Enough with the sweet sentimentality. It's time for some bitching.

1. When a nurse charges, we give them little phones to carry around. That way, we can reach them when something like a code or a respiratory-team response happens. If you are a charge nurse, please carry your phone so we can reach you, and some gooberhead like me doesn't have to respond to RTRs with a little box and a befuddled expression.

2. If you smoke before rounds, Doctor, please flap your coat around outside so you don't choke the rest of us with your putrid cigar smoke. Or smoke better cigars. Please.

3. You're going to get a bath. I don't care what you say. You're in the ICU, you get a bath. If not now, later. Seriously. If I can smell you from the door, you might get two. Believe me, it's not fun for me, either, but it does help cut down on infection rates.

4. Neuro-breath may be the worst thing ever. It's not due to intubation--non-intubated patients get it too--and it has nothing to do with overall oral hygiene. It's a weird, awful bad breath that people who've had bleeds get. I do not know why, and I'd like to, so that there might be some chance someday of some bright person solving the problem.

5. Delicate-featured, pale redheads should never wear as much makeup as you're wearing, Doctor. Trust me on this. If you're leaving smudges on your own labcoat by turning your head, you've got too much paint on.

6. While I'm at it, can every owner of every beauty and fashion blog in the world please get over this putting-eyeliner-on-the-inside-rim-of-your-eye kick? It looked like crap in 1983, and it looks like crap now. Not only do you end up with irritated eyes and black eye boogers, you look like a tired old whore. Or at least I do. Because I believe in truth in advertising.

7. The time to schedule every single elective aneurysm clipping in a three-state area is not the week that our main CT develops some weird software problem and has to be taken apart.

8. And while I'm at it, the time to mention that oh, yeah, I forgot, I *do* have some metal implants in this arm from when I broke it as a kid is *not* as I'm sliding you into the MRI. Especially when it's a stat MRI. Perhaps especially-especially when the resident on call has already dragged his exhausted ass out of bed and come up here to admit you, and he's already cranky.

9. If your six-hundred-pound mother-in-law has just had an extremely risky gastric bypass surgery, she is not allowed fried chicken to eat. Please don't try to smuggle it in under your shirt.

10. Likewise, when we've just had a huge scare regarding Fifth's Disease and immunocompromised patients (and pregnant nurses) is not the time to attempt to smuggle your small baby into the ICU in a tote bag.

There. I'm done now. You can expect more sweet sentimentality and wide-eyed wonder next week.