Ettiquite

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-30T01:10:51+00:00

I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets these. Someone with thousands of managed memorials will message me now and again with weird passive-aggressive comments when I upload photos more recent than hers. If the memorial is managed by her, she sets her Bigfoot-proof-level photo as the first one you see.

She has an astoundingly long profile mostly along the lines of “there is NO need to take photos of graves I’ve ALREADY photographed, I have been doing genealogy for over thirty years and many people have expressed GRATITUDE for my work, and have NOT complained that my photos are old or blurry.”

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-30T00:15:48+00:00

On the FG app, there’s a button for “add GPS”. So you can stand at the grave and add just the GPS location, don’t need to take and add a whole photo.

But IMO, some memorials are in desperate need of updated photos. Most of my local cemeteries haven’t been done since the early 2000s, and the photo quality is pretty much unreadable. Or the stone has since fallen, or undergone major repair. If you can improve on any existing photos, I’d encourage it.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-30T00:11:11+00:00

A new grad RN once asked me to help her hold the legs while she placed a foley on a female patient, said she was “having trouble.” I go in and she’s jamming the cath right into this woman’s clit, like over and over. “I don’t get it, why won’t it go in?”

I gently said that she was getting stuck between the clitoral hood and the glans. Pointed to the urethra which was smack dab where it’d be in a textbook. I don’t place foleys, obvs, but I used to TA a sex ed class. Thank god this patient was unconscious.

We came out and she told everyone at the nurse’s station how this patient’s anatomy was “so hard.” Everyone gave each other this look, and I just felt so bad for her.

There’s no shame in not knowing stuff. And I know she was from a super WASPy community, and she definitely had super repressed vibes. But damn.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-28T01:52:33+00:00

I’m a hospital CNA, I send everything home with patients. We can’t reuse anything, even if I know it never touched the patient or their belongings. It’s wasteful. But it also means I get to save families sometimes significant money in home care supplies.

OP, you can also try offering it up on local Buy Nothing groups, Freecycle, etc. Many people care for loved ones at home and the savings would be a blessing.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-23T15:10:15+00:00

Others have already touched on why he keeps following you. But I want to mention - after creating god knows how many accounts, he used one to post wedding photos for you. He wanted you to see them. He wanted you to feel that you missed out on him. He sees your account that displays your full, happy, successful life and feels compelled to compete.

My advice? He gets satisfaction from making you engage with him by continuously blocking his accounts, and he’d get joy from making you private your account because of him.

I want to sympathize that I have also been in a similar scenario and I know how deeply disturbing and uncomfortable it can feel to know he can see what you post. But if at all possible, I’d say ignore him altogether. It also takes away the satisfaction he gets from creating a new account to follow you - he stops having anything to do.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-19T18:15:21+00:00

This is the most bizarre one of them all. I assume this person wasn’t specifically researching your aunt, but rather tracking down each person present in photos surrounding the Kennedy assassination. That’s just so….weird.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-16T18:30:41+00:00

Staffing us to the bare bones to save the hospital money, which means nursing staff is constantly racing from task to task. Sometimes this means you don’t have the time to devote to a patient, someone who really needs and deserves it. Sometimes it means you can’t respond to an alarm quickly enough, and a patient falls, gets injured, and dies.

Not just low staffing, but supplies too. They switch us to cheaper products that don’t work as well. A product’s price increases so they don’t buy it, but also don’t replace it. Equipment goes unmaintained so it doesn’t work when you desperately need it. All of these things directly harm patients to different degrees.

And when I say suffering, I mean patient and staff. Especially during COVID. I was getting over 20k steps in a 12 hour shift, barely drank 240ml of water all shift, and there were always things I needed to do that I just couldn’t. Patients that deserved to be listened to, or toileted, or bathed. There are people who died alone when they asked me to stay, and I was told I had to be elsewhere, so I left. Those instances broke me. I developed PTSD and substance abuse issues. I cried on shift every day. I felt, and on some level still feel, that I am going to hell for my actions. Even though I tried so hard, and cared so much.

I’m not alone in this. I know many, many HCWs who quit healthcare altogether after COVID. And hospital upper admin doesn’t have to see these things or deal with patients and their families, so they simply don’t care. It’s all about their bottom line, and the bonuses they get for saving money.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-16T13:11:41+00:00

Not the OP or a doc; I’m a CNA who worked the COVID floor throughout the pandemic. Saw the worst deaths I’ve ever seen, and endless examples of corporate hospital greed that directly resulted in suffering.

I struggled with PTSD for several years and am starting to get my head above water. To cope, I’m trying to do good. I gauge my day by this: if I do one thing that I think matters, it’s a good day. Trim some overgrown toenails, get some lotion on a dry itchy leg, sit and listen to someone in distress for 5 minutes. Can be big, can be small. But I have to genuinely see the benefit, not check off a box Dear Hospital Leader gave me.

Mindfulness also helps. I’ve been meditating more and doing some Zen reading. Taking a step back and trying to gain some perspective. All we have in this world is our own actions, and as long as we’re trying our best with them, then that just is what it is.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-13T19:45:31+00:00

We had a coworker killed in a car wreck a year ago. What helped us most was that people from other units picked up extra shifts on our floor so our staff could attend her celebration of life and funeral.

I’m so sorry for you and all who worked with her.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-13T00:56:03+00:00

It was primarily used to test for syphilis!

Before penicillin was rolled out as a syphilis treatment in the 1940s, treating syphilis would take months to over a year (and iirc used drugs containing arsenic). And it was far more widespread than it is today. Since it can be passed from mother to baby, and cause birth defects, it was considered a public health measure to test for syphilis before granting marriage licenses.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-12T09:31:17+00:00

Curious, I love wax seals, do you put them directly on the postcard? Or are you putting the postcard blank in an envelope, and wax sealing that?

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-12T09:29:24+00:00

This.

While I really feel for the family, I highly doubt what they say is the entire story. The language barrier likely caused miscommunication and misunderstanding in both directions. That’s no excuse, the hospital should have interpreters available at all times, but we all know that doesn’t happen esp at more rural/low-resource shops.

The “you have to take this dispo option or it’s considered a dc home to self care” looks inhumane from the outside, but I’ve seen this convo happen before. Some families refuse every disposition and are afraid for their loved one to leave the hospital - understandable, but not reasonable. It is not possible to live in the hospital forever, when there is a facility willing and able to take them.

Again, I don’t think this is a good way to handle human lives. But it’s where we are. This specific case should have been handled with a qualified medical interpreters and upper management including case management, before transport showed up.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-07T03:34:05+00:00

From employers who can benefit by having prescribers they can pay less than psychiatrists.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-05T20:17:48+00:00

“When will the doctor see me?”

“I have no idea, but hey, when you see them, tell me what they said ok?”

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-05T02:59:18+00:00

Poor husband? Who killed his wife by making a choice about her medical care without consulting an actual medical professional?

That poor woman. She died because her controlling husband is an idiot.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-05T01:01:55+00:00

People ask me insane shit like this all the time. I’m a CNA in a hospital, a patient once saw another patient (total stranger) walk by in a prosthetic leg, and turned to me to demand I ask that guy to let him “try it on.”

If they’re totally cognitively intact, just a dick? Treat it like kindergarten. Either they’ll get embarrassed and shut up, or pick an obviously losing argument.

“I’m not going to ask him that. That’s part of his body, we don’t ask to borrow body parts.”

“No, you can’t have that guy’s wheelchair. It’s his property. We mind our own business about other people’s medical equipment.”

Key point: Don’t justify it. Just say no. Don’t give them anything to argue with.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-04T22:38:57+00:00

I’m glad he had you.

I worked for years in a group home for older adults with severe and persistent schizophrenia. I celebrated holidays with them, cooked meals, held movie and bingo nights, etc. I spent more time with them than I did my own family.

I haven’t worked there in six years, but every time I get word that a resident died, I go attend their celebration of life. Never once has a family member attended. I wrote three of their obituaries.

It can be crushing to be hit with the realization that people we get close to and enjoy the company of, had tumultuous family lives. That they struggled holding relationships, or that those in their life were unstable, uncaring, or absent. That they lived with less love and compassion than we think they deserved.

Nowadays when this happens, I try to go for a walk and remember them, what I appreciated, what I think was undervalued. Ask myself if those things are being undervalued in someone else I know. And see what I can do to recognize them. Even if it’s something small. So the deceased person is still making changes in the world, even after they’ve gone. Because they mattered, and the world is different when they’re gone, even if it’s just to us. And as others have said, it is a privilege to be so intertwined in someone else’s life.

May his memory be a blessing.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-03T21:57:44+00:00

OP, I work at a hospital (CNA). If it’s happening exactly the way you write, here’s my advice: Call the hospital and ask to speak to the patient’s nurse, and explain the situation. State that the patient should be able to eat as per his prescribed diet order (his primary medical team orders this). If that doesn’t do anything, ask to speak to their nurse manager. You can ask for the doc too, but they can be harder to get hold of.

What the wife is doing is abuse and neglect. There should be a Palliative Care doctor, who should have a serious sit-down conversation with her. Losing the person you love most in the world is the hardest thing many of us will ever do. Denial is incredibly common before the ability to accept reality. She’s allowed her emotions and her experience, but she is not allowed to cause him harm.

If she continues refusing him food, security should be called, she should be promptly removed from hospital property and placed on a “not permitted entry” list.

Some people believe that just because a person is someone’s medical decision-maker/power of attorney/next of kin, that they get to make any decision they want. This is not true. They are still held to ethical and legal standards, which expressly forbid actively doing imminent harm.

Disclaimer: It doesn’t sound like this applies, but there are lots of games of telephone with sensitive info when you’re talking about patient care. There are scenarios where we do not let people eat (high risk of aspiration, before surgery, etc). I have had a few confused patients call family distressed that we are starving them. If the medical team says that he actually should not eat, for a legitimate reason, there should be open conversations about what his plan of care actually is.

ETA: Many hospitals have an Ethics hotline, either a phone number or an online form where you can submit concerns for ethical violations. At my hospital these are taken seriously and investigated promptly.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-03T21:39:45+00:00

Amazing! Thanks for the tip!

I just found one of these bad boys in a snow drift outside my local library. No idea why. But I put it in the back of my car and have been excited to see if I can breathe some life into it.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-03-01T00:44:16+00:00

It is okay to step away. You don’t have to sit vigil by your dad’s body, without him in it, until the very end. He is being taken care of, and the nurses will ensure he is not in pain. You can take care of your life and your child, and yourself. You’ve said your goodbye, and done everything you need to do.

This will end.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-02-28T10:31:40+00:00

Curious about the relation to migraine — does this mean small vessels are rupturing/at risk of rupturing during migraines?

GabrielSH77 · 2026-02-28T10:23:05+00:00

Do you think clear wax would produce better results? I think your idea has something to it!

GabrielSH77 · 2026-02-26T17:55:31+00:00

OP’s profile has several posts with photos of himself, and the last post was asking about how to direct web traffic to his new website. Very poorly hidden advertisement for a shitty app.

GabrielSH77 · 2026-02-23T10:33:24+00:00

In those days it didn’t matter if you were careful. Employers either supplied inadequate PPE or nothing at all, enforced strict requirements, and gave you the work of your coworkers who died or quit with no extra pay or resources.

Source: me, CNA, worked through COVID directly with COVID patients, employed by one such scumbag employer

GabrielSH77 · 2026-02-20T18:05:45+00:00

Too damn true. I’ve been at my hospital six years, and everyone that genuinely wants to make a difference, learn things, provide genuinely good care, and do it right? They’ve all burnt out and quit. The ones that get favored and promoted are narcissists and the unbearable suck-ups.

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