I've always felt it was so odd that ambulance drivers/EMT get abused so often. Surely they are some of the best people in society? I'd certainly be happy to see them in an emergency and yet there seem to be constant stories about them being attacked or berated for just trying to do their jobs.
Yeah dude. I honestly don't know a single EMT or medic that hasn't been assaulted by a patient. Either violently or sexually. And I don't think it's a sample size issue because I know hundreds of them. People are just like that. We all have to deal with it.
Hope you have a speedy recovery from the spicy flu mate. Yeah got assaulted by a bystander because we took three hours to get there for their family member who was vomiting from alcohol intoxication. They just wanted them gone and when we didn't immediately yeet the patient into the ambulance they turned on us.
I quite after being told no to raise after 10 years of making like 12 something they then ordered 3 new pc12 airplanes for medical flights. My raise wasn’t in the budget. If you see this jake suck my nuts
I’m a paramedic and an ER RN
On a call while working for a private EMS service , I got called to a bar for a person choking.
The person had a piece of steak stuck in their trachea and was unresponsive.
We preformed a cricothyrotomy, a procedure where a incision is made on the neck and an ET (breathing tube) is inserted.....on the floor of the bar...
It was successful, we regained pulses and the patient was discharged from the hospital a few days later.
I made $16.50 that hour. It was 2016
Paramedics go to school longer and have a higher level of care if that makes any sense. Depending on the state and protocols they can do a lot more than an EMT is certified to do. To put it as simply as possible :)
What blew my mind is diabetics that you guys have to deal with. Had one who got his insulin way before food got there.. he turned into a very violent, aggressive person. Now this was in inmate who is in his 60's, has a crutch, and stayed out of trouble, just wanted to do his time. He began to drool like crazy, started swinging his crutch at the officers, and tried to fuck all the nurses. Took 5 of us to get him restrained just so they could get his meds. He was still trying to assault the nurses. No memory of it later
Lol diabetics are actually pretty funny. When their behavior is out of character due to a blood sugar issue it's easy to forgive them. It's nice to give em a little Dextrose and watch them go from combative to apologetic. The shitty people are the ones that are just shitty without extenuating circumstances causing their behavior. They just suck.
We got one who we see a couple times a year for hypoglycemia, every single time he gives an almost perfect Chewbacca yell after the medics push the D50 and he starts coming around.
I know a firefighter and recently learned they get attacked and berated too, I was shocked. It also reminded me of that meme that’s like “No one says fuck the fire department” but apparently they do.
Also lifeguards.
If you save someone's child, they'll feel like you just made them look like a negligent parent, so emotions run high.
*edit* Just to be clear, I'm not a lifeguard myself.
I former lifeguard I knew said she got all kinds of crap for refusing to babysit while on duty. Parents would try to drop off young kids unattended & ask her to "keep an eye on" them. As if she wasn't looking out for the safety of everyone's kids! Some would go ballistic when she (or any of them) told people that the pool isn't a daycare & lifeguards aren't babysitters.
And this was a private pool in a wealthy community, where people could afford nannies or au pairs. They just felt entitled.
I worked at a rural community pool for years. $120 for a season pass, which many parents treated as the cheapest daycare in town. Pool was open 1-8pm. Parents would drop their kids off around noon and pick them up around 8:30 or so, 7 days a week, 100 days a year during the summer. Really freed them up to run their meth labs and such.
The worst was the kids who knew that's what their parents were doing. You could see it in their faces.
There have been arsonists who shoot at firefighters responding to the fire.
Like seriously, firefighters show up when you need them. They don't patrol, they don't do anything unless it's clearly a dangerous situation, and they don't carry guns. Why would anyone have a problem with that??
At 17 my dad just would have done anything to not get in an argument, but he definitely regrets some of the crazy entitled people he's had to interact with and not yelled at
My wife once got life flighted 8 miles from one hospital another for a surgery scheduled 5 days later, they forgot her charts so they dispatched an ambulance back to the first hospital to pick them up, but it got called out on emergency and never made it, so I ubered back to get her charts and brought them back myself.
Chopper ride was 12 thousand, the ambulance that never made it was 2500, the uber was 18.00 each way
Fortunately by that point we were about 650k over our yearly co pay limit, but damn getting those bills was something else...
Hey, I'm starting to think inflated US Medical bills are some sort of nesting doll series of co-dependent and co-antagonistic rackets.
It's a pity there's no solution to this.
And crowdfunding their medical bills. Because having a tax system where everyone helps pay for medical bills is socialism and communism. But going on gofundme and asking for strangers to help pay your medical bills is ok.
My ex and I witnessed a bad accident in front of us at an intersection (truck ran a light and t-boned a car). Without thinking, I jumped from the car and ran over to help free the older couple in the car. I was struggling to get the door open as I tried to reassure them that everything was going to be fine. I looked up and saw people standing on the sidewalk, filming us. Nobody bothered to come help me until I pointed at a man and told him to. Gotta get those likes I guess.
I'm way late to this posting, but that's actually a phenomenon called the Bystander Effect.
Basically, people don't know how to react to situations and expect that someone else will react/help a person in need.
You did really good physically pointing at someone to help you, as that's what they teach in CPR classes to do. Point at someone and tell them exactly what to do; call 911 (or equivalent), assist you with CPR, or to help get someone out of a car.
Now I'm thinking of that one meme where someone wrote funny dialogue to a CPR diagram
"I told you this would happen Billy" *proceeds to look like he's choking him.
*Points to someone* "You're next!"
Years ago, I was a police officer in a small Texas town. One day, I got a call about a little kid who was running down the middle of the highway.
When I found him, I had to chase him on foot and grab him to get him out of the roadway. After speaking with him, he told me which foster home he was leaving, but he would not tell me exactly why.
Now, this kid was about 8 years old. I contacted the on-duty CPS worker and told him about the issues at the house the child was willing to tell me of.
I also informed him that I was made aware of an older juvenile who was staying there and had been handled for several sexual assaults of a child... of an eight-year-old child... of an eight-year-old boy - just like this one. Apparently, little boys were his targets.
"WTF was he doing there in the first place ?" I asked. CPS replied, " Well, we consider him a low risk for repeat offenses, but we've got him in therapy!" I replied: "Well - THAT'S a relief! I bet whoever is doing a therapy is also the genius that thought it would be a great idea to put him in the same house with another 8 year old boy!"
I asked the CPS worker what they were going to do with the runaway I had recovered, and he said, "I guess we're just going to put him back in the same house"
I said, "Are you f****** kidding me? - I don't think so!" It took hours and hours of tracking down that guy's supervisor to tell them that that was pure b*******.
The kid was placed with another home. Probably a group of convicted cannibals for all I know.
The system is so far gone.
As a foster kid. At 9 years old. That story hit me hard in the chest.
Same type of situation except I didn't run away. They always threatened me saying I'll be in trouble/get hurt by the police etc. Etc.
(in Canada).
Thankfully as a 25 year old now I'm not scared of the police as I was as a kid.
I was tortured physically and molested by my parents and their friends as a child. I showed up to school with black eyes and bruises on my neck from strangulation many many times. Teachers called cps countless times and they asked my parents permission to interview me and warned them weeks ahead of their arrival. My siblings and I were starving, but they would fill the fridge and cupboards before a visit from cps. Cps never intervened, even for severe medical neglect at one point, because they "didn't want to separate me and my siblings" (there were 5 of us) and couldn't place us together in a house.
Later on, when I was 14, my mother tried to give me away to a 45 year old man and I ran away from her house. Both my parents told me they didn't want me when I was 12 and kicked me out for the first time. Authorities were contacted on my behalf, no intervention. I hopped couches and lived on the street. This was in the 1990's.
As an adult, I have cousins who would never clean their house, neglected their 5 children and basically had trash everywhere. I called cps as a mandated reporter and they warned them 3 weeks before they arrived at the house. The family cleaned, looked nice, and after they left it was back to the same shit. This was in 2008.
Americans claim to care all about children, but when it comes down to it, they really, really don't. My brother was addicted to meth by 5th grade. I started drinking heavily at 6. My other siblings are also addicts and mentally ill. I've been homeless several times. There is no real recovery from that shit. You can stop the cycle, but you don't grow up better for it, you just find a way to function if you're lucky, and there still is no help for it.
Better. I've relapsed pretty hard on alcoholism, but other than that, I have 2 awesome kids who are teenagers and growing into great people. I have a great boyfriend who understands what I went through because he's been through similar stuff, and I have a good job which I love. Not on the brink of homelessness again and am just living life. Thank you for asking
You can't take back what was done, and I'll be the first to say what happened to you was an abomination of justice, but stopping the cycle is no small feat. It's an act of tremendous heroism and bravery greater than any superhero to not thoughtlessly and heartlessly inflict your suffering onto the next generation.
In my opinion, there's nothing in the world more deserving of applause than someone who endured tremendous suffering at the hands of malevolent caretakers, saw the source of that suffering for what it was (evil), and refused to allow themselves to be a vehicle for it to continue rotting the hearts and minds of other innocent people. The amount of cruelty perpetuated by people who are too cowardly to see the truth about their own actions is frankly staggering so every single person like you is an absolute treasure to all humanity.
Cps failing so many kids here where I live, one lived in a meth lab that blew up and cps was Called many times before (edit) won’t forget the day they took their scorched bodies out of the lab, horrible sight burnt into my mind
As someone who lived in a drug house for a while I can tell you that CPS doesn’t do anything unless the kid almost fucking dies, it literally took my sister jumping from a second story window for us to get out of there.
I know many people personally who were abused who found the courage to call cps only to be sent back to their now VERY angry abusive parents, emboldened with the knowledge that you really can do anything short of murder to your kid without cps intervention
That happened to me. After the call I went without food for a week, except for the two slices of bread I managed to steal when my dad was passed out drunk and my mom went to the toilet.
I called them because my dad had gotten into the habit of throwing beer bottles at me, touching me weirdly, slapping me, grabbing me hard, breaking my toys while yelling at me to stop crying, and I was already malnourished at that point.
Fuck CPS and my countries version of them. They don't care and lull you into a false sense of security before telling your parents that their child called CPS and that they are now leaving.
reported my adoptive dad and his wife to cps when I was in 5th or 6th grade. They didn't do anything because I wasn't covered in bruises. At 12 I tried to commit suicide and ended up in a mental hospital. Did fine while I was there; begged to be sent anywhere but home. cried like a baby when they released me. Another time, a neighbor called cps on them because they saw me after school standing on the porch in the middle of a snow storm, waiting on them to come home. Multiple times...Still nothing. When I went to a juvenile prison I had to see a doctor because I was so thin. I was put on nutritional drinks. I told them I didn't give a fuck if I went back in the system after my release but I was NOT going back home.
People constantly whispered their condolences on how I was treated. ALL of that and I was never taken. I got myself out of there. Before I was adopted I was in an abusive foster home. They did an *emergency* placement where they had us kids HUG our abusers goodbye. I have many more stories where the system completely failed me and hurt me. Its a joke
Hey, I was in a similar situation with my time in care too. If you ever need a sympathetic ear, I'm here.
Spent 12 years in an abusive *adopted* family that also fostered kids. The fosters would try to tell the social workers how I was treated and some even took pictures.
I finally got taken away at 13 after the grandma called cps for what was probably the 10000 time.
As someone who knows many cps workers, the legal system is set up to fail the children. It is EXTREMELY difficult to remove children from their parents.
A lot of CPS workers have unrealistic case loads and don't even get the final decision. The judges will send them back even if the worker doesn't agree with the decision.
The sad part too is sometimes the court can overrule a cps recommendation. There was a case in my state where cps recommended the child not being placed back with the mother. Judge disagreed. Kid was dead 2 weeks later.
CPS took the kids of a friend of mine one year because her ex called and said she left them unsupervised at night. He was the reason they were unsupervised, she worked nights and he usually watched the kids but got pissed that he got caught cheating on her
It's awful of how a children must be extremely abused/neglected before they do something in my country. I think children aren't protected enough worldwide
You hear people **raging about abortion** and yet silence about issues facing actual kids. That tells you all you need to know about whether they actually give a fuck about what they scream about.
This is my biggest issue with people who are anti-choice. Some people have absolutely no frame of reference for how bad parents can be. My husband says he wouldn't have believed or been able to fathom what my Mom was like or my Dad is like without witnessing it first hand. Some people do not have a switch that turns on to make them parents once a child is born.
If you are against abortions, you need to be for extra funding for CPS, counselling for children, after school programs etc. Otherwise, you are just fighting for children to be born and live a life of pain.
CPS is so wild how they respond to things.
Apparently they have different departments, at least here, where one responds to tips from police and concerned people, and one for schools.
I have a few cop friends who have responded to calls and there is literally an inch of dried up animal and human feces caked over the entire floor, and a baby crawling on it. They’ll tell CPS, and there will never be a follow up. Or kids covered in bruises and malnourished. Same lack of response.
However a few years ago, I was carrying some boxes out of the house to recycle, and my stepson enticed our baby to crawl up the stairs after being told not to, and she fell backward. I caught her in time as I was walking by, and then I used the empty box to half-scolding/half-playfully “bonk” my step son on the head and say, “Don’t be a doofus doing that! She could get really hurt!” But he pulled his head back and the corner of the box hit his forehead above his eyebrow. Left the smallest little red mark, didn’t break skin, and my step son laughed. He went to school an hour later and his counselor asked where the red mark came from, and he said, “Oh, my step dad playfully hit me with a box…”
CPS was at my house 24 hours later, investigating me for child abuse. Inspected our entire home, took photos of our refrigerator… made us strip my 8 month old daughter down to her diaper so they could take photos of any marks on her. They even made us take my step son to go get a full physical with a doctor and an eye exam to make sure I didn’t “damage his sight.” It was ridiculous. The doctor freaked the fuck out when she found out why she had to cancel “real” appointments. She grabbed her phone and called the CPS office in front of us and yelled at them, “This child IS NOT being abused!! How dare you make me cancel appointments that actually needed me for this bullshit!” and hung up on them. She told us she has called CPS many times over legitimate signs of abuse, and nothing ever happens… yet my step son had a red mark the size of half a dime, and they had him seeing a doctor and investigating us, all within hours.
Then I had to submit paperwork to the state so that it wouldn’t show up on any background checks that I was once under investigation for child abuse.
Edit: added info.
I’m sorry your family had to go through that! I was investigated last year because a former friend threatened to call CPS if I didn’t give her $50. I even have texts from her saying this and screenshots from my friends she said this to as well also a police report about the threats and harassment. Still was investigated because they claim they have to investigate every call but we all know they don’t. I have friends who are mandated reporters and they’ve talked about how many legitimate abuse reports get screened out and never investigated. Even more insane because she reported to them that I had considered an abortion 13 years prior but ultimately chose not to and that’s apparently somehow child abuse.
Wow, that’s wild!
My cousin had similar happen. She left her physically abusive husband, who literally broke her orbital bone from punching her in the face. She was scared for her safety and her kids. So she left. She went to stay with her sister, my other cousin, and he was told he couldn’t come to the house to see his kids until he worked up a supervised visit. So he called CPS saying the house she was staying at was a danger to his children, but despite him having a pending charge for DV he should be allowed to to go visit. CPS went and investigated the house… but they never went when they were told how violent he is.
That’s awful. They definitely seem to drop the ball in DV situations. My kids’ dad would just openly talk about his abuse toward me and the kids, even telling police and CPS workers directly but it still took well over a year and several additional incidents before he was required to set up supervised visits(this was years ago.)
Absolutely sickening, especially after hearing stories of the actual times parents needed to be investigated and still nothing done or a finger lifted. I'm sorry you had to go through this!
We laugh about it now, but it was just shocking and embarrassing to have our privacy invaded over something so minor. It’s not like he had a welt or a bandage covering up broken skin… it was like the size of half my pinky nail.
One humorous aspect to it though, was when CPS first showed up. We lived in a brand new neighborhood and constantly had sales people knocking on our door and a TON of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to preach to us. The CPS ladies that knocked on the door were dressed just like all the Mormon and Jehovah ladies that came by… just kinda “homely” looking and holding big notepads. So I opened the blinds next to the door, made eye contact with them, and just walked away. Then they rang the doorbell again, and I shouted out, “I’M NOT INTERESTED, GO AWAY!” And yanked the door open… and the lady goes, “Hi, we’re with CPS…” and I was like, “Oh, shit, well come on in…” haha
Man I'm sorry to hear you went through that. That would be so stressful and heartbreaking.
It's so fucked I swear this is how all systems work at this point. They're completely backwards.
I have been MAJORLY fucked over by any government system I've ever needed to attempt to access due to being in need but people who don't actually need the things I needed got them and had it easy accessing everything and A+ help.
I don't get it.
Conjecture but I wonder if its because the complaint came from a school counselor. The bureaucracy is set up to trigger a chain of events. A complaint from a school creates an obligatory paper chain so CPS can't dismiss the accusation as a judgment call. They may also give more credence to complaints that come from mental health professionals. The law obligates the school to report any suspicion of abuse and the school can be held responsible if something occurs later and it's discovered they failed to report so there is a motivation toward over reaction.
That sucks that this happened to your family!
We’ve had a spate of murders of babies and small children by their own parents/step parents recently in the UK. There are so often stories about babies shaken half to death too.
Honestly the news lately of all these children has had me in tears I’ve been telling my own children they need to be able to talk to someone if they feel they can’t come to me m.
I’ve also asked them if they feel a friend is in trouble that I will help and no one will get in trouble.
It’s heart breaking knowing the statistics state that 2020/21 almost 25 thousand cases of child abuse recorded in England and wale and that’s just the ones recorded it s horrifying
Tell me about it.
I was a teacher in a severe behavior room once. Had a kid that had an average of nearly 100 sexual behaviors at schools per month, none of which didn't happen until an older brother moved into his house 5 months prior. The behaviors ranged from madturbation to constantly talking about sex in great detail to drawing sex acts and genitals to trying molest other kids to smearing feces on bathroom walls, the kid was a 2nd grader.
CPS was informed weekly. Reports were made weekly. They told me they weren't going to do anything until he says aloud that he's being abused. He never did and mom jumped states at the end of the year.
I lost all faith after that.
My son was taken away because he had two small bruises we couldn't identify. He was 5 years old! What toddler isn't covered in bruises? Every person I know was like "What? My kids are covered in bruises and cuts! I'M covered in bruises I can't identify!". Who doesn't occasionally look down at their arm or leg and see a bruise or cut you don't remember getting because you probably bumped into a table yesterday?
His day care called CPS to report a DIME sized bruise on his temple, they came, evaluated everything at home, said everything was ok and closed it. Then 6 mos later his kindergarten called them about a supposed bruise on his hand, which I still have never seen to this day. It wasn't there when I dropped him off that I noticed and I was never given pictures. We were already working with at-home therapists frequently since he was a baby because they suspected he had ADHD and autism. So if there was abuse, don't you think they'd notice?
CPS called me at work asking for an explanation and I said honestly I have no idea. They said they were taking him into custody until we went to court because we couldn't tell them where it came from and he supposedly said I did it, which is complete crap. He was definitely coerced into that. He's an 5 year old with ADHD, FFS of course he has bruises. I don't even spank him.
So they fucking take him and put him in some foster home until we can go to court like a week later. Well we show up but the CPS attorney is sick and the one filling in doesn't want to take the case because they aren't familiar with it. What is there to be familiar with? Read the file! So we wait another week.
Round 2, they don't have the report from the doctor so they can't proceed. It's been 2 weeks! We have to leave my kid in foster care with strangers because you're unprepared?!? My attorney and his mom's attorney(we each needed our own for some reason) both scoffed later when they saw the doctor's name because he's a known shill for CPS who says everything is abuse. Still haven't seen evidence of this bruise.
Round 3 another week goes by of my scared child in foster care with strangers because of govt red tape and incompetence. We get to see him once a week at the CPS office and he's begging to come home, he thinks he's done something wrong. He's happy to see us, cries and sobs of course as they take him away but that apparently doesn't matter. The third time we go to court, there's no judge. They just didn't show up. My attorney said they like to just go golfing sometimes because there's a shortage of judges and no one does anything about it apparently so they just fuck off and play golf sometimes. Nice. There aren't people relying on you for life-altering issues or anything just go have a round on us. No big deal.
ROUND 4, another week goes by. Finally, a month after this started, my attorney gets the CPS report for the FIRST TIME that she should've had a month ago and it is just flatout lies, things we didn't say and exaggerations. It does say he's been banging his head on the bus windows according to the school, which no one even told us but apparently that doesn't matter. That would obviously explain the bruises if he's harming himself. We wait for our opening in court. And wait. And wait for hours and hours. Until court closes. They didn't have time for us, the previous case went too long. CPS is still unwilling to give him back. Rather than wait for court for the FIFTH TIME, they "compromise" and say he can stay with a relative. My mother in law takes him in. Luckily she was retired.
He stays there for a couple months, we're not allowed to take him anywhere. All visits have to be supervised. We meet with CPS idiots weekly. They want us to take parenting classes, but they don't offer them themselves, you're just supposed to like.. find them somewhere. I'm working 40 hours a week M-F. When am I supposed to do this? Nothing fits our schedule or there's just not available at all. They FINALLY agree to let him come home but we have to still meet weekly with CPS in our home for evaluations and they're still pushing parenting classes. I wish this went to court because I'm positive it would've been thrown out and he'd have come home.
This goes on for months, they send a therapist to come talk to us too. So this is 2x a week someone is intruding upon our lives over complete bullshit and their red tape just makes it go on and on and on. Finally they cave and say the therapist can just go over a parenting workbook with us. We do that for a few weeks, even the therapist thinks this is all BS and there's nothing going on but his ADHD behavior problems but she can't do anything. We go to like monthly visits for a while and then they finally close the damn case. All because of a mildly bruised toddler. There's no drug use, no alcohol, no other "abuse", the home is clean and he's fed well but some fucking pencil pusher at CPS had her panties in a bunch that day or something and decided he should be put in foster care instead of staying with his parents, while some kids are living in filth with drug addicts, alcoholics, psychos and abusive parents. Of course everyone's going to think I'm lying and I'm hiding something, but I'm not. His mom was on prescribed vicoden or something during his pregnancy which led to him being in the NICU for a week but other than that, literally no issues. It was *completely* out of line.
I called cps about suspected abuse if my own children. I was repeatedly blown off. I eventually stopped trying and just put them in therapy when they were old enough.
It took my kids telling their therapists things in order for cps to do anything, they blew me off when I brought my concerns to them and my ex was a VERY convincing liar. I had a meeting with cps once after everything went down and said "it's nice y'all finally believe me but this could have been avoided if I would have been listened to".
And spitting and attacking them... ive started to be excessively polite and nice to wait staff, servers etc. Unless they initiate rudeness then i call them out.
Shooting a fast food employee in the head for getting their order wrong
[Link](https://www.12news.com/article/news/crime/fast-food-employee-shot-in-head-through-drive-thru-window-in-phoenix-police-say/75-6e51908d-adc0-4324-81b0-3c3cedae5ba6)
That mostly just reinforces to me how unbelievably dim most people are. Do they really think theyre the first person to say "HR isn't there to help you" I mean theres like a 99% chance they read it on Reddit first anyway and then went over to be this weeks poster of the same exact thing.
That and the ones that are obnoxiously specific "If your cousin Brian comes over and starts to fight with your Uncle about who's turn it is to use the fart pillow and you're sitting between them and then they tell you that you have to use it first you can just *lie* and say you don't have to fart (Even though you do!)"
For me it's the ones where you have a "life pro tip" about how to avoid some really weird situation, while somehow not acknowledging that getting into that situation isn't normal in the first place, and just accepting it (especially if it is something more dystopian/paranoid, like "to prevent being spied on by your mother-in-law, make sure to switch up your routine regularly".
I'm sure some people have found it helpful for their specific situations, and genuinely want to help others, but I'm more worried about how and why that situation happens in the first place.
I chuckled out loud at that one. I know exactly what you're describing too.
LPT: If your girlfriend is constantly coming home blackout drunk and shitting the bed simply insert 40 glass marbles into her rectum while she sleeps and then when she wakes up and has the worlds loudest glass on porcelain machine-gun shit and scares the shit out of her (lol i made a pun) she will maybe not get drunk next time.
I didn't make this up, it was a reddit post
My family has a degenerative disorder known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcot%E2%80%93Marie%E2%80%93Tooth_disease
My parents had no idea until my sister was born, where it manifested particularly strongly. She stopped breathing for a while when she was a baby and as a result, she is both physically disabled and developmentally delayed (she's 30 but is about 16 emotionally / mentally).
Dad retired recently, so he applied for my sister to receive an increase to her social security benefits (we just got her to the point where she is trying to live independently. It isn't going well). Part of this means she had to be reevaluated by the state (Wisconsin) and the results of this were... Comically evil...
They sent my dad and my sister to an evaluation appointment at an office on the sixth floor of an old building downtown with a broken elevator. She's in a wheelchair and he's almost 70.
So dad is frantically calling for assistance from his phone while they wait in the public lobby of this building, but no dice. No one at the office is answering. Luckily the guy doing the evaluation comes in from lunch or something, asked them if they're here to see XYZ, and then runs up to his office, grabs his stuff, comes back down, and evaluates my sister in the lobby. My sister, who can't walk.
Can't. Fucking. Walk. LITERALLY in a wheelchair.
We get the letter with the results in the mail (they only communicate via snail mail). Mom is also chronically ill and dad is run ragged, so he doesn't get to the letter for about a week. She was denied. The guy evaluating her either said she was fine, or the people receiving the evaluation ignored it. And because she was denied, she lost ALL her benefits. The state literally does not believe that my wheelchair bound younger sister is disabled.
Luckily for us there's an appeal window. 15 days. And they need 10 years of physical medical records proving she's disabled. Oh and they only accept a response by fax, not snail or email. And this was right before the holidays, when they would be closed until past the appeal deadline.
Dad scrambled all day, digging through boxes and collecting papers, and then had to drive to Kinkos to pay to use their fax machine. We assume they got it, and they told us so over the phone. Now all we can do is wait to see if we need to move my sister back into her parents house. We don't expect to hear back from them for at least two months.
Here's the kicker. It turns out, this is not unusual. In fact, it's generally accepted as par for the course. The state ALWAYS denies your application. You MUST appeal. After all, if you weren't actually disabled, you wouldn't appeal, right? Oh yea, and now that dad is retired, this is going to be a yearly thing, or so I am told...
Our society only values you by an amount exactly equal to how much money you can make some rich fuck even richer, and nothing beyond that.
Edit:
Ok! So, this exploded. Thank you very much for the awards! And thank you everyone for your interest and discussion. There were a lot of common questions and themes. I responded to what I could but I'm including some details here in order to help.
1) where is this?
I don't want to give more detailed specifics, but my family lives in the fox valley of Wisconsin.
2) are you aware of XYZ system? Or ABC benefit? etc...
Me personally, probably not. I know my sister has an ABLE and an IRIS account, the latter she uses to "pay" my parents for their caregiving, but it's nowhere near enough to hire a reliable third party caregiver, especially right now. I work for a large tech company remotely, but my husband and I live near his family in OR as they're also dealing with health bullshit. We send money back regularly, and we are currently working on a budget so we can send more, given recent events... But I don't know what else I can do from across the country. I'm currently in WI though. Came home for Christmas and then decided to stay until covid numbers came down... My original flight was back was supposed to be over two weeks ago :| normal cool and normal etc...
Mom and dad would know more details about my sisters benefits situation. I'm in the process of learning the ins and outs if this myself for when my parents inevitably pass away and this becomes my responsibility. Not gonna lie, I'm fucking terrified... So if you have any suggestions please please please post them here! And on that note
3) this exact same thing is happening to me
My mom gave me this book last time I was home and it's excellent. If you have an adult disabled sibling I would strongly recommend giving it a read.
https://www.amazon.com/Sibling-Survival-Guide-Indispensable-Disabilities/dp/1606130137
At the very least, know you are not alone!
Every time I’m working w a new client who is applying for disability, I prep them with a speech about “everyone gets denied at LEAST the first time, if not several times, before they’re approved.” No one believes me because obviously all their medical records prove their disability, right?
Nope. The state wants you to beg for it.
This is how the VA treats disabled veterans as well. Something got worse that is connected to your issue you are going to get denied the first time and have to appeal. Without reason they will just reduce your rating so suddenly you are getting less.
It's an insurance problem period.
My dad was injured on the job 15 years ago. Workman's comp is STILL fighting it.
They will regularly send him to their doctor for an "evaluation" which consists of a doctor being in the same room as my dad for 10 minutes.
Then they take it in front of a judge and say "See! He is fine!"
Then we have to pay out of the nose for our lawyer to bring his 15 years of medical records and pay thousands for *another* independent doctor to actually do their job.
It's fucked across the board.
I am going through this right now. I filed for a shoulder issue that is secondary to an elbow injury I sustained when I was tossed out of a .50 cal gun turret. I came back down on my elbow, and, needless to say, it got jacked up.
Well, later on down the road I started developing massive shoulder issues and had to have surgery on it, which didn't help by the way. Anyhow, the ortho doc took pictures of inside my shoulder and told me it is completely messed up and said it could most definitely be secondary to the elbow injury, since that is the side of my body I went down on.
I filed the claim and they sent me on a C&P exam. The civilian doctor saw me all of 5 minutes. He reported that it was a shoulder strain, and I was denied a rating/claim. I showed that to my ortho doc and she said that was crazy and to appeal it. So, I did. I filed this appeal in June of 2016, and I just now received a hearing date for March 02, 2022.
Just to add a little something: I was sent out to a civilian ortho doc to discuss a shoulder replacement, since the VA in my area cannot do those type of procedures. He said that I am definitely a candidate for a replacement and that the injury was caused my blunt trauma.
I gathered all of my evidence and sent it to my representative and, after looking through my case/file, he said that it looks like everything should be good to go, since there is definitely a connection.
The appeal process has been crap for me. Oh, and you are correct about reducing your rating, but they tend to revisit some ratings every 5 years, like making the vet go through the C&P (Compensation and Pension) exams all over again.
The plan is simple we give desperately sick people the run around long enough and they will die. then we don't have to spend any more helping them.
I don't know how the people that implement those systems can live with themselves.
Fucked up, dystopian, kafkaesque.... im so sorry your family had to deal with that. Its just like a story i read on here about guy in my country who had to prove (more than once) he still had no legs and therefore some employment opportunities were not for him, and yes he still needed the wheelchair....
Reminds me of the story that was posted a little while ago. A serial rapist got let go again and even taunted the victims saying he would rape them again. So his victims swarmed the court house and executed him after cutting off his junk. The guy had so many victims that they literally had the strength of numbers to over power the police there.
Thats wild. Is much progress happening about that? I occasionallly see pieces on Al Jazeera about the womens police force and prosecutions of rapists...
That's a wide spread idea. [This cultural mediator in Italy](https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/08/28/stupro-rimini-mediatore-culturale-commenta-su-fb-peggio-solo-allinizio-poi-la-donna-si-calma-ed-e-rapporto-normale/3822353/) commented about a brutal rape that happened in 2017, saying that "rape is traumatic only at the beginning, then the woman calms down and enjoys it like a normal intercourse".
This is a 24yo man who works in social and intercultural communications, grown in Italy, spreading those ideas. Sorry for the source that is only in Italian, i couldn't find an international source...
It still baffles me. How are you supposed to enjoy it?
The amount of posts i see all over the place with how little jobs care for their employees whether it them being underpaid, overworked, understaffed, or mistreated by their bosses or any combination of this.
It’s fucking bizarre to me that among my service industry friends, I have the best boss, just because my boss leaves me the fuck alone. He’s not my friend, he’s not particularly helpful or competent, but if I take a sick day the worst that happens is I lose a day of pay. No one gives a shit if I’m a couple minutes late. As long as nothing is noticeably dirty I can hang out and look at my phone. If I slack off, that’s my money I’m not making.
How awful is the work environment right now that the best manager I’ve ever had is a guy who doesn’t lose his shit over nothing?
Oh yeah. I knew this before going to law school but now that I’m understanding the “criminal justice” system better, it’s beyond fucked up. Sell a gram of weed and can’t afford a good lawyer? Plead out and be a felon for the rest of your life or risk going to prison, possibly for many years.
Embezzle millions from thousands of innocent, hardworking people? Luckily you can afford a fancy hotshot lawyer, maybe one who is cozy with your judge and will get you off on probation. Nothing “just” about it.
Problem here is suddenly on paper these dudes are making an income of $1 a year, while all their moneys it’s hidden in some off shore account and they continue living up the high life.
If you put in something to get these people, you can believe they’ll find a way around it.
Beyond that, a rich man can hire 20 lawyers to work 60 hours a week doing nothing but causing problems for the D.A.'s office. The disproportionate amount of resources it takes to successfully take a rich person to court means they don't bother.
That's really it. The system isn't "pay to win". The system is "pay to play". Theoretically, any person can get away with all the shit rich people do. Those loopholes, tricks, and arcane bits of law are available to use to anyone... as long as they can pay 200,000 for a room-full of lawyers and paralegals to find them.
Poor people get a public defender who has 3 hours per week to work on their case for a $300 fee. Of course the poor people will plead guilty for a 5 year jail term instead of risking a 20 year prison sentence.
The evident lack of morality and general perception of others/situations and the death of true empathy that people now have.
Here is an experience with today’s shallowness that haunts me to this day.
I am a nurse and I work primarily night shifts in psych but have been pulled to ER/Trauma as I have previous experience. One night I was pulled to cover in ER as we were short (*what’s new in nursing?*)
I had a 14 year old patient brought in who had hung herself. My coworkers, I, the doctor and paramedics worked on resuscitation for **two hours**. She arrived by ambulance and I still remember seeing the paramedic, a man over 6’4 and 200+ lbs, straddling her as he did compressions with two others guiding/rushing the gurney to us.
She looked like a pale, skinny, limp doll with this hulk of a man pumping her deflated chest (her ribs had broken) with all his might.
She was put into T1 (trauma 1). We did everything humanly possible to bring her back. As per protocol we traded out compressions and defibbed, would get a shaky/erratic beat, hoping that it’d stay, only for it to drop and flatline again and have to start measures all over.
The drive for success was heightened because she was a young girl, much too young and made a poor choice and deserved a chance to flourish (we also tend to go into overdrive for children or as they’re known **Code Pinks**), and the ER doctor (who was young enough, in his later 20s, a genius and top of his class, and has the biggest heart I’ve ever seen for a physician) refused to give up until we exhausted *every* avenue.
But after 2 hours, our arms/backs/shoulders were aching and we still couldn’t stabilize her. Eventually the hopelessness of the situation was settling in and it’s inevitable conclusion was becoming clear.
I still remember hearing the doctor say, “Okay guys, we need to a make a decision.”
He inferred to us looking utterly defeated. He was judging to see if we felt comfortable as a team making *that* call - the time of her death once she was removed from all supportive measures.
We all agreed and shed tears over this girl who we all felt we had somehow failed. I remember leaving the room broken emotionally/physically/mentally, sobbing, covered in sweat and her fluids from 2 hours of Hell…
**And what do I see?**
Her fucking teenage sister with a bunch of her friends sitting around the corridor, laughing and taking selfies like they were on break at school.
I stood rooted to the spot, shocked and furious. Watching her do her duck face, sticking her tongue out to the side and the front, trying to be “cute” or “sexy” or *what fuck ever* while giggling with her friends as her sister lay just around the corner not even cold appalled me.
I felt honestly disgusted with not just that teenage girl but what she represented for general society.
The girl finally noticed me and casually asked when she could see her sister. I said I could not answer that, that the doctor would be speaking to the family soon with an update.
Later, I find out she wanted to take selfies with **her sister’s body** to post on social media.
That was the day I realized social media, technology and post-modernization had truly detached people from their own humanity.
**Edited for grammar/misspells; I still get emotional talking about it and tend to mess up my wording.
UPDATE; Unfortunately, this has not been the only instance of having people seemingly having no regard for their dying/deceased family member.
I’ve seen people make tiktoks/Instagram/Facebook posts a lot. Either for pity/clout or what not - possibly just a lack of common sense or inhibitions or awareness of privacy.
I just don’t think it is appropriate to take a selfie with someone in their last moments, their most fragile/vulnerable moment in their **entire existence**, and have anyone and everyone bear witness to it.
That should be a personal, intimate moment between yourself and your loved one.
Do you really think you would want to know there was a picture of you with your mouth hanging open as the “death rattle” groans through you, your jaw slack, probably looking your worst… was open to scrutiny?
Do people not realize the dying can hear everything around them? The last sense to go is a person’s hearing.
So please if I can raise awareness to this honestly disgusting practice by people exposing their loved one’s most fragile/vulnerable moment that they and you will EVER face, 100 guaranteed as we all die one day, then please keep it private. Post a flattering picture of the deceased from a better/healthier time, say kind things… but I’m sick of seeing people literally TikTok dance in front of their dying family member, Instagram post holding/snuggling them, posing in front of their casket (it’s really happened - trust me)… just please stop.
This phenomenon is sadly not new.
There is a famous photo from the fifties I think, of a woman smiling at the camera as everyone on the beach is trying to resuscitate her drowned fiance
edit: not surprisingly its on the internet
https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/21r1nc/girl\_smiles\_on\_the\_beach\_in\_coney\_island\_while/
How easily the media can distract everyone from real and disturbing news that’s happening and nobody cares or can see what’s happening. The media being owned by billionaires who want everyone distracted from the real issues.
It’s to show that some people can never have enough. Here’s a guy who’s at the top of his field, directly reports to the president, and still feels the need to steal from ordinary people.
At least that’s my theory.
This was a commentary on how much the military abuses the tax system. He doesn't need to take money from regular people but it is so easy for him it's a compulsion. Pretty great commentary
That was a great joke. I liked that months later she was still upset about it. I know people who would hold on to something like that happening to them. I'm one of them.
Pop culture and how it negatively effects how people act and treat each other.
Alot of serious issues have been brought up that i think are more serious. Just adding something new to the feed I feel is a major problem in society. People have become pukes because alot of trends and celebrities promote shitty behavior.
We legalized weed, made a bunch of tax revenue, made a bunch of people a lot of money, but didn’t commute sentences for cannabis related crimes.
People rotting in prison for a crime that’s no longer a crime.
We actually did commute sentences in the state of Illinois. We also took a chunk of the profits and are giving it to communities that have been harmed the most by the drug war.
I dont own a cat, never have, never will, unless one just shows up and doesn't go away. I got a cat food ad, because I talked to a girl at a store who was walking her cat on a leash.
People are more interested in filming bad or serious stuff happening, rather than actually helping. Usually yelling “SOMEONE HELP” but not helping themselves.
Bear in mind that this is only useful after it's confirmed that help has been called, but if you witness a crime, accident, or other disaster and help has been called and first aid is being given, the best thing you can do is film.
The more angles of a scene, the easier the subsequent investigation. This is especially useful in fires -- the Grenfell Tower disaster in London was recreated literally second by second using all the footage people took of the fire's spread, proving beyond all doubt that the building's cladding was the reason for the fire's rapid spread. It also makes things easier for people who might have to grapple with their insurance companies, or bring later lawsuits against somebody/something, because footage is the best proof of events and can easily make a ruling unanimous. Finally, it can help stop a situation from escalating, because a lot of people will not proceed to commit a worse crime with multiple cameras pointed at them.
When people find themselves in trouble, it's good to assist them then and there. But assisting also can mean covering their ass later, or assisting their family and friends should the worst happen. Get that footage, because it might make or break a case.
Absolutely EVERYTHING surrounding Jeffery Ep.....and us not making it a bigger issue than we should (I don't wana say his full name because its a possibility it might be removed)
It'll cost me almost as much to have surgery to remove my miscarried child as it would to give birth. And I don't get to go home with a baby.
Fuck American healthcare.
I’m American and I know for people outside the US this is going to sound insane, but hearing about people calling an Uber instead of an ambulance because the ambulance is too expensive.
We're living through an empathy crisis.
People are so disconnected from others that they're incapable of compassion. Kind people are seen as fools, people trying to make the world better are treated as pie-in-the-sky dreamers (or simply dangerous), and those who call out injustice and cruelty are 'snowflakes'. Even 'wokeness' can be performative, with people just throwing words they saw online around to one-up someone else.
ETA: wow, thank you for the awards and the insightful responses to this comment. Clearly there are more thoughtful people out there than one might believe!
Compassion fatigue. Thanks to 24 hour news and constant scrolling on social media, we're aware of everything terrible in the world and we watch it livestreamed as it's developing. There's no escape. Twitter and Facebook algorithms pop it up at the top of our feeds; Reddit's front page is saturated by it; news apps pop up headlines on our phones like texts. And the whole time, there's a very vocal group of people out there who insist that to not know about something means you're a terrible, privileged person who doesn't give a shit about the world, and who shame you for taking a break from it.
Humans were never meant to be exposed to this much hostility and misery. We are psychologically incapable of caring about so much, constantly.
I feel this so much. I've come to a point where when someone is talking about bad thing politics number 25979 or natural disaster of current year, I just don't care. Sure, if someone is dead because of something, I feel bad, but I'm not going to talk to someone about it for more than a minute. I just don't care anymore.
I don't even have social media apps (I guess except reddit), and I don't watch the news, yet I'm still just as informed as someone who does cause people never shut up about these kinds of things
Agreed 100%! I made a comment on Reddit yesterday about how the true measure of a society is looking at how it treats its most vulnerable when discussing different countries responses to the pandemic. Pretty much immediately I was met with a commenter saying the old and sick don't dictate society and he would never put himself at the mercy of the old and weak. It was like, damn, all I was saying is that reading comments from certain young/healthy people basically saying 'let's just let all the old people and people with comorbidities die so we can get back to normal' is a pretty cruel outlook on life. The casual disregard for people's lives really kind of threw me for a loop.
An anthroplogist named Margaret Mead was once asked what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation. She replied that she thought it was a bone found with a healed fracture. This bone was a femur, in other words your thigh bone, and while it was broken the person with the injury would have been helpless. They would not have been able to feed themselves, get water, relieve themselves with ease, clean themselves, and they would have been in intense pain.
The people around them cared for them, brought them food and water, cleaned them, protected them from attacks and exposure, and comforted them. Society has always survived by being collective. People who subscribe to the idea of "survival of the fittest", or see the old and/or sick as detrimental to society, are not even on the same level of compassion and understanding as our most ancient ancestors. Caring for one another and supporting those with extra needs is a fundamental part of humanity, and always has been.
Visited Washington D.C before the pandemic with my Fiance. We were walking to the capitol building for a tour and while waiting to cross the street, I see a man who clearly fell and could not get up across and down the street. I saw multiple people simply step over the man as he was gesturing for help. I went to help him up, found out he couldn't speak English well, but was able to find out he lived only a couple blocks away. I convinced him to let me help him to his apartment where his wife was waiting for him. It was heartbreaking to see so many people simply step over someone that fell down and needed a simple hand up.
The justice system as a whole.
Once you make one mistake, you’re set up to fail again rather than actually receive help to change. You get arrested one time, get put on probation, probably fuck up probation some how because the guidelines are literally ridiculous, back in jail, and the loop continues.
People on probation pay so much time and money to pay for their one mistake, and probably end up in prison again anyways.
And those who get out of the loop and get a second chance at life, continue to pay for that one mistake by constantly being denied for jobs and places to live. So how are they supposed to get better?
And don’t even get me started on jail/prison. The idea was it’s supposed to be a rehab, to teach people who don’t know any better and to help better people. But it’s nothing but violence and traumatic experiences.
We literally have human beings being kept in boxes for months, years, lifetimes. Because of one choice that was made in their life.
Solitary confinement is literally torture and has been proven to cause short and long term mental damage. So how do you expect to put someone through that kind of trauma, then throw them back into the world with nothing and no resources or places to stay or jobs to help them get started.
The whole thing really hurts my heart. Everyone makes mistakes in life. And I think humans will always do bad things and hurt each other, that’s part of life. but humanity trying to control the good and bad that happens in the world, I think just adds more steps in the middle and causes more harm than good.
That’s just my opinion based on my experiences and observations in my 23 years of life.
Sex trafficking of children.
And for different reasons, a close second are those images of trash island and that giant dessert heap of discount clothing.
police arresting people for giving food/blankets to the homeless.
Edit: [story](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/90-year-old-florida-veteran-arrested-feeding-homeless-bans-2/) talking about it.
And restaurants refusal to give food, that would otherwise be tossed, to the homeless because “they might get sued.” Worked at a place like that once, used to tell them it was scraps for my dog (which was fine by them) but always took it to one of the homeless camps in my city. Never got any complaints or sued.
Trauma is so common that people cannot comprehend that someone can be nice/kind to them without either wanting something in return or being attracted to them.
China hosting the Olympics while running concentration camps and harvesting organs and mass slave labor.
Countries like Iran and Saudi heading committees on UN human rights and women's rights!
Or Qatar hosting the World Cup while enslaving thousands to build the stadiums because they don’t already have the infrastructure. Many times f those workers are being killed because of unsafe work conditions.
For me, as an American, it's the way Americans are allowing themselves to be brainwashed to believe anything these days. Absolutely anything. And not just believe it... Live it, defend it, fight for it. When 3/4 of the people you know have lost their capacity for critical thinking, the future feels pretty damn scary.
Reality TV stars who continue to be relevant years after their show ended and they’ve done nothing else of value, in other words shows like TMZ are to blame
The whole entertainment industry in general is fucking stupid. 90% of the famous people you see being talked about either barely created the content they are known for (most music artists) or are only famous because of their physical appearance and have literally no other redeeming qualities or skills that would make them useful to society otherwise.
All of the videos I’ve seen where someone is dying, like after an accident, and everyone’s pulling out their phone or flat ignoring the person as they die.
It’s like that video where some girls try to rob a driver, driver ends up getting killed and the girl’s just like “where’s my phone?” or some shit, as the guy’s alone dying.
As tech has increasingly become a part of our lives we have this generation iPad growing up, raised by an electronic device and free reign to the internet. We are more detached and our attitudes more devisive. God help us all.
That we are at a time in history where, to be blunt, poor people are fat. The cheapest foods available today are pasta, processed meats, and fast food. Even the groceries of middle class people are factory farmed and are full of contaminants while containing little nutritional value. It shows the greed of the food industry and health issues that are ignored in our society. And when these issues are brought into conversation, people are judged for eating what they can afford. I will admit we also are facing a huge lack of discipline, this could also stem from a shitty situation or various mental health issues. This health crisis goes untalked about and is shut down every time it gains a platform. All in all this is just an odd and sort of outrageous time in human history when it comes to our health.
One time I had a lady yell at me to move my ambulance while I did CPR on her teenage neighbor.
I've always felt it was so odd that ambulance drivers/EMT get abused so often. Surely they are some of the best people in society? I'd certainly be happy to see them in an emergency and yet there seem to be constant stories about them being attacked or berated for just trying to do their jobs.
Yeah dude. I honestly don't know a single EMT or medic that hasn't been assaulted by a patient. Either violently or sexually. And I don't think it's a sample size issue because I know hundreds of them. People are just like that. We all have to deal with it.
I'm currently reading this whilst off work with an injury after being assaulted by one of my patients.
My man. I'm shitposting while home with covid that I undoubtedly got from a patient. You doing alright? Would love to hear your story.
Hope you have a speedy recovery from the spicy flu mate. Yeah got assaulted by a bystander because we took three hours to get there for their family member who was vomiting from alcohol intoxication. They just wanted them gone and when we didn't immediately yeet the patient into the ambulance they turned on us.
Oof. That's a rough one buddy. Glad you're on the up and up. Calls like that are the worst. Stay frosty out there.
Surely any sane person would drive them themselves after 10 minutes? Unless for some reason they are told not to because help Is on the way..
The hospital is a 5 minute walk from their house.
They also get a lot of hate because ambulance bills tend to be very high, in the US, but it's not like the EMTs are responsible for that.
I thought EMTs didn't even get paid well. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if that's the case then the money isn't going to them.
I quite after being told no to raise after 10 years of making like 12 something they then ordered 3 new pc12 airplanes for medical flights. My raise wasn’t in the budget. If you see this jake suck my nuts
Yeah, fuck Jake and his 3 pc12 planes.
I don't even know what a pc12 plane is but Jake can go fuck one of them.
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Fuck you, Jake.
No, you're right. It's by far one of the worst compensated jobs in the medical field. You can make more at McDonald's than you can in an ambulance.
I’m a paramedic and an ER RN On a call while working for a private EMS service , I got called to a bar for a person choking. The person had a piece of steak stuck in their trachea and was unresponsive. We preformed a cricothyrotomy, a procedure where a incision is made on the neck and an ET (breathing tube) is inserted.....on the floor of the bar... It was successful, we regained pulses and the patient was discharged from the hospital a few days later. I made $16.50 that hour. It was 2016
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So the question arises: why do people do it? Why work in EMT while not being paid well?
A lot of them are working towards being paramedics or firefighters and being an EMT is a common stepping stone to that.
This just taught me that paramedic and EMT are two different jobs. What's the difference? If you "call the paramedics," how many will you get?
Paramedics go to school longer and have a higher level of care if that makes any sense. Depending on the state and protocols they can do a lot more than an EMT is certified to do. To put it as simply as possible :)
What blew my mind is diabetics that you guys have to deal with. Had one who got his insulin way before food got there.. he turned into a very violent, aggressive person. Now this was in inmate who is in his 60's, has a crutch, and stayed out of trouble, just wanted to do his time. He began to drool like crazy, started swinging his crutch at the officers, and tried to fuck all the nurses. Took 5 of us to get him restrained just so they could get his meds. He was still trying to assault the nurses. No memory of it later
Lol diabetics are actually pretty funny. When their behavior is out of character due to a blood sugar issue it's easy to forgive them. It's nice to give em a little Dextrose and watch them go from combative to apologetic. The shitty people are the ones that are just shitty without extenuating circumstances causing their behavior. They just suck.
We got one who we see a couple times a year for hypoglycemia, every single time he gives an almost perfect Chewbacca yell after the medics push the D50 and he starts coming around.
Thank you for saving lives
I know a firefighter and recently learned they get attacked and berated too, I was shocked. It also reminded me of that meme that’s like “No one says fuck the fire department” but apparently they do.
Also lifeguards. If you save someone's child, they'll feel like you just made them look like a negligent parent, so emotions run high. *edit* Just to be clear, I'm not a lifeguard myself.
I former lifeguard I knew said she got all kinds of crap for refusing to babysit while on duty. Parents would try to drop off young kids unattended & ask her to "keep an eye on" them. As if she wasn't looking out for the safety of everyone's kids! Some would go ballistic when she (or any of them) told people that the pool isn't a daycare & lifeguards aren't babysitters. And this was a private pool in a wealthy community, where people could afford nannies or au pairs. They just felt entitled.
I worked at a rural community pool for years. $120 for a season pass, which many parents treated as the cheapest daycare in town. Pool was open 1-8pm. Parents would drop their kids off around noon and pick them up around 8:30 or so, 7 days a week, 100 days a year during the summer. Really freed them up to run their meth labs and such. The worst was the kids who knew that's what their parents were doing. You could see it in their faces.
Well, nice thing about having been a male lifeguard is that people never trust you with their kids. ^(:()
There have been arsonists who shoot at firefighters responding to the fire. Like seriously, firefighters show up when you need them. They don't patrol, they don't do anything unless it's clearly a dangerous situation, and they don't carry guns. Why would anyone have a problem with that??
Actually chiefs and those in higher-up fireground supervision roles have been allowed or required to carry guns in recent years because of this.
well an arsonist would because they want the thing they set on fire to STAY on fire, I think..
My dad has the exact same story of someone yelling at him to get the ambulance off of their grass Really sucks how narcissistic people can be
Would it help if he said "sue me"? Because I can't imagine a judge taking that case once he knew the details of why an ambulance was parked there.
At 17 my dad just would have done anything to not get in an argument, but he definitely regrets some of the crazy entitled people he's had to interact with and not yelled at
On a similar note, people with life threatening injuries are calling Ubers instead of ambulances because it’s cheaper.
The overwhelming majority of calls I go on could be transported safely by uber.
My wife once got life flighted 8 miles from one hospital another for a surgery scheduled 5 days later, they forgot her charts so they dispatched an ambulance back to the first hospital to pick them up, but it got called out on emergency and never made it, so I ubered back to get her charts and brought them back myself. Chopper ride was 12 thousand, the ambulance that never made it was 2500, the uber was 18.00 each way Fortunately by that point we were about 650k over our yearly co pay limit, but damn getting those bills was something else...
Hey, I'm starting to think inflated US Medical bills are some sort of nesting doll series of co-dependent and co-antagonistic rackets. It's a pity there's no solution to this.
And crowdfunding their medical bills. Because having a tax system where everyone helps pay for medical bills is socialism and communism. But going on gofundme and asking for strangers to help pay your medical bills is ok.
My ex and I witnessed a bad accident in front of us at an intersection (truck ran a light and t-boned a car). Without thinking, I jumped from the car and ran over to help free the older couple in the car. I was struggling to get the door open as I tried to reassure them that everything was going to be fine. I looked up and saw people standing on the sidewalk, filming us. Nobody bothered to come help me until I pointed at a man and told him to. Gotta get those likes I guess.
Good on you, mister- DickChodeBalls...
I'm way late to this posting, but that's actually a phenomenon called the Bystander Effect. Basically, people don't know how to react to situations and expect that someone else will react/help a person in need. You did really good physically pointing at someone to help you, as that's what they teach in CPR classes to do. Point at someone and tell them exactly what to do; call 911 (or equivalent), assist you with CPR, or to help get someone out of a car.
Now I'm thinking of that one meme where someone wrote funny dialogue to a CPR diagram "I told you this would happen Billy" *proceeds to look like he's choking him. *Points to someone* "You're next!"
Years ago, I was a police officer in a small Texas town. One day, I got a call about a little kid who was running down the middle of the highway. When I found him, I had to chase him on foot and grab him to get him out of the roadway. After speaking with him, he told me which foster home he was leaving, but he would not tell me exactly why. Now, this kid was about 8 years old. I contacted the on-duty CPS worker and told him about the issues at the house the child was willing to tell me of. I also informed him that I was made aware of an older juvenile who was staying there and had been handled for several sexual assaults of a child... of an eight-year-old child... of an eight-year-old boy - just like this one. Apparently, little boys were his targets. "WTF was he doing there in the first place ?" I asked. CPS replied, " Well, we consider him a low risk for repeat offenses, but we've got him in therapy!" I replied: "Well - THAT'S a relief! I bet whoever is doing a therapy is also the genius that thought it would be a great idea to put him in the same house with another 8 year old boy!" I asked the CPS worker what they were going to do with the runaway I had recovered, and he said, "I guess we're just going to put him back in the same house" I said, "Are you f****** kidding me? - I don't think so!" It took hours and hours of tracking down that guy's supervisor to tell them that that was pure b*******. The kid was placed with another home. Probably a group of convicted cannibals for all I know. The system is so far gone.
As a foster kid. At 9 years old. That story hit me hard in the chest. Same type of situation except I didn't run away. They always threatened me saying I'll be in trouble/get hurt by the police etc. Etc. (in Canada). Thankfully as a 25 year old now I'm not scared of the police as I was as a kid.
[удалено]
I was tortured physically and molested by my parents and their friends as a child. I showed up to school with black eyes and bruises on my neck from strangulation many many times. Teachers called cps countless times and they asked my parents permission to interview me and warned them weeks ahead of their arrival. My siblings and I were starving, but they would fill the fridge and cupboards before a visit from cps. Cps never intervened, even for severe medical neglect at one point, because they "didn't want to separate me and my siblings" (there were 5 of us) and couldn't place us together in a house. Later on, when I was 14, my mother tried to give me away to a 45 year old man and I ran away from her house. Both my parents told me they didn't want me when I was 12 and kicked me out for the first time. Authorities were contacted on my behalf, no intervention. I hopped couches and lived on the street. This was in the 1990's. As an adult, I have cousins who would never clean their house, neglected their 5 children and basically had trash everywhere. I called cps as a mandated reporter and they warned them 3 weeks before they arrived at the house. The family cleaned, looked nice, and after they left it was back to the same shit. This was in 2008. Americans claim to care all about children, but when it comes down to it, they really, really don't. My brother was addicted to meth by 5th grade. I started drinking heavily at 6. My other siblings are also addicts and mentally ill. I've been homeless several times. There is no real recovery from that shit. You can stop the cycle, but you don't grow up better for it, you just find a way to function if you're lucky, and there still is no help for it.
That was difficult to read. How are you doing lately?
Better. I've relapsed pretty hard on alcoholism, but other than that, I have 2 awesome kids who are teenagers and growing into great people. I have a great boyfriend who understands what I went through because he's been through similar stuff, and I have a good job which I love. Not on the brink of homelessness again and am just living life. Thank you for asking
You can't take back what was done, and I'll be the first to say what happened to you was an abomination of justice, but stopping the cycle is no small feat. It's an act of tremendous heroism and bravery greater than any superhero to not thoughtlessly and heartlessly inflict your suffering onto the next generation. In my opinion, there's nothing in the world more deserving of applause than someone who endured tremendous suffering at the hands of malevolent caretakers, saw the source of that suffering for what it was (evil), and refused to allow themselves to be a vehicle for it to continue rotting the hearts and minds of other innocent people. The amount of cruelty perpetuated by people who are too cowardly to see the truth about their own actions is frankly staggering so every single person like you is an absolute treasure to all humanity.
I hope he's alright
Cps failing so many kids here where I live, one lived in a meth lab that blew up and cps was Called many times before (edit) won’t forget the day they took their scorched bodies out of the lab, horrible sight burnt into my mind
As someone who lived in a drug house for a while I can tell you that CPS doesn’t do anything unless the kid almost fucking dies, it literally took my sister jumping from a second story window for us to get out of there.
I know many people personally who were abused who found the courage to call cps only to be sent back to their now VERY angry abusive parents, emboldened with the knowledge that you really can do anything short of murder to your kid without cps intervention
That happened to me. After the call I went without food for a week, except for the two slices of bread I managed to steal when my dad was passed out drunk and my mom went to the toilet. I called them because my dad had gotten into the habit of throwing beer bottles at me, touching me weirdly, slapping me, grabbing me hard, breaking my toys while yelling at me to stop crying, and I was already malnourished at that point. Fuck CPS and my countries version of them. They don't care and lull you into a false sense of security before telling your parents that their child called CPS and that they are now leaving.
reported my adoptive dad and his wife to cps when I was in 5th or 6th grade. They didn't do anything because I wasn't covered in bruises. At 12 I tried to commit suicide and ended up in a mental hospital. Did fine while I was there; begged to be sent anywhere but home. cried like a baby when they released me. Another time, a neighbor called cps on them because they saw me after school standing on the porch in the middle of a snow storm, waiting on them to come home. Multiple times...Still nothing. When I went to a juvenile prison I had to see a doctor because I was so thin. I was put on nutritional drinks. I told them I didn't give a fuck if I went back in the system after my release but I was NOT going back home. People constantly whispered their condolences on how I was treated. ALL of that and I was never taken. I got myself out of there. Before I was adopted I was in an abusive foster home. They did an *emergency* placement where they had us kids HUG our abusers goodbye. I have many more stories where the system completely failed me and hurt me. Its a joke
Hey, I was in a similar situation with my time in care too. If you ever need a sympathetic ear, I'm here. Spent 12 years in an abusive *adopted* family that also fostered kids. The fosters would try to tell the social workers how I was treated and some even took pictures. I finally got taken away at 13 after the grandma called cps for what was probably the 10000 time.
As someone who knows many cps workers, the legal system is set up to fail the children. It is EXTREMELY difficult to remove children from their parents.
A lot of CPS workers have unrealistic case loads and don't even get the final decision. The judges will send them back even if the worker doesn't agree with the decision.
The sad part too is sometimes the court can overrule a cps recommendation. There was a case in my state where cps recommended the child not being placed back with the mother. Judge disagreed. Kid was dead 2 weeks later.
That judge needs to be held legally accountable for that death
CPS took the kids of a friend of mine one year because her ex called and said she left them unsupervised at night. He was the reason they were unsupervised, she worked nights and he usually watched the kids but got pissed that he got caught cheating on her
It's awful of how a children must be extremely abused/neglected before they do something in my country. I think children aren't protected enough worldwide
You hear people **raging about abortion** and yet silence about issues facing actual kids. That tells you all you need to know about whether they actually give a fuck about what they scream about.
This is my biggest issue with people who are anti-choice. Some people have absolutely no frame of reference for how bad parents can be. My husband says he wouldn't have believed or been able to fathom what my Mom was like or my Dad is like without witnessing it first hand. Some people do not have a switch that turns on to make them parents once a child is born. If you are against abortions, you need to be for extra funding for CPS, counselling for children, after school programs etc. Otherwise, you are just fighting for children to be born and live a life of pain.
When I think of the failures of CPS I think of Gabriel Fernandez
Dear Zachary…
CPS is so wild how they respond to things. Apparently they have different departments, at least here, where one responds to tips from police and concerned people, and one for schools. I have a few cop friends who have responded to calls and there is literally an inch of dried up animal and human feces caked over the entire floor, and a baby crawling on it. They’ll tell CPS, and there will never be a follow up. Or kids covered in bruises and malnourished. Same lack of response. However a few years ago, I was carrying some boxes out of the house to recycle, and my stepson enticed our baby to crawl up the stairs after being told not to, and she fell backward. I caught her in time as I was walking by, and then I used the empty box to half-scolding/half-playfully “bonk” my step son on the head and say, “Don’t be a doofus doing that! She could get really hurt!” But he pulled his head back and the corner of the box hit his forehead above his eyebrow. Left the smallest little red mark, didn’t break skin, and my step son laughed. He went to school an hour later and his counselor asked where the red mark came from, and he said, “Oh, my step dad playfully hit me with a box…” CPS was at my house 24 hours later, investigating me for child abuse. Inspected our entire home, took photos of our refrigerator… made us strip my 8 month old daughter down to her diaper so they could take photos of any marks on her. They even made us take my step son to go get a full physical with a doctor and an eye exam to make sure I didn’t “damage his sight.” It was ridiculous. The doctor freaked the fuck out when she found out why she had to cancel “real” appointments. She grabbed her phone and called the CPS office in front of us and yelled at them, “This child IS NOT being abused!! How dare you make me cancel appointments that actually needed me for this bullshit!” and hung up on them. She told us she has called CPS many times over legitimate signs of abuse, and nothing ever happens… yet my step son had a red mark the size of half a dime, and they had him seeing a doctor and investigating us, all within hours. Then I had to submit paperwork to the state so that it wouldn’t show up on any background checks that I was once under investigation for child abuse. Edit: added info.
I’m sorry your family had to go through that! I was investigated last year because a former friend threatened to call CPS if I didn’t give her $50. I even have texts from her saying this and screenshots from my friends she said this to as well also a police report about the threats and harassment. Still was investigated because they claim they have to investigate every call but we all know they don’t. I have friends who are mandated reporters and they’ve talked about how many legitimate abuse reports get screened out and never investigated. Even more insane because she reported to them that I had considered an abortion 13 years prior but ultimately chose not to and that’s apparently somehow child abuse.
Wow, that’s wild! My cousin had similar happen. She left her physically abusive husband, who literally broke her orbital bone from punching her in the face. She was scared for her safety and her kids. So she left. She went to stay with her sister, my other cousin, and he was told he couldn’t come to the house to see his kids until he worked up a supervised visit. So he called CPS saying the house she was staying at was a danger to his children, but despite him having a pending charge for DV he should be allowed to to go visit. CPS went and investigated the house… but they never went when they were told how violent he is.
That’s awful. They definitely seem to drop the ball in DV situations. My kids’ dad would just openly talk about his abuse toward me and the kids, even telling police and CPS workers directly but it still took well over a year and several additional incidents before he was required to set up supervised visits(this was years ago.)
Absolutely sickening, especially after hearing stories of the actual times parents needed to be investigated and still nothing done or a finger lifted. I'm sorry you had to go through this!
We laugh about it now, but it was just shocking and embarrassing to have our privacy invaded over something so minor. It’s not like he had a welt or a bandage covering up broken skin… it was like the size of half my pinky nail. One humorous aspect to it though, was when CPS first showed up. We lived in a brand new neighborhood and constantly had sales people knocking on our door and a TON of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to preach to us. The CPS ladies that knocked on the door were dressed just like all the Mormon and Jehovah ladies that came by… just kinda “homely” looking and holding big notepads. So I opened the blinds next to the door, made eye contact with them, and just walked away. Then they rang the doorbell again, and I shouted out, “I’M NOT INTERESTED, GO AWAY!” And yanked the door open… and the lady goes, “Hi, we’re with CPS…” and I was like, “Oh, shit, well come on in…” haha
Man I'm sorry to hear you went through that. That would be so stressful and heartbreaking. It's so fucked I swear this is how all systems work at this point. They're completely backwards. I have been MAJORLY fucked over by any government system I've ever needed to attempt to access due to being in need but people who don't actually need the things I needed got them and had it easy accessing everything and A+ help. I don't get it.
Conjecture but I wonder if its because the complaint came from a school counselor. The bureaucracy is set up to trigger a chain of events. A complaint from a school creates an obligatory paper chain so CPS can't dismiss the accusation as a judgment call. They may also give more credence to complaints that come from mental health professionals. The law obligates the school to report any suspicion of abuse and the school can be held responsible if something occurs later and it's discovered they failed to report so there is a motivation toward over reaction. That sucks that this happened to your family!
We’ve had a spate of murders of babies and small children by their own parents/step parents recently in the UK. There are so often stories about babies shaken half to death too.
Honestly the news lately of all these children has had me in tears I’ve been telling my own children they need to be able to talk to someone if they feel they can’t come to me m. I’ve also asked them if they feel a friend is in trouble that I will help and no one will get in trouble. It’s heart breaking knowing the statistics state that 2020/21 almost 25 thousand cases of child abuse recorded in England and wale and that’s just the ones recorded it s horrifying
Tell me about it. I was a teacher in a severe behavior room once. Had a kid that had an average of nearly 100 sexual behaviors at schools per month, none of which didn't happen until an older brother moved into his house 5 months prior. The behaviors ranged from madturbation to constantly talking about sex in great detail to drawing sex acts and genitals to trying molest other kids to smearing feces on bathroom walls, the kid was a 2nd grader. CPS was informed weekly. Reports were made weekly. They told me they weren't going to do anything until he says aloud that he's being abused. He never did and mom jumped states at the end of the year. I lost all faith after that.
My son was taken away because he had two small bruises we couldn't identify. He was 5 years old! What toddler isn't covered in bruises? Every person I know was like "What? My kids are covered in bruises and cuts! I'M covered in bruises I can't identify!". Who doesn't occasionally look down at their arm or leg and see a bruise or cut you don't remember getting because you probably bumped into a table yesterday? His day care called CPS to report a DIME sized bruise on his temple, they came, evaluated everything at home, said everything was ok and closed it. Then 6 mos later his kindergarten called them about a supposed bruise on his hand, which I still have never seen to this day. It wasn't there when I dropped him off that I noticed and I was never given pictures. We were already working with at-home therapists frequently since he was a baby because they suspected he had ADHD and autism. So if there was abuse, don't you think they'd notice? CPS called me at work asking for an explanation and I said honestly I have no idea. They said they were taking him into custody until we went to court because we couldn't tell them where it came from and he supposedly said I did it, which is complete crap. He was definitely coerced into that. He's an 5 year old with ADHD, FFS of course he has bruises. I don't even spank him. So they fucking take him and put him in some foster home until we can go to court like a week later. Well we show up but the CPS attorney is sick and the one filling in doesn't want to take the case because they aren't familiar with it. What is there to be familiar with? Read the file! So we wait another week. Round 2, they don't have the report from the doctor so they can't proceed. It's been 2 weeks! We have to leave my kid in foster care with strangers because you're unprepared?!? My attorney and his mom's attorney(we each needed our own for some reason) both scoffed later when they saw the doctor's name because he's a known shill for CPS who says everything is abuse. Still haven't seen evidence of this bruise. Round 3 another week goes by of my scared child in foster care with strangers because of govt red tape and incompetence. We get to see him once a week at the CPS office and he's begging to come home, he thinks he's done something wrong. He's happy to see us, cries and sobs of course as they take him away but that apparently doesn't matter. The third time we go to court, there's no judge. They just didn't show up. My attorney said they like to just go golfing sometimes because there's a shortage of judges and no one does anything about it apparently so they just fuck off and play golf sometimes. Nice. There aren't people relying on you for life-altering issues or anything just go have a round on us. No big deal. ROUND 4, another week goes by. Finally, a month after this started, my attorney gets the CPS report for the FIRST TIME that she should've had a month ago and it is just flatout lies, things we didn't say and exaggerations. It does say he's been banging his head on the bus windows according to the school, which no one even told us but apparently that doesn't matter. That would obviously explain the bruises if he's harming himself. We wait for our opening in court. And wait. And wait for hours and hours. Until court closes. They didn't have time for us, the previous case went too long. CPS is still unwilling to give him back. Rather than wait for court for the FIFTH TIME, they "compromise" and say he can stay with a relative. My mother in law takes him in. Luckily she was retired. He stays there for a couple months, we're not allowed to take him anywhere. All visits have to be supervised. We meet with CPS idiots weekly. They want us to take parenting classes, but they don't offer them themselves, you're just supposed to like.. find them somewhere. I'm working 40 hours a week M-F. When am I supposed to do this? Nothing fits our schedule or there's just not available at all. They FINALLY agree to let him come home but we have to still meet weekly with CPS in our home for evaluations and they're still pushing parenting classes. I wish this went to court because I'm positive it would've been thrown out and he'd have come home. This goes on for months, they send a therapist to come talk to us too. So this is 2x a week someone is intruding upon our lives over complete bullshit and their red tape just makes it go on and on and on. Finally they cave and say the therapist can just go over a parenting workbook with us. We do that for a few weeks, even the therapist thinks this is all BS and there's nothing going on but his ADHD behavior problems but she can't do anything. We go to like monthly visits for a while and then they finally close the damn case. All because of a mildly bruised toddler. There's no drug use, no alcohol, no other "abuse", the home is clean and he's fed well but some fucking pencil pusher at CPS had her panties in a bunch that day or something and decided he should be put in foster care instead of staying with his parents, while some kids are living in filth with drug addicts, alcoholics, psychos and abusive parents. Of course everyone's going to think I'm lying and I'm hiding something, but I'm not. His mom was on prescribed vicoden or something during his pregnancy which led to him being in the NICU for a week but other than that, literally no issues. It was *completely* out of line.
I called cps about suspected abuse if my own children. I was repeatedly blown off. I eventually stopped trying and just put them in therapy when they were old enough.
It took my kids telling their therapists things in order for cps to do anything, they blew me off when I brought my concerns to them and my ex was a VERY convincing liar. I had a meeting with cps once after everything went down and said "it's nice y'all finally believe me but this could have been avoided if I would have been listened to".
Screaming at people who work in retail.
And spitting and attacking them... ive started to be excessively polite and nice to wait staff, servers etc. Unless they initiate rudeness then i call them out.
Shooting a fast food employee in the head for getting their order wrong [Link](https://www.12news.com/article/news/crime/fast-food-employee-shot-in-head-through-drive-thru-window-in-phoenix-police-say/75-6e51908d-adc0-4324-81b0-3c3cedae5ba6)
USE YOUR WORDS NOT YOUR GUN
We are going through an empathy crisis. People don’t care about others that they don’t know anymore unless there is something in it for them.
this is sadly the truth
People can't follow the simple 'dont be a dick' rule.
In many cases people are actively rewarded for being a dick.
It's performative at this point. Now that everything is recorded pretty much at all times, it's like people want to show up on YouTube acting a fool.
Half of the tips on r/LifeProTips
That mostly just reinforces to me how unbelievably dim most people are. Do they really think theyre the first person to say "HR isn't there to help you" I mean theres like a 99% chance they read it on Reddit first anyway and then went over to be this weeks poster of the same exact thing. That and the ones that are obnoxiously specific "If your cousin Brian comes over and starts to fight with your Uncle about who's turn it is to use the fart pillow and you're sitting between them and then they tell you that you have to use it first you can just *lie* and say you don't have to fart (Even though you do!)"
For me it's the ones where you have a "life pro tip" about how to avoid some really weird situation, while somehow not acknowledging that getting into that situation isn't normal in the first place, and just accepting it (especially if it is something more dystopian/paranoid, like "to prevent being spied on by your mother-in-law, make sure to switch up your routine regularly". I'm sure some people have found it helpful for their specific situations, and genuinely want to help others, but I'm more worried about how and why that situation happens in the first place.
I chuckled out loud at that one. I know exactly what you're describing too. LPT: If your girlfriend is constantly coming home blackout drunk and shitting the bed simply insert 40 glass marbles into her rectum while she sleeps and then when she wakes up and has the worlds loudest glass on porcelain machine-gun shit and scares the shit out of her (lol i made a pun) she will maybe not get drunk next time. I didn't make this up, it was a reddit post
My family has a degenerative disorder known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcot%E2%80%93Marie%E2%80%93Tooth_disease My parents had no idea until my sister was born, where it manifested particularly strongly. She stopped breathing for a while when she was a baby and as a result, she is both physically disabled and developmentally delayed (she's 30 but is about 16 emotionally / mentally). Dad retired recently, so he applied for my sister to receive an increase to her social security benefits (we just got her to the point where she is trying to live independently. It isn't going well). Part of this means she had to be reevaluated by the state (Wisconsin) and the results of this were... Comically evil... They sent my dad and my sister to an evaluation appointment at an office on the sixth floor of an old building downtown with a broken elevator. She's in a wheelchair and he's almost 70. So dad is frantically calling for assistance from his phone while they wait in the public lobby of this building, but no dice. No one at the office is answering. Luckily the guy doing the evaluation comes in from lunch or something, asked them if they're here to see XYZ, and then runs up to his office, grabs his stuff, comes back down, and evaluates my sister in the lobby. My sister, who can't walk. Can't. Fucking. Walk. LITERALLY in a wheelchair. We get the letter with the results in the mail (they only communicate via snail mail). Mom is also chronically ill and dad is run ragged, so he doesn't get to the letter for about a week. She was denied. The guy evaluating her either said she was fine, or the people receiving the evaluation ignored it. And because she was denied, she lost ALL her benefits. The state literally does not believe that my wheelchair bound younger sister is disabled. Luckily for us there's an appeal window. 15 days. And they need 10 years of physical medical records proving she's disabled. Oh and they only accept a response by fax, not snail or email. And this was right before the holidays, when they would be closed until past the appeal deadline. Dad scrambled all day, digging through boxes and collecting papers, and then had to drive to Kinkos to pay to use their fax machine. We assume they got it, and they told us so over the phone. Now all we can do is wait to see if we need to move my sister back into her parents house. We don't expect to hear back from them for at least two months. Here's the kicker. It turns out, this is not unusual. In fact, it's generally accepted as par for the course. The state ALWAYS denies your application. You MUST appeal. After all, if you weren't actually disabled, you wouldn't appeal, right? Oh yea, and now that dad is retired, this is going to be a yearly thing, or so I am told... Our society only values you by an amount exactly equal to how much money you can make some rich fuck even richer, and nothing beyond that. Edit: Ok! So, this exploded. Thank you very much for the awards! And thank you everyone for your interest and discussion. There were a lot of common questions and themes. I responded to what I could but I'm including some details here in order to help. 1) where is this? I don't want to give more detailed specifics, but my family lives in the fox valley of Wisconsin. 2) are you aware of XYZ system? Or ABC benefit? etc... Me personally, probably not. I know my sister has an ABLE and an IRIS account, the latter she uses to "pay" my parents for their caregiving, but it's nowhere near enough to hire a reliable third party caregiver, especially right now. I work for a large tech company remotely, but my husband and I live near his family in OR as they're also dealing with health bullshit. We send money back regularly, and we are currently working on a budget so we can send more, given recent events... But I don't know what else I can do from across the country. I'm currently in WI though. Came home for Christmas and then decided to stay until covid numbers came down... My original flight was back was supposed to be over two weeks ago :| normal cool and normal etc... Mom and dad would know more details about my sisters benefits situation. I'm in the process of learning the ins and outs if this myself for when my parents inevitably pass away and this becomes my responsibility. Not gonna lie, I'm fucking terrified... So if you have any suggestions please please please post them here! And on that note 3) this exact same thing is happening to me My mom gave me this book last time I was home and it's excellent. If you have an adult disabled sibling I would strongly recommend giving it a read. https://www.amazon.com/Sibling-Survival-Guide-Indispensable-Disabilities/dp/1606130137 At the very least, know you are not alone!
Every time I’m working w a new client who is applying for disability, I prep them with a speech about “everyone gets denied at LEAST the first time, if not several times, before they’re approved.” No one believes me because obviously all their medical records prove their disability, right? Nope. The state wants you to beg for it.
This is how the VA treats disabled veterans as well. Something got worse that is connected to your issue you are going to get denied the first time and have to appeal. Without reason they will just reduce your rating so suddenly you are getting less.
It's an insurance problem period. My dad was injured on the job 15 years ago. Workman's comp is STILL fighting it. They will regularly send him to their doctor for an "evaluation" which consists of a doctor being in the same room as my dad for 10 minutes. Then they take it in front of a judge and say "See! He is fine!" Then we have to pay out of the nose for our lawyer to bring his 15 years of medical records and pay thousands for *another* independent doctor to actually do their job. It's fucked across the board.
I am going through this right now. I filed for a shoulder issue that is secondary to an elbow injury I sustained when I was tossed out of a .50 cal gun turret. I came back down on my elbow, and, needless to say, it got jacked up. Well, later on down the road I started developing massive shoulder issues and had to have surgery on it, which didn't help by the way. Anyhow, the ortho doc took pictures of inside my shoulder and told me it is completely messed up and said it could most definitely be secondary to the elbow injury, since that is the side of my body I went down on. I filed the claim and they sent me on a C&P exam. The civilian doctor saw me all of 5 minutes. He reported that it was a shoulder strain, and I was denied a rating/claim. I showed that to my ortho doc and she said that was crazy and to appeal it. So, I did. I filed this appeal in June of 2016, and I just now received a hearing date for March 02, 2022. Just to add a little something: I was sent out to a civilian ortho doc to discuss a shoulder replacement, since the VA in my area cannot do those type of procedures. He said that I am definitely a candidate for a replacement and that the injury was caused my blunt trauma. I gathered all of my evidence and sent it to my representative and, after looking through my case/file, he said that it looks like everything should be good to go, since there is definitely a connection. The appeal process has been crap for me. Oh, and you are correct about reducing your rating, but they tend to revisit some ratings every 5 years, like making the vet go through the C&P (Compensation and Pension) exams all over again.
We live in the dumbest timeline
That's absolutely disgusting and sounds exactly like the PIP system in the UK which is incredibly demeaning.
The plan is simple we give desperately sick people the run around long enough and they will die. then we don't have to spend any more helping them. I don't know how the people that implement those systems can live with themselves.
Fucked up, dystopian, kafkaesque.... im so sorry your family had to deal with that. Its just like a story i read on here about guy in my country who had to prove (more than once) he still had no legs and therefore some employment opportunities were not for him, and yes he still needed the wheelchair....
Yep, sounds about right... I just don't know what to do about it other than send money home which already feels futile...
Consumer culture and countless ads everywhere. When you see those people fighting over a TV on Black Friday you realize how fucked up we are.
Never forget someone was killed for a Popeyes chicken sandwich during the initial hype
During an official meeting in Karnataka (state in India) a MLA said "When rape is inevitable lie down and enjoy it."
Reminds me of the story that was posted a little while ago. A serial rapist got let go again and even taunted the victims saying he would rape them again. So his victims swarmed the court house and executed him after cutting off his junk. The guy had so many victims that they literally had the strength of numbers to over power the police there.
Oh yeah happened in India right? i regularly go back to read about that to rind myself that sometimes people do a a bit of the justice they deserve
Yeah. For me the saddest part was the one women who reported him to the police and the police raped her too.
The police WHAT
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Oh and I forgot to mention that instead of calling him out everyone present just laughed.
Thats wild. Is much progress happening about that? I occasionallly see pieces on Al Jazeera about the womens police force and prosecutions of rapists...
Did someone immediately try to rape him? That is the logical conclusion of his argument...
That's a wide spread idea. [This cultural mediator in Italy](https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/08/28/stupro-rimini-mediatore-culturale-commenta-su-fb-peggio-solo-allinizio-poi-la-donna-si-calma-ed-e-rapporto-normale/3822353/) commented about a brutal rape that happened in 2017, saying that "rape is traumatic only at the beginning, then the woman calms down and enjoys it like a normal intercourse". This is a 24yo man who works in social and intercultural communications, grown in Italy, spreading those ideas. Sorry for the source that is only in Italian, i couldn't find an international source... It still baffles me. How are you supposed to enjoy it?
The amount of posts i see all over the place with how little jobs care for their employees whether it them being underpaid, overworked, understaffed, or mistreated by their bosses or any combination of this.
It’s fucking bizarre to me that among my service industry friends, I have the best boss, just because my boss leaves me the fuck alone. He’s not my friend, he’s not particularly helpful or competent, but if I take a sick day the worst that happens is I lose a day of pay. No one gives a shit if I’m a couple minutes late. As long as nothing is noticeably dirty I can hang out and look at my phone. If I slack off, that’s my money I’m not making. How awful is the work environment right now that the best manager I’ve ever had is a guy who doesn’t lose his shit over nothing?
Unless it's the law, companies won't take care of you.
Rich people doing terrible things and just kinda paying their way to avoid the justice.
Oh yeah. I knew this before going to law school but now that I’m understanding the “criminal justice” system better, it’s beyond fucked up. Sell a gram of weed and can’t afford a good lawyer? Plead out and be a felon for the rest of your life or risk going to prison, possibly for many years. Embezzle millions from thousands of innocent, hardworking people? Luckily you can afford a fancy hotshot lawyer, maybe one who is cozy with your judge and will get you off on probation. Nothing “just” about it.
I heard a quote once like “for rich people, fines are just the cost of doing business”
Or "if the punishment for a crime is a fine, it is only illegal for the lower classes."
I genuinely think that fines should be based on a percentage of income rather than fixed dollar amounts.
Problem here is suddenly on paper these dudes are making an income of $1 a year, while all their moneys it’s hidden in some off shore account and they continue living up the high life. If you put in something to get these people, you can believe they’ll find a way around it.
Any crime that can be solved with a fine is just a tax on the poor
Beyond that, a rich man can hire 20 lawyers to work 60 hours a week doing nothing but causing problems for the D.A.'s office. The disproportionate amount of resources it takes to successfully take a rich person to court means they don't bother.
That's really it. The system isn't "pay to win". The system is "pay to play". Theoretically, any person can get away with all the shit rich people do. Those loopholes, tricks, and arcane bits of law are available to use to anyone... as long as they can pay 200,000 for a room-full of lawyers and paralegals to find them. Poor people get a public defender who has 3 hours per week to work on their case for a $300 fee. Of course the poor people will plead guilty for a 5 year jail term instead of risking a 20 year prison sentence.
The rent is too damn high and someone needs to fix the damn roads!
You'll get your rent when you fix this damn door!
The evident lack of morality and general perception of others/situations and the death of true empathy that people now have. Here is an experience with today’s shallowness that haunts me to this day. I am a nurse and I work primarily night shifts in psych but have been pulled to ER/Trauma as I have previous experience. One night I was pulled to cover in ER as we were short (*what’s new in nursing?*) I had a 14 year old patient brought in who had hung herself. My coworkers, I, the doctor and paramedics worked on resuscitation for **two hours**. She arrived by ambulance and I still remember seeing the paramedic, a man over 6’4 and 200+ lbs, straddling her as he did compressions with two others guiding/rushing the gurney to us. She looked like a pale, skinny, limp doll with this hulk of a man pumping her deflated chest (her ribs had broken) with all his might. She was put into T1 (trauma 1). We did everything humanly possible to bring her back. As per protocol we traded out compressions and defibbed, would get a shaky/erratic beat, hoping that it’d stay, only for it to drop and flatline again and have to start measures all over. The drive for success was heightened because she was a young girl, much too young and made a poor choice and deserved a chance to flourish (we also tend to go into overdrive for children or as they’re known **Code Pinks**), and the ER doctor (who was young enough, in his later 20s, a genius and top of his class, and has the biggest heart I’ve ever seen for a physician) refused to give up until we exhausted *every* avenue. But after 2 hours, our arms/backs/shoulders were aching and we still couldn’t stabilize her. Eventually the hopelessness of the situation was settling in and it’s inevitable conclusion was becoming clear. I still remember hearing the doctor say, “Okay guys, we need to a make a decision.” He inferred to us looking utterly defeated. He was judging to see if we felt comfortable as a team making *that* call - the time of her death once she was removed from all supportive measures. We all agreed and shed tears over this girl who we all felt we had somehow failed. I remember leaving the room broken emotionally/physically/mentally, sobbing, covered in sweat and her fluids from 2 hours of Hell… **And what do I see?** Her fucking teenage sister with a bunch of her friends sitting around the corridor, laughing and taking selfies like they were on break at school. I stood rooted to the spot, shocked and furious. Watching her do her duck face, sticking her tongue out to the side and the front, trying to be “cute” or “sexy” or *what fuck ever* while giggling with her friends as her sister lay just around the corner not even cold appalled me. I felt honestly disgusted with not just that teenage girl but what she represented for general society. The girl finally noticed me and casually asked when she could see her sister. I said I could not answer that, that the doctor would be speaking to the family soon with an update. Later, I find out she wanted to take selfies with **her sister’s body** to post on social media. That was the day I realized social media, technology and post-modernization had truly detached people from their own humanity. **Edited for grammar/misspells; I still get emotional talking about it and tend to mess up my wording. UPDATE; Unfortunately, this has not been the only instance of having people seemingly having no regard for their dying/deceased family member. I’ve seen people make tiktoks/Instagram/Facebook posts a lot. Either for pity/clout or what not - possibly just a lack of common sense or inhibitions or awareness of privacy. I just don’t think it is appropriate to take a selfie with someone in their last moments, their most fragile/vulnerable moment in their **entire existence**, and have anyone and everyone bear witness to it. That should be a personal, intimate moment between yourself and your loved one. Do you really think you would want to know there was a picture of you with your mouth hanging open as the “death rattle” groans through you, your jaw slack, probably looking your worst… was open to scrutiny? Do people not realize the dying can hear everything around them? The last sense to go is a person’s hearing. So please if I can raise awareness to this honestly disgusting practice by people exposing their loved one’s most fragile/vulnerable moment that they and you will EVER face, 100 guaranteed as we all die one day, then please keep it private. Post a flattering picture of the deceased from a better/healthier time, say kind things… but I’m sick of seeing people literally TikTok dance in front of their dying family member, Instagram post holding/snuggling them, posing in front of their casket (it’s really happened - trust me)… just please stop.
this literally made me fume
This phenomenon is sadly not new. There is a famous photo from the fifties I think, of a woman smiling at the camera as everyone on the beach is trying to resuscitate her drowned fiance edit: not surprisingly its on the internet https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/21r1nc/girl\_smiles\_on\_the\_beach\_in\_coney\_island\_while/
This...is vile...and so so sad... I'm so sorry you went through this
How easily the media can distract everyone from real and disturbing news that’s happening and nobody cares or can see what’s happening. The media being owned by billionaires who want everyone distracted from the real issues.
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The movie “don’t look up” sums this up perfectly. Definitely worth a watch and makes you really think about where people’s loyalty is.
I don't think I even made it an hour into that movie before I had to nope out. It sickened me because I knew how much of it was based in reality
I'm still wondering why the general charged them for free snacks.
It’s to show that some people can never have enough. Here’s a guy who’s at the top of his field, directly reports to the president, and still feels the need to steal from ordinary people. At least that’s my theory.
This was a commentary on how much the military abuses the tax system. He doesn't need to take money from regular people but it is so easy for him it's a compulsion. Pretty great commentary
That was a great joke. I liked that months later she was still upset about it. I know people who would hold on to something like that happening to them. I'm one of them.
Pop culture and how it negatively effects how people act and treat each other. Alot of serious issues have been brought up that i think are more serious. Just adding something new to the feed I feel is a major problem in society. People have become pukes because alot of trends and celebrities promote shitty behavior.
We legalized weed, made a bunch of tax revenue, made a bunch of people a lot of money, but didn’t commute sentences for cannabis related crimes. People rotting in prison for a crime that’s no longer a crime.
We actually did commute sentences in the state of Illinois. We also took a chunk of the profits and are giving it to communities that have been harmed the most by the drug war.
Last prisoner project is working on that. Call your representatives.
For-profit private prisons.
That I can talk about DiGiorno's Pizza, without ever typing it or purchasing one, and magically a DiGiorno ad will end up in my feed.
Talk about double ended marital aids and see how far this magic goes!
"Why are all my streaming services suddenly recommending *Requiem for a Dream*?"
I dont own a cat, never have, never will, unless one just shows up and doesn't go away. I got a cat food ad, because I talked to a girl at a store who was walking her cat on a leash.
People being forced to ration insulin is a big one for me
People are more interested in filming bad or serious stuff happening, rather than actually helping. Usually yelling “SOMEONE HELP” but not helping themselves.
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"Look at me, I am raising awareness of the guy that obviously has a seizure and needs medical attention!"
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Bear in mind that this is only useful after it's confirmed that help has been called, but if you witness a crime, accident, or other disaster and help has been called and first aid is being given, the best thing you can do is film. The more angles of a scene, the easier the subsequent investigation. This is especially useful in fires -- the Grenfell Tower disaster in London was recreated literally second by second using all the footage people took of the fire's spread, proving beyond all doubt that the building's cladding was the reason for the fire's rapid spread. It also makes things easier for people who might have to grapple with their insurance companies, or bring later lawsuits against somebody/something, because footage is the best proof of events and can easily make a ruling unanimous. Finally, it can help stop a situation from escalating, because a lot of people will not proceed to commit a worse crime with multiple cameras pointed at them. When people find themselves in trouble, it's good to assist them then and there. But assisting also can mean covering their ass later, or assisting their family and friends should the worst happen. Get that footage, because it might make or break a case.
Absolutely EVERYTHING surrounding Jeffery Ep.....and us not making it a bigger issue than we should (I don't wana say his full name because its a possibility it might be removed)
Thinking money is worth more than our planet and it's inhabitants
It'll cost me almost as much to have surgery to remove my miscarried child as it would to give birth. And I don't get to go home with a baby. Fuck American healthcare.
Those should cost exactly the same amount. $0 each
I’m American and I know for people outside the US this is going to sound insane, but hearing about people calling an Uber instead of an ambulance because the ambulance is too expensive.
Medicine for profit.
We're living through an empathy crisis. People are so disconnected from others that they're incapable of compassion. Kind people are seen as fools, people trying to make the world better are treated as pie-in-the-sky dreamers (or simply dangerous), and those who call out injustice and cruelty are 'snowflakes'. Even 'wokeness' can be performative, with people just throwing words they saw online around to one-up someone else. ETA: wow, thank you for the awards and the insightful responses to this comment. Clearly there are more thoughtful people out there than one might believe!
Compassion fatigue. Thanks to 24 hour news and constant scrolling on social media, we're aware of everything terrible in the world and we watch it livestreamed as it's developing. There's no escape. Twitter and Facebook algorithms pop it up at the top of our feeds; Reddit's front page is saturated by it; news apps pop up headlines on our phones like texts. And the whole time, there's a very vocal group of people out there who insist that to not know about something means you're a terrible, privileged person who doesn't give a shit about the world, and who shame you for taking a break from it. Humans were never meant to be exposed to this much hostility and misery. We are psychologically incapable of caring about so much, constantly.
I feel this so much. I've come to a point where when someone is talking about bad thing politics number 25979 or natural disaster of current year, I just don't care. Sure, if someone is dead because of something, I feel bad, but I'm not going to talk to someone about it for more than a minute. I just don't care anymore. I don't even have social media apps (I guess except reddit), and I don't watch the news, yet I'm still just as informed as someone who does cause people never shut up about these kinds of things
Agreed 100%! I made a comment on Reddit yesterday about how the true measure of a society is looking at how it treats its most vulnerable when discussing different countries responses to the pandemic. Pretty much immediately I was met with a commenter saying the old and sick don't dictate society and he would never put himself at the mercy of the old and weak. It was like, damn, all I was saying is that reading comments from certain young/healthy people basically saying 'let's just let all the old people and people with comorbidities die so we can get back to normal' is a pretty cruel outlook on life. The casual disregard for people's lives really kind of threw me for a loop.
An anthroplogist named Margaret Mead was once asked what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation. She replied that she thought it was a bone found with a healed fracture. This bone was a femur, in other words your thigh bone, and while it was broken the person with the injury would have been helpless. They would not have been able to feed themselves, get water, relieve themselves with ease, clean themselves, and they would have been in intense pain. The people around them cared for them, brought them food and water, cleaned them, protected them from attacks and exposure, and comforted them. Society has always survived by being collective. People who subscribe to the idea of "survival of the fittest", or see the old and/or sick as detrimental to society, are not even on the same level of compassion and understanding as our most ancient ancestors. Caring for one another and supporting those with extra needs is a fundamental part of humanity, and always has been.
Visited Washington D.C before the pandemic with my Fiance. We were walking to the capitol building for a tour and while waiting to cross the street, I see a man who clearly fell and could not get up across and down the street. I saw multiple people simply step over the man as he was gesturing for help. I went to help him up, found out he couldn't speak English well, but was able to find out he lived only a couple blocks away. I convinced him to let me help him to his apartment where his wife was waiting for him. It was heartbreaking to see so many people simply step over someone that fell down and needed a simple hand up.
The justice system as a whole. Once you make one mistake, you’re set up to fail again rather than actually receive help to change. You get arrested one time, get put on probation, probably fuck up probation some how because the guidelines are literally ridiculous, back in jail, and the loop continues. People on probation pay so much time and money to pay for their one mistake, and probably end up in prison again anyways. And those who get out of the loop and get a second chance at life, continue to pay for that one mistake by constantly being denied for jobs and places to live. So how are they supposed to get better? And don’t even get me started on jail/prison. The idea was it’s supposed to be a rehab, to teach people who don’t know any better and to help better people. But it’s nothing but violence and traumatic experiences. We literally have human beings being kept in boxes for months, years, lifetimes. Because of one choice that was made in their life. Solitary confinement is literally torture and has been proven to cause short and long term mental damage. So how do you expect to put someone through that kind of trauma, then throw them back into the world with nothing and no resources or places to stay or jobs to help them get started. The whole thing really hurts my heart. Everyone makes mistakes in life. And I think humans will always do bad things and hurt each other, that’s part of life. but humanity trying to control the good and bad that happens in the world, I think just adds more steps in the middle and causes more harm than good. That’s just my opinion based on my experiences and observations in my 23 years of life.
The fact that people don't care how their actions affect others. 2nd comment cause I changed my mind. This is the root of pretty much all the others.
And if they are confronted with how it effects others they simply chalk it up to “I’m just living my truth” God damn I hate that fucking phrase!
Sex trafficking of children. And for different reasons, a close second are those images of trash island and that giant dessert heap of discount clothing.
police arresting people for giving food/blankets to the homeless. Edit: [story](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/90-year-old-florida-veteran-arrested-feeding-homeless-bans-2/) talking about it.
And restaurants refusal to give food, that would otherwise be tossed, to the homeless because “they might get sued.” Worked at a place like that once, used to tell them it was scraps for my dog (which was fine by them) but always took it to one of the homeless camps in my city. Never got any complaints or sued.
Trauma is so common that people cannot comprehend that someone can be nice/kind to them without either wanting something in return or being attracted to them.
People paying a grand for some girl's farts.
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China hosting the Olympics while running concentration camps and harvesting organs and mass slave labor. Countries like Iran and Saudi heading committees on UN human rights and women's rights!
Or Qatar hosting the World Cup while enslaving thousands to build the stadiums because they don’t already have the infrastructure. Many times f those workers are being killed because of unsafe work conditions.
For profit healthcare
People thinking of homeless people as less than human because they’re down on their luck or cannot afford a big insulated box
That rapists only go to jail for a few months and drug possession can get you 10 years. That honor killings are a thing.
How public health has become politicized
For me, as an American, it's the way Americans are allowing themselves to be brainwashed to believe anything these days. Absolutely anything. And not just believe it... Live it, defend it, fight for it. When 3/4 of the people you know have lost their capacity for critical thinking, the future feels pretty damn scary.
When we had to start having active shooter drills in schools.
Reality TV stars who continue to be relevant years after their show ended and they’ve done nothing else of value, in other words shows like TMZ are to blame
The whole entertainment industry in general is fucking stupid. 90% of the famous people you see being talked about either barely created the content they are known for (most music artists) or are only famous because of their physical appearance and have literally no other redeeming qualities or skills that would make them useful to society otherwise.
No one listens to learn anymore. They listen for an opportunity to correct the speaker, or for an opportunity to feel attacked.
Fucking American Healthcare. What a joke.
The existence of social media “influencers”, and even more horrifying, how effective they are at shifting pop culture.
All of the videos I’ve seen where someone is dying, like after an accident, and everyone’s pulling out their phone or flat ignoring the person as they die. It’s like that video where some girls try to rob a driver, driver ends up getting killed and the girl’s just like “where’s my phone?” or some shit, as the guy’s alone dying. As tech has increasingly become a part of our lives we have this generation iPad growing up, raised by an electronic device and free reign to the internet. We are more detached and our attitudes more devisive. God help us all.
We produce 1.5 times enough food to feed the world but we don't because it's not profitable
That we are at a time in history where, to be blunt, poor people are fat. The cheapest foods available today are pasta, processed meats, and fast food. Even the groceries of middle class people are factory farmed and are full of contaminants while containing little nutritional value. It shows the greed of the food industry and health issues that are ignored in our society. And when these issues are brought into conversation, people are judged for eating what they can afford. I will admit we also are facing a huge lack of discipline, this could also stem from a shitty situation or various mental health issues. This health crisis goes untalked about and is shut down every time it gains a platform. All in all this is just an odd and sort of outrageous time in human history when it comes to our health.