Four and a half hours.

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.

Word of the Day

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.

I think there's a new TV show coming out......

....and I'm fairly certain it was filmed last night in my ER.*

I worked with two docs that were younger than me, and 4 of the 5 RNs were young enough that I could have given birth to them. The other RN was old enough to be my mother. Almost all of them were Hollywood beautiful.

Mixed in amongst all of the stinky and annoying not-sick patients, we had a "stopped-breathing-right-in-front-of-EMS" code, an internal carotid dissection, a new onset paranoid schizophrenia, a classic presentation STEMI with a 31 minute door-to-balloon time, a ruptured appy, and a GSW to the head.

I swear, I spent the whole night looking around for the cameras.


*(No, it's not an ED, Whitecoat. It is one super-big room with a bunch of curtains and partitions. Some of the partitions just happen to be made of wood, metal and glass.)

How to Quantify Good Care

I went to the Farmer's Market today, because I wanted some fresh corn, and the produce section at our Super Wally World sucks.

"How much is the corn?" I inquired of the sweet farmer lady with the huge pickup truck bed full of ears of corn.

"Six fo' two dolla or a dozen fo' tree," she said.

I told her that six was plenty and handed her two bucks. She counted out eight ears and handed them to me in a gently used Wally World plastic bag.

"I think you gave me a couple more than I paid for," says I, not wanting to cheat the sweet farmer lady out of 50 cents worth of corn.

"Oh, I knows," she replied. "I did it a purpose. You took care of mama in the 'Mergency Room over Christmas time when she done had her stroke. You brang me a blanket and some coffee when they didn't have no rooms to put her in upstairs. I jest wanted ta say thanks."

A short discussion later I found out that mama was back at the farm, no worse for the wear. In fact, if I come back next week for some more corn, I could talk to her myself, because she'd prolly be there. I said I would try to do so, bid her farewell, and went on my way.

So now you know. A cup of hot coffee and a warm blanket is worth two ears of corn.

And it was damn good corn, too.

Happy Independence Day

Still the best movie speech ever.