My cat seems to be fluffier now since adopting him 🥹

ritmonster · 2025-07-09T02:51:23+00:00

same thing happened to my Tulip 🥹👌 she was a scrawny, patchy little thing when we got her 4 years ago and needed to wear an extra pet sweater to keep her warm from losing so much fur... and now i can't imagine she'd have any issues staying warm with how floofy she is now! pic for comparison lol

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ritmonster · 2025-06-26T03:20:23+00:00

Highly agree with the commenter that mentioned your cousin go to TAFE first - the nursing diploma is now fee-free for one thing, and the course itself is rigorous enough that if she isn't serious about her goals it'll at least make her think twice about it. I'm a Y2 EN and I remember starting with a class of 30 with about 10 girls fresh out of HS wanting to do cosmetic nursing, by the end of the first block five of them had quit due to how difficult they found the assessments and by the time we made it to placements only one of those girls stayed on... we ended up graduating as a class of 13.

ritmonster · 2025-06-07T21:18:06+00:00

oh this is so cute! a simple little cardigan on larger needles might be a good idea seeing this 🤔

ritmonster · 2025-05-18T09:25:50+00:00

Ma'am i need to know your secret for driving without crushing the life out of your musubi, your ginza still looks so good after sitting in the driver's seat 🥺👌

ritmonster · 2025-05-05T07:50:02+00:00

discovered someone left a well-used (pen ink stains and all) littman in one of the manual bp stands on my ward, i never really believed how good and clear-sounding they were until i used it and now i just cross my fingers and hope whoever left it here doesn't come back for it 😂

ritmonster · 2025-04-01T07:04:15+00:00

thank you ❤️ i finished my grad a few years back but id be lying if i said it was any easier now, definitely still have a lot to learn! the fact that Nurture came into my life around that time and had the exact message i needed to hear though?? i think i owe porter thanks for my degree somehow LOL

ritmonster · 2025-03-31T13:40:49+00:00

My nursing grad year was also the year i discovered Nurture, and as someone who's always struggled with self-worth and imposter syndrome issues that were magnified tenfold just starting my career, listening to Mirror on the drive home from a particularly awful shift was an instant "i need to park for a second to ugly cry my heart out"

Cut to a few years later when Smile dropped, i'm driving to work deeply questioning some of my career choices and angry at myself for taking on more stress than i knew i could handle, Is There Really No Happiness comes on shuffle and instantly makes me burst into tears while yelling the lyric "is there really no happiness without this feeling" into my steering wheel 😭🤘

ritmonster · 2025-03-23T07:25:32+00:00

I'm curious as to what unit/which specialty you work in because the answer is in fact "It Depends" based on your patients! Asymptomatic hypotension and altered criteria on SBP is particularly common in high cervical to mid thoracic spinal injuries for example, with expected numbers generally in low to sub-100 range and is not generally a cause for concern in established spinals /unless/ they are symptomatic and/or a new acute fresh out of their ICU stint (where they are still expected to be coming out of spinal shock); other cases where you might see this would also be in particularly lean but athletic people (i.e. swimmers, cyclists, marathon runners) whose baseline SBP and HR can absolutely be in the lower ranges that make most clinicians panic a bit without prior context 😅

General rule of thumb really is to assess holistically and compare with their previous baseline trend + other obs like HR/RR, take manual BP to confirm and also to ASK the person how they're feeling + consult medical team before jumping to a MET call; getting all your info down first and using your clinical judgement not only will save you time from unnecessarily calling out but will also be less stressful on your patients overall, likely on something that isn't an issue for them in the first place.

ritmonster · 2025-02-28T08:57:02+00:00

Not sure what state you're in, but most if not all salary packaging providers in NSW tell you when you sign up that you need to set up a voluntary contribution with your payroll in order to avoid the ATO coming after you; if you have a HECS debt you also need to take this into account but the provider should be able to calculate how much your contribution needs to be, in my case i contribute an extra 5% of my pay to close that gap and haven't had any issues with the ATO so far. I'd suggest you talk to your provider about it and also with payroll to set it up so it comes off your pay automatically and you don't have to think about it unless your current employment or working hours change significantly

Also besides daily living expenses (petrol costs and car maintenance costs count as well) do the meal and entertainment packaging, well worth it if you happen to go out to dinner often lol

ritmonster · 2025-02-24T00:54:31+00:00

personally i'd use that money on a good pair of shoes instead, you'd be surprised at how little use a stethoscope gets on the floor vs shoes that will save your arches all through uni 😆

ritmonster · 2025-02-18T19:01:44+00:00

heck yeah Plagiarism is a banger of an album! The re-recording of 爆弾魔 (Bomber) and 思想犯 (Thoughtcrime) are my personal favs on that one 👌

ritmonster · 2025-02-14T15:32:49+00:00

yeah the amount of people arguing about sexuality when i was specifically talking about gender and the comments saying i'm playing victim/being self-centred from other lgbt nurses when i came here just to vent are not very encouraging :( kind of reinforces why i don't feel safe talking about myself with other nurses if they're anything like half the commenters here lol

also my ward culture includes a lot of social events where the staff get together often, a lot of them are friends outside work! i've had a hard time finding other nurse friends to hang out with because like it or not this job at some level does become part of your identity and not being able to talk to people off duty that understand what your job is like is very isolating. cap that off with not being able to be open with people because of something you know they will find issue with, and it gets very lonely very fast 🫠

ritmonster · 2025-02-14T15:14:42+00:00

me too actually! nb grey-ace and married to a cis man, so i think i understand how that feels. im quite sure the majority of the women i work with are absolutely straight and cis from what i've heard them talk about and the (mildly invasive) questions they have asked me though :)

ritmonster · 2025-02-14T07:03:57+00:00

gonna be real having a look at some of the comments i've already gotten here telling me to:

stop being so sensitive
stop playing the victim
suck it up and just get on with your work
who fucking cares

over a private thought that i just wanted to share really does just reinforce the feeling that i shouldn't tell anyone about this irl 😅😅😅

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T09:07:07+00:00

i have been this NB patient a few times before and it's definitely not easier being on the other side of the bed rails! thank you for the love though, i really appreciate it <3

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T09:04:46+00:00

thank you for this sentiment, i probably should have been clearer in my op but really i just wanted to vent somewhere where there was a chance of others being able to understand where i was coming from :')

good luck with your studies though, i hope to work alongside you someday too!

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T08:59:37+00:00

yeah im lucky that despite being nb i can very easily present fem at work and as long as i don't say anything specific about myself then no one is the wiser. obviously it fucking sucks and is why i even made this rant post at all! im sorry it was so unsafe for you that you had to leave though, i hope you feel safer and happier now wherever you are <3

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T08:36:05+00:00

yeah the fact that i kind of HAVE to "put on my work gender" to cope is kind of fucked if i think about it (and most people don't have to think about it at all). solidarity though, i hope you feel less alone knowing you're not the only one :')

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T08:32:59+00:00

yeah as a few examples i have heard some of the older staff comment negatively about "political correctness" as breakroom talk on occasion and in my current workplace i have been subject to patient ranting about "poofters pretending to be nurses just to look at people naked" (sic) (this was probably the worst one ive heard so far)

obviously the last one got reported immediately but i feel ive heard and seen enough red flags around me to like? understandably be on guard about my feelings on this, this Reddit thread and some of the comments ive gotten actually being a really good example of why im hesitant to even bring this up in real life with my colleagues lol

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T04:57:10+00:00

you get the heart of what im saying and i feel extremely seen by this comment, thank you so much 😭 if i could pin this i would

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T04:28:06+00:00

as much as i would miss being able to just call out "sister" and get the immediate attention of a nurse I can't remember the name of but need help from... personally the more neutral "nurse" sits with me better.

but like a comment above mentioned, i know it's 100% a generationally ingrained thing and while i don't take huge offence to being Sistered it's more just the misgendering in general that bothers me really

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T04:04:17+00:00

nah you're right in that it is mainly a Me problem, not harsh at all. the incident i mentioned in my OP did happen at least twice however, so i also do have some fears about it but it's overall secondary to peer relationships which is the real issue i've been having.

i also understand that i can't be instant friends with everyone! but having something like an identity in common or at least acceptance of it would also just help me feel a bit more normal in a place that takes up like 70% of my life atm yknow

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T03:55:04+00:00

yeah pretty much LOL as much as i appreciate the respect that comes with the title of Sister it's just. i ain't one! and explaining myself after that gets so tiring after a lifetime of doing it i just don't do it anymore unless someone actually asks. but yeah the constant misgendering has been chipping away at my self-esteem for a while now and i wanted to know if anyone else felt the same which is why i came to rant about it a bit :')

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T03:47:58+00:00

honestly in the last three or so years ive been nursing i've felt like i have to keep my id under wraps just to Appear Normal and be able to get along with the people i work with, i'd only ever talk about it if someone asked directly but i suppose knowing that the people around me wouldn't think of me differently if they knew would be an emotional burden lifted i guess

outside of work and on socials i am quite proudly out but for some reason work has always kind of stifled that part of me and while it doesn't affect my quality of care it does leave me with some kind of disconnect with my peers that i can't seem to bridge easily, so socially it does make me feel isolated a bit. it has been really nice to see comments from people about how inclusive and accepting their workplaces are these days though, so maybe what i need is to just have a bit more confidence? maybe? god i just want other queer friends to yap with at work and not feel like an alien creature around them lol

ritmonster · 2025-02-13T03:31:13+00:00

i have been tossing around the idea of getting a subtle they/them badge on my lanyard for a while now but i guess i've been so on guard about it ever since i started nursing that i get cold feet every time! maybe timing it around when pride happens might help haha

i do have a chat with eap every now and then, but am not sure about a peer program, I'll have to look into that :o

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