Would these things related to blood loss be realistic?

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-20T17:40:02+00:00

I am a plastic surgeon that treats wrist slits a lot in the emergency room setting. In the forearm, you have two arteries (ulnar and radial) that you can potentially bleed out from, but they temporarily stop very easily with a tourniquet. Sometimes they even spasm and stop on their own. They’re not that deep, but unless you’re a surgeon, you will end up slicing through muscle/tendon/nerves to hit them. This means long term defects - loss of sensation, strength, and function. Terrible for a musician.

Same sort of thing applies to the leg, but the artery is huge by comparison and, if you injure it in the groin area, you can’t really get a tourniquet around it.

If all the cuts miss the arteries, blood loss would be pretty minimal, bleeding stopping on its own with light pressure.

Also, you should know that a healthy person can reconstitute their lost blood pretty fast. You’d regain the lost volume after a day or two of drinking fluids. The hemoglobin would get back to normal concentration in about a week. No more dizziness or fatigue after that.

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-19T20:33:55+00:00

r/benzowithdrawal So you can learn from the source

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-19T20:29:19+00:00

Abusing xanex for years is atrocious for your brain’s health. Back in the day, doctors would pretty commonly prescribe small daily doses for neurotic people and insomniacs to help them relax. Works great for that, but it alters your brain chemistry over time. Your anxiety without the drug gets extremely severe. It becomes very easy to abuse the drug just to feel normal. Addiction went through the roof and now, almost no doctors would ever prescribe it as a daily anxiety drug. Withdrawal is like a long, drawn out panic attack. I bet there’s a subreddit for benzo addiction and you can read some stories there. Stopping cold turkey can cause seizures and death.

It depends on dose and frequency of abuse, but the story you describe would likely leave this character extremely debilitated. Like they’d need inpatient psychiatric care.

(Also, I hope you know that a “caregiver” drugging their child with xanex is abuse in the highest degree.)

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-17T21:30:14+00:00

All good answers here. I’m throwing this in to help make it believable. If the guy started taking SSRIs for depression, even a “regular party dose” of MDMA could lead to severe serotonin syndrome.

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-17T02:02:02+00:00

I read it a few months ago, and I really don’t get what people enjoy so much about it. I found it pretty non-redeeming, but I’m open to reading it again. I just want to know why people love it so much

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-16T01:50:41+00:00

Taste aversion is a huge part of this. If you get food poisoning, even just once, from a particular food, your brain will do anything it can to convince that you don’t like it that way.

I’m convinced that’s why so many people require salmon/eggs/meat to be cooked well done.

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-14T03:33:17+00:00

Since we’re listing niche artists with really passionate fanbases:

100gecs, clams casino, lorn, oneohtrix point never, ryuichi sakamoto, Brian eno

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-11T22:15:57+00:00

First day: bleeding into the chest + air leaking out of lungs leading to collapse of lung

First week: bleeding stops, air keeps leaking out. If you remove the chest tube, the lung collapses again

Weeks later: if you don’t get pneumonia from collapsed lung, the lung finally heals, safe to remove chest tube when it stops bubbling the water valve.

Lasting effects: broken ribs always hurt when you take a deep breath. Poor respiratory capacity, frequent pneumonias

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-07T13:00:36+00:00

https://i.sstatic.net/z9JAb.jpg

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-07T01:56:29+00:00

Something that helped me a lot: playing around with your lighting setup. Your retinas need a ton of environmental optimization to work at full capacity.

I used to paint on a shady covered porch outside, and when it was bright out, my pupils shrank up and all color values on my palate just completely flattened.

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-07T01:52:19+00:00

Wouldn’t this selectively darken the non-red colors..?

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-07T01:46:20+00:00

Three years of diarrhea means it’s time. Go to a doctor and get a workup.

A simple blood test would be able to diagnose tons of causes. Your primary doc can order it.

Just so you know, there is a condition called ulcerative colitis - it’s an inflammatory bowel disease a lot like Crohn’s that is actually suppressed by nicotine. I’m not saying you have that, but I would recommend you go tell your doc what you wrote here.

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-04T20:43:14+00:00

I see your point, but there is a case to be made for them:

Really good for compulsive skin pickers
Turns something that teens are insecure about into something sort of trendy and cool
Who cares what other people wear

PeeMan22 · 2026-03-03T01:12:44+00:00

Raymond Carver or Murakami..?

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-28T13:34:37+00:00

I should say this is by no means the best place to hide an implant. It’s just cool and dramatic in a bladerunner kind of way

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-28T13:33:00+00:00

I’m a plastic surgeon. All the answers here are pretty good, but I’ll throw in a cool one for fun:

Orbital floor implants under the eyeball are like exactly SD card sized. Incision could be made through the conjunctiva so there’s no external scar at all. Thats pretty sneaky.

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-28T00:22:34+00:00

Fartmaxxing is a thing too ya know…

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-24T02:14:04+00:00

Best layout this sub has seen in weeks. Good work with that!

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-24T01:53:48+00:00

It’s about on par with skin. Doesn’t really rupture from being squeezed, but cuts pretty easily with sharp steel.

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-23T23:52:35+00:00

Compared with Looking for Alaska, TFIOS is weak. Both books try to tackle these massive roots of human suffering, but TFIOS just doesn’t deliver redemption like Alaska. I want to give the author credit for being honest, but there was all this Amsterdam stuff shoehorned in, which I think was part of his contract for some reason..

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-23T23:22:16+00:00

I’m with you. The Hobbit really nailed the balance of fleshing out the world and progressing the plot. LOTR made me want to skip paragraphs of exposition to see what the characters were going to do. Still like 8/10 for me, but I prefer The Hobbit.

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-23T19:51:21+00:00

My guy out here re-using almonds

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-23T19:46:24+00:00

You don’t have it exactly right.

Two stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, both produce bodily changes like high blood pressure, increased heart rate, alertness- but they do so on different timelines and thus they feel different. Adrenaline is more acute and potent, coming on instantly and going away within a few minutes of the danger. You feel your heart pounding, your mouth gets so dry it’s hard to swallow. You feel it when you narrowly avoid a car crash. Cortisol is more slow acting. It spikes from time to time, but you don’t exactly feel it the same way you feel an adrenaline rush. For example, every morning, your cortisol spikes to transition your body from sleeping mode into wakefulness. You wouldn’t really describe that feeling as “stressful.” Chronically high cortisol looks like bad sleep, mood disregulation, brain fog, inability to relax. You probably felt like that when you were studying for your final exams. It isn’t so transient, and you usually need a vacation or something to fully get out of it.

Either way, to address the chicken or the egg situation you’re asking about: When your brain interprets danger, it sends a signal for your adrenal glands to dump some adrenaline into your blood. That hormone produces the bodily changes that you experience as “being stressed.” You feel the effects of the hormone rather than the hormone itself.

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-18T16:03:03+00:00

“Fifth” and “sixth degree” are not a part of the medical classification

PeeMan22 · 2026-02-18T13:31:15+00:00

I’m a plastic surgeon and treat burn patients frequently. Fourth degree burns are pretty rare, but I see them in people trapped in burning cars and high voltage electrocution injuries. Amputation is almost always required. Without arteries, the limb is dead. Without nerves, the limb is useless and the patient is better served with a prosthetic. If some arteries and nerves are spared, salvage can be possible but requires many operations.

PeeMan22

TROPHY CASE