Steve “JAFERD,MD” Sample🇺🇸
@Supermansings
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Just a F#%king ER doc. AF vet. 🏳️🌈 ally, Secular humanist with musings on life, medicine, and politics. It’s chaos,be kind. [email protected]
United States
Joined April 2009
1/ .I’ve been to war, twice. Iraq in ‘09 and Afghanistan in 2011. I am just a fucking ER doc. But it was there, in the deserts far,far from home, that I made my bones as a newly board certified ER doc. It is around that time, I think that I lost my capacity to feel joy.
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Is this the best thing I have ever seen? Can't rule that out.
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This is one of the saddest things I have ever seen.
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I cannot stress to you how demoralizing it is to have worked in medicine for the last 18 months and to see patients every day, and to be told that you’re lying about what you are seeing,and that even if you aren’t, you’re treating it wrong. I feel deep pain and sadness over this.
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🧵 Hi. I’m an ER doctor. I’m vaccinated, but 10 months out with a high level of daily exposure to an airborne disease. I can’t get most patients to keep a mask on when I’m out of the room,or wear it properly when I’m in. I now have Covid. Mild for now. 1/.
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Got a text from a ICU doc friend yesterday about a patient that he pronounced in south Florida. Refused all treatment for Covid, signed a do not resuscitate order and died saying Covid was a lie. That level of dedication is…something.
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National Guard today. Lined up for my 13th Anthrax vaccine (for a pathogen that I have an infinitesimally small chance of being exposed to) with a line of guys that statistically 40% or so objected to the COVID vax during a deadly pandemic. Not a peep heard.
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🧵 8 years ago today, my wife who was SO sick and so much pain with stage 4 melanoma with many bony mets received her first dose of the drug that was to become Keytruda. She was the last enrollee worldwide in the phase 2 trial. 1/
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Watch this beautiful child see beyond a few inches in front of his face for the first time and cry with me. Thanks.
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If there’s ever a discussion of whether or not masks and social distancing work to prevent transmission of illness, ask your friendly neighborhood ER doc how many cases of RSV or ear infections that they’ve seen in the last 12 months. For me, zero, and zero. It’s actually unreal.
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I’m confident that I’ll be ok. You know what I’m not gonna do? Take HCQ. Or Ivermectin. Or gargle betadine. Or OD on vitamins. I may seek out some regeneron. I’ll check my oxygen levels, and I’ll sit bored as hell in my basement feeling crappy for a bit. Stay well. #vaccinate.
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But so thankful every day that the anniversary of her funeral, which was rapidly approaching, is not on my calendar. The photos in the first post are screenshots of Facebook posts we made that day. Enjoy. And F#%K cancer. ~fin
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20/.Not sure where this came from tonight. Probably the Iran thing, and all the back and forth on twitter. Makes me so damn tired. And that old pre-deployment anxiety is still fluttering down there, somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind. Thanks for reading my longest tweet.
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So, the ramblings of about old man got some traction. Thanks. I don’t do SoundCloud, whatever that is, but my daughter’s voice is a balm for my soul. If you want to check out a beautiful human singing like an angel, check her out and give her a follow.
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19/.They thank us, but they bite for war-hawks that want to put us in harms way for various, often very murky reasons. Before you get hung ho for war, consider that the human costs aren’t only tallied in death or injury but also in destroyed families and the theft of joy.
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@hottamali02 This is helpful. Forces applied during a crash are wildly different on female and male bodies. As @SecretaryPete says- not everything has to be a culture war. This will help keep YOU safer, you dolt.
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My wife is alive because I make a lot of money. That’s all. Many/most people could not have done what we have done. The cards fell into place for us. A doc who speaks the language and can parse the lit and knows how to advocate for his family. The $$ to get it done. 9/.
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chatting with a patient while I’m doing a procedure tonight-. Pt-“I don’t want to sound racist, but-“.Me- “then don’t”.Pt- “lol, I know but-“.Me- “don’t do it. Do not say stupid racist shit in here while I’m doing this. “.Pt- meekly, “ok”. Me- (satisfied smile behind my mask.).
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Let’s leave Facebook down for 6 months and conduct a little experiment to see if the world is nicer and mental health improves while it is gone.
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18/.I’m hearing people clamoring for war all the time. They talk a big game, and seem to get a thrill out of the carnage that they watch from 1000s of miles away. But they forget the 19yo private, the 32 yo Sgt, the 38 year old major that are getting it done.
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For now, I will continue to advocate hard for my patients,and do my best to see that they receive equitable care. And VOTE. Because EVERYONE deserves the chance to live, and if the only thing that separates us is the size of our bank account, that is some grade A bullshit. 11/.
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And hopefully, gonna stay that way. I am very optimistic that I will stay well, thanks to the vaccine. My body is already at war with this stupid bug, beating it back. If I had gotten this last year, I would have been very scared. I’m middle aged, and smoked for 25 years. 2/.
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8/.I went to my office, put my hands in my head and cried. Maybe for the first time as a physician. I cried for him, I cried for me and the long 7 months stretching out in front of me where I would witness the brutality of a war that I had once backed that I was starting to Q.
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I do not pretend to know what it will take other than burning our health system to the ground and starting over to erase that inequity. But I know that SOMETHING has to be done, and it gnaws at me. 10/.
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My cousin almost died early in, before the world closed down. I am prone to health related anxiety at times, anyway. But now I feel irritable, not anxious. Could I get really really sick? Sure. Could I even die? Yep. But I’ve done the right thing to minimize those chances. 3/.
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Imagine being privileged enough to have been born into a situation that allowed for a stable income with no food insecurity, free of the scourge of addiction, being provided a good education and arguing that paying people 7.25 an hour is enough. 1/.
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Now, here, 8 years later, and she is training for Kilimanjaro early next year. The girls kept their mom into their own adulthood. Even though she has watched most of her “melahomies” die over time, she still has no evidence of disease. Joy and survivor’s guilt, hand in hand. 7/.
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2/.Being in war is a strange place. As an ER doc, I wasn’t out kicking doors or taking small arms fire. I was back in base at the level 1 trauma center, waiting for the wounded to pour in. As far as safety went, I was about as safe as you can get there.
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10/.For all but a few, that’s what war is, boredom, but knowing that shit could hit the fan at any second. And that if you didn’t perform at peak when called, that someone would die. And often, they would die even despite all you did.
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17/ .And this is one of the ways war changes us. It steals our joy, but somehow makes us want to come back for more. Despite it all.
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I’m not crying, you’re crying. Shut up.
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13/.And then we come home to regular life. Which is in some ways harder to adjust to than it was adjusting to over there. There is no routine. Here, you have to think about others than your own grind. People want you to smile and be happy. You’re kids want you to pay attention.
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3/.Safety is relative. Because we were frequent targets of mortar fire in Iraq, mostly rockets in Afghanistan. My base in Iraq got shelled so often, it was dubbed Mortaritaville. In fact 1 missed me and my buddy by just a couple of minutes of us standing right where they landed.
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9/.And I went back to work. And I saw them again, and again, and again. Night after night 6 -7 nights a week for months on end. My life was mostly utter and complete boredom punctuated by minutes to hours of sheer adrenaline. When they come, they all come together.
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4/.That was my 2nd day in country, in the middle of the most hellacious sandstorm you could imagine. We were not prior service, we were science nerds, avoiding active murder by chance. This was a lot for us compared to our prior experiences.
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15/.And so you put your game face in and try to fake it till you make it. And occasionally even miss the place you hated, the place that changed you, the place that robbed you of feeling joy. But the routine makes sense, the work is important, and you take care of only you. But.
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The world does not deserve @PatinkinMandy. Stick around for the second tweet. That’s where he comes in.
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7/he told me of his fondness for living up there near the arctic circle. Surprised me for a west Texas boy. He told me of his fun snow shoeing, skiing and all the other athletic endeavors he had picked up. We held hands, me blocking the view below me until he went to the OR.
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Yep. #stevencrowder is just as big of a misogynistic, gaslighting abuser as you would have expected. 1/2
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14/ .You’re wife wants you to pick up some slack,but has new routines doing everything the way she wants and there is friction when you don’t do it, as there is when you try and change a well set routine. You must work, which for me is still in another ER,wading through death.
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12/.Your world has been shrunk to a 2-3 block radius. You will trudge the 2 minutes to work and back many times. Then 2 minutes to the gym tent. Then 2 minutes to the chow hall. Overandoverandoverandover. For 6-12 months. Your bed is in a plywood room that measures 7.5x7.5 feet.
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5/.My first overnight shift was quiet, until the 4 blackhawks landed outside and rushed several soldiers to the trauma bay via Hero’s Higway. My patient was a young man from west Texas, stationed in northern Alaska. Both his legs were gone, shredded. One above the knee,one below.
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11/.No matter your job, that’s what it looked like for all of us. We tried to completely relax, but when death could come from the sky at any time, or a foreign officer could turn on his troops and shoot down anyone in his vicinity, there is no REAL relaxation.
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16/. but- it’s hard. You’ve been home a year, and you are already on a calendar marking your upcoming trip to do it all over again, in a distant, probably worse location. The anxiety needles at you, distracts, and pulls you further into your head, and away from your family.
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6/.His tourniquets were causing much pain and had been up for a couple of hours. I loaded him up with pain meds and we chatted to take his mind off the destruction that had been wrought on his once Adonis-like body before he went to the OR to clean him up.
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Over those 14 months before approval, being out of network, and having to pay for 50% of costs for a zillion labs/scans plus 2 plane tickets and a hotel room, I spent WELL north of 100k out of pocket. And during that time I had to face facts. Important ones. 8/.
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Night shift hospitalist in the ER this morning when I came in… .“Man, I am SO tired of intubating unvaccinated patients. This has to stop.”.
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I am an American veteran who spent 2 tours in the Middle East taking care of blown up American heroes. The fact that @POTUS knew that there was a bounty on our heads for months and continues to bow to Putin makes me rage in a deep dark place in my soul. Treason. #ImpeachHimAgain.
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On the 10th day after her tx, she asked me to bring home a suture removal kit to take out her stitches. She pulled her shirt to the side and my mouth dropped and tears fell from my eyes. The tumor was MELTING. The sutures were floating in normal skin. 6/.
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This was a Tuesday and I found that the trial closed that Friday at 5. An amazing research nurse named Victoria at UNC Chapel-Hill had mercy on us and we went through the app over the phone and the forms were faxed from my ER at 4:55 PM on Friday. 4/.
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Exciting Rona era NYE. One vaxxed and boosted couple and their late in life little whoopsie baby! She’s milk drunk already.
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Did you know… that almost every physician I know is looking for an exit ramp from clinical medicine? America is lucky that most of us are bound by debt, time served, and the fear of taking the leap.
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When all hope was lost, I put my head into the lit, and became an ER doc specializing in the advances of immunotherapy and melanoma. I found the PD-1 drugs in trial and knew that I wanted her to have it. I emailed every oncologist in the nation studying the drug, and begged. 3/.
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As a doctor, I’ve seen crazy things. I’ve pulled many items from many butts. I’ve opened the necks of people with swollen shut airways. I’ve cracked chests and massaged hearts. I’ve drained all manner of gross from infected cysts. But I’ve never seen a mask cause hypoxia.
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60% of Ohio nursing home staff members have thus far declined the vaccine. Not sure about Indiana numbers yet, but - This. Is. Unacceptable. Shame on the bullshit anti-science, anti-vaccine movement that is contributing mightily to the slaughter of fellow Americans.
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Ladies and gentlemen of the Twitterverse. I am an emergency physician. COVID has not hit where I live yet, but it is coming. Because of people needlessly hoarding N-95 masks, my ER has 2 boxes, with no estimate as to refill date. I will be literally covered in virus. 1/.
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She had been given an effective death sentence. There was nothing left.She had failed traditional therapy and was in bed 23 hours a day, and dozed on the couch in a haze of narcotics the other hour. It was so painful to watch, and in the 6th and 9th grade my kids were reeling. 2/.
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Me wasting my time on some random loser who was stupid enough not only to enlist in the military, but sucker enough to get hurt. What was in it for him, I wonder? #WeRespectVets
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I just had something happen to me last night in a small town ER for the first time since i donned a pair of scrubs. I am 6-4 225 pound white dude with a greying face and hair. When I was walking into a ptroom, the family said -“are you the nurse?” And I grinned. Progress, maybe?.
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She was biopsied and given her first infusion after being randomized into the active drug. I was told I could remove her sutures from the nasty large grape sized tumor on her right shoulder in 10 days. This would start a 14 mo ordeal where we flew to NC every 3 weeks for tx. 5/.
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No at home Covid tests, anywhere in my town. The fact after two years of this godforsaken hellscape that I can’t get a test on demand, anywhere, anytime, for any reason is bull#%*t.
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Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Out of quarantine, heading to work! Thanks for all the check-ins!
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National guard duty this weekend. All members who have refused vax so far will be lined up and vaccinated. I have been placed on the vax team to counsel them about the shit and answer questions. Should be an interesting weekend.
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My wife ain’t playing with my banishment to the basement. But she is taking care of me.
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I’ve seen more completely unvaccinated toddlers in the last year than I have seen in the entirety of my career, combined. Used to be the occasional hippy, religious culty people. Well- still the culty part, but now that’s like a third of the population.More COVID misinfo fallout.
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Told a person feeling like death the other day that they had an overall mild case of COVID pneumonia, and they looked at me like I had two heads. “Yes, my friend, it gets WAY worse than this. Spread the news to your friends.”.
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Most pregnancies that are truly unwanted or borne from/into trauma do not get happy endings.Most will not go up for adoption and have a “savior” swoop in and redirect the course of their lives. Many will instead continue in the cycle of trauma. In a system that won’t help them.
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“Did y’all get your vaccines?”. “No. We have COPD and he has had a bunch of blood clots. We were told that if you have pre-existing conditions, we shouldn’t get the vaccine. Is this really very contagious?”. *head explodes*. ~scene.
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Just found out that a gal in my National Guard unit is separating from the guard, she and her husband sold everything they own except for some clothes and that they are picking up their 2 kids and just moving to Ireland. It sounds completely insane.And I am so profoundly jealous.
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They’re giving him the drugs that we save for really sick people. Plus stuff not even approved yet. Either he’s getting “VIP” medicine, which is non-evidenced-based and can cause more harm than good, or he’s getting really sick, really fast. We are living in wild times.
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Dear police person. When a suspect is scared, beaten, tazed and maced, his physiology REQUIRES him to coverup and try to protect himself. He CAN NOT lay quietly and offer no resistance, nor could you. Please do not murder them for that, okay? Thanks. #TyreeNichols #Memphis.
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Happy 4th. Please leave the fireworks to the pros.
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I’m sitting parked in my truck. A work truck drove by me,and the guy backed up and pulled alongside me.Told me I saw his wife in the ER, got her on track and that he’s been watching on TV and that he really appreciates what I’m doing for this town and that I am valued. Day. Made.
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Fellow medical professionals- if you are the type of professional that would refuse treatment to ANYONE based on their gender identity, sexuality, or really, anything else, do the rest of us a favor- hand up your stethoscope and GTFO. Thank you.
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Quick question for those in the know- I'm getting my first COVID vaccine tomorrow and wasn't sure if i need to post a pic of me getting it on here or if the microchip does that automatically? Thanks for any help in advance.
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I watched this twice. This dog is in HEAVEN.
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Well. I managed to score a booster on Saturday that was destined for the bin. Was super excited. Had a nice hardcore immune response the night of, all fevers and achy and stuff. But. Also, little cough, stuffy nose. Hm. Still have that. Maybe I should check. Freaking POSITIVE.
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Our decompensated patients are reliably coming to the hospital with respiratory compromise around day 8-10 of symptoms. One of 3 things is happening- protecting him over-zealously, he’s been positive longer than they are telling us, or he is getting sick with concerning speed.
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If the cops are too scared to immediately engage an active shooter,with the exp and training to breach a building,y’all think arming up sweet Mrs Smith from the music class is gonna solve the problem?You think when shit hits the fan her inner Rambo gonna come out? Piss off.
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@LetitiaMontana Same thing would happen here. I had a guy try to take his off last week and be smart about it and I just told him that no one was coming back in the room until his mask was covering his face. Protect the ones that are protecting you, and quit being a Internet drama queen.
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That time my asshole dog Charley stole a Capri Sun from a kid at a party and ran into the lake with it so we couldn’t get him.
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Please don’t put coffee in your butt. And if you do, it does NOT GET INTO YOUR PORTAL VEIN JFC.
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Getting quotes for new windows. First quote– $80,000. I will burn the house down before I will pay that. Second quote 50k. Still terrible. Third quote, $26,000. WHY does everything have to be this hard?? Now it’s got me wondering if the low quote is way too cheap.
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“Son, unless you can define the word socialism,you don’t get to use it as an argument. You are in the US military, where you are provided a job, housing, free education and healthcare. We are the literal embodiment of socialism.Go get your shot.Who else has a concern?”.
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That’s not dementia, folks. He’s not as robust as he was, and I’d rather have a younger candidate, but in November I’ll vote for him with bells on. Time to beat MAGA into the dirt.
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Dearest ER gods. Please. Stop sending me sick babies. Enough. 0/10 do not like.
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Care of heart attacks, delayed. Care of your momma’s pneumonia,delayed. People will suffer, I will have 2 weeks off with a bad cold, unable to help. Give us our fucking PPE back. If you’ve hoarded masks, donate them to your local ER. They will not help you. 3/.
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This is me at 6-4 and 98.5 pounds. Just kidding- I’m at about 225 here. DJT at 215 makes me lol.
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Since I don’t have anything to do right now, other than run back-and-forth to the toilet, I’m going to share this most amazing video with you. Please watch, listen, use headphones, if you have them. I literally cried and cheered at the chorus.
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Had to run to the vet to pick up some meds for my doggo and saw a red-faced amd puffy-eyed elderly couple coming out the private exit they use after you get your pet euthanized. I’ve been out that door twice in the last few years and my heart broke for them.
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The fact that there are ppl in this world willing to ship busloads of real, thinking, feeling, human beings around the country and leave them without a well defined plan-for a political stunt-hits me like a punch in the gut. Our humanity is in such rapid, steep decline.
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