Random Thoughts Part VI

Assessment of the elderly, sounding confused.

When I am assessing a patient, and ask, in my interview, ref location/day of month/day of week/name/etcetera, when you are not the patient, and YOU answer, talking over the patient, please realize that IDGAF about YOUR mentation, and when you coach the patient, it really, really interferes with my assessment. Plus, it is entirely likely that I myself KNOW the place/day/date/season/etcetera, because, you can bet your ass that if it were NOT Tuesday March the 41st, I would certainly be somewhere else, doing something else, other than attempting to struggle my way through your interruptions of my evaluation of your parent.

In a similar vein, when I ask Jim-Bob where he hurts, probably, when you coach Jim-Bob, admonishing him to “Tell the doctor where you hurt”, you are not really contributing any value whatsoever to the interview. If Jim-Bob indeed comprehends my question, you are only adding noise and distraction and likely, that is NOT helpful. If, on the other hand, Jim-Bob does not understand my query, your repeating it IN THE VERY SAME FREAKING WORDS, neither adds to the information that I require, so that I may care for Jim-Bob properly, nor facilitates timely implementation of that care. So, unless Jim-Bob does NOT speak Engrish, himself, please STFU, and allow me to interview the patient. Or, perhaps, go boil some water, gather a fresh newspaper and some clean shoelaces, right now, please.

Which will, of course, require you depart the exam room and allow me to complete my interview and examination.

Thank you.

Thoughts about Cost vs Price:

Lowe’s “bargain bin” AA battery powered cell phone charger: $10

Having several in your Bag-O’-Tricks at work, so you can hand one to a patient you’re sending to ED via ambulance, whose phone is dead: Kharma.

Having that guy get my cheap-o, bought-on-a-whim charger back to me, with a thank you: PRICELESS!

EMS LAW OF ALTITUDE: Patient’s weight divided by number of floors above street level equals a constant, “K”. Therefore, a 300 pound inert patient on the first floor is roughly equivalent to a 1200 pound patient on the 4th floor. With no functional elevator. And the first due engine company out on a working fire.

(redacted)’s Law: (I don’t have permission to use his name, but it’s not *MY* formulation) When responding to an EMS call, and you are pretty sure that you are on the correct block, but, for some reason, folks in this neighborhood do NOT have any house numbers, seek out the most tumbledown anonymous house on that block, and knock, Your patient awaits inside.

(redacted’s partner)’s Corollary Number One: The one house on the block with ghetto gates (bars on the doors and windows), is your call.

Corollary Number Two: Occupants of the house with the gates KNOW who is performing all the neighborhood B & Es.

Corollary Number Three: There is nothing inside the grilled house worth stealing. The decor is milk crates, cast offs, soiled mattresses on the floor. Even odds that the smell makes the place a haz mat scene.

Final Thought”

Please, please, please! If your physician has ALREADY prescribed a medication for your affliction, take the freaking med, BEFORE your come to my clinic stating that you require treatment for that selfsame affliction! Because, it could happen that my self control may lapse, and I may, indeed, ask you just how exactly I may help you, when you not only were prescribed, but physically picked up, the very medication that I would have prescribed (and, indeed, wound up prescribing) for your problem.

But, OF COURSE, you weren’t here to get a work note! Totally!

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“He Didn’t Have To Be”

Well, campers, the sun is shining, it is 40-something outside, and that means that, in The Un-Named Flyover State, it is time to start sunbathing!

Well, almost, but not quite. In any event, it is time to reflect, gratefully, on the looming advent of spring. And, that turns me back to my recent theme, gratitude and thankfulness.

In 2006-2007, The Plaintiff divorced me. It was a dark time. I had taken-for-granted (perhaps, one of our problems, right there?) that she would always be there, and that we would always work through our rough spots. I was, of course, mistaken, and the divorce provided irrefutable evidence of same.

I was immersed in depression, and found myself weeping at traffic lights, for example. (Has anybody else experienced the angst, the melancholy, pouring out of a RED LIGHT?) (uh, no? oh, ok. Maybe it was simply me…..)

It was in the midst of this self pity party, that my step daughter (who I have everywhere else referred to as my daughter, as that is how I view her, notwithstanding the fact that she has none of my chromosomes) made for me, and gave me, a Christmas gift, that I treasure to this very day.

Brad Paisley has a song, on his Who Needs Pictures album, entitled “He Didn’t Have to Be”. The narrative is a step child (in Paisley’s, and his co writer’s case, a son), who gets included early on in his single mother and (to be) step dad’s activities, and how that forms a family. My daughter copied that song, and created a slideshow, set to that song, of photographs of my children, their mother and I, as our own family formed, and grew.

I wept. At the time my daughter created that slideshow, she was, herself, a single mother, working full time, as well as going to school full time. Her child, my oldest grand daughter, had spent more than a little time in pediatric ICU. My daughter had spent who knows how many hours collecting those photos, organizing them, arranging them, including that song, knowing that it would touch my heart, perhaps knowing, even, that I *needed* that memoir.

That was the single nicest, most apt, most engaging Christmas present, that I have ever received. She gave it to me for Christmas 2007, and I played it, again, today.

Over 13 years later, I wept, again. Thank you, honey. You have touched me, again. Still.

For so many reasons, I am grateful for my children.

GRATITUDE

My mother died last month. She had passed her 100th birthday, and was living in the house she had occupied for something like 40 years. The immediate trigger to her death was liver failure, occasioned, most likely, by an adverse interaction between anesthetics and a century old liver. She had fallen, a couple of days prior, and fractured her hip. The surgery, fortunately, was for this sort of thing, uncomplicated, and she evidently tolerated the surgery side of the affair pretty well.

That is to set up the following deliberation. Gratitude. My mother was able to spend her last months in her house, because my youngest brother pretty much dropped everything, and moved in with her. The woman who has been his family’s housekeeper for something like a generation (from well before The Plaintiff became The Plaintiff, in fact!), also dropped her comfortable daily routine, and became my mother’s de facto practical nurse. Wordy as I am, I am unable to adequately describe my gratitude to my brother, and (let us call er…) Angelica. I thanked them both, even though my brother sloughed it off, “You would have done the same, if you had been able. Hell, you *did* do the same, for Dad.” Angelica simply smiled, sniffled a bit, and turned away.

Mom was able to live pretty independently in the two years prior to that, due to my middle brother, and his wife, let us call her “Donna”. Due to Donna’s efforts, in particular, Mom was able to live in her own apartment, have her dog with her, and, generally, run her own life. Donna made certain Mom got to her doctor appointments, got and took her medications, had her clothing laundered, had food in her frig, and that the dog got walked. All this on top of running her, Donna’s, own household, and helping her husband, my brother, run his business. Thank you.

Prior to that, well, there are, and were, neighbors who looked in on Mom. Then, there is The Car Service Guy. https://wordpress.com/post/musingsofastretcherape.wordpress.com/431 During one power failure (different from The Car Service Guy story), her neighbors physically took her in, where she stayed at their house, warm due to their generator, eating their hot food, and remained until the power was restored. Without these folks, not a one of whom was any sort of kin to my mother, she could not have lived in the house that she loved, for as long as she did, as nearly independently as she did. Thank you. God Bless you.

Police officers in her town, on a couple of occasions, looked in on her at my, and my brother’s request, and reported back that she had been fine. Thank you.

Several of my youngest brother’s friends, living “only” one state over, would drop in on her a couple of times a year, helping make sure that she was getting on alright, and providing an “eyes on” report to my brother. Thank you, as well.

I have to say, the shriveled vestigial organ where my heart may have once resided, is warmed by the good example of these folks. Not for them the bullshit “You voted for Trump! Demon!, or “You voted for Biden! Traitor!”, pejoratives that seem to pass for political discourse. Simply, good people, watching for their neighbors, and living the admonition, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Good people, good examples. Thank you.