Heroes
Landing On Mars: Well, I Don't See How This Could Possibly Go Wrong
I'm not sure what's more intense, the "7 Minutes of Terror" laid out in this video or the music that accompanies it.
07.02.12
It takes a special type of person to become a nurse. The job requires a combination of energy, empathy, clear mind, oftentimes a strong stomach, and a cheerful attitude. And while people typically think of nursing in a clinical setting, some nurses are driven to work with the people that feel forgotten by society.
Michelle Santizo is a street medicine nurse working in Los Angeles, California. For her, the field of street medicine requires providing lifesaving health services in unpredictable and sometimes uncomfortable environments, but is where she is most passionate about her work.
Nurse Santizo credits her parents for teaching her resilience, a necessary trait when providing care in places like tents, under bridges, in alleys, vehicles, at libraries, on the side of the freeway or even at a bus stop.
“Every corner of Los Angeles needs our services,” said Nurse Santizo. “It can be in a pristine, abandoned, trashed, or graffiti-filled neighborhood.”
Michelle | Heroes Behind the Masks presented by CeraVe www.youtube.com
Santizo prepares for the workday by loading her backpack with supplies before heading to a section of downtown L.A. known as “skid row” to care for her clients, who are typically people experiencing homelessness and living on the fringes of society without regular access to healthcare. As the child of immigrant parents, she experienced firsthand a lack of healthcare and basic necessities. Her mother fled from El Salvador as a young woman, arriving in the United States alone and without shelter.
“My mother told me that the only people that acknowledged her while sleeping outside on a bench [were the people going in and out of] the church that was across the street,” said Nurse Santizo. She said her mother instilled in her that there are many reasons why people are homeless and that each individual has their own story. “[She] taught me to never judge someone’s struggle … my mother’s inspiring upbringing taught me if you have the time to help the broken or disadvantaged, then take a moment to acknowledge or help in some positive way.”
Michelle and her mother on a beachCourtesy of Michelle Santizo
Growing up, Nurse Santizo watched her parents struggle to earn a living wage to keep up with the family’s needs. “My father worked nearly seven days of the week and my mother worked as much as she could in jobs like babysitting, cleaning homes or caregiving. Feeding our family was my parent’s main concern…healthcare and all the other important aspects of life became secondary or non-existent. My parents could barely make enough income to buy fresh fruit or vegetables,” she said.
The Santizo familyCourtesy of Michelle Santizo
That upbringing is what drove her to pursue a career in medicine, with the goal of giving back to underserved communities. “[Access to] medicine should not be determined based on your socioeconomic status. It should be a right for someone to seek healthcare when it is needed and important, especially for children and adolescents who will be the future of our generation,” said Nurse Santizo. She credits her lack of access to healthcare as a child for empowering her to keep pushing for change.
When the opportunity to practice street nursing arose, Santizo knew instinctively that it was the right fit. Every workday she has meaningful interactions, but one experience in particular had a lasting impression on her. She encountered a middle-aged man who had lost his job during the pandemic and was forced to live on the streets. Nurse Santizo approached, and he asked if she wouldn’t mind examining his feet. As she gently inspected the condition of his skin, she explained that he needed a thorough cleaning and a special ointment and offered to wash his feet and patch them up.
Courtesy of CeraVe
“This kind man stared right into my eyes and nearly cried, as he shared ‘no one has ever cared for me like this ever since I’ve been forced to live on the streets, nor has anyone ever acknowledged my existence,’” recalled Nurse Santizo. “I remember squatting on the side of the street while cars were driving by … my only mission was to devote that moment in time to servicing a person who needed my attention and love. As you can tell, I love what I do, and I could scrub feet for days when servicing the most vulnerable populations.”
According to the most recent report, approximately 580,466 people were experiencing homelessness in America in January 2020. Most were individuals (70%) and the rest were people living in families with children. The full effect of the pandemic on the homeless populations across the country have yet to become clear, and hard data will not be fully known until late 2022 or early 2023.
“Bringing medicine to people who are not able to seek medical assistance due to their inabilities whether it be homelessness, chronic illness, or mental health has always been my true calling … to serve the broken, the sick, the vulnerable and the ones who really need a second chance at life,” said Nurse Santizo, a reminder that no one knows what another human is battling.
To recognize the healthcare professionals that are so often giving to others before themselves, CeraVe seeks to spotlight those that go beyond the call of duty for their patients and communities. The brand is honoring nurses such as Santizo in the second iteration of a docuseries titled Heroes Behind the Masks Chapter 2: A Walk In Our Shoes.
Follow along in the coming days for more stories of heroism, kindness and love.
Not everyone breastfed before formula was invented.
Prior to baby formula, breastfeeding was the norm, but that doesn't mean it always worked.
As if the past handful of years weren't challenging enough, the U.S. is currently dealing with a baby formula crisis.
Due to a perfect storm of supply chain issues, product recalls, labor shortages and inflation, manufacturers are struggling to keep up with formula demand and retailers are rationing supplies. As a result, families that rely on formula are scrambling to ensure that their babies get the food they need.
Naturally, people are weighing in on the crisis, with some throwing out simplistic advice like, "Why don't you just do what people did before baby formula was invented and just breastfeed?"
That might seem logical, unless you understand how breastfeeding works and know a bit about infant mortality throughout human history.
Rutgers University historian Carla Cevasco, Ph.D. shared some of the history of infant feeding in a viral Twitter thread to set the record straight. (Note: Cevasco provided sources for her facts, which can be viewed at the end of her thread on Twitter.)
"You may be hearing the argument that before the rise of modern commercial infant formula, babies all ate breastmilk and everything was great," she wrote. "As a historian of infant feeding, let me tell you why that’s not true."
First of all, throughout history, people have at times needed to feed infants using foods other than breastmilk. For many reasons:— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD) 1652312444
Cevasco explained that, throughout history, people have had to feed infants food other than breastmilk for a variety of reasons.
"Sometimes the birthing parent was unable to breastfeed," she wrote, "Because: death in childbirth, or physical/mental health concerns, or need to return to work outside the home right after childbirth, OR their partner or enslaver forced them not to breastfeed so that they could return to fertility ASAP after giving birth.
"Sometimes baby was unable to breastfeed. Because: poor latch, prematurity, cleft palate, other health or disability reasons, etc.
"Sometimes baby was being cared for by carers other than birthing parent, including adoptive parents."
So, feeding baby other people\u2019s breastmilk wasn\u2019t necessarily an ideal situation either, given the power dynamics of race, class, and gender in the past.— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD) 1652312706
Cevasco went on to explain what babies ate instead of a parent's breast milk in those situations.
"Sometimes someone else would breastfeed the child," she wrote. "This might have been a relative or neighbor doing it for free. Or it might have been a paid or unpaid servant or enslaved person doing it at the expense of their own nursing infant, who might starve to death as a result."
She also explained that some babies thrived on alternative diets, which are not recommended today due to concerns about safety and nutrition.
"Wabanaki women in the 18th century sometimes fed infants a mixture of boiled walnuts, cornmeal, and water; an English colonist, Elizabeth Hanson, reported that her baby thrived on this diet," she wrote. "In early modern Europe, babies often ate pap or panada, mixtures of animal milk or water, bread crumbs or flour. Sometimes these were boiled, sometimes they weren’t."
However, she explained, those milk substitutes weren't always safe or nutritionally complete.
"So before the advent of modern commercial formula (in the 1950s), a lot of babies died of illness or starvation because they couldn’t breastfeed and the alternative foods were not safe or adequate," she wrote. "Let me repeat that: in the absence of modern formula, A LOT OF BABIES DIED OF ILLNESS OR STARVATION DUE TO LACK OF SAFE OR ADEQUATE FOOD."
As Cevasco illustrates, the idea that the pre-formula days were a bastion of infant health due to widespread breastfeeding is simply incorrect. Cevasco explained that better supports such as paid parental leave, free lactation consultation and education, better access to places to pump and so on, would go a long way toward increasing breastfeeding rates. She also pointed out that the greed of the corporate formula industry created the formula shortage crisis.
"But! Let’s not demonize formula because of an imagined past in which everyone breastfed," she wrote. "In the ACTUAL past, babies fucking starved and died of disease. Babies who would have survived today, because they would have had access to safe, nutritionally complete formula. Access that is now, horrifyingly and unjustly, under threat for many babies and their caregivers."
There will ALWAYS be people who need formula for a whole hosts of reasons.— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD) 1652313204
Cevasco pointed out that there are multiple safe and nutritionally complete ways to feed a baby, and making sure babies don't go hungry should be our main goal.
So many misinformed comments could be avoided with a basic understanding of what infant feeding looked like in the past, as well as a basic understanding of how breastfeeding works both physically and logistically. Let's spend more time informing ourselves and sharing facts from experts rather than continuing to perpetuate unhelpful and harmful myths about both breastfeeding and formula feeding.
Courtesy of Elaine Ahn
The energy in a hospital can sometimes feel overwhelming, whether you’re experiencing it as a patient, visitor or employee. However, there are a few one-of-a-kind individuals like Elaine Ahn, an operating room registered nurse in Diamond Bar, California, who thrive under this type of constant pressure.
Nurse Ahn felt drawn to a career in healthcare partially because she grew up watching medical dramas on TV with her mother. While the fast-paced level of excitement seen on TV is what initially caught her interest, she quickly found out that real-life nursing is quite different from how it was portrayed on her favorite shows.
Courtesy of Elaine Ahn
The most striking difference, according to Ahn, is the level of involvement that nurses have with their patients during each 12-hour shift. Nurses are often the first to catch subtle signs and symptoms that provide insight into how a patient is doing emotionally as well as physically. Science tells us that emotional health and our overall attitudes have a direct impact on physical health and healing, and Nurse Ahn noticed early on that she could make a huge difference in her patient’s recovery, just by taking the time to sit down for a chat.
California is the only state in the country to require by law a specific number of nurses to patients in every hospital unit. It requires hospitals to provide one nurse for every two patients in intensive care and one nurse for every four patients in emergency rooms, for example. This regulation was created to increase positive outcomes for patients and prevent employee burnout. Even though she never has more than five patients to care for during a shift, Nurse Ahn, like many nurses,still feels stretched thin coping with the needs and demands of the day.
“Sometimes people just need to be heard. In the busy world of acute care, time can really be a luxury. With the number of tasks to perform and numerous alarms pulling nurses and aides in various directions, stretching us thin like pizza dough, it’s upsetting because it can get difficult to be able to spend as much time as we would like with our patients,” said Ahn.
“I remember one day having a patient and his family member being anxious and frustrated. In that moment, I found that drawing up a chair to sit at their eye level and giving them my full, undivided attention for however long I could truly went a long way. They later told me that it was the first time during their hospital stay that they felt heard without being rushed, and this experience led me to adopt this as a part of my practice,” said Ahn.
Nurse Ahn was assigned to a patient with terminal lung cancer, referred to in this series as “Grumpy Man.” Grumpy Man was dying, in constant pain and didn’t have any visitors. He was lonely and without hope, and it tugged at the nurse’s heartstrings.
Elaine | Heroes Behind the Masks presented by CeraVe www.youtube.com
She credits two of her mentors, Josh and Jess, with the idea of providing this patient with more TLC and this inspired her to implement the routine of having daily 15-minute chats with him.
“Especially upon learning that he had no friends or family members to visit or call him, I really wanted to be someone who was present with him in this very difficult time of his life. I wanted him to be able to have another human present and be engaged with him and for him to feel heard and cared for,” said Ahn.
Courtesy of Elaine Ahn
It’s no secret that nurses often put their own patients well-being above their own. That level of caring is what makes them so good at what they do, but it can also lead to exhaustion. Even though she thrives on the rush of being busy, caring for patients like Grumpy Man taught Nurse Ahn the importance of taking a moment to pause, center herself and prioritize taking care of herself first, so she has the energy to devote her undivided care and attention to her patients.
“It’s so easy to get caught up in the momentum of busy-ness, but I make the point to not rush myself and take things one thing at a time. To my delight, taking things one step at a time helped me complete things faster than rushing,” said Ahn.
To help care for the healthcare professionals that are so often giving to others before themselves, CeraVe seeks to spotlight those that go beyond the call of duty for their patients and communities in the Heroes Behind the Masks Chapter 2: A Walk In Our Shoes campaign. The goal of this year’s campaign is to showcase incredible nurses such as Nurse Ahn and celebrate the nursing community as a whole, recognizing the trials, emotional and physical toll the profession has while aiming to inspire and encourage them.
Follow along in the next few days for more stories of heroism here.
Your cat knows you better than you think.
Cats are often seen as being aloof or standoffish, even with their owners. Of course, that differs based on who that cat lives with and their lifetime of experience with humans. But when compared to man’s best friend, cats usually seem less interested in those around them, regardless of species.
However, a new study out of Japan has found that cats may be paying more attention to their fellow felines and human friends than most people thought. In fact, they could be listening to human conversations.
"What we discovered is astonishing," Saho Takagi, a research fellow specializing in animal science at Azabu University in Kanagawa Prefecture, told The Asahi Shimbun. "I want people to know the truth. Felines do not appear to listen to people's conversations, but as a matter of fact, they do."
How do we know they’re listening? Because the study shows that household cats often know the names of their human and feline friends.
via Pexels
The researchers studied 48 cats that live with at least two other pets either in a family home or at a café. Each cat was played a recording of their owner calling the name of a cat they lived with that was accompanied by a feline photo. Sometimes the photos were of the correct cat, other times they were not. The household cats spent a longer time looking at photos of the incorrect cat—a common reaction when animals are surprised.
"These results indicate that only household cats anticipated a specific cat face upon hearing the cat's name, suggesting that they matched the stimulus cat's name and the specific individual," the authors explained.
The researchers also tried the same experiment with their owner’s name being said alongside an accompanying photo that was either correct or incorrect.
via Pexels
The results show that some house cats stared longer at the monitor when the face didn’t match the name, suggesting they knew the human’s name. But they were more familiar with the names of the cats in the home. The study found that cats that lived in a larger human family “attended for longer to the monitor in the incongruent condition” as well as those who had lived with the family for a longer period of time.
Researchers hypothesize that the cats are more familiar with the names of their feline counterparts than their human families because there is competition for food. “A cat might receive food when the owner calls her name but not when she calls another cat’s name,” the researchers wrote.
Unfortunately, café cats that are used to interacting with a greater number of strangers aren't as familiar with the names of their fellow felines or human friends.
"These results indicate that only household cats anticipated a specific cat face upon hearing the cat's name, suggesting that they matched the stimulus cat's name and the specific individual," the study says.
The authors believe that household cats may learn the names of other cats and humans but they aren’t sure why and "could not identify the mechanism of learning."
"It is still an open question how cats learn the other cats' names and faces," researchers note. Because, of course, a cat is never going to tell you everything.
If you know how to fix this tape, you grew up in the 1990s.
There are a lot of reasons to feel a twinge of nostalgia for the final days of the 20th century. Rampant inflation, a global pandemic and political unrest have created a sense of uneasiness about the future that has everyone feeling a bit down.
There’s also a feeling that the current state of pop culture is lacking as well. Nobody listens to new music anymore and unless you’re into superheroes, it seems like creativity is seriously missing from the silver screen.
But, you gotta admit, that TV is still pretty damn good.
A lot of folks feel Americans have become a lot harsher to one another due to political divides, which seem to be widening by the day due to the power of the internet and partisan media.
Given today's feeling of malaise, there are a lot of people who miss the 1990s or, as some call it, “the best decade ever.” Why? The 1990s was economically prosperous, crime was on its way down after the violent ’70s and ’80s, and pop culture was soaring with indie films, grunge rock and hip-hop all in their golden eras.
The rest of the world was feeling hopeful as globalization brought prosperity and Communism fell in Europe and Asia.
The mood in America would swiftly change at the turn of the century when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and the 2001 9/11 attacks would lead to the never-ending "war on terror."
A Reddit user by the name purplekat20 was clearly feeling some ’90s nostalgia on May 16 when they asked the online forum to share “What ’90s trend would you bring back?” A lot of people noted that it was a lot cheaper to get by in the ’90s, especially considering gas and rent prices. Others missed living in the real world instead of having one foot in reality and the other online.
Here are 17 things people would love to bring back from the 1990s.
"Inflatable furniture and transparent electronics." — Dabbles-In-Irony
"Hope." — DeadOnBalllsaccurate
To which HowardMoo responded: "I hate this despair thing that's all the rage these days. I miss optimism."
"The '90s web was the best web. People actually made their own home pages. Now it's all social media." — IBeTrippin
"Affordable housing." — Amiramaha
"Ninety nine cent per gallon gas." — Maxwyfe
"The 'mean people suck' statement everywhere. People seemed generally a lot happier and kinder back then. It was a nice reminder to be kind." — simplyintentional
via Reddit
"Being detached. Not being attached to an electronic gadget every minute of every day." — SuperArppis
"Calling fake-ass people 'poser.' The state of social media and 'reality' tv demands that this word be taken out of retirement." — rumpusbutnotwild
"Grunge music." — ofsquire
"I want movies to be the same caliber as '90s." — waqasnaseem07
Cremmitquada nailed it on the head with their response, "Everything has been redone. It's all recycled ideas now."
"Pants that didn't have to be super-tight to be in style." — chad-beer-316
"People really expressing themselves. Very few people take any risks with style anymore, or they do something 'different' that's just enough to still conform. In the '80s and '90s there were people doing crazy things with hair and piercing and just didn't give a fuck. I don't think I'll ever see that come back." — FewWill
"Great animated TV. Spongebob started in the 90s (99 but it counts), Hey Arnold, X-Men, Batman, Justice League, Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Boomerang cartoons... the list goes on." — Phreedom Phighter
"Fast food restaurant interiors." — Glum-Leg-1886
Another fantastic photo of Taco Bell in the 1990s, before the disease of modernismpic.twitter.com/GIiAyNWxiu— Jules (@Jules) 1590273071
"Hypercolor shirts and neon puff paint designs on t-shirts. But here in a few months, that'll be changed to abortion and voting rights, probably." — TheDoctorisen
"News that was news instead of rage bait." — nmj95123
"We had a stable country with a vigorous economy. In fact, we drew a budget surplus some of those years." — jeremyxt