Take A Bow, Douchecanoe @$$hole Mouthy Visitors

It never ceases to baffle me how people who would never lip off at the DMV, or when getting dinner at a restaurant, or while standing in line at Starbucks, or anywhere else, think that when they show up at the hospital, the rules of civility and decency have suddenly magically disappeared - for them.

Dear fuckweasels: Thought For The Rest Of Your Life
Didja ever lip off at a restaurant, and show that dumb waiter who's the boss?
Didja ever notice afterwards that your food all tasted like spit??!!!
WORD!

Take a lesson: some of us won't be badgered by your rude assholerry, and will not only give you worse than you send, and that right in front of your friends and family, we're big enough to make it stick, including sideways up your ass in the parking lot if you think you can go there.

And nota bene: your friend/relative in the bed is the patient. They have an actual reason for being here. Your presence is a mere courtesy, and a revocable one at that. The minute, no, the second dealing with a knobjob like you interferes in the slightest way with patient care in my room, I don't care if you're the Pope's uncle, your ass is out, for good, permanently. I will make you persona non grata, with no visiting privileges, and I'll happily swear out the restraining order in the morning to make that a permanent situation. Test me, I triple dog dare you.

If you shut down your mouth long enough to engage your eyes and ears, you might also notice that your friend is
1) Getting damned good care
2) Not very happy when you're being an obnoxious litter box nugget
3) Eager to forget he/she knows you when you bring your Inner Jackass, and let him/her out to play in front of God and everybody.

So instead of "advocating for your friend"*, realize that you're just another pain in my ass, because all you're really doing is demonstrating your impotence to do anything more helpful than dropping a hand grenade into the outhouse just to watch the shit fly.

My cure for your problem is sending you to Siberia, forever, and if you want to go double or nothing, you can find out what the bail is on Monday morning for disturbing the peace, trespassing, and/or assault and making terroristic threats. See if the judge thinks it's as funny then as you do now. Especially if you blow a point-anything on the jail breathalyzer.
BTW, I document the antics of lunatics for a living; good luck with "your side" of things after I file my totally accurate notes of the encounter in a legal document, for the permanent record, right after it all happens, while you're still hitching up your trousers and looking for that missing piece of your hindquarters, sobering up in a holding cell, or trying to get someone to go good for your bond.

Or just cowboy up, and realize that if we're taking care of a friend or family member who's having a heart attack, a stroke, or bleeding out, fucking with us while we're doing our jobs probably isn't in their best interests either.

So do yourself and your buddy a great big favor: sit your ignorant ass down, or go get yourself a nice steaming hot cup of STFU, while people smarter than you do the job they're being paid to do, instead of dealing with dumbasses like you interfering with other peoples' care.

Momma may have pinned your diapers up on the family refrigerator and told you they were art since you were two years old, but now that you're only acting like a two year old, the rest of us can see your handiwork for exactly what it is, and reality is about to slap you real hard right in the back of the head. With a sock full of quarters.


*(After 20 years of this BS, it's no longer anecdotal evidence: 99.98% of these Special Snowflake Wannabe Patient Advocate douchenozzles are the visitors, not the patients. If you like watching Wheel Of Fortune for hours, and reading old dental hygiene magazines, keep bucking for Permanent Waiting Room Flourescent Light Therapy, proud soldiers of the Dumbass Army.)

Thumbs Down

More than seven in 10 Americans support mandatory quarantines for health professionals who have treated Ebola patients in West Africa, even if they have no symptoms, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The survey shows that 71 percent of those surveyed say the health workers should be subject to a 21-day quarantine, while 24 percent disagree.

Unsurprisingly, zero out of ten thought nurse MiMi Crybaby should get a tickertape parade for her selfless heroism, but nearly 90% expressed the opinion that she's a simpering jackass.

Hang onto that government job, babe. Private sector employment is not in your future for a loooooooong time. Hope you're Civil Service too, or bank some cash, else the summer of '17 could see you dropping some pounds when food money gets tight.

Waaaaaaaaahmbulance Alert!

I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone - an Ebola-affected country. I have been quarantined in New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me.
I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine.
I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a grueling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. I walked up to the immigration official at the airport and was greeted with a big smile and a “hello.”
I told him that I have traveled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: “No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions.”
He put on gloves and a mask and called someone. Then he escorted me to the quarantine office a few yards away. I was told to sit down. Everyone that came out of the offices was hurrying from room to room in white protective coveralls, gloves, masks, and a disposable face shield.
One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn’t. One man who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls barked questions at me as if I was a criminal.
Two other officials asked about my work in Sierra Leone. One of them was from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They scribbled notes in the margins of their form, a form that appeared to be inadequate for the many details they are collecting.
I was tired, hungry and confused, but I tried to remain calm. My temperature was taken using a forehead scanner and it read a temperature of 98. I was feeling physically healthy but emotionally exhausted.
Three hours passed. No one seemed to be in charge. No one would tell me what was going on or what would happen to me.
I called my family to let them know that I was OK. I was hungry and thirsty and asked for something to eat and drink. I was given a granola bar and some water. I wondered what I had done wrong.
Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101.
The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said.
I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset.
I was left alone in the room for another three hours. At around 7 p.m., I was told that I must go to a local hospital. I asked for the name and address of the facility. I realized that information was only shared with me if I asked.
Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong.
I had spent a month watching children die, alone. I had witnessed human tragedy unfold before my eyes. I had tried to help when much of the world has looked on and done nothing.
At the hospital, I was escorted to a tent that sat outside of the building. The infectious disease and emergency department doctors took my temperature and other vitals and looked puzzled. “Your temperature is 98.6,” they said. “You don't have a fever but we were told you had a fever.”
After my temperature was recorded as 98.6 on the oral thermometer, the doctor decided to see what the forehead scanner records. It read 101. The doctor felts my neck and looked at the temperature again. “There’s no way you have a fever,” he said. “Your face is just flushed.”
My blood was taken and tested for Ebola. It came back negative.
I sat alone in the isolation tent and thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal. Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?

Awwwwwwww, does Pwecious Special Snowflake need a hanky to cry in?
Let's try this again, after we turn up the "Brigthtness" dial:

I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone - an Ebola-affected country. I have been exposed to Ebola in the past 48 hours, and out of a rational fear that, just like my colleague, Dr. Spencer, I might also display symptoms of this deadly disease, and expose friends, family, and hundreds of strangers to this deadly disease, I have been quarantined in New Jersey. As a grown up, I think this was an entirely rational response, to prevent exposing or infecting my fellow airline passengers and the cabin crews on multiple flights, plus various officials, clerks, taxi drivers, bus passengers, hotel clerk, waiters and waitresses, cashiers, plus their families, children, and by extension the rest of Newark, and the state of New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, but I realize it's not all about MeMeMe, and my feelings don't trump the safety of countless others. I'm sure my fellow health care professionals will also understand the need for this common sense response, and deal with it as a minor inconvenience compared to what would happen if I had been infected, let alone if I were to spread the disease to innocent strangers through negligence and reckless disregard for normal infection control processes, of the exact sort used for centuries.
I had to wait in complete isolation, and it's scary and lonely, but now I begin to have some tiny bit of empathy for how all the people I treated must have felt when I was on the other side of the hazmat gear. I didn't realize what a sight I must have presented every day to strangers in a faraway land dying from a deadly disease, but now, I have some tiny inkling of what they faced, and it will give me more empathy for my patients for the rest of my nursing career. Until now, I was pretty oblivious about what that feels like.Now though, I understand how important it is to introduce myself when I'm all covered up and anonymous. I also understand how it feels to be scared, hungry, and thirsty, and completely at the mercy of other people - exactly like my patients are. I get why my tone of voice, and some compassion, can make someone in a strange situation feel afraid, vulnerable, and helpless, in a way I never confronted personally before.  

And I see how one person's thoughtless actions can have consequences for hundreds to thousands of others when a deadly disease is the culprit, and the health and safety of thousands to millions of people is at stake, and it makes me feel very humble under such a weighty responsibility. I was thankful for being given food and water, and even for being isolated so that I wouldn't infect or expose any of those other people, all strangers, with whom I would have otherwise been sitting as I continued my journey home. The officials were so concerned about my health and the public's safety they dedicated an ambulance and eight police cars to getting me safely to a definitive medical screening. I'm sure those cops must have had better things to do in Newark than babysit me, but I never heard a peep of complaint from them; the ride was all business, fast, and I was completely safely conveyed to the hospital. It was quickly determined that I was not symptomatic, which was a huge relief.  

Now I only have to spend three additional weeks waiting it out before everyone I meet can be assured I'm no threat to the public's health. Or to my own family and friends, who mean the world to me. I didn't expect this additional hurdle when I left the US to help out overseas, but I'm a professional with extensive training and experience in controlling the disease in question, and it's so horrible I'd rather die myself than spread it to one other person. So the last thing I'm going to do is bitch, piss, and moan about my tiny little problems, instead of dealing with this additional hurdle, and then getting back to the people and work that I love. I am not the most important thing in the universe, and in case I forgot, I just got a huge wake-up call. So if this is the worst thing that happens to me after spending weeks working amongst the dying in third world squalor, I've got nothing to worry about. And I can't wait to get out of here and enjoy a feast with my friends and family. Compared to what I've seen, they really have no idea how blessed they are to be here, instead of over there. But I sure do, now.

You tell me: which one of those statements sounds like a dedicated professional, and which one sounds like a whiny four-year-old?

Get over yourself, Princess!
You have a Planetary Rotation Malfunction: the world does NOT, in fact, revolve around you. Got that?
So either change your attitude, or change your profession. You embarrass me, and you're seriously pissing me off!
It sounds like a three week time out for you is just what the doctor ordered.
Now get away from me until you can act like a goddam grown-up. Go!

 

An Embarassment Of Riches

It's television pilot season in Califrutopia.
Which means that several networks and studios will spend millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours to create a host of programs which, thank a merciful deity, you'll never ever see, in order to cull the stack down to a manageable number, of which all but one or two, based on historical precedent, will suck, and probably hugely.

This matters to me about as much as the weather on Jupiter, because in the meantime, I get a lot of days as a decently-remunerated and medically licensed babysitter, and the checks all clear. How many in a lot? This week has been 14 days long, so far. And just about the time I could get used to it, it will be gone, and I'll be back in the salt mines. But until then, I just got to give my bank account a transfusion that should cure the recent anemia, but a side effect of multiple 12 hour days separated by 3-5 hour nights off is that I'm sleepy, cranky, and several of the other dwarfs, none of whose names I can recall at the moment. (Bitchy? Meany? Clumsy? Stupey?...whatever)

(Bonus Game for those in school, or back there again: psychoanalyze the Seven Dwarfs based on direct clinical observation of the DVD/BD, turn it into a paper, ace your psych presentation.)

That's not a whine (It's not! It's not! It's not!); I knew the gig was tough when I signed up.
But it means my usual fund of bile has been eating craft service, is a little gassy, and putting on a couple of pounds, and would really rather face-test the thread count in my pillowcase than saddle up for any rhetorical jihads or jousting the slumbering herds of pigs in our profession. At least for now.

My profound apologies, but that means anybody stopping by will have to entertain themselves for a bit longer while I nap. True to form, there are some very old obscure magazines laying about for you to read. This will probably cease all too soon in a week or three, then I can recert about half a dozen cards and classes to prove that I'm still nursey enough to market myself to greener pastures, as if they actually exist.

After a few weeks of Hollywood's amateur drama queens, I'm not looking forward to returning to the professional circuit. The catering there sucks, everybody is Scarlett O'Hara, and I can't fire them.

Submitted for your approval: What say we all pass the word, and on April 1st, apropos of the day, we all submit reviews on our most horrible patients, direct to hospital management and the Press-Ganey knuckleheads, and roundly bitch them out for the worst offenders?
In a perfect world, this catches on like Talk Like A Pirate Day, and the patient ratings for the entire country, complete with the best individual write-ups, get posted online. Anonymously, of course.

See you when I've thoroughly inspected the inside of my eyelids, and can open them spontaneously without using my hands. And hey, look, I just wrote an entire post about not being able to write an entire post. Sleepy, soooo sleepy...