Aviandelight

That is completely fair to want more info and I agree the article should have explained this. Here’s the thing no CAP/CLIA certified lab would ever release screening results without a note directly on the results saying that said results are only for screening purposes. The key here is that screening tests will not hold up in court. It would be business suicide and against regulations to do otherwise. I do know from personal experience that LabCorp generally charges $70-$90 for a limited urine drug screen and that confirmation testing which should be reflexively run for all screening positives can run between $150-350ish range depending on the drug. We’re talking that price per drug per confirmation test. So I’m fairly sure the prison was being a bunch of cheap bastards and ignored what Quest told them. The fact that Quest noticed the result trends in their reagents before the company producing the reagent did tells me that their on point with their QA/QC. If this was a major reagent provider like Abbott or Siemens then this issue would have been noticed country wide real quick, but I’m guessing that this was some sort of third party reagent for something more esoteric like oxycodone testing. But that’s just a hunch on my part. I’m more pissed off that once again the lab is getting blamed for people doing whatever the fuck they want with testing results when the lab community does so much fucking work that’s never seen or appreciated to keep people safe. Also pisses me off that screening testing is used to trap and incarcerate innocent people who don’t know or understand that they’re being fucked. Thanks for listening while I shake my pipette in fury at the sky here.

Once again here we have fucking screening tests used for legal reasons without confirmation testing being done. This is not the fault of Quest Diagnostics and completely the fault of the cheap ass prison system.

So I actually experienced one of these on 64W between VA Beach and Richmond. It was amazing how everyone including myself just instinctively moved to the sides of the road. It’s not a hard concept it just takes cooperation.

I adore going to the Air and Space museum. I’m usually overwhelmed with wonder by all the space craft because seeing a thing makes it all real and tangible but seeing the Enola Gay was a different kind of overwhelming. Seeing it drives home a true sense of horror for what happened that day and what has been unleashed on the world. But that museum contains more than just artifacts; it contains our cumulative memories and experiences as a country. My last visit was almost two decades ago but I had the most moving experience I’ll probably ever have there. At one point during our tour my husband and I were walking through an exhibit of planes used in the Asia-Pacific theater. We were in this tight little offshoot where there was a single plane in the center of the room and placards along the walls. It was really crowded and noisy but I wanted to read all the placards. As I was reading with my back turned the room almost suddenly got real quiet and thinned out real quick. My husband nudged me to get my attention and as I turned around there was an old man in a wheelchair right in front of the plane. He must have been a veteran because he had his service ball-cap on. Everyone was instinctively giving this man room and a moment of silence as he openly wept while staring at the plane. My husband and I stood there a few moments longer before quietly nodding at his family members in recognition and respect before we too left the room. I’ll never be able to imagine what was going through that man’s mind or what he was re-living in that moment but I’ve been thinking about that experience a lot since last November. I felt respect, empathy, and even a bit of patriotism at the time but lately all I feel is shame that this country has gleefully spit in the face of our veterans and their service today.

The minute checks stop going out is the moment shit gets real. This will impact everyone. Yes the people directly getting checks will be in dire trouble. But I don’t think most folks understand just how much our economy relies on this system. Business will take a hit, more people will end up having to support aging parents even more than they do already, and every working American is going to immediately question why they’ve now lost money to this system. Billionaires can fuck around with money because it’s not really or tangible for them, but normal folks… Yea you just don’t fuck with people’s money.

I don’t subscribe to dull men’s club but I’ve been enjoying the posts showing in my All feed.

Omg there is a name for that. I definitely fear eternity more than I fear death. My only consoling thought is the idea that time is a construct of physical reality so we “have time” to experience living and that really the entirety of time is happening all at once. I have no idea why this idea brings me comfort though.

I’m one of those people that’s switched skill sets and jobs multiple times. It’s great for me because I love learning new things and using the new things I’m learning as it applies to the current job I’m doing. But there is a disadvantage to this in that recruiters don’t know what the hell to do with you and bosses are always suspicious that you will jump ship at the drop of a hat. The ones who do take a chance and hire me have always been happy with my work though.

Yea I’m still trying to figure out how a fire truck can physically get around rail road arms. Like at that point why not just drive through them. They break pretty easily and would have been less expensive than destroying a whole fire truck.

Damn that zoo is right up the street from me. I haven’t been in a few years so I had no idea they had pygmy hippos. They do have an emu herd that you can hand feed and a large aviary which is always awesome.

You know I’ve said “dude” all my life and I still use it all the time in regards to everyone. If I saw that someone was genuinely offended at being called dude I wouldn’t use it again with that person, but now that I really think about it I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term in a derogatory way. Like ever. For me it’s always been a happy/inclusive word for addressing friends. My only worry for now is that saying it shows my age.

Fuck yea this is the best news ever and that trailer looks amazing 😍

Oh I absolutely agree. Gabapentin being one of those “scheduled” and monitored drug about broke me in the lab. Like no one is purposely getting high off of that shit. The Sacklers ruined pain management for everyone and I hope they all burn in hell.

Here we go again more stories about hospitals and CPS services using faulty and/or cheap means of testing to “comply” with regulations at the expense of patient. Why am I not at all surprised. I used to do this testing and when the process is done correctly it works. Here’s how it’s supposed to be done. First off you get a urine from Mom on admissions BEFORE giving any medication. Then you get the meconium and urine from baby after birth. You screen all three and confirm any positive screen with a more stringent confirmation test. Then you compare the three results to get a full picture of any drug usage that may be going on. Mom’s urine will tell you if she’s using within the last 3-5 days depending on the drug with the exception of THC which can stick around longer. Meconium gives you a window of drug use that might have occurred from the second trimester and on. It’s not great to test it on its own because it’s suspectable to faulty specimen collection. (I can’t tell you how many times I got a cup of baby shit instead of real meconium. Real meconium looks like plastic, has the consistency of a mallomar, and usually has a mucus plug attached.)Then you test the baby’s first urine output to determine if they have active drug in their system now. Use all three results together to interpret the big picture. At NO point do you ever give providers the screen results before confirmation. Hospitals and legal entities should be sued into oblivion for prosecuting innocent people over bad procedure and screening results. This shit irritates me to no end.

I went to community college for my first two years and only had adult friends. It was exactly what I needed at the time because they shared their life experience with me and it was immensely helpful in making my own good decisions. Now in my 40s my husband and I are the older friends in our game group who do the same for our 20-something friends. We even convinced one of them to get his GED and had a big celebration for him once he got it when his own family blew him off over it. You have to make your own community where you can and older people outside of family have value too.

My dad gave me his old Panasonic TV that he bought back in '08 with the Bush stimulus money. That big fucker is a bitch to move and puts out an ungodly amount of heat, but it’s still going strong and I refuse to get rid of it.

My husband recently found this gem of a cooking channel that we both love. Chef Jean Pierre He’s hilarious and the food looks amazing.

"The reasoning for bringing in AI tools to monitor patients is always that it will make life easier for us, but in my experience, technology in healthcare rarely makes things better. It usually just speeds up the factory floor, squeezing more out of us, so they can ultimately hire fewer of us. " - yup and there’s not much we can do about it without harming a lot of people.

Same boat my friend. Never ever had a xitter account but I made a Bluesky account last week to check things out. My husband deleted his Twitter account quite a while back and has been sorely missing seeing people he followed. I tried getting him here but he really doesn’t understand the whole set up. So I’m trying to convince him to join Bluesky. I have no idea what I’m doing over there but the folks there are much like we were here in the beginning in that everyone is helping each other learn. I do think that the platform will serve as a good bridge to get people learning about Federated platforms. We all have to start somewhere.

Just adding this article here from the ACOG about how tenuous the definition of viability is and how few babies actually make it when delivered in the 20-25 week mark. We love to focus on those miracle babies who do make it this early but it is definitely not the norm.