Adventures In Gastroenteritis, Day Two...

Ugh...



Thank you to everyone who posted a reply on my thread yesterday. I appreciated the company.

*****Birthday Thread For cilla4progess*****

Happy Birthday!

Called in sick today...

Friday Night Wine-Buzz.

Earlier than usual. Mrs. Aristus is binge-watching Modern Family, so I beat a hasty retreat.

Cheers!

A little under the weather today. Too much vodka last night.

Or not enough...

But after some corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and a little hair of the dog, I'm feeling right as rain...

Good St. Patrick's Day evening, Loungers!

Friday Night Vodka-Buzz. Ask me anything.

Sorry I'm late. I was at a party hosted by one of Mrs. Aristus's co-workers.

I'm finally off call!

And enjoying myself appropriately...

Mrs. Aristus is on NetFlix re-watching old episodes of 'Friends'.

I looked in on a few scenes, then beat it out of there.

I remembered how awful all six of those people were. Insufferable.

And I remembered why I was never a big fan in the first place.

Arrrrgh! Have you read reports of jail inmates dying of dehydration while in custody?

From the looks of it, a new patient I visited with just now may have been subjected to such treatment while she was in our local county jail.

She was taking a shower in our hygiene center when we heard a moan, and a thud on the floor. My assistant (a woman) ran in to see if she was all right, and found her curled up on the floor, evidently having an anxiety attack. My MA got her covered with a towel, and I came in and did a quick assessment. She was pretty badly dehydrated (heart-rate was off the charts). When she was able to talk, she told me the infirmary at the jail diagnosed her with strep throat, but neglected to treat her.

My team got her cleaned up and dried off, then put her in an exam room. I did a full evaluation including for strep, and prescribed the appropriate treatment. The patient told me that the staff at the jail had cranked the heat in the cellblock and then denied her any form of hydration for a couple of days.

A colleague of mine works down at the jail. I'm going to ask him tomorrow what the hell is going on down there...

If there's such a thing as 'compassion fatigue', I'm having it right now.

As posted on Friday in lieu of a drinking thread, I'm on call this weekend. Actually until next Friday morning.

Yesterday, I got a call from a patient (not one of mine) who stated that he was having suicidal thoughts, and wanted help. He said his wife had just left him, and he was also taking a medication that was making him feel suicidal. I took a look at his chart, and he had definitely been prescribed a medication for which suicidal ideation is a potential side effect.

I told him I would call the crisis response team based out of a local hospital, and that they would be contacting him right away. I got off the phone with him and called the crisis response team. The dispatcher took the patient's information, and forwarded me to the team leader.

The team leader told me: "Oh yeah, this guy. He calls every weekend declaring that he is going to kill himself. But by the time one of us is able to get him on the phone, he says he feels fine, and there's nothing to worry about." I thanked her for the information, noting that this was my first experience with this patient. She said she would do due diligence and call him. I thanked her and said goodbye.

Got another call from him today, stating that no one from the crisis response team had either visited him at his home or called him. Same thing: I told him I would call them back and find out what happened. I was put in touch with the same team leader, (I guess this is her weekend in the barrel, too) who laughed and confirmed that she had called the patient yesterday, and that he was just up to his usual tricks. She clarified that he had no wife to leave him in the first place. Once again, I thanked her, and told her how much I respected her patience and good humor.

The call service called a third time about an hour ago, with a call holding from the same patient. This time, the call-service guy advised me to have a note placed on this patient's account that he is a frequent-flyer. I agreed, and asked him to add the number for the crisis response team, so he can call them directly, thereby avoiding wasting the time of at least two different service organizations in the process.

There are so many people out there who are in genuine pain and experiencing actual suicidal thoughts, that it's an outrage that this guy is continually pulling this crap, wasting the time of people who sincerely want to help those in need.

When next Friday rolls around and I'm off call, I'm going to have an extra drink for every time this hammerhead calls me for the rest of my call shift...

Go to Google Images. Do a key word search for 'gothic novel covers'.

You will be treated to a never-ending sequence of paperback novel covers, most of them from the 1960's; nearly all of them fall into a pattern: a lovely young woman in billowy evening dress, running away from a sinister house, mansion, castle, monastery, etc, all dark, except for one single light burning in an upper window, signaling that the evil lord of the manor has noticed that the heroine is missing.

I have been enamored of this kind of novel cover-art since I was a kid. I would spend hours browsing through old bookstores when I was young, no more than ten or so. Once, I discovered a shelf of these books, and was captivated by this admittedly rather cheesy cover art. The eerie, sinister images haunted me, probably far more so than the prose inside the books would have, if I'd ever bothered to read them.

I never did.

I've only ever read a few pieces of gothic fiction, and only the classics: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, Dracula, by Bram Stoker, The Castle Of Otranto, by Horace Walpole, and Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

But still, I often get a kick out of looking at those covers and wondering if the stories within ever lived up to those entrancing images...