I Freaking Love Medical Life
Out of semi-boredom and just for a laugh down the road, I have been writing down my hilarious and ridiculous hospital experiences. Most of the time my job is pretty mundane: a lot of sitting around, getting paged every hour or so, sometimes free lunch. Within the last month I've had some head-shaking experiences that I would just love to share.
This last Thurs. I was doing EKGs around 6:30ish, tip-toeing around darkened rooms, and trying not to wake patients up as I typically do that early in the morning. Each day I have a set of routine EKGs, which are EKGs ordered in the middle of the night when respiratory (who works when our offices close down) can't get to them for a good 2 hour stretch. So my final routine of the day takes me to the ICU, where a 96-year-old woman is sleeping soundly on her bed. Keep in mind this is a fairly dark room and, not wanting to wake her up, proceeded to do my EKG via hall lights. So she's hooked up, I return to my machine, and lo and behold I get no beat. I asked the charge nurse what was up and, sure enough, she had died about two hours before I entered the room. No cover, no rose on the door, but I did get a half-hearted apology as the nurse asked "was she cold?" Well she wasn't while we were spooning 10 minutes ago but let me go check again. What the hell kind of question is that? Not that I didn't appreciate three nurses watching me enter the room and administer an EKG on a deceased woman without saying anything, but I wasn't exactly feeling her forehead for a fever so if I'm not sure if she's "sub-93 degrees" ease up.
Later on that day I was taking a kid to x-ray, probably 11 or so, for a gash in his big toe, a gash that came as a result of watching TV in his living room when the chandelier came crashing down on the ottoman where he was resting his right foot. No broken bones, no glass, but a bit of blood and a cool-ish story for girls. Only girls with boobs, by the way, because this kid had some lofty standards and shared them with me as we walked. I don't remember 11 all that well (is that 5th grade?), but I can't believe I ever listed boobs as criteria for girls I dug. For that matter did I dig girls when I was 11? Either way that picture of his bike he showed me is sure to get him some come the skating party.
That's all I've got, now. Dave & Buster's was cool, likewise the Mai Tai Lounge. Too bad Dave is gone, one more cool person takes off and the midwest is that much less shallow. We'll miss ya, Dave-o.
This last Thurs. I was doing EKGs around 6:30ish, tip-toeing around darkened rooms, and trying not to wake patients up as I typically do that early in the morning. Each day I have a set of routine EKGs, which are EKGs ordered in the middle of the night when respiratory (who works when our offices close down) can't get to them for a good 2 hour stretch. So my final routine of the day takes me to the ICU, where a 96-year-old woman is sleeping soundly on her bed. Keep in mind this is a fairly dark room and, not wanting to wake her up, proceeded to do my EKG via hall lights. So she's hooked up, I return to my machine, and lo and behold I get no beat. I asked the charge nurse what was up and, sure enough, she had died about two hours before I entered the room. No cover, no rose on the door, but I did get a half-hearted apology as the nurse asked "was she cold?" Well she wasn't while we were spooning 10 minutes ago but let me go check again. What the hell kind of question is that? Not that I didn't appreciate three nurses watching me enter the room and administer an EKG on a deceased woman without saying anything, but I wasn't exactly feeling her forehead for a fever so if I'm not sure if she's "sub-93 degrees" ease up.
Later on that day I was taking a kid to x-ray, probably 11 or so, for a gash in his big toe, a gash that came as a result of watching TV in his living room when the chandelier came crashing down on the ottoman where he was resting his right foot. No broken bones, no glass, but a bit of blood and a cool-ish story for girls. Only girls with boobs, by the way, because this kid had some lofty standards and shared them with me as we walked. I don't remember 11 all that well (is that 5th grade?), but I can't believe I ever listed boobs as criteria for girls I dug. For that matter did I dig girls when I was 11? Either way that picture of his bike he showed me is sure to get him some come the skating party.
That's all I've got, now. Dave & Buster's was cool, likewise the Mai Tai Lounge. Too bad Dave is gone, one more cool person takes off and the midwest is that much less shallow. We'll miss ya, Dave-o.