Overheard in the breakroom last night: "Man, I gotta get the doc to write me a script for some Cipro. When I just went pee, it smelled so bad that I looked around to see if there was a nursing home geester Foley hidden in the trash can or something."
Last night was cardiac night in my rooms.
First patient was a CPR in progress coming in via EMS.
"54 year old male has been experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath all week. Tonight he decided to get on the treadmill. Family reports he was on it for about 5 minutes when they heard the crash and went in and found him pulseless and apneic on the floor."
Our resuscitation was unsuccessful. Darwin wins that one.
Patient number 2 was a 58 year old man who was told after a positive stress test two months ago that he needed two stents, and was putting it off because it was too expensive. Tonight he comes in with a classic presentation STEMI. Door to balloon time: 75 minutes. At 0300, I'll take it. LAD 100% blocked, RCA almost 100%, both stented, dude's gonna be fine, 'cept for the angina when the bill comes.
His wife leaned over to kiss him goodbye as he went to the cath lab and I heard her whisper, "I told you so."
MonkeyGirl wins that one.
Darwin's up!
That's how long it takes to get the smell of c-diff out of your nostrils after you have taken the patient upstairs.
The first two will be spent repeatedly checking your shoes, scrubs, stethoscope, etc, to make sure that you don't have any on you, because are sure that the smell is coming from something that you missed. After all, you spent five hours cleaning up massive quantities of slimy (yes, Mom, it really is slimy) poo every 30 minutes, it had to have gotten on you somewhere, right? Those gowns are only paper, after all.
But alas, it is coming from your own abused little olfactory cells. The cells that hate you now. The cells that will make everything you eat in that 4 1/2 hours taste like c-diff, too.
C-diff is a powerful little bug. Kinda like Slimer, from Ghostbusters.
entubulate \en-TOOB-yoo-late\ (verb): to place a breathing tube down the throat of a redneck for the purpose of mechanically ventilating the lungs.
ie: "The doctor told me after my gallbladder surgery that I have a crooked neck and he had a hard time entubulatin' me."
During a redneck code, often the patient will be both entubulated and defibulated.
