anonniemouse: (Default)
anonniemouse ([personal profile] anonniemouse) wrote in [community profile] tf_talk2015-04-09 04:03 pm

The Pit

For all your Andy-related info-dumping needs. If there's information you'd like to archive, please post it here, and feel free to link to it from the main post if you'd like to discuss it.

Andy's account of the shooting - 2 year anniversary version, part 3

(Anonymous) 2015-04-22 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Ask that provides some more info:

http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49872123285/j-f-c-andy-i-knew-that-the-american-health-system

>J F C Andy! I knew that the American health system was problematic but they didn't help you at all? Then the police just let you bleed and take it out yourself and didn't help you either? That's just sick! How is this allowed?
Anonymous

1. If you are not in any significant danger, the hospitals here have no obligation to treat you. The bullet was not in a place where it risked my life or even crippling me as it was, and the bleeding was relatively minor and certainly not remotely life threatening. So yes, I was just told to leave. It’s not even sadly that bizarre that they didn’t look under the gauze. Since it wasn’t bleeding through that badly, they wanted the x-ray first before they shifted anything, and the x-ray showed there was no need to treat me at all.

2. I didn’t take it out myself. I tried, and it fractured and I only got a fragment. The rest of it was taken out two weeks later by a surgeon…another story in and of itself.

3. I’m pretty sure, when I look back, that the cops had no idea the extent that I was digging around in it and I know they didn’t know how much I was bleeding. I had asked if I could “clean it up and stuff.” They were on the other side of the table and from where I had my leg crossed on my lap, they couldn’t see the ankle itself or my hands on it. Yeah, I took about 15 minutes, but given that I never looked up and what I was talking about and the monotone, I think they just assumed I was kind of fiddling with it, probably taking my time because of how much the alcohol stung. From where they were sitting, they’d have only seen the little alcohol swab packets piling up, the bloody swabs and q-tip, and the empties from the butterfly bandages, gauze pads, etc, all of which are perfectly reasonable to let someone do for themselves. And again, I wasn’t giving any reactions that would have indicated there was more going on. In retrospect, they seemed startled when they came around the table to give me the bathroom break and let me use the phone and saw the blood, but they did play it off very low key and just “we’ll put some paper towels down, clean it up later, no big deal.”

4. Basically, the ER were dicks and our healthcare system IS fucked, but the cops were awesome and it’s not their fault that in my current headplace, amateur field surgery seemed like a reasonable idea.


http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49872698460/im-so-so-so-sorry-is-writing-about-what-happened

>I'm so so so sorry. Is writing about what happened like a coping mechanism for you? It's strange to me, because my coping mechanism is to completely block and repress memories, or I feel like I'm going insane. it's painful to see you remembering things in details and I just want to give you the biggest tightest of hugs and not say anything until this day ends.

Thank you for your compassion, and I’m sorry that this is upsetting for you. Sincerely, I am, and I don’t hold it against any of the people unfollowing me today.

It is absolutely a coping mechanism. Part of it is that working through it in linear time like this forces it to make clear sense of first A, then B, cause and effect, etc. Putting it in a detailed, orderly line lets me see that it’s not just a freak finger of God THING that happened. It takes sensations and memories that are powerful in awful ways against me and in which I was helpless and turns them into word-structures that *I* choose and *I* have power over. It makes it make sense, which lets me cope with it, and it makes it a narrative, and that makes it make more sense and lets me cross-reference it to other narratives and use lessons from them to help me deal and feel a sense that I’m not alone nor do I have to stay alone and fester inside it because narratives make the unfathomable communicable and thus relatable and thus surmountable. Furthermore, putting it in public lets me see that it makes sense to others outside my head, and that gives it an external validation of reality that is really important for someone with a history of hallucinations.