street Drug

6:42 PM

I pull into the lot and sit for a minute. I say a small prayer that goes something like, “God, why do you punish me so? I HATE YOU……Amen!”
I sigh a deep and agonizing sigh and hoist my tired ass outta my truck and into the pits of hell that is our Emergency Department.

This one tends to have the psychotic market cornered so as to promise an especially challenging shift. One that will one day assure my place amongst the ranks of chronically psychotic.

06:45

I’m met at the vacuum sealed double doors, coffee in hand and a bad attitude by a crash and a yell, “Hey, ..STOP HIM” I’m a tad stunned to

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see Atilla the Hun barreling towards me and a crack team of nurses and doctors all looking at him, pointing at me and caring less that he decided to make an untimely exit. As Mr Hun blazes by me I wish him well, pat him on the back and kindly hit the silver button on the wall, allowing him that very freedom that appears he’s willing to die (kill) for. We surround him in the parking lot where he is coaxed back inside by the unit clerk with the promise of a hot meal, a cool buzz (Ativan) and a quick admission to the floor in time for the NBA playoff game. All this love and attention because wifee wanted

Drug Deficiency Anemia
...because I am not made out of money. I ll need a lot of cheap or free drugs. Street drugs are looking better all the time, when you think about the costs. I ll probably have to do such combinations ...

out and he wasn’t crazy about the idea. He’s put up for about a 1000 dollars a night, spoiled, pittied and pampered until he’s ready to say he’s sorry and he’ll be a good boy. 72 hours later he’s released with hugs abound. When presented with the $5200.00 bill he explodes at the admissions desk, shares a few expletives with the beleaguered clerk and vows to “never pay you sorry mutha*****!” No doubt the soon-to-be-ex-wife will soon end up in one of our local trauma centers, unfunded, unloved and unconscious.

7:04 PM

I’m sucking down my now lukewarm coffee and I am thinking, “All this already”….”AND I HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED MY SHIFT YET”.

No sooner do I sit down for

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...in the first place but who's parents snuck her in so she could watch grandma vomit stool. 9:47 SMOKE BREAK. 9:52 Catch an earful from someone elses patient who is unhappy that no one has fed her, angry because no ...

report when I am approached in rapid succession by a flurry of angry, psychotic, confused patients and family members. “Can I have water?”… When is the doctor coming in?”…..”That 200 milligrams of Demerol just ain’t workin, can I get another ‘hunerd?”….”My father just took a shit in your garbage can and now he’s got the red thermometer in his mouth and the BLUE one up his….” “MA’AM,…I’ll be with you momentarily” (i.e. I’M DRINKING MY *****IN COFFEE)
The oncoming shift all look and feel as I do. There is distance in their stare. Want in their heart…And a loaded .45 caliber just under their fanny pack if a career change is near. The outgoing Nurses are bouncing around and

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singing like they are Oompa Loompa’s in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. The elation at the end of another ER shift is truly palpable. You tend to be a little nicer, a little better nurse, a little more human, if only for a few moments. But we are just arriving and could give a damn about 90% of the crap that invades our Emergency rooms on any given day. All we care about is who is dying and how can we help. The animal’s will have to wait.

7:11

At once I establish who my patients are, why they are here and if they are pending admission to the Eternal Care Unit. I bury myself into the sickest

one’s and assure that all is medically stable, comfort is being maintained, info is passed along, all the while offering up a healthy dose of compassion and professionalism. They are why I am here and why I chose this profession. My other 2 patients are chronic alcoholics, multiple visits, multiple attempts to dry them out at the tax payers expense, multiple personalities. Neither can see straight, pee straight or walk a straight line. Both have liver’s the size of Rhode Island. One has jaundice so bad it looks as though he spent his last drinking binge slurping Vodka Martini’s in a tanning booth. One will eventually get admitted as a medical patient because his blood alcohol level exceeded numbers that

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resembled surface temperatures of the Sun. He will go on to dry out overnight and sign out against medical advice by morning………. and, be drunk again by noon.