The Gaming Den

I think you should really be looking more at Baleen Whales, since whalebone plates are pretty much what you seem to be describing.

-Username17

Ok, I'm trying writing a new thing, and I want a scene of a character being rushed into the ER after, well, basically the Chitauri invasion. The fact that I don't know enough about ER settings and medical jargon to make this at least sound authentic is bugging me.

So, person is rushed in during an alien attack, they have shrapnel in their arms and legs, maybe some in their torso. What are the doctors or whoever saying as they wheel them in?
EDIT: Also, if the person is a transwoman on hrt, how does that affect the description of them by doctors/nurses/whatever, if at all, in this case?

http://www.scriptmedicblog.com/

Written by an actual medic, created specifically to help people write better medical anything. I know there are a couple of posts about exactly the kind of scenario you need help with.

It seems that site is more about the effects of wounds, which, I sort of don't overly care about, because this is just a bit of set up for a Supers story. What I'm bugged about is whether what I'm writing sounds at least semi-authentic to an ER.

Basically, I'm implicitly setting this in the Marvel universe. Character is caught in a Chitauri attack and gets hit by shrapnel, some of which bonds to them. I don't specifically care about the long term realistic effects of that. I want to know what the doctors/nurses/whatever are saying as they wheel in a trans woman who has shrapnel embedded in their arms, legs, and torso, and lacerations on their scalp.

Dude, legit, there were a couple of posts she did a while ago that were exactly that - what the docs will say as they wheel you into an ER. They might have been on the Tumblr and not the site, but they definitely exist. You're just gonna need to trawl back through the archive a bit.

So, I have no idea what a Chitauri is beyond Wikipedia telling me that they're ugly-ass aliens from the Avengers movies. But I am an EMT and a trans person who has to misfortune to frequently deal with nurses, so I've got that part covered.

Emergency response operates on the basis of ABC. A for Airways (is their windpipe clear?), B for Breathing (are they getting enough air?) and C for Circulation (how's their blood pressure and pulse?). Circulation is the big one when it comes to limb trauma (shrapnel wounds bleed a fuck ton), but Breathing can be an issue with torso injuries if the diaphragm or the lungs get injured. I can talk about what would happen in that case if you want, but it complicates things and probably won't improve your story to include.

In response to bleeding shrapnel wounds, the first responders are going to get the patient on a saline IV for fluid replacement and wrap all of the wounds with bandages to keep their blood inside rather than outside. They'll also hook up a blood pressure/heart monitor to keep track of their circulation during transport. If the bleeding is severe, they'll be given blood (matching if the blood type is known, universal if unknown) in addition to the saline. Once they get to the ER, the patient will be taken to the trauma team for assessment (figure out where all of the shrapnel and damage is) followed by treatment (remove shrapnel and get them to stop bleeding). A nurse will meanwhile be running a blood typing kit to figure out their blood type and get them started on an IV of appropriate blood.

Assessment involves stripping the patient to visually inspect their body for entry and exit wounds. Any entry wound that doesn't have a matching exit wound indicates that there is shrapnel still inside the patient, which will prompt an X-Ray to figure out where the shrapnel is in the body. If there's no indication of shrapnel inside the body, the X-Ray will still be done, but later only after the bleeding is taken care of and the patient is stabilized. Just because there's an exit wound doesn't mean that ALL the shrapnel exited, after all.

Treatment focuses on fixing any broken blood vessels and preventing infection. The wounds are going to be disinfected, any shrapnel that is safe and easy to remove will be removed and then the surgeons will get to work fixing as much of the damage as triage allows. (Given that this is in the middle of an invasion, there are obviously going to be other patients needing their attention. As a result the priority is to make sure that the patient won't die immediately - after that's done they move on to the next critical patient ASAP rather than worrying about fixing nerves/broken bones/whatever else.) Afterward, a nurse will start the patient on antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent infection. (This is especially true if the abdomen (guts) get injured because of sepsis concerns.)

If the patient is conscious, the EMTs will take down their medication information (including HRT) on the way to the hospital and include it in the charts to prevent interactions. The two big HRT interactions that a doctor might (but probably won't, see below) care about are NSAIDs and heparin. Both are Monitor/Modify interactions, AKA they have side effects on the same thing (blood potassium) but not to such a degree that it's actually likely to do anyone harm unless they've got some sort of freakishly low/high potassium metabolism or are taking potassium supplements for some daft reason.

As far as bedside manner goes: expect the nurses and doctors to misgender trans patients constantly and ignore any transgender-related concerns. The medical profession is one in which the "biology is biology, chromosomes are the only thing that matters, fuck your identification" mantra is pretty much universal and in which compassion is a precious, precious resource that nobody can spare for mere trauma patients. It's not necessarily that they have anything against transgender people in particular (although they might depending on the area in question), it's just that the hospital can not and does not give any fucks about you as a person, just as a chart full of problems and a bed that they needed empty as of yesterday.

One thing to remember here is that New York is a war zone at this point and it's bad enough that people with the authority to drop nuclear bombs on New York think that doing so is the least bad option.

ERs are going be be swamped and a lot of people just aren't going to get treatment at all. We're talking battlefield triage. If you're not dying die within the next ten minutes, you'll have to wait. If you are going to die within the next ten minutes, then it depends entirely on how much effort and resources will be required to save you. If it's too much, then you get enough morphine to knock you out and just die on a stretcher in the hallway while the ER staff saves several people who would have died in the time it took to save you.

@Hadanelith: I'll keep looking, but I searched pretty hard.

@Grek: Thanks, this is very helpful

@hyzmarca: Well, I'm setting my stuff on the West Coast, basically saying "There were totally other chitauri war parties in other places, New York was just the focus."

Except not explicitly.

Could an evil empire of the sort that likes making objects out of their murder victims turn humans into glue? Or is there something about human ligaments that makes us unsuitable for glue manufacturing? Would turning a human into glue significantly reduce the amount of skin (for parchment), meat (for decadent feasts), or bones (for interior design) you could harvest from that same victim? Is there anything else that human parts could be used for (besides human blood, which is ritually consumed in its entirety as part of the sacrifice) to help make the sinister nature of this evil empire evident in more small details? If you wove human hair into rope, would it be any good? Is there any use for human bones besides making your house look super spooky? Is there anything you could do with specific organs besides consume them?

Human hair can be long enough to be usefully woven into bowstrings (and to perform well in that role) so I expect it'd make OK rope. Dunno about the rest.

Chamomile wrote:Could an evil empire of the sort that likes making objects out of their murder victims turn humans into glue? Or is there something about human ligaments that makes us unsuitable for glue manufacturing? Would turning a human into glue significantly reduce the amount of skin (for parchment), meat (for decadent feasts), or bones (for interior design) you could harvest from that same victim? Is there anything else that human parts could be used for (besides human blood, which is ritually consumed in its entirety as part of the sacrifice) to help make the sinister nature of this evil empire evident in more small details? If you wove human hair into rope, would it be any good? Is there any use for human bones besides making your house look super spooky? Is there anything you could do with specific organs besides consume them?

The Nazis used human fat to make soap and human hair to make socks for submarine crews.

Chamomile wrote:Could an evil empire of the sort that likes making objects out of their murder victims turn humans into glue?

Yes.

Would turning a human into glue significantly reduce the amount of skin (for parchment), meat (for decadent feasts), or bones (for interior design) you could harvest from that same victim?

Skin yes, meat no, bones no. Animal glue is all about collagen, and there's a lot of that in skin.

Is there anything else that human parts could be used for (besides human blood, which is ritually consumed in its entirety as part of the sacrifice) to help make the sinister nature of this evil empire evident in more small details?

Many, many things. Depending on the tech level of the society, possibly most things.

If you wove human hair into rope, would it be any good?

Absolutely, you just probably wouldn't have much of it, relatively speaking. Vegetable fibers are much easier to produce in large quantities.

Is there any use for human bones besides making your house look super spooky?

Sure. They can be used as part of composite bows, for example. Carved into flutes. Sharpened into ritual knives, or disposable darts. The sawed-off top of a skull has been used as a bowl, an ashtray, and a doorstop. Enormous creepy potential.

Is there anything you could do with specific organs besides consume them?

Here I have less information, although I assume the bladder could be made into a delightful balloon.

Chamomile wrote:Could an evil empire of the sort that likes making objects out of their murder victims turn humans into glue? Or is there something about human ligaments that makes us unsuitable for glue manufacturing? Would turning a human into glue significantly reduce the amount of skin (for parchment), meat (for decadent feasts), or bones (for interior design) you could harvest from that same victim? Is there anything else that human parts could be used for (besides human blood, which is ritually consumed in its entirety as part of the sacrifice) to help make the sinister nature of this evil empire evident in more small details? If you wove human hair into rope, would it be any good? Is there any use for human bones besides making your house look super spooky? Is there anything you could do with specific organs besides consume them?

How advanced is the medicinal tech of your evil empire? If you're going around processing humans in an industrial scale and you know what you're doing, you can end with a shit-ton of human hormones, which you sell/give to needy people or use in novel and disgusting ways (adrenalin shots for your terror troopers, growth hormones to make giant body-guards, or whatever).

I'd also argue that there's something to be said for turning conquered people into glue alongside their mounts like there isn't even any difference.

Whipstitch wrote:I'd also argue that there's something to be said for turning conquered people into glue alongside their mounts like there isn't even any difference.

That's deliciously evil . Seconded the harvesting hormones idea, too - that's very cool.

If you were going for more industrial evil, harvest people for their organs, turn the bits you don't need into fertiliser (or food for the other slaves), keep the skin for leather and don't forget to look for gold fillings.

Apart from organs (and maybe donor blood), you'd not really need human bodies, anything you can get out of them you can get easier elsewhere. But if you are going to kill lots of people, someone will find some use for an abundance of dead folk.

How do the 'muscles' and joints work on those robots DARPA is building

They work fine, thank you for asking!

Stahlseele wrote:They work fine, thank you for asking!

/r/totallynotrobots

Soft Robot Muscles

Human muscles 'contract' and 'relax' - when contracted they gather up in the middle and look taller/bigger. Artificial muscles do effectively the same thing, but they're 'pumped' with air or fluid to 'contract' and the fluid/air is released to 'relax'.

And in the future, we may actually see Myomer be used:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/ ... n-Strength

Are there "Mother of Monsters" figures in the mythologies of Asian, African and/or North/Central/South American cultures?

Prak wrote:Are there "Mother of Monsters" figures in the mythologies of Asian, African and/or North/Central/South American cultures?

No idea. But I love that in what became Brazil, the dominant religious cult, at least on the litoral, was on based on fear of nightmares sent by Jurupari, an evil solar god. It's bizarre because I read a book on Tupi mythology when I was younger, and right now searching online I can't find much about him.

The Jesuits were quick to associate the main religious figure of the natives with Satan, and to boost the stories about Tupã, a thunder god without much importance.

The Spider Goddess of Teotihuacan has unknown properties and significance to a pre-Aztec lost civilization. We have no idea what she was, so she could be drafted into a mother of monsters role and no one can say you're wrong.

Do we have a name for her?