Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Today's Last Patient of the Night....from the other night...

happened to be the Lady on Elm St. We heard the ambulance tone out for leg pain to her address on the scanner, so we knew what was coming. I looked up her last several visits to see if she had been seen recently: nope, just a bunch of outpatient stuff. Whatever.

The paramedics who brought her in were an interesting team; Drew is somewhat of an ass bordering on douchebaggery, but seems to be growing up a little of late. He is making fewer insensitive comments, actually asks intelligent questions and has been less condescending than usual to the patients whom he deems beneath him, or less deserving of his vast array of knowledge. Or taking pictures with his I Phone of random stupid stuff. ("Oh! Want to see a picture of an icicle that looks like Larry the Cable Guy?"....um, no. But thanks for asking).

Lady was on an insulin that I hadn't seen before along with her 25 other daily meds (not total doses, total meds....not including the PRN pain meds that she routinely takes and just doesn't seem to get around to adding to her med list). Drew took the time to look it up on his fancy phone.

So, Lady had been given an antibiotic for a 2 cm. red area on her leg the day before. Gee, it's not better. Wow.

Bobo gave her another antibiotic and I dispatched her via comped cab to her home in near record time, a happy camper. But since it was the night before Valentine's Day, I decided to have some fun with Bobo in case he had received a funny bone transplant recently.

Lady had given Cripes a Valentine the week before; a nice long, flowery valentine, for which he received an enormous ration of shit. Lady just LOVES Cripes, and even gave him a big hug to prove it.

I took a plastic heart off the wall and wrote:
"Dear Dr. Roboto,
You are the best doctor in the world. I am so glad that I had you to take care of me today. If you give me your schedule, I will come in every time you are working.
Love and Kisses,
Lady"

After she left, I handed it to him
"Here, Lady left this extra special valentine for you"

He took it, read it, blushed and said, "She really did this?"

Me: (laughing) ".Um, no, not really. I just knew that Cripes had received one and didn't want you to feel left out".

He had the good grace to laugh. "Guess I'm a little slow on the uptake. That's pretty funny".

Me: "I'm going to put it in your call room for everyone to see".

Bobo: "Haha, they will all be jealous".

Naturally I left it for Mikki and Sherry who called me early in the morining when Bobo was back to work the early shift with them Not thinking or believing that I had the guts not only to do it but to show it to him, they left it for Bobo along with a chocolate heart. It kind of backfired since it was already played. But they did get a laugh out of it.