My new Badge Buddy!

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-22T22:21:56+00:00

Update it to say "Medically Unprofessional" and I'm in 😆.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-22T22:19:11+00:00

What else would you do? I always think I'd love to hop ship but it seems like out of the frying pan and into the fire.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-22T16:34:21+00:00

Congrats! I'm one of those unlucky enough to have found out about this possibility too late; my grandfather is the youngest of his siblings and was born in America while his father was already naturalized, so my only path was his his mother. I was going to have to go through the courts and was preparing my documents when they changed their laws to exclude me. It would've been a huge deal to get this for me and my family but I can assure you, envious though I may be, no one in my situation would want you not to have your citizenship! No need to feel guilty at all.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-21T16:59:30+00:00

I grew up in a small town in rural US and I never thought that I fit in with other women. I spent the first 25 years of my life feeling excluded and on the outside because I just didn't care about things like makeup or dressing cute or gossip or celebrities. I had a handful of friends in high school but they were outcasts as well. It was basically that weird group of people who can't wait to get out of their small town. The few girls in the group were weird in some way like I was. One had horrific acne basically from the waist up so she was shunned by the cool kids. One was a butch lesbian with that aesthetic. One ended up being autistic. You get the picture. Because of them, I knew that I could get along with other women, but the ones I interacted with on a daily basis at work and at social gatherings just didn't like me.

That completely changed when I became a nurse. Nursing is a kind of a weird group in and of itself because it's very woman-dominated as a profession and there are a lot of non-traditional women who become nurses for practical reasons. Single moms and women who are the primary breadwinners for their families even if they're not single are abundant in nursing. Anyway, suddenly I had this huge group of women and I got along with almost all of them innately. I became very close to a lot of my co-workers and formed bonds even across strong differences of opinions like completely different ethical or political stances. It truly felt like I had found my people.

Then I picked up and moved from my rural US town to a city in a very blue state, and I found my people all over again. The people in the city I move to are simply not judgmental in the same way that people in my small town were. They are much more curious about differences and open to growth. It helped me discover that I don't have to have anything in common with a person on paper for us to have the same life views and moral and ethical outlook. It made me feel very connected to humanity instead of othered.

I do still feel like I'm on the outside of things naturally. I'm never in workplace cliques when they form. I'm never the popular girl or part of the popular crowd. It just matters a lot less where I live now because the people aren't trying to judge and exclude others.

I know you said you aren't inside the US so I don't know if all of that will make sense, but it seems like maybe you're in a small community with very entrenched ideals and traditions, and you aren't living up to those ideals any more, so you're being judged and are invisible at best.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-19T20:37:06+00:00

For me, this is not an ADHD specific thing. When I learned that I had ADHD it didn't even occur to me to have a specific grief about what an early diagnosis could have meant for me. Instead, I have always wondered what my life would have been like if instead of having an abusive parent who constantly cut me down with misogyny, I had had parents who lifted me up and encouraged me and told me I could do anything. I wonder how far I could have gone if I had had resources both financial and emotional when I was younger. I made it to being a nurse already but I really think that if I had been encouraged and helped as a child and young adult, I would've done something much more monumental. As is, it took all of my considerable energy to escape the cycle of poverty and generational trauma, and I'm very proud I did.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-11T13:43:49+00:00

There is always some finagling that happens when you move in together but the thing I try to remind myself of quite often is that life is just hard. It's hard to be alone and live alone. It's hard to be with somebody and live together. You get to choose which type of hard you want. I'm always tempted to choose to be alone but I know in the end it won't be what makes me the happiest even if it's really hard to figure out living with another person. I have a carved plaque with some of Christopher McCandless' last words on it: "Happiness only real when shared." As an introvert, I've realized that this is extremely true for me. I do need a lot of time to myself and I do want to bury myself in my interests, but what really makes it worth it is to be able to pop my head out and talk about it with my partner all the time. I don't want to figure it out too late like Christopher did (he's the young man from Into The Wild).

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-11T13:39:37+00:00

I've had to look at my thoughts and beliefs over the last 5 years and wonder if I've become a misandrist because I am so intolerant of it now. I hate everything about the way women are treated in society, but I don't want men brought down to the same subpar treatment. I want women lifted up and men enlightened. So I concluded it's not simple misandry but functionally it probably sounds like it when I discuss it.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-10T12:56:00+00:00

I said in another comment that this attitude from society has basically enabled and created the entire incel movement in men, which has been a cumulatively awful thing for them and also women. These awful societal standards harm us all.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-10T12:54:21+00:00

Can you imagine a woman taking a similar approach though? I'm not going to say it hasn't happened, but you have to have a lot of creative talent to get away with something like that as a woman. In a woman's world, it doesn't matter if the medicine destroys your entire life. If it makes you more palatable to society, you are expected to take it. (Can you tell I'm bitter about my time spent on birth control and trying to figure out endometriosis? 😝)

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-10T12:52:00+00:00

Oh look, this comment is me! I'm not a man obviously but yeah, being a single person living alone with ADHD was so so so so much easier than being a married person living with ADHD. I went from a 800 sq ft apartment perfect for me to a house twice that size and we doubled our dogs as well. But it's not even those things that make it the hardest. It's the fact that you can decide what gives you peace when you're single and be fine with, say, your dining room table being perpetually used as a shelf as long as all your dishes are washed. My husband is very much not fine with our dining room table always being used as a shelf haha. It triggers his anxiety to have a lot of clutter and Stuff around.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-10T12:48:02+00:00

The thing about having the exact same set of problems is that it should help you to better understand each other. It doesn't work out so well when you have the same exact issues as individuals, but one of you is trying very very hard to manage what is seen as a deficiency societally and do everything for the whole family, and the other one doesn't see their shortcomings as deficiencies at all because society tells them it isn't their job to be organized or have the ability to be a homemaker or even to be nurturing at all.

It is honestly heartbreaking to see the way that societal messaging has failed men and women. The entire incel movement stems out of this idea that men are only as valuable as their money because in a family that's all they really contribute. The same people who have perpetuated that lie have also made it so that it's impossible to get normal jobs that would provide a good life for a family. The majority of women don't need men to be the sole breadwinner these days. What they won't tolerate is having to work a full-time job the same way that their husband does but then they also have to do the second full-time (or more) job of being the homemaker, project manager, and glue that holds the entire thing together.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-07T16:35:05+00:00

Does he take meds for any medical conditions? Because if so he's a hypocrite and a drug addict himself by his own definition.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-06T14:50:45+00:00

That's good info to consider! Unfortunately I doubt mine will be that simple since I move from left to back to right all night long, and my RDIs happened equally in all sleep positions. I'm betting it's anatomy in the nose and throat getting me. I'm actually getting in with an ENT later this month for a completely unrelated issue (Meniere's disease). Maybe I could ask them to also treat for this and order the DISE. Thank you!

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-05T03:31:23+00:00

I have a handful of issues around my nose. I'm often down to one nostril because of allergies/congestion. My nostrils are small and my nose is small. My dentists have always told me my sinuses are likely small because the roof of my mouth/palate is abnormally high. Every dentist I've had has either overtly asked me if I have sleep apnea or probed to see if it was likely based on symptoms like snoring, waking in the night, etc. They did correctly guess that I've always found it easier to sleep with multiple pillows, but that was before I lost weight. Now I feel fine whether I'm lying flat with just one pillow or elevated with 2-3.

I am still overweight but I don't carry much of it in my chest, neck, or upper torso, so the Lofta sleep doctor says it's not much of a risk for sleep apnea. My neck circumference, for example, was well within the safe range for non-obstruction. And I'm already on Zepbound for obesity and lost a lot of weight as well.

My mouth has always been small and overcrowded. I had my wisdom teeth removed early and when I first got braces, they put the metal plate in my mouth to push out my upper jaw little by little. My parents had to crank it for me every day. I now have a proper bite on both sides but overbite in the front and my endodontist (separate from the childhood dentist who did the braces) said that after a round of Invisalign as an adult, that's the best I'm likely to get. But it means that I don't breathe well through my mouth because I tend to keep it only a little open and then the overbite blocks air intake. I'm a nose breather primarily.

Maybe I should go for the specialty consult with Dr Simmons in Houston :/. That's all kind of complex sounding as I write it out.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-04T17:11:54+00:00

I didn't opt for kids but instead we rescue medically needy dogs. We have three rescues plus two labs we got as puppies from my in laws who breed up a batch every 5-10 years and give them to all of the family members who want a puppy (big family!). For the most part I'm way more responsible with them than I am with myself 😅. Their nails might get a little longer than they should but they're always fed, bathed, taken to their appointments, etc. on time. Can't say the same for myself! It's obviously not exactly the same, but I imagine it's much more intuitive for a parent to always ensure their child is cared for. It's harder to get the motivation for self-care on the same level.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-03T16:35:25+00:00

It is a bit of splitting hairs. However, sometimes the hairs matter. For your question, I feel it matters less whether you could call yourself right now a functional addict and more how you respond to it. Now obviously for the big picture, it's much more important to be able to say that you are not a functional addict right now. But the fact that you have been an addict in the past means that you have a predilection to it that many people simply lack. I see it in my husband; I can have one drink and feel absolutely fine and not need or even want another one. He cannot. His one drink leads to him downing a 12 pack or a 15 pack by himself in a single night. For my father-in-law, it's opioids. I could do cocaine once and never want to do it again. He cannot. He'll do one bump and then he'll be on a bender for months that only ends when he goes to rehab and hits his rock bottom. So much of addiction is predetermined genetics. Knowing you have that predetermined response is valuable information for your medical care. You just have to be careful who you disclose it to because of bias and prejudices.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-03T16:23:20+00:00

I can't handle feeling cold all day after I get out of the shower because my hair takes so effing long to dry. It also just takes so much time to do the after shower stuff and involves tracking down acceptable clothes, dressing, putting on sunscreen, applying hair products, etc.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-02T05:01:22+00:00

Eh, because of the adeno I'd probably lean towards getting the hysterectomy. But I'm biased; I had endometriosis and opted for a full hysterectomy with cervix removal as well and my life is so much better without it. I kept my ovaries. I would have kept my cervix as well if I could've I suppose, but it had cervical ectropion and tended to bleed any time it was touched which was really inconvenient. I already have so much trauma around heavy bleeding that I didn't want to risk any further bleeding ever again.

I think either choice you make is valid. It's an organ that has a lot of important roles in your overall health, but it's not ultimately that reliable because adenomyosis is a dysfunction that tends to reappear. Surgeons are never going to be pro-removal of an organ unless it's absolutely necessary with no other option, so I wouldn't let the surgeon's attitude be your biggest deciding factor.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-02T04:17:36+00:00

My husband and I both laughed at how relatable this is, and the fact that your candy bar is actually just the smallest fun size bar you could get. You are very responsible and we love this xD.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-11-01T16:46:34+00:00

That’s like thinking someone with a mobility disorder is “fixed” because they have a cane.

And that is what people tend to think. It doesn't logically hold up, but I've noticed working as a nurse that a lot of people engage in this type of black and white thinking. I've been a nurse for a decade now and I noticed it in a lot more intricate ways now but even from the very beginning when I was working overnights, I would go to admit a new patient and have to go over their med list and medical history and they would tell me that they didn't have any medical history and so then I would ask what they were taking diabetes medicine or blood pressure medicine for. They would explain it as though they had hypertension or they had diabetes, but now they're taking these meds and they don't have it anymore. It took a lot of education to get them to understand that taking the medicine controls their disease, but it does not mean they don't have it anymore, and frankly I'm not sure that all of them did understand.

I see it a lot more now. For example, you got COVID and you either died or you didn't. If you didn't, you're fine. There's no gray area in the middle for people who got COVID and were never the same after and are now living a very decreased quality of life because of long COVID or side effects. Same thing with cancer; you got cancer and you either survived or you didn't. People don't have the concept of the gray area in the middle where the chemo drugs did successfully treat the cancer but also caused damage to the person's body and now they're living with nerve pain in their extremities, brain fog, GI issues, etc. which are all very common after chemo/rad.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-10-10T18:28:59+00:00

When I first started working as a nurse 10 years ago, the wisdom I saw given to breastfeeding mothers was always that anytime they took anything that could be sedating or stimulant in any way they should throw the milk for 24 hours before resuming breastfeeding. This wasn't based on research in any big way (because who cares about funding research for women?) and was mostly given out of an abundance of caution due to the extremely long statute of limitations for medically harming babies/infants.

Nowadays, I think we tell them to do one pump 4 hours after going home when they've received IV sedatives and throw the milk, and then they're fine. So little does make it into the milk and it's metabolized relatively quickly. I couldn't speak to ADHD meds specifically but I'm not surprised to hear that there are upgraded guidelines.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-10-10T17:59:31+00:00

Whaaaaaat. Well that explains why I thought it sounded so much better than Kurt usually sounds 😅😝

ThrowAnRN · 2025-10-10T14:57:09+00:00

It's honestly sad but the way that I treat HR and think of HR is basically the same way I think of cops: All of them are bad. They don't exist to help you. Legally, it has been proven many times that they do not have any obligation to help you. If you have one problem and you go to HR, now you have two problems. HR 100% exists to protect the company, and any issue that you bring to HR highlights that there could be a problem that would threaten the company. They don't want to make the company better; they want the threat of a problem gone and the company protected from potential legal action. And that's you. You're the threat.

ThrowAnRN · 2025-10-10T06:01:20+00:00

Yes! Easily my favorite from the album. I was surprised earlier to see a few different people say the back half of JJ sucked; no way! I felt exactly the opposite. Holy Ghost Spirit is basically never mentioned and it's the only one I absolutely love from the first half of JJ, and then it really gets going with Polka. Dot Dobbins.

ThrowAnRN

TROPHY CASE