Thursday, December 3, 2009

lessons, kids, lessons

Yesterday was a sucky and emotionally exhausting day, but let me share with you what I learned.

1.) If you are an old man in the ER with a "bolus" of chicken stuck half way down your esophagus because you've got a narrowing there that on rare occasions acts up, and that bolus has been there for over 18 hours, is preventing you from even drinking water, and you have not responded to the IV medication that is supposed to relax your esophageal muscles, the thoracic surgeon on call will tell the ER staff to give you meat tenderizer mixed in warm water that will plow through that bolus like Draino unclogging your bathroom sink, in a last ditch effort to avoid scoping you. Furthermore, the nurse practitioner from the surgeon's office will go to the Shaws supermarket up the street in her scrubs to buy the meat tenderizer herself and deliver it to the ER, because they in the thoracic surgery world are deeply suspicious of the watered down version of the active ingredient in meat tenderizer that the hospital pharmacy actually stocks.

2.) If you are in the ER midday on a Wednesday, you will be surrounded by people in their mid-forties through early sixties. They are not the patients. They are the children of the people in their late seventies through early nineties who *are* the patients. They will be alternately crying, trying to explain to their demented mother that no, she cannot just go home with her broken hip, or feeding their fathers meat tenderizer.

3.) Just wearing your beautiful new underwear beneath your jeans does not guarantee that you will actually get any sex on your day off from work. Not when there's meat tenderizer involved in your day.

The End

xoxo

5 comments:

crispix67 said...

Hmm..never heard of the meat tenderizer trick. Sorry to hear you had to spend your day in the ER, and that your undies did not make your day better :-(

malevolent andrea said...

They will also tell you very emphatically not to try the meat tenderizer trick at home ;-)

crispix67 said...

LOL- oh those ER people...such kidders. (I used to work in the ER-sometimes I miss it)

Uncle said...

I'm at an age where I take the trick seriously, and I'm taking notes.

Any day in the ER--as a patient or family member at least--sucks by definition. I wish more ED staff remembered that.

malevolent andrea said...

I SAID "don't try this at home..."

hahaha