Put That Pig on a Leash….

...is a phrase coined by the husband of a friend of mine.  She had been mowed down at the skating rink by a gal larger than she, thus inflicting bodily harm and a trip to the ER requiring sutures.  He was referring to the mower, not the mowee.  That was about 12 years ago.  It's still funny.

Today I use the term to refer to the pigs who inhabit my world, the patients as well as their families and visitors, cousins, neighbors, acquantances, etc.  Basically anyone who dwells in any part of my ER.  All pigs.  And it's not just the blood and gore, spit, vomit, piss, shit that has turned me into a germophobe.

The waiting room is littered with trash.  Trust me, it's not the staff who does this.  The leavings of fast food fine dining are left on the floor, empty chairs, windowsills.  Coffee cups, soda cans.  Trash bins are apparently sacred oracles to be avoided at all costs.

Masks that coughing patients are asked to don are crumpled and left anywhere.  I can't even speak about used Kleenex and used (usually empty) vomit bags.

We clinical staff , because we don't have enough to do, disinfect and clean the treatment rooms after the patient leaves.  This should only take a few minutes although I try to do a through job cleaning up after my pig patients to make it spiffy for my next pig patients.  But the rooms are generally disasters.  In addition to the aforementioned trash will also be used bandaids and used gauze, used Kleenex and paper towels strewn about.  Meal trays.  Each of 12 EKG electrodes and at least 3 monitor electrodes are  stuck to the bedside table or side rails because the trash, all of 2 feet away, is just too much of an effort.

 I disinfect all the moving parts that touch my patients.  We use the environmental staff only if there is debris on the floor such as body fluids, mud,  or an infestation of bed bugs.  Once it was necessary to have environmental steam clean a room after one of my patients arrived with 3 different infestations of insect and covered in poo.  The poor old soul.  I discarded my scrubs and demanded new ones.  Then I had them steam clean my clogs, otherwise I would have thrown them away.

This is why the germophobe in me gets worse all the time.  I compulsively wash my hands because of people's piggish habits.   I am protecting myself from their germs rather than the other way around, despite the admonitions for staff to do so.  Cute little posters that invite the public to put us on the spot and ask if they don't see us doing so.  Yes I use sanitizer, but consider it a stopgap until I can get to hot running water and soap.  To me using hand sanitizer is the equivalent of taking a deep breath and holding it until you can get away from a stench and take a deep breath of fresh air.

 Unless you live in a permanent bubble, the world is full of germs, every surface you touch in the real world.  In a medical environment where people are casual about excreta it is worse.  And lets just say the bathroom habits of the general public is less than optimum.  There are a LOT of people who don't wash after using the toilet.  Shudder.  Many and many a time I am approached with a proferred full specimen container.  Sometimes it is damp, sometimes it is wet.  In a damp bag.   And people expect me to accept it without putting on gloves.  NOPE.  I disinfect with Lysol any pens  which people sign their admission or discharge patients because scrupulous attention to hygiene seems to have gone by the wayside.  If people are truly disgusting I throw them away.

OK, now I am going to turn you into a raging germophobe too.  After exiting the bathroom, handing me a warm, wet cup of pee (or whatever), people are perfectly happy to go and sit down in the waiting room.  In chairs that are never disinfected.  Eating their doritos and drinking their lattes, handling money, going in and out of the cafeteria.

WITHOUT WASHING THEIR HANDS.

Now, what else are they touching?

Sleep well.

Science is my religion (or "your delivery sucks, man")

I am not anti god.  I am not anti religion.

Heaven or hell?  Not so much.

I don't praise god for good weather, getting into the college of one's choice, surviving a heart attack.  Neither do I blame god for tornadoes, losing the state championship, or childhood cancer.

Good shit happens, bad shit happens. People are great, or they suck.

There is life.  There is death.

To me, any religion involves drinking the Kool-Aid, which has never been my drink of choice.  I can swim but don't dunk myself in just any old river.

If religion is what floats your boat, gives you a reason for living, brings you comfort,  or helps you cope,  I'm fine with that.

Do I walk out during a Last Rites ritual? No. Do I act insensitivity when my patients ask for clergy, or say "God bless you?" Of course not.  If a patient says they will pray for me, I say "thank you".  If they ask me to pray with them, I will hold their hand.  I have even been known to say "God bless you" when someone sneezes.

I have no problem whatsoever with Nativity scenes on public town squares.  I think saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is PC bullshit.

 I respect that this great nation was founded on Christian values.   I am fine with "one nation, under God", or "In God We Trust".  These mottos are important to the history of the US.  It's not with the Christian values that I have a problem, but with some so-called Christians.

I'm fine with talking to you (but will not debate) about your religious rituals, holidays, beliefs.  It's interesting to me.  I have a problem with people getting all judgey and assuming that theirs is the only point of view that is correct.  Usually it spills over into other aspects of their daily life and belief system, but that is a post for another day.  All I ask of anyone is that you not ram your religious beliefs up my ass.  Or want to chop off my head because I don't believe what you believe.  Mostly, I'm fine with whatever you believe as long as you keep it to yourself and don't come knocking on my door looking for donations or insist that I need saving.

Here is the point of my preamble.  One of my mother's close friends died.  At home, comfortably, with her family surrounding her.  Enviable.

I accompanied her to the funeral and the collation.  Mom is the only person I know who refers to the funeral after-party as such.  I had to look it up, thinking for sure she had misappropriated the word, but nope.  It's a word.  My mother is a Scrabble whiz at 85, and regularly kicks my ass.

If I did believe, I would probably thank god for  the end of the most excruciating homily of the most painful funeral service of my lifetime.

Her friend was a parishioner of St. John of the Autobahn, practically a four lane highway.  Very busy and difficult to park.  I hate to be late to shit, especially funerals.

 The priest was admittedly out of mothballs retirement for the Catholic Mass,  He did not know my mother's friend, and clearly never bothered to ask the family about her.  It would have helped enormously if he had even bothered to read the obituary.  Lots of good stuff there.  He could have extrapolated a minimum amount of information at least.  He never used her name.  Ever.  Not once.

It started badly.  "Funerals",  he intoned, "are the time when we should examine our relationship with God".

Um, well,  me and God broke up when I was 12 and he killed my only sister  took my newborn baby sister home to be an angel.  I just could never see a cold patch of earth in a place as dismal as a cemetery as a better place.  So consider my relationship examined, found wanting, and terminated.

The homily went on and on.  And on.  No mentions of my mother's friend, no friendly words of comfort for the family.  "You must live the life of the righteous, and the kingdom of heaven and eternal life in the house of the lord will be yours.  If you do not feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked…..you will dwell forever in darkness and in sin. "

I distinctly heard a quiet, but audible, "What the fuck?', and had a moment of panic when I thought the words had  escaped my thought bubble and exited, unbidden, through my lips.  But no. It was the guy behind me, as gobsmacked as I.

Later, at the collation, the old ladies buzzed about what came to be known as the "Fire and Brimstone" incident.

I felt bad for the family, whose devout wife/mother/grandmother/aunt had done such lovely things in her lifetime had such a crummy sendoff from a church she loved.  Mom said, "She would have been pissed."

Another one bites the dust

You might recall Lazy Nurse.  Well, like all lazy nurses, she left to take a job for better pay.  Buh-bye.

She will not be missed, and I doubt that she will be rehired when she quits her current job at Big City Monster ER, where she will not last long, I'm betting.  

They will eat her for lunch, she and her Lazy Nurse ways.  

Memory

This is the tale of the toughest man I ever met, a 90 something who fell off a ladder.  Yes, a ladder.  Why a 90 year old would be on a ladder defies the imagination as well as gravity, but understandable knowing that he also still rides a motorcycle.  He was in amazing shape, a wiry muscular frame and sharp as a tack.  With piercing blue eyes, he saw everything and used everyone's name.

The fall dislocated his shoulder.  After a difficult series of manipulations with minimal medication, at his request, he shrugged the whole thing off like it was no big deal.  He was chatty and engaging.  He  wore a WWII service cap.  My partner asked him about his service, and he told us the where and when he had served.  Her recounted the story of his most memorable WW2 experience like it happened yesterday, and not over 70 years ago.

"You see a lot of things.  You think about them every day".

I was riveted as I rested my arms on the side rails and leaned in to catch every word.  B, my partner, was on the other side of the cot,  equally attentive.  Without taking my eyes off him I slowly reached my hand toward the monitor to silence the alarm as he quietly told about his closest call, an explosion that destroyed his hearing but left him otherwise physically intact.

"The other man (note he did not refer to him as the enemy) was as close as you and I were.  I had my gun.  He had a grenade.  We looked each other in the eye, that look... we each knew what the other was thinking.  In that second we both knew that he had to kill himself to kill me.  As he opened his hand, I launched myself backwards.  It was miraculous, I came out of it not hurt...but with a lot of him on me."

How do you get past something like that?

You live to age 90, being grateful every day for your life, and living it to the fullest by riding motorcycles and falling off ladders.  And teaching life lessons.

Name game, vol. 2

Ok,  some additional head shakers:

Shaen.

Broedy

Shyanne

Jasiyah  (Josiah??)

Malissa

Crystol

Dunovan

Milissa

Tiler

Jaesun

Jeramia

Hydie

Zakkary

Falasha

Ileenee (the 2nd e on the end is silent)

That's all for now.