A Quickie

Deborah Peel fell down some steps the other day and was brought in by ambulance. The EMS radio report included the words,"We've got her immobilized on a backboard, but we don't have a c-collar on her because it won't fit." It also included the words, "She's complaining of abdominal pain and thinks that she might be 2 weeks pregnant."

Guess how many people it took to move her from the ambulance gurney to ours?

I overheard her nurse say, "I ain't doing a pelvic on her. Her U-preg is gonna be negative if I have to go to the lab and pee on the stick myself!"

***She was just fine, and no, she wasn't pregnant. Neither was her nurse.

This is for Paul

Because right now, this interests me more than anything else. Sorry.

ouch.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

I hate the feeling of ribs snapping under my palms. It freakin' creeps me out.

I must admit, however, that CPR is excellent exercise. My abs, chest, arms, shoulders, and upper back are killing me.

Motrin, Guinness, the couch and basketball. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Guilt

I feel as if I should be posting an entertaining story from my week, but I don't have the energy to HIPAA-ify one right now, and I have lots of basketball to watch.

I'll deal with the guilt and you can deal with the disappointment.

Next week I'll tell you how I helped kill Deborah Peel with a bedpan.

Public Service Announcement

If you come in with a blood sugar of 28, and we can't get a line on you because your veins suck, so the doc decides to put a central line in, and when he pulls back the sheets to prep your groin there is a cockroach crawling in your pubic hair, YOU HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN JUST HYPOGLYCEMIA.

Clean your house. Or move.

Did you know....

That you can watch UNC annihilate their opponent (for the second game in a row) with NCAA.com's free live streaming video feature on your laptop in the kitchen whilst baking brownies to take to work for the overtime shift that you agreed to work even though you knew you were going to watch basketball all day instead of sleeping?

Thank God for this.

A Tip for the Criminals in my Town

Let's say that you and your buddy are walking down the street, just minding your own business. (Which is just about the most dangerous thing in the world that you can do.)

Perhaps up ahead, in the distance, you spot another gentleman, also walking along, just minding his own business.

You and your buddy should resist, at all cost, the urge to pull a gun and attempt to rob this gentleman as if you are living in the ghetto of Detroit or something, not the freakin' backwoods of Hillbillyville.

Because there is a very strong possibility that he will make a fast and scary Steven Seagal move that will cause the gun to miraculously fall from your friend's hand to the ground, which will in turn cause your friend to run screaming like a girl into the night, which will in turn leave you as the only target for a very angry, not-as-helpless-as-you-thought-he-was man to beat the hell out of you, and then sit on you and call the Po-Po to come and pick you up.

And after about 30 minutes, your face will swell to twice its normal size, and the CT scan will show that you have a multitude of really nasty facial fractures, and your mommy will come to the ER and sit by your bed, talking to the Po-Po about what a good boy you used to be, until you get transferred to the Trauma Hospital in the Big City.

Now, what will be harder to live down? The fact that you got your ass kicked by the guy that you were gonna rob, or the fact that your mommy came to the ER and scared all your hoodlum friends away?

PS: Good luck with the reconstructive surgery, man. Maybe that wonky eye looking off in the wrong direction will give you some street cred. Or not.

Quote of the Night

I was sitting at the nurses' station drinking a tasty caffeinated beverage out of my fantastic new mug, when the charge nurse looked at me and said, "I can't believe you have a mug now, too! Isn't that stupid bracelet bad enough?" One of the other nurses said, "My son has a bracelet kinda like that. It says something about Alzheimer's on it, but I forget what exactly it is."

Of course, hilarity ensued.

Daddy's Little Girl

When I was 2, my Daddy used to zip around on his motorcycle, and I loved to go with him. He was my hero.

When I was older, it was airplanes. He was still my hero.

I'm working on my fourth decade of life now, and I've still never met anyone who is the caliber and quality of man that my daddy is. He'll always be my hero.

Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you.

It's a toss-up.

I was talking to my cat's vet this morning as I paid her 74 bucks to look in his ears with an otoscope and then put 2 drops in each ear. I told her about what 'Cat said about Vets vs. ER Docs, and how sometimes I wished I dealt with animals instead of people.

Then the phone rang. I listened to her try to explain to the woman on the other end why her puppy's regular puppy shots won't cure the horrible case of mange that it has. I was laughing in my head as I pictured explaining to this same lady why the Wellbutrin and Lortab that she takes for her "fibromyalgia" won't take care of her hypertension and diabetes.

Then I listened to her explaining to someone why they had to use anesthesia, an IV and a pain shot when they spayed her dog. I imagined asking our next cholecystitis patient if they wanted to skip the anesthesia, IV and pain meds.

At the same time, the receptionist was talking to the bank about a patient's check that had bounced.

And I realized that vets really don't have it any better. Because every pet has an owner.

So much for that.

Michigan is going to be Notre Dame next year.

*sigh*

Why do the football gods hate me?

Just a thought....

Every single time I see/give any type of heparin, I think of this picture from an article I read a couple of weeks ago.

When it comes to medical drug production, I've always thought of it as a sterile production in a high-tech laboratory somewhere. I never knew that it was just glorified meth lab in a little village in China. Then again, it's more like a laundry than a meth lab. Subtract the Sudafed, add some Tide.

Ew.

This is why tornadoes hit Kansas

Because God is aiming for people like this guy.

Dear Lord.

Somebody emailed me this article and asked how I'd like to be working when this rolled through the door.

I wouldn't.

I do have one queston, though: What color were the sweatpants?

Primum non nocere

MonkeyHusband and I were just discussing doctors and bottom-feeding scum lawyers.

MH: "I wonder what we're going to do when we have to go to the lawyers for medical care because they've forced all the doctors out of medicine."

MG: "That wouldn't work. They could never take the Hippocratic Oath."

MH: "Sure they could. They'd just have to change it a little. Add a couple of words here and there. You know, like 'First, do no harm
to me.' Stuff like that."



Yes, anal-retentive fact-freaks, I know that "First do no harm" isn't actually in the Hippocratic Oath. I can read. Not the point of the discussion.

Yes, I know most of you don't care.

A friend of mine just sent me this picture with instructions to post it on my blog. Since it is a great picture, I will do so. Anyone who watched the game knows how freakin' FANTASTIC this particular score was.

Note Peyton Manning on the lower left. I still love him even if he's sort of a Duke fan. (Duke football really doesn't count.)

What goes around.....

There's this guy that comes in about once every couple of weeks for COPD exacerbation. He smokes 2 packs a day, drinks like a fish, and never bathes. He has a full, greasy beard and long stringy brown hair. He looks kind of like Jesus on meth. And he's an ass. He usually leaves AMA after a couple of breathing treatments and a round of steroids. Occasionally he's got a pneumonia and will stick around for the antibiotics, but he won't let you admit him. After all, the docs upstairs won't write for Budweiser and Marlboro q 15 min PRN.

The last time I saw him for one of his "regular" visits, he was even more of an ass than usual. He was cussing up a storm, wouldn't let us draw any labs or start an IV, and when the RT tried to get ABGs, he actually hit her. (After he hit her I told her I'd help hold him down so that she could get the ABGs from his retinal artery, but she said no go, she was done with him.)

No pneumonia, he took a couple of doses of Xopenex and some Solu-Medrol and headed out the door as usual. This time he wouldn't even sign the AMA form. We all shook our heads and went back to work.

Fast forward a week or so. EMS is bringing in a patient with facial burns. They get here, and who is it? You got it, Jesus on Meth. He was smoking with his oxygen on and set his face on fire.

Gone was the beard and mustache, and his hair was singed into curlicues at least 3 inches back on his scalp. The nasal cannula was melted into his face, his nostrils and the inside of his mouth were black, and he was greeted with an RSI kit and a stat transfer to the Burn Unit at the Trauma Center in the Big City.

That Karma, she is a bitch.

My kind of cheer!

I was just watching the Ohio Valley Conference Championship Game on ESPN2. The winning team was Austin Peay. Every time they got the ball, their fans shouted, "Let's go Peay!"

*giggle*

The only way it could've been any better is if the school was Austin Poo.

Mmmmm..... donuts!

Last week, while perusing the selection of deodorants at the local Mart of Wal, I discovered that Secret comes in a lovely French Vanilla flavor. Since I'm not one for the girly smells and baby powder smell should be outlawed on anyone between the ages of 2 and 80, I figured, "What the hell? Let's try it."

Now, I don't want to shatter anyone's dainty image of me, but when I'm at work, I sweat. (Something about running my ass off for 12 hours.) Well, with my new deodorant, when I sweat, I'm enveloped in a pleasant cloud of French Vanilla.

Anyhoo, at about 0300 last night, I was involved in the workup of a nursing home patient that came in for AMS. (Altered Mental Status, for those of you non-medical-acromym-using types.) After cleaning off the layers of poo that could be read like tree rings, and putting in the Foley that diagnosed her AMS with its butterscotch pudding-like appearance, we got to work trying to get an IV in her horrendously sucky veins.

As I was blowing my second attempt in her thumb while someone else was blowing veins on the other side, (no, I didn't get it. Bragging rights belonged to him last night) all of a sudden the LOL opened her eyes and said, "Oooh, something smells gooood!"

I laughed and said, "That would be me." ( I was mostly joking; I always say that.)

She said, "No, it smells like something I want to eat! Like... like..... donuts!"

At that point I laughed even harder, because I realized she really was talking about me.

She closed her eyes and drifted back into her happy place while we poked holes in her upper extremities, and after another 10 or 15 minutes, when we were finally almost done, she opens up her eyes again and says, "I sure wish I could have a bite of whatever it is that smells so good!"

I wonder if she would have said that if she had known it was my armpits?

The Trolls are out in force!

If I was posting this week, I would tell you to go check out this post from GuitarGirl RN about her experience with a Methadonian.

You especially have to read the comment thread.

I thought that only fibromyalgeurs could be so mistakenly indignant and offended about something so trivial. Obviously, I was wrong!

Why I'm not posting this week

My attitude sucks.

I 'm not burned out, I just hate everything and everyone. When I vent about the things that suck, I get accused of being an uncaring bitch that should go find an office job.

So I'll let someone else vent and I'll just add an "Amen".

ERNursey is in my brain about staffing, supplies, dirt, etc. (We work every shift short, nothing freakin' works, and the place is filthy. Jeez!)

Nurse K is in my brain about crappy nurses that are gonna kill someone. (PS: If you're a crappy nurse and you just hasten along the death of someone that would have died anyway, that's bad, too.)(PS#2: My hospital is not union. We're just scraping the bottom of the barrel, no, under the bottom of the barrel, when it comes to hiring new nurses.)

RT 101 is in my brain about who I should feel compassion for. (Repeat after me: "A Cold is not an Emergency. A UTI is not an Emergency. Chlamydia is not an Emergency." Go to the freakin' health dept in the morning, you dumb jackass. And stop dragging your kids out in the middle of the night for your fix. Just because you don't have a job doesn't mean they shouldn't be in school.)

And if you haven't already, go over to AD's and read this post that sums up in 5000 words or less why I lust after him luuuurve him so much. It'll make you end all the madness with a smile. (Or a spew of Diet Coke onto the keyboard.)

Love this guy. Love. Him.

UNC has been my favorite college basketball team for 3 years.

Tyler Hansbrough has been my favorite college basketball player for 3 years.

Here's one reason why.


They gotta beat Duke on Saturday. They just gotta.

Hey Crayzee!

Does your cat have one of these?

Word of the day: German Edition

I followed some links today and learned that the word for "Nurse" in German is "Krankenschwester".

The literal translation is prolly "Kranky Bitch" or something.

Ironically, I'm feeling a bit Kranky after my week from hell, and I'm declaring a fatwa on the internet, telephone, and anything else that brings me into contact with people.

I'll see you next week.