From Leading Man
Leading Man wrote the following for his work buddies. If nothing else, this should demonstrate why I love this man so much:
1) At the ER admittance desk, if you complain of shortness of breath, take a seat, and have your wife answer all other questions, you will go to the head of the line.
2) The ER physician orders a CT scan of the lungs. Before a CT scan, the technician will ask at least 3 times if you’re allergic to iodine. If it is that important, shouldn’t we test for that first?
3) The CT technician also says that during the scan, you should take a deep breath and hold it. I told her if I could do that, I wouldn’t need the scan.
4) While waiting in the ER for the results of your CT scan, if a TEAM of doctors and nurses burst into your room, you’re probably not going home that night.
5) When the ER physician begins to explain your condition with “Wow…” and ends with a discussion of mortality rates, you’re definitely not going home that night. My naïve response to the physician was “it sounds like you’re telling me that this is a big deal.”
6) As one of many ICU/Telemetry patients, our vitals are transmitted, via telemetry, to a central location just outside the hospital rooms for monitoring. Alarms and multiple alarms coming from this location are quite common. It can seem annoying, particularly at night, until half asleep, you become vaguely aware of a nurse leaning over to re-adjust the oxygen lead in your nose, and waiting there until at least one of the alarms is silenced.
7) There are an infinite number of reasons for a hospital to draw blood. If your condition involves blood, then there are many more reasons.
8) During an attempted blood draw, if your veins roll to avoid the stick, or fail to yield a full vial of blood, or if you seem to have only limited sights to draw blood, you become known in nurse lingo as a “tough stick.”
9) A nurse or technician that can consistently draw a full vial of blood from a “tough stick” is called a “vampire.”
10) A “tough stick” and a “vampire” quickly become good friends.
11) If the hospital staff begins to look at your feet for a place to draw blood, you become eligible for the “tough stick” hall of fame.
12) If a nurse or technician draws only about half of a vial of blood and walks way saying, “hopefully this will be enough for the lab”, an hour and a half later, a “vampire” from lab services will arrive to draw more blood.
13) If you really want to know how you are doing, listen at shift change to the off-going nurse brief your condition to the on-coming nurse.
14) One phrase you will NEVER hear in a hospital…”it’s a good thing you were over-weight or your condition would have been much worse.”
15) If the doctors continue to refer to me as a “super coagulator”, I’m going to need a cape.
16) A few weeks ago I knew nothing about my blood oxygenation level, now it is the only number I care about.
17) Just because my condition is not present in my family’s medical history, I really didn’t appreciate the hematologist referring to me as the potential “genetic mutant.”
18) The doctors are emphatic that blood thinning does nothing to dissolve a clot, only keeps the body from making more. Only the patient’s body can dissolve a clot. Why do I think this point will be overlooked when the hospital bills arrive?
19) The hospital staff always seems concerned that your urine output is consistent with the amount of saline drip. Do they think I might be trying to steal saline solution?
20) When the nurse and technician roll a 4-wheeled cart into your room full of empty vials with various multi-colored caps, don’t be so naïve to think that they’re not all for you. When the nurse tries to convince you that it really isn’t that much, I think she’s comparing it to a blood donation.
21) If your blood is being shipped off to local universities for analysis, you can count on your hospital stay to be lengthened by 1 or 2 days per university.
22) If you want to have a low-key unemotional Father’s Day, do not have it in the ICU.
23) Even the most stoic nurse can be made to laugh with the following line…”gee, that pill tasted terrible, should I not have chewed that?”
24) If my blood is twice as thin as it once was, why do I weigh about the same?
Just the right combination of sarcastic, funny and sweet IMHO.
1) At the ER admittance desk, if you complain of shortness of breath, take a seat, and have your wife answer all other questions, you will go to the head of the line.
2) The ER physician orders a CT scan of the lungs. Before a CT scan, the technician will ask at least 3 times if you’re allergic to iodine. If it is that important, shouldn’t we test for that first?
3) The CT technician also says that during the scan, you should take a deep breath and hold it. I told her if I could do that, I wouldn’t need the scan.
4) While waiting in the ER for the results of your CT scan, if a TEAM of doctors and nurses burst into your room, you’re probably not going home that night.
5) When the ER physician begins to explain your condition with “Wow…” and ends with a discussion of mortality rates, you’re definitely not going home that night. My naïve response to the physician was “it sounds like you’re telling me that this is a big deal.”
6) As one of many ICU/Telemetry patients, our vitals are transmitted, via telemetry, to a central location just outside the hospital rooms for monitoring. Alarms and multiple alarms coming from this location are quite common. It can seem annoying, particularly at night, until half asleep, you become vaguely aware of a nurse leaning over to re-adjust the oxygen lead in your nose, and waiting there until at least one of the alarms is silenced.
7) There are an infinite number of reasons for a hospital to draw blood. If your condition involves blood, then there are many more reasons.
8) During an attempted blood draw, if your veins roll to avoid the stick, or fail to yield a full vial of blood, or if you seem to have only limited sights to draw blood, you become known in nurse lingo as a “tough stick.”
9) A nurse or technician that can consistently draw a full vial of blood from a “tough stick” is called a “vampire.”
10) A “tough stick” and a “vampire” quickly become good friends.
11) If the hospital staff begins to look at your feet for a place to draw blood, you become eligible for the “tough stick” hall of fame.
12) If a nurse or technician draws only about half of a vial of blood and walks way saying, “hopefully this will be enough for the lab”, an hour and a half later, a “vampire” from lab services will arrive to draw more blood.
13) If you really want to know how you are doing, listen at shift change to the off-going nurse brief your condition to the on-coming nurse.
14) One phrase you will NEVER hear in a hospital…”it’s a good thing you were over-weight or your condition would have been much worse.”
15) If the doctors continue to refer to me as a “super coagulator”, I’m going to need a cape.
16) A few weeks ago I knew nothing about my blood oxygenation level, now it is the only number I care about.
17) Just because my condition is not present in my family’s medical history, I really didn’t appreciate the hematologist referring to me as the potential “genetic mutant.”
18) The doctors are emphatic that blood thinning does nothing to dissolve a clot, only keeps the body from making more. Only the patient’s body can dissolve a clot. Why do I think this point will be overlooked when the hospital bills arrive?
19) The hospital staff always seems concerned that your urine output is consistent with the amount of saline drip. Do they think I might be trying to steal saline solution?
20) When the nurse and technician roll a 4-wheeled cart into your room full of empty vials with various multi-colored caps, don’t be so naïve to think that they’re not all for you. When the nurse tries to convince you that it really isn’t that much, I think she’s comparing it to a blood donation.
21) If your blood is being shipped off to local universities for analysis, you can count on your hospital stay to be lengthened by 1 or 2 days per university.
22) If you want to have a low-key unemotional Father’s Day, do not have it in the ICU.
23) Even the most stoic nurse can be made to laugh with the following line…”gee, that pill tasted terrible, should I not have chewed that?”
24) If my blood is twice as thin as it once was, why do I weigh about the same?
Just the right combination of sarcastic, funny and sweet IMHO.