glasses when the sun was in his face. So this isn't something that needs medical attention beyond recalibrating the new glasses; once Pips gets those on tomorrow, he'll be fine as far as the headache issue is concerned.
For reference, Pips has maybe 1-2 soup migraines a year, sometimes less, and it's usually work related like a sonic or light based attack. Once it happens, a headache would last for days or weeks if untreated, but he has treatments to stop that, so the treated duration usually means he's passed out in bed for 8-12 hours and mildly hung over for a day or few. Light and sound triggers tend to cause sharp, piercing pain; others like a blow to the head are more inclined to cause throbbing. Light triggers bring on weird visual and other sensory effects, and all of them can bring cognitive malfunctions. The severity is usually high enough to be disabling. The primary trigger is light and other visual input, which is what the glasses control. Sound is a less common trigger, along with sufficiently violent motion. Associated features include photophobia and sonophobia. He doesn't seem to have the food triggers common to ordinary migraines, probably because this is a soup thing. Reducing noise, sleep, and a dark quiet environment all help. Pips also relies on blue chamomile and prescription medication during a headache, essential oils like lavender and peppermint for aftercare, herbal teas and dietary supplements for maintenance.
This was the only form I could find that screens for medical trauma, and it doesn't cover medical abuse, malpractice, or similar issues; medics generally don't want to hear about those. But it does give an idea of some things that people may find traumatic which can then impair their ability tolerate medical care later on. Normally this isn't an issue for Pips now, but when his abilities first manifested, he was miserable for months and nobody knew how to help for a while and some people were shitty about it. So he may be fine with reasonably competent caregivers, but a nasty one will rile him right up. His ability to snap into correct distrust is fast and accurate; his ability to return to correct trust is also accurate, but slower -- only somewhat slower than average.
The parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems govern much of human reaction. The flight-or-fight response raises heart rate among other things. Once activated, adrenaline takes about 10-20 minutes to break down. Relaxation techniques can help restore parasympathetic balance. There are worksheets on processing trauma, how the problem developed, subjective units of distress, identifying triggers for anxiety, triggers and coping for depression, body map of emotions, support system, core beliefs, self-talk, storytelling, blame, challenging worries, challenging unhelpful thoughts, what to let go of, emotional suffering, your strengths, how you want to be treated,
This list of trauma healing goals offers people a path to recovery.
For self-care there's a check in sheet, activities list, and planner.
Journaling can help process trauma. See page 1 and page 2 of the prompts.
The Achievement Closeness Enjoyment Log is a self-care guide that goes along with mood tracking. These belong to a self-help course.
10 Minutes to Let Your Mind Wander is one of a set of printables on mindfulness.
Emotional regulation is an important skill. Explore a workbook about it.
This is an example of a crime victim treatment form.
Clean bulking is a way to gain muscle without gaining too much fat. Clean foods with high protein make for good meals. Smoothies work too.
Follow the steps to cleaner eating with some do's and don'ts. Here is a shopping list.
For the clean eating cookbook see Breakfast page 1, Breakfast page 2, Lunch page 1, Lunch page 2, Lunch page 3, Lunch page 4, Dinner page 1, Dinner page 2, Dinner page 3, Desserts page 1, Desserts page 2, Desserts page 3.
A Medical Binder helps caregivers organize information. In this case, the hospital has a standard package of binder and filler that they offer to clients for organizing informative handouts, test results, care plans, and so forth. Staff can print out information from an appointment in the same format to put in the binder. The printables include all kinds of record pages on contacts, insurance, bills, medical history, appointments, questions, hospital visits, vision care, dentistry, supplements and medications, food sensitivities, blood pressure; along with divider tabs, cover and spine. It also comes with folders, labels and other stickers, an elastic organizer, and a zipper pouch for storing loose items.
There are nonverbal signs of pain. I looked for ways to tell when someone is having a migraine, but couldn't find specifics. Often a migraineur is unwilling or unable to say what's wrong. In this case, Pips was clinging to a wall, tense, whimpering, barely able to speak or move -- obviously in mortal agony. Joshua took one look and knew something was seriously wrong, even before Pips explained what it was. Sometimes what people need most is for someone to notice when they are not okay. Step up and offer to help.
Native American herbs include remedies for headaches. Here is an anthropological study about headache and migraine in native cultures from Central and South America. Teaberry, also known as wintergreen, is good for headaches and other migraine symptoms. Because it also fights fatigue, it can help clear migraine fog. It's available in tea, tincture, gum, and oil extracts.
The Master said, “If a ruler acts correctly, he can govern without issuing
orders. If he acts incorrectly, his orders won’t be followed.”
-- The Analects of Confucius, 13:6
Nutri-U is a T-American restaurant chain that sells everything in official nutritionist portions. They're typically smaller than the serving size listed on boxes or the portion size that people will take if serving themselves. Here are some sample sizes. That's perfect for children, senior citizens, and other people with modest appetites. People who want more can either order multiple servings of the same thing, or fill a platter with many different foods. They also cater to all the different dietary needs such as high fiber, low fat, no salt, kosher, halal, allergen-free, etc. This restaurant attracts a lot of parents with young children, retirees, and people on special diets.
A healthy plate is one way to dish up a balanced diet.
Whole grains include ancient grains, farro risotto, herbed brown rice, quinoa, and 7-grain rolls. Joshua has the ancient grains, while Pips has a 7-grain roll.
Nutri-U offers a fat serving of sliced avocado, mixed nuts, packet of nut butter, olives, oil-and-vinegar salad dressing, dark chocolate, or an egg. Joshua chooses olives, and Pips the dark chocolate.
The restaurant provides a protein serving of Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, tuna salad, grilled salmon, pan-seared beef steak, grilled chicken breast, tofu cubes, chili, green lentil dal, 15-bean soup, bean salad, or soba noodles. Joshua goes for steak, and Pips gets a cup of chili.
Vegetable options include steamed sugar-snap peas, roasted rainbow carrots, rainbow vegetable bowl, riced veggies, mixed greens, butternut squash noodles, zucchini pasta, green soup, tomato soup, mesclun salad, garden salad, heirloom tomato salad, romaine lettuce salad, strawberry spinach salad, or Green Goddess salad dressing. Joshua picks the garden salad.
Nutri-U offers fruit servings in the form of fruit salads (apple salad, tropical salad, melon mint salad), cooked fruits (grilled peaches, baked apples), and fresh fruits including apples, bananas, grapefruit, oranges, strawberries, and blueberries. Joshua gets the melon salad, and Pips takes an apple.
Beverages (Joshua mint water, Pips hot water)
Various healthy beverages include mineral water, flavored waters, coconut water, fruit juice, vegetable juice, whole or skim cow milk, almond milk, soy milk, coffee, kombucha, iced tea, and hot water with a selection of herbal tea bags. They also have strawberry-basil lemonade, cucumber-mint water, mixed fruit juice, and mixed vegetable juice.
Terramagne-America likes to spread prosocial and educational ideas. One way of doing this is through paper placemats at restaurants. These are often double-sided, either with a restaurant menu or promotion on one side and educational material on the other, or with child and adult versions on the two sides. In addition to informing people about a topic, this also encourages social interaction by offering an interesting and constructive topic of conversation. See the Gifts of Imperfection placemat.
Eating can be a real challenge for people with vision loss. Read about locating techniques, eating and pouring. Pips actually has excellent skills, but he is tired and frazzled right now. So he chooses things that are easy to eat: everything is a finger food except the chili, which is simple to scoop up. Follow the tips for serving and assisting blind people.
Food sharing is a bonding activity which conveys affection and intimacy. Feeding people may be associated with romance or parental caregiving, but it's not restricted to that. It's also an excellent way of bonding with survivors of abuse or neglect and showing friendship.
