You Have Been Warned

I tried to ignore this, I really did.  
But I can't.

Now it's your turn.

Follow New Nurse and her Community Service Announcement back to her home base, Hood Hospital:

Hood Hospital Epidemiology


While speaking to ER BFF during lunch about a patient I'd triaged earlier in the night:
Me: Dude. This chick just checked in for... 

Driving Around With No Pants On

If I try to direct blog traffic away from elle::est::belle:la:seine:la:seine:elle::est::belle and toward something I find noteworthy, there aren't going to be any resultant traffic jams.  Still, from time to time I fall in love with a blog that appeared out of the blue, some place I landed by accident on one of my crazy-ass searches.

Like:  How can I apply Bob Dylan's The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll in a way to express my contempt for the Weeper of the House, John "Crybaby" Boehner?





Like:  Cure for moat algae infestation, kind of a muted aubergine with bright red moving specks.  That won't harm the finish on The Captain's submarine.


Like:  naked women xxx  [My blog usually turns up on the first or second page of a Google search using these terms.  Also, if you plug in "red," and do a Google image search, my use of a very red graphic is now featured toward the top of page two.  It was used to illustrate a very important post that culminated in a group sing-along of De colores.  Funny, Fred and I were just a-warblin' away, putting our unusual vocal stylings all over that perky classic the other night.  It's the only song besides  I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night that he and the Militant Lesbian Feminist Existentialists can agree is appropriate music for Sunday services.]


Umm.  I've been awake for a long time now.  Going on 40 hours.  Okay, I took two naps totalling 1.5 hours 
-- both were achieved by judicious overdose.  I share this information because of how dangerous it is to start talking about blog discoveries and being ostentatious enough to start giving recommendations.


Yeah, well, whose blog is it, anyway? 


But, please, Lord, don't let all 51 of my subscribers** rush over to New Nurse in the Hood's place, just because an insomniac in a ShitFest of Pain recommends it -- lest the internet tip over.

** Plus the naked women xxx crowd from Israel, Dubai, Wisconsin, and Tajikistan [plus virtually all of the former Soviet Socialist Republics and every nationalized islamic society].

I ran into her as most of us run into new people in the blogosphere (it being such a small and cozy place 'n all):  via one of her comments.  She exuded Good Snark.  She made me laugh out loud, and I like that.

Why read ER blogs at all if you are not in the health care profession?  I am health-obsessed, obviously, as I don't have any.  But aside from that, they serve as an excellent reminder of two things:
1.  These are intelligent, spirited people with unique insights into what makes people do, say, and think the things that they do, say, and think.  If the nurse/doctor/tech writes well, also, that's just a dandy combination of talent that shouldn't be ignored.
2.  When I am considering going to the ER, I only need to spend 5 minutes on an ER blog for complete dissuasion of the notion.  I figure medical bloggers have done more to keep me out of the hospital and emergency department (nod to WhiteCoat***) than the combined efforts of the best medical team in the world and the complete ingested products of Big Pharma.

***See the end of this post by Nurse K for an explanation of ER versus ED.  And yes, I DO see similarities between "New Nurse" and the inimitable Nurse K... but I also see more soul and less asking-readers-for-money to buy a freaking refrigerator (or *whatever*).  I'm just sayin'.

Honestly picked at random from my Google Reader is this piece, from July 31:

I Just Had to Know
So, after a couple of years working in the ER I for the most part have learned to stop asking why. Why? Because what does it really matter, most of the time?
Why did you insert that particular object in that particular place? Does the answer make a difference as to how you remove it? Why did you continue to eat sloppy joes after you had been vomiting? Is there a good answer to this question? Why did you choose to get on the roof to get drunk? It doesn't really change the big ass head laceration at this point, so what the hell do I care?
Yup, now I'm like, "Oh, the old flashlight in the butthole, eh? Cool. Well, let's get that taken out for you. Next please."
Until tonight, when we got the drunk driver found in the car by EMS wearing a shirt, but no pants. We're clearing him from the backboard and without even thinking, I just blurted out, "What happened to your pants, bro?" Everyone in the room started laughing hysterically, because they all know, as I do, that it's pointless to ask- they all thought I was just screwing with the dude. But no, I was just really curious what was going on that he was driving around with no pants on. But alas, there was not a good answer.
Oh well.

So go visit.  You'll bust a gut.  And probably end up in the ER.  Uhh, ED.  Whatever.

Always remember and never forget:

"If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good." 

— Dr. Seuss

Man, I sure am using "Google" at the drop of a hat.  Hmm.  I wonder if that could be because I am scared of losing my current 27% profit on GOOG come Monday at about, ohhhh,  9.31 am, Wall Street time?  Ya think?

New Nurse

Though I am tempted to insist that she appear at the same time and in the same place with Nurse K, I enjoy reading New Nurse In The Hood's blog.  It's... scrappy.

Also, like the always aforementioned Nurse K, New Nurse reminds me of why you will never find me in an Emergency Room/Department unless my ACTUAL emergency involves lots of blood (and gore, lots of gore) that cannot be resolved by applying feminine pads to my shin. (Please try to keep up.) And even then, I might not go.  I mean, who knows, Dr. Schwartzman's Office Staff might try and call me with a free hair appointment.  Or a gift card for a shopping spree at Amputations R Us.

I'm fine.  Really!

Anyway... New Nurse is good.  And if only 10% of what she relates as happening in her ER/ED (screw WhiteCoat!) actually happens?  Then she is a far better person than I would be under similar circumstances.  Some of these folks qualify for Group Memberships on my List of People Who Need Killing.

Would you HUSH, please?  I said, "I'm fine," and that's what I meant: I'M FINE.

So... New Nurse gives us the run-down in this post entitled "Just an overall poor effort" -- from last Wednesday.  An optional title?  One girl, no brain.  Or something like that. 

It's an old tale, really, as old as time.  Shakespearean in its ridiculousness. 

Yes! Pregnancy games!  How to waste precious medical resources, in human as well as monetary terms!

From reading many an excellent medical blog, I get the feeling that a good version of New Nurse's "poor effort" post could be written weekly by each of them, and from fresh, actual material, too!  That's sad and pitiful.

Without further ado... why not start her post here and then finish it over there at her place?

Just an overall poor effort

Chick checks in last night for nausea x 5 days, with positive pregnancy test at home. Let me pop that in the hood hospital translator for you right quick:
I want a sonogram, and maybe another pregnancy test. Starts going into an in depth discussion with the triage nurse about when she started having sex with this dude that is with her currently. Listen sister, this isn't Maury, we just asked your LMP, next please.
So it was utter pandemonium and fuckery up until about 4 am last night, people were forming human pyramids in the waiting room because there were no more chairs, the line to check in wrapped around the building and everyone had chest pain. I had two dudes who fell off of roofs, like, really actually fell off of them, check in within 5 minutes of one another. One had a broken C2. So, uh, obviously this young woman's complaint was not of immediate concern. So she and baby daddy leave and do some shit at Walmart or whatever and then come back...

the::people::around::me

Henri Cartier-Bresson, La Villette, Paris 1929

New-nurse-in-the-hood describes herself this way:

Baby nurse in the ED surrounded by nursing homes in the worst part of a big city. Consequentially, I get sworn at A LOT, and I'm growing up fast.

I've been meaning to recommend her, but as you know, I'm not blogging much of late. It was on my list.

Then the girl went and wrote this, impinging on my doggone hiatus. She calls it Compassion Deficit:

I think everyone has their type of patient that they just can't get over the feeling of wanting to kick. I've been a little surprised at myself lately at who it's been. I've always known that I can't deal with the entitled patients. I know why, and I've learned how to deal with them. But lately another sort of pet peeve- I hate to even call it that, because it's a little stronger than that- has crept over me for our addicts.

This may seem like a given to a lot of nurses, especially those that work in ER. But it sort of bothers me. I've always sort of felt deep inside that the reason I always end up with so many high drama psych patients is that God knows I know how to deal with them. I always thought that I would feel sort of a kinship or at least a deep empathy for addicts because of my own past. I was never a substance abuser, but I've dealt my whole life with a lot of unhealthy tendencies. When I was about 13 or 14, I started cutting myself. A couple years later, I also started dieting to a ridiculous degree even though I was already underweight. When I slipped up, I would make myself throw up. I didn't tell anyone. For a long time. When my family found out, and I realized how much it hurt them to see me this way, I worked very hard to stop. I had my setbacks, and I still have the tendency to do these things. I always will. The thoughts still run through my head, but I have it in me to stop myself because I think about how it hurts the people around me.

I think this is where I struggle. I hurt for our depressed patients. I hurt for the type of people who rely on some self destructive behavior to escape all the bad things they feel. But I hurt even more for their families.

I took care of a lady with liver failure and esophageal varices the other day. I remembered her face. I knew why she was here. Drank herself sick again. This time, though, her son was with her. I knew I would have remembered him. He was a big cherubic looking kid. Really quiet. Really young, about 21. He never asked us for a thing. He sat there and stroked his mom's hair and held her hand while we tried to start an IV on her scarred-up shit veins. I don't think she even really acknowledged his presence. She did demand Dilaudid from us while he sat outside the room and cried. He asked one of the nurses how much it would cost to get his mother a liver transplant. That was enough to make me cry, too.

And my patient last night. Came in via EMS for approximately the 50th time this year. Took 9 Vicodin at once for whatever bullshit pain complaint she made up at that particular moment. Her tooth...nope. Maybe her back. And/or neuropathy. Wherever the pain was, she wasn't trying to kill herself or get high. She was just trying to make the pain better. In fact, the pain was still there, could she get some more pain medicine? Yeah. No. So her husband came back. Apparently this was a pretty regular little routine for them. By the way, she'd also been popping Xanax all day like they were sweet tarts. She does this and passes out, he says, so he just calls the ambulance as soon as she does it. Take her meds away, we tell him. Nope. Can't do it. Supposedly if he takes her meds she throws boiling water on him. Why he stayed with her I have no clue. But he did. The whole night he hugged and kissed her while she drooled. He cleaned and changed her when she peed on herself. This is my wife, he said. I married her because I love her. The EMTs who ran on her knew her by name. They said he would run down the block and use the pay phone to call 911 because she got so irate and abusive when he did it, so he would call from outside the house and pretend it wasn't him. I felt so awful for him. He clearly loved his wife so much, and there was absolutely nothing he could do for her.

I looked into both of these people's faces trying to find what it was that made these people love them. I could not figure it out for the life of me. Who had they been? And what happened? I can understand trying and failing. But I cannot understand looking into the eyes of your loved one and seeing the desperation I saw in both of these men and not wanting to change at all. The selfishness in them made me sick. It didn't change the way I cared for them but it just felt... bad. Like there was an anger in me for them that I really felt uncomfortable with. Chances are that these women will both kill themselves with their behavior one of these days. An awful part of me felt like it would be better for their loved ones if they went ahead and did it.

Is this normal? Am I putting too much on them? And is it even fair for me to compare my problems with theirs? This job sneaks up on me so bad some days.

[Click HERE to read more amazing blog entries over at New Nurse, in the Hood.]