Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Odds and Ends


Things not to do:

Show up tanked on the day of surgery.

No matter how nervous you are about having brain surgery, it's probably best not to appear at the hospital at 6 am completely schnockered. It'll require a delay in the start time. 

Yank the spike out of a REALLY big bag of fluid.

You all know that I am Genius Incarnate when it comes to being clumsy in new and creative ways. In the past, I've spilled most of the contents of the pharmacy on myself...but I reached a new high recently when I accidentally yanked the spike out of a three-liter bag of saline that was hanging at about head-level.

No, I don't want to talk about it any further. Thank you.

Sell drugs out of your hospital room.

Calling security is a pain in the ass. Could you not wait until you got home to make some extra bank?

Attempt to mug one of our employees in the parking garage.

Because, though she looks tired and vulnerable, she might actually end up being a second-degree black belt and wind up kicking your lousy ass. The cops who responded to the yanked emergency phone arrived to find one mugger, in a bruised lump on the concrete, and one rather pissed-off, medium-sized woman who just wanted to go home to bed.

Have two dogs, each well over a hundred pounds, and only a Honda Accord to move them around in.

I could solve this problem in one of two ways, I guess: 1) Buy a new car, like an xB or a Versa, that has room enough for two guys who each stand more than 25" at the shoulder. Or, alternatively, I could 2) Cobble together a lightweight cart and train them to pull it. That way I'd save the money on gas, give the boys some exercise, and look cool doing it.

The only problem would occur if Strider were to see a snack on one side of the street and Max a potential belly-rub on the other. 

Roll a loaded linen cart over your toes.

No, surprisingly, this did not happen to me. Owie, though.

Eat like, fourteen cups of blueberries at once because, you know, they taste soooo good.

I did this. It was actually more like three cups. That's still enough, though, for Interesting Things to Happen.

Ah, the glamorous life. I livez it.


6 comments:

shrimplate said...

During my psych rotation in nursing school (which is, by the way, *nothing* at all like the TV show of the same name) we were all amused one night when the local police were called to the closed unit because one of the clients was dealing cocaine to some of the others.

The cuffed him and took him away. He was smiling.

woolywoman said...

Hah! I once did that with TPN! The whole unit felt like the floor in a theater. Thank goodness it was the bag coming down, and not the one going up, or I would have had to bake for the whole freaking pharmacy.

Anonymous said...

Cool about the "medium sized black belt employee" making said mugger into a lump. Makes me want to take karate.
Of course I don't think I'd be too easy on someone trying to prevent me from going home to bed after a 13/h night.

Anonymous said...

At least it was only saline, right?

I had a run of spiking tube feeding bags with the bolus bag tubing, then trying to turn the bolus bag around to read it as i filled it...and instead twisting the tubing spike out of the hanging, full, bag of tube feeding. And the worst part was that it took two or three tries to figure out that maybe i needed to not turn the bolus bag around.

We rock. :D

Ian Furst said...

Hey Jo,

Can I add the following:

don't smoke/snort/shoot dope the morning of surgery (probably best not the night before either)

don't make out in the waiting room (while sitting on your lover's lap) while waiting to be called into the suite the morning of surgery.

SClubBethan said...

I'v had a linen trolley pushed over my toe by a porter in a hurry and yes- it does hurt! Ouch thinking of it!