Planetary Intelligence Is A Constant; Population Is Increasing

h/t Kenny

Behold, the dangers of listening to the horseshit they put in the Washington Compost, and mistaking it for factual information:

Falls remain the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries for older Americans. Hospitals face financial penalties when they occur. Nurses and aides get blamed or reprimanded if a patient under their supervision hits the ground.

But hospitals have become so overzealous in fall prevention that they are producing an “epidemic of immobility,” experts say.

This is easily solved.

Waive all your rights to sue in case of a fall, accept full responsibility for all injury and damages in writing, including to any other parties, and consent to binding arbitration with capped damages, and we can talk.

Refuse, and you're full of shit, and your ass can stay in the wheelchair, or in the bed with the siderails up. Once you're back in your house, you can play by any rules you damned well please, as it should be, okay? But in my house, it's my rules. Fair is fair.

If you make it past that hurdle (literally) we can talk about mandatory drug and alcohol testing (because people lie, pretty much 75% of the time, about that), and about how many people got to the hospital because they fell at home in the first place, and were too stubborn and stupid to use things like a light switch, their eyeglasses, walkers, canes, crutches, etc., and are now lined up for a shiny new titanium hip to replace their new three-piece femur, because they had to get to the bathroom right this minute, in the dark.

Last night's genius wanted to be released, despite being drunk at 3-4X the legal limit, and not able to recollect how he ended up on his face in the street, right up until the CT revealed he had a major brain bleed. Pull the other one, Einstein, it has bells on it.

I had one lady, brought in because she was too weak to get up for seven hours after a fall at home, tell me she was leaving. I told her to go ahead. And waited. And waited. She could barely raise her voice, let alone her body.

Look, I get that it's frustrating when your 60-, 70-, or 80-year old body doesn't act like it does in your still-18-year-old head. But it isn't my job to mollycoddle your weak grasp on reality. It is my job to make sure I don't have to explain - or lose my license and livelihood - for why you're on the floor of your room on your ass, especially when you're frail, feeble, confused, broken, or on narcotic medications. If you could do Gene Kelly's "Singin' In The Rain" with full choreography, you wouldn't be in the hospital, now would you, smartypants?

This is on my bucket list. But not as a patient in the hospital.

"Patients are idiots" should be carved in stone above the hospital front door, because they won't let me wear a button that says DLTDHYITAOYWO. (I'll help out: "Don't Let The Door Hit You..." work the rest out yourself.)

And hockey pants with pads, and crash helmets should be mandatory attire after age 70.
You tell me which is sillier; dressing that way, or those neat-o zipper scars on your hips, and 6-9 months of OT/PT learning to walk again in your 70s and 80s. If you don't fail, stay in the hospital endlessly, get pneumonia and twenty other opportunistic infections, and then just die.
Because in case you didn't notice, you don't bounce as well as you did when you were five or ten years old.

When someone tells me that 98% of tort lawyers are literally dying of starvation due to lack of business, then we can talk about "overzealous" fall prevention from the medical professions.

Until then, it's crybabies wanting to have it both ways. If you don't like being group punished (and sorry about that, but make no mistake, you are) for the 25% of people (minimum) who're just conniving weasels and outright morons, punch them in the throat in the waiting room, and then go burn their ambulance-chasing lawyers' offices and homes.

But thanks for the entertainment.

You'll win this argument when pigs fly outta your butt.

I truly enjoy taking care of people, and I want each and every one of them to go home and enjoy life as near to whole as human wisdom and the medical arts can make possible. Even when they're not smart enough to figure out that I'm going to act in their best interest, even (especially) if it pisses them off or spoils their plans right this minute. Me and my coworkers easing off for ten seconds can turn into 5 years of court appearances, and six-figure damages. Or someone dying.

Alongside that consideration, someone's momentary butthurt is not a medical complaint, it's a character flaw for them to work out on their own.


Don't like hospital rules? Don't get sick, injured, or old. (As if, but that's the truth of it.)
No one's going to come to your house to enforce them on you. Problem solved.

F**king It Up By The Numbers

 

Today's tale of How Not To Do Your Jobs:

(PITTSBURGH) Eugene Wright of Meadville says police and medical workers got the wrong man when they transported him to the local hospital this summer and injected him with anti-psychotic drugs against his will, thinking he was someone else.
"The experience that I went through, this should never happen to anybody. It's very simple to check ID," said Mr. Wright, 63. "These people need to be held responsible."
Mr. Wright and his wife, Carolyn Wright, made their allegations in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against the police in Meadville, the Meadville Medical Center and a local crisis center, Stairways Behavioral Health.
Mr. Wright had the misfortune to have the same name as another Eugene Wright, a psychiatric patient who police said had issued threats at his doctor's office, his suit says.

RTWT.

Long story short: they did, in fact, have the wrong guy.
"But they were acting in good faith!"

Yeah, right up until that failure to look in his wallet, or call his employer or the ortho doc to confirm they had the right guy- or not. Times everyone from A to Z. No exercise of due dilligence equals gross negligence and depraved indifference to the consequences. And deserves a prison sentence.

So Innocent Bystander gets hauled away to the nuthouse.

And now, I'm the Pittsburgh D.A., by the power of the Internet.
What happens?

Officers Sh*thead and F**kstick are suspended without pay for battery, kidnapping, false arrest, false imprisonment, criminal conspiracy to do all of the above, and making terroristic threats. They deserve to be fired for cause, and referred for criminal prosecution.
The representative for Stairways who accompanied them gets charged with making a false report, criminal negligence, and accessory to all the charges against the Meadville PD.
Any nurse(s) who gave the medications has their license suspended, and is charged with criminal medical battery on a patient and gross professional negligence, along with false arrest and false imprisonment. Their license(s) gets revoked by their state board, and they get referred to criminal prosecution.
Ditto for the ordering MD at the hospital.
All of the above: the PD, the crisis center, the hospital, the nurse(s), the doctor, get civilly sued for the maximum penalty that a jury will accept. The chief of police, and the CEOs of both health facilities are also named as co-defendants civilly and criminally for gross incompetence and criminal negligence leading to battery, medical battery, kidnapping, false arrest, and false imprisonment.
Oh, and sue the orthopedic doctor and his staff for failing to make a complete report. They deserve some love in this too. 
The cardinal rule I've observed in a couple of decades in the E.D. is that the more you're arguing with someone, the exponentially greater the likelihood that they're right and you're not. Break the chain early, and double check, especially when it's as easy at it would have been here to sort it out with certainty.

It was the responsibility of the nurse treating that patient to make sure he/she had the right patient - not just the one the doctor pointed at, but that he was indeed the mental health case in question. When nothing more than an ID check and one phone call would have raised the question and undone the entire chain of errors here, there's no excuse, for anyone involved. Some criminal arrests and indictments would drive that home satisfactorily.

I don't have the medical record info here, but if the patient was not in any way an imminent danger to himself or others in the hospital, there was no reason whatsoever to administer ANY medications to him under any circumstances. If the record shows that he did nothing but raise the obviously valid legal and medical point that they had the wrong guy, and was not physically combative, they should be fired and sued just for that act. That's medical battery all by itself, even if he was the correct whackjob in question.

There should be five to ten people facing actual state and federal prison for this incident, and the plaintiff deserves a mid eight-figure payout to drive the point well home.
And then every staff member of the PD, crisis center, and hospital, down to admitting clerks, has to undergo mandatory training by the state, at their employers' expense, on properly validating the ID of a mental health patient in crisis adequately and properly.

When you have someone frothing and barking on scene, that problem is solved. But when you send your minions to round up people in the community, and end up kidnapping the innocent off the streets and hooking them up as psych cases, it needs to leave a mark, in both the criminal and civil divisions of the superior court, and at the federal level. (Posit this guy as someone with a valid CCW and carrying when the cops roll up, and let your mind wander how it turns out. One or more people dead, because a clerk had his/her head up their own ass. That's why everyone who screwed this pooch should be fired and criminally prosecuted, and not just sued into poverty.)

This is utterly unconscionable and inexcusable behavior at every level, and several people need a long, quiet time in a small gray cell - let alone some frequent group sex sessions in pound-you-in-the-ass-prison - to contemplate the responsibilities of their former jobs, and the rights of the people they're supposed to be serving.

After that, they can get jobs greeting people at f**king WalMart for all I care.
They're shitbags as human beings, and if it were my relative or yours involved, the full measure of justice in this kind of case would require baseball bats and some emergency dental and orthopedic surgery. Blowtorches and pliers might possibly be involved.

Dear Jackbooted Thugs: You're Officially Dead To Me

How about this one from Salt Lake City:
ER nurse refuses (per policy agreed upon by hospital and SLC PD) that she's not allowed to draw blood from an unconscious patient unless he gives consent (impossible), or the officer arrests him, or they get a warrant for the draw.

So, instead of making the arrest, or obtaining the requisite warrant, Officer Jackboots arrests the nurse in the ER!
For refusing to break the law, violate hospital policy, do something unethical, and commit both a civil rights violation and an act of battery on the patient.

Story link

God help you jackbooted thugs if you get shot or injured.
I won't. You're why.

I'll relent on one condition, and it's a package deal:

Drop all charges against this nurse.

Fire the officer(s) who arrested her, for cause, without benefits or pension.

Refer them for prosecution for false arrest, kidnapping, and violation of civil rights.

Demote his/her/their supervisors.

Make your entire department go through mandatory re-training on why this is recockulous.

Revoke all sovereign immunity, so the nurse, hospital, and all patients affected can sue the officer(s) in question, the city, and the SLPD, for whatever exorbitant civil damages multiple juries think are justified and fair. Something in the mid nine figure range looks appropriate based on the video.

Require your mayor, your police chief, the watch commander, and the supervising sergeant(s) of the officer(s) in question make a full, forthright, rapid, and public apology, on air and in writing, to that nurse, her co-workers, the patients, hospital, staff, and citizens of SLC for this egregious violation and badge-happy horseshit.

Otherwise, you're worse than the criminals you claim to protect us against.

And never, ever, ever, ever, EVER let this happen again.


Barring that response, PDQ, let me be the first to say that when someone shoots you, I'm giving out candy.
When you die, I'll send a note saying I heartily approve.
And I hope you suffer on the way.

You maybe think you have a big team? Wait until you see what a wall of scrubs looks like.
There are 2,000,000 nurses in this country, and that's before we get to doctors, PAs, techs, etc. You're not even in the same league.
You're about to be shat upon, from a great height.


UPDATE: From Comments:
"officer A$$H*le can be contacted @ 801-799-3100
and his supervisor can be contacted at 801-799-6397 "

Real American Heroes

 

So this week, after spending the weekend at St. Sisyphus (if you're hazy on mythology, look it up) see if you can spot the hidden trend:

--- 20-something dude, too drunk to skateboard, so he walks into traffic, gets hit by car, ambulance ride to ED, elopes (forgets skateboard), brought back by PD from his home a few blocks away, found drunk off his ass and returned for trauma work-up, alcohol level 240
--- guy who jumps off second level of building, breaks fall with face, blood alcohol level >300
--- guy who's drunk goes out to get more beer, falls down on head, comes home, family notices he's way more dopey than when he left, and he full on seizes in ED due to a massive brain bleed, alcohol level 180
--- guy comes into ED claiming to have been shot in face, actually has minor trauma from getting bounced from club after acting like an a-hole, blood alcohol level 250
--- homeless guy takes all his daily psych meds and drinking beer, passes out, does faceplant on concrete, alcohol level 225
--- drunk chick falls in parking lot, breaks fall with face, alcohol level 225
--- way underage coed waiting in line to get into illegal rave, passes out before she even gets in, blood alcohol level 270

And that's just a random HIPPA-compliant mix-and-match sample of the week's actual patients, with descriptions/sexes/etc. scrambled at whim.

If you guessed the common factor was an overdose of braincell-killing Judgement Juice, buy yourself another round.
These aren't lifetime problem drinkers, these are simply young jackasses whom society needs to stop rescuing. (Seriously, let's just let a few of them go under, to drive the point home.) A couple of those are going to be effed up for life already, and then, surprise surprise, will probably drown their problems in alcohol for another 40 years.
Just to pile on, this is the week after Spring Break, which brought out hitherto unheard-of levels of alcohol-induced assholery, judging strictly by a few media stories from around the country. So my sample were merely the Everyday Drunkholes.

I shouldn't complain, because Budweiser et al will be paying for my mortgage and cruise vacation tickets at this rate, and it's barely April.

But when you can afford to get so f****d up you can't walk straight and not play in traffic without a keeper, but you can't afford health insurance or a hospital bill despite the government handing you that shit on a platter, it's time to bring back galleys, where you could work off your hospital bill by rowing at wages of 10 cents a mile, or by being chained between two poles on a street corner, and letting people kick you in the junk for $1 a kick.

Ill be the guy in line with a wad of singles bigger than a pole dancer's on Monday morning, and wearing a pair of steel-toed boots.

And either solution would keep those a-holes from procreating anytime soon, which would be a net plus for society. But the next time some soopergenius bitches that their hospital bill listed a Tylenol for $65, remind them how much it costs to subsidize these ignorant jackasses who rang up a $40,000 trauma bill at the hospital while on welfare and food stamps, or while still living in momma's basement. Then tell them to STFU.

High Blood Pressure PSA

Those of you in the trade already know this.
Move along, or share it with those who need to hear it.

This is for the laymen (and women) out there who read this, and their cute doddering parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, older siblings, and dopey next door neighbors.

The medical word for "hypertension" is High Blood Pressure.
They are not two separate ailments.

If you're taking medication for it, YOU HAVE IT.
It did not go away, it's simply "controlled". We hope.

The only way you know this, is if you CHECK your own pressure at least once a week, if not daily.

If your pressure is too high, you have to check it at least daily for several days until it returns to normal, to know that you're doing it right.

Yes, EVERY TIME it's too high.

Anything higher than 140/90 is TOO HIGH.

And BTW, Anything higher than 140/90 is TOO HIGH.

Did we mention that anything higher than 140/90 is TOO HIGH? Okay then.

If you're on anything that makes you pee more, you should be checking your weight DAILY.
And yes, a "water pill" is called that because your kidneys make more.

If you gain more than a pound or two in a day, and it's not the Friday after Thanksgiving, you're retaining water.
And need to call your doctor.

You can't take your blood pressure medications only when you "feel bad".
They don't work when you take them randomly like that.

They also don't work when you don't take them at all.
Even when you "ran out of them last month."

They also don't work when you stop them abruptly, because you don't like some/any/all of the side affects.
That's what the telephone number to your doctor's office is for.

When you do any of the above bone-headed steps, the medical term for what you have is UNCONTROLLED HYPERTENSION.

The laymen's medical term for what you are is IDIOT. (cf. MORON, JACKASS, FUTURE STROKE PATIENT, etc. )

When you walk around with a blood pressure of 200/anything, it won't kill you today.
Probably not tomorrow. (But avoid sharp objects.)
But eventually, like driving your car 100MPH from red light to red light, something's going to blow up.
But it won't be in your engine, it'll probably be in your head.

BTW, when grandma's face looks droopy on one side, and she's babbling incoherently, and/or can't move her arm and leg, it's not okay to wait "until the playoff game is over" before you come to the ER.

It's not okay to "wait a couple of days" afterwards "to see if the symptoms get better", or listen to her when she says "I don't want to go to the ER now, I'm fine".
(Or when she says, "Ib dwwwn wahhh du koh du the blarg marfletthhhwwffft.")

We can fix some strokes, IF you get to the hospital right away.
Two days later is NOT "right away".
Even on "island time".

Call the effing ambulance.
That's what it's FOR.

If you want to spend most of your golden years re-learning to talk and walk again, sort of, or worse, being used as a doorstop because you can't walk and talk anymore, but your family/kids/friends don't have the heart to put you down like Old Yeller, please, ignore all these notes, skip/stop your meds, and get ready for a decade or more of falling down, drooling in your lap, crapping and peeing your pants, and wearing really badly-coordinated clothes, and socks with sandals, because you can no longer move around or dress yourself, as you decompose slowly and agonizingly for a decade or more in some elder-care purgatory you wouldn't send terrorists to, but which is all your family can afford.

Or, lose 50 pounds, take your goddam BP meds now, EVERY DAY, know what meds you take, why, how many milligrams, how often, keep it written on a card in your wallet/purse 24/7/365, check your BP and weight every day, write it down, bring it to your regular doctor check-ups, and enjoy your sunset years doing whateverinhellyouplease without having your family look at you like a cat that needs to take that last trip to the vet, or having people like me deal constantly with your irrationally ignorant and generally jackassical non-compliant behavior.

Or a least have the decency to have "DNR" tattooed on your forehead, and forbid anyone from calling an ambulance to drag your stroked out big-old-brain-bleed ass into the ER, so the ICU nurses can treat you like plant life after your next massive stroke: by feeding you, watering you, and turning you towards the light.

And remember, I yell because I care.

World's Biggest Putz

 

And in NYFC, where that title truly means something!

So, Doctor Doofus is released, and in a manner worthy of jackholes everywhere, completely avoids any personal responsibility for his own jackassery in spreading chaos and panic to the entire Big Apple, and putting nearly 400 fellow New Yorkers on Ebola monitoring protocols for three weeks:

 “My early detection, reporting and now recovery from Ebola speaks to the effectiveness of the protocols that are in place for health staff returning from West Africa.”

No doubt Doctor Dickhead would have been detected, reported, treated, and recovered even earlier if only he hadn't
a) ignored his original symptoms for two days
b) trotted his stupid ass all over the Five Boroughs for two days, thus
c) exposing 357 or so other people to a deadly pathogen because of
d) his reckless disregard for public health and safety, and
e) his total failure to inform the police and health authorities, who
f) only learned of his infectious travels hither and yon after
g) querying his financial and subway pass records because he
h) never bothered to inform those authorities of his contacts.

Thanks a lot FUCKHEAD, you're a credit to people everywhere with shit for brains, and hopefully the NY Medical Board has a spine and some balls, and will be revoking your license to practice medicine for the next decade or so, until you come to Jesus, 'fess up, apologize, and spend some thoughtful time digging ditches, you selfish bastard. Hopefully the D.A. will look into criminal charges, and the 357 people inconvenienced by your antics will be helping themselves to every cent of your income for the rest of your life for the mental anguish suffered as a direct consequence of your failure to use any shred of professional judgment or common human sense. 

Walk tall, you embarrassment to your profession, and all humanity, and here's hoping the first fifty people you exposed meet you and kick you in the crotch, hard and repeatedly, while bystanders point and laugh, as a proper down payment on what you so richly deserve.

Apparently this is one of those instances where M.D. stands for

MONUMENTAL DUMBASS.

 

Now go to Home Depot, buy a crowbar, and see about popping your head out of your ass before you hurt yourself.

Kaci Hickox, Jackass Of The Moment



In a case so filled with @$$clowns, it's hard to stand out, but this crybaby clearly has what it takes:

(Reuters) - New Jersey's mandatory quarantine for certain travelers from Ebola-stricken West Africa will likely face its first legal test this week, after a lawyer for a quarantined nurse said she would file a federal lawsuit within days.Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer, said Kaci Hickox's isolation upon her return from West Africa raised "serious constitutional and civil liberties issues," given that she shows no Ebola symptoms and has not tested positive for the disease.
Michelle Mello, professor of law and public health at Harvard University, said courts in such cases seek to balance the level of danger posed by the disease with the likelihood that the individual poses a public threat.
But she said courts have found reason to uphold past quarantines, even when there was no definitive proof the individuals were ill.
"I don’t think it is clear, but I suspect when all is said and done, it won’t be successful," she said.

Emboldened by the fawning publicity from her childish tantrum, and today's governmental pique over her quarantine by the state of New Jersey, woman-child and alleged nursing professional Kaci Hickox is now electing to quite literally make a federal case out the state's decision not to let her wander hither and yon until she goes symptom free from Ebola for 21 days, after arriving in the US only 48 hours from working amidst the outbreak of same in pestilential Conkary, Guinea.

Her entire rationale is that the state should wait until she, like medical assclown Craig Spencer, starts shedding virus all over a major metropolis before the state should have the right to keep her from walking hither and yon like a modern-day Typhoid Mary.

Because after all, what 's most important here is not the rights of 317M Americans to not be exposed to Ebola, but instead Hickox's inalienable right to dine at Olive Garden and Taco Bell, and shop at Old Navy.

Let us grant that she has the right to be at liberty. Fine.
What she doesn't have is the right of return to the country from a place in the middle of a massive epidemic. So that leaves a simple solution.

Ship her fat whiny ass back to Conkary, and let her do her quarantine for 21 days there, under the auspices of the CDC. If she goes 21 days symptom free, then permit her return to the US. (Oh, and bill her personally for the accommodations.)

Everybody wins, and she can go down in history as the most lunkheaded excuse for a medical professional since someone threw a bag over Tom Frieden and made him stop holding international press conferences.

But I'd rather a federal judge elects to wait 19 more days before issuing the ruling that her case is moot, and dismissing it.

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."

 

Unlike NY Gov. Jellyfish, Chris Christie has indicated that NJ is not backing down despite the whinging:

"New Jersey is not changing its quarantine protocol. The protocol is clear that a New Jersey resident with no symptoms, but who has come into contact with someone with Ebola, such as a health care provider, would be subject to a mandatory quarantine order and quarantined at home," [Christie spokesman] Roberts said. "Nonresidents would be transported to their homes if feasible and, if not, quarantined in New Jersey."

  

Psst! Hey, Princess! Guess what?

We've quarantined ACTUAL HEROES before, and they didn't piss their pants or sue anybody about it.

Get OVER yourself.

 

 

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!

 

Have A Nice Bedpan Full Of STFU!

It seems things aren't turning out well for the vaunted "any hospital can play with Ebola" cheerleaders in NYC:

An extraordinary number of Bellevue Hospital staffers called in sick on Friday rather than treat the city’s first Ebola patient — and those who showed up were terrified to enter his isolation chamber, sources told The Post.
“The nurses on the floor are miserable with a ‘why me?’ attitude, scared to death and overworked because all their co-workers called out sick,” one source said.
“One nurse even went as far as to pretend she was having a stroke to get out of working there, but once they cleared her in the ER they sent her back up,” the source added.
Dr. Craig Spencer is being treated by nurses working in teams of two, “with one serving as a buddy watching the other,” said Health and Hospitals Corporation spokeswoman Ana Marengo, who denied there was a sickout.

Bravo to the folks there with the sense to pour piss out of a boot.
Having exhausted all other options, apparently common sense is getting a turn at bat.

This could even catch on, and give TPTB cause to re-think their wholly jackassical approach to this crisis thus far, while there's time to make such a change work.

And once again, free-market capitalism FTW!



h/t to Zebra Dun for the title!

NOT This. Right Here.

As noted authorities like the Muppets have told us:

"One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things just doesn't belong..."

On the left, how to do it.
On the right, how NOT to do it.
As seen again even better here. (It's a bigger pic, you should go there, really.)

*(Names changed here out of sheer embarrassment at this spectacle.)

Nurse Intelligent, on the left, is wearing full head-to-toe protection from Ebola and/or infectious matter, including a respirator or HEPA filtration set up somewhere under that head cover with faceplate.

Nurse Future Ebola Victim, on the right, has no coverage of much of her face, hair, or shoes  (the linked NBC News article has a better view of both, head to toe) so blood-flecked cough spray, vomit splatter, diarrhea, or simple dripping blood from the patient or splashing onto the floor will contaminate her face or hair, where it can run into her eyes, nose, or mouth, underneath the non-compliant simple mask she's wearing, or soak into her street tennis shoes, and then be tracked everywhere she goes.

The hospital cafeteria.
The NY subway.
Home to her family.
Etc.

Unfortunately, both were suited up for a photo op to demonstrate their hospital's preparedness for handling Ebola. (Pray you get the nurse on the left.)
And these idiots not only posed to demonstrate their hospital's preparedness, they're proud of it! (FACEPALM.)

One nurse with a documented competence, and one nurse with less sense than what God gives to jackasses in the barnyard. Represent, sisters.

(Word to your mother, Nurse Cupcake, this isn't cosplay, and the details are the difference between going home safely, and slow, lingering, horrible death from an incurable disease.)

Compare and contrast this with what it looks like done right. So either Nurse FEV is terminally stupid, or her co-workers just don't like her, and didn't bother to hook her up enough to save her life in the dressing process.

Do we get it yet, boys and girls??

Of course not. Because if the word was getting out, you wouldn't see this sort of assclownery on national news, in front of God and everybody.





*(Somebody may write or email Nurse Cupcake, and let her know her ass is showing. They may even tell her they found out about it because I was being mean to her on my blog. I do this because I'm not going to cover for life-threatening acts of stupid, and I Yell Because I Care. Smarten up, campers. You're not in nursing school any more, so there aren't any free mistakes. If the only thing hurt is your feelings, count your blessings.)

Dear 70 IQ Meatpuppets: Your Ride Is Here

In any emergency involving more than zero persons, the driving force determining the duration and severity of the emergency will quickly become the IQ and common sense of the stupidest person(s) in the group. Also their level of preparedness, and the global group wisdom of whatever entity or agency may have been responsible for preparing them (or failing miserably to do so) to cope with such emergency.

This is why the castaways have spent three seasons in prime time and 45 years in syndication, on Gilligan's Island.

It's why Thomas Duncan got to the United States.

It's why Madrid currently has an ongoing Ebola problem.

And today, it's why Officer Safety, in Dallas, is at risk to be the next Texan to die a horrible and totally preventable death inside about two weeks, unless he's very, very fortunate.
(And true to form, Dallas health official fucktards continue to do what fucktards do best, insisting that the deputy can't have Ebola because he wasn't exposed to the guy who wasn't there, ignoring that the entire apartment he was in unprotected was so contaminated that it had to be decontaminated days later. Notice they didn't say "He can't have Ebola because we've tested him, and the tests are completely negative for 3 weeks". Nor that "We think the risk is low, but he was definitely exposed to the contagion, so we'll monitor him for 21 days, and hope for the best." But that because they say so, this can't be Ebola, because "smarter than basic principles of epidemiology". You can't make stuff up that's as surreal as the daily behavior of people in charge in Dallas. I have to ask: do y'all just elect people there with the lowest IQs, or is it just a lucky serendipity that that's who you have in apparently every position of importance on this case?)

If he is infected, it's also why he probably won't be the last one there to be so.

On a human level, if this turns out poorly, I'm sorry for him and his family, and I'm sure he's a nice guy and great fun at parties.

Unfortunately, Ebola didn't get that memo, and it can't read.

Ebola will not "Respect Your Authoritay!" just because you have a badge.
Ebola will not stop because you're cute, or have a banging body or a killer smile.
Ebola will not stop because you like puppies and kittens.
Ebola will not stop because of any countless number of asinine reasons you, whoever you are, think it should magically want to go and jack somebody else up, if you're one of the troglodyte halfwit continuation school mouthbreathing utterly clueless morons.

THIS

   stops Ebola.

Got PPE on? EVERY TIME? BEFORE you risk exposure??

NO?!?
No problem.

You'll get Ebola instead. And then, in +/- 12 days, you'll die in a puddle of your own bloody guts as you vomit and shit them out both ends, because you were ignorant, stupid, uninformed, lied to, gullible, lazy, careless, clueless, depravedly indifferent, and just generally a waste of skin and oxygen on the cosmic balance sheet of the Universe.
And Mother Nature has red-carded you out of the game, and out of the gene pool, forevermore.
The Universe doesn't give a damn about that, and for the most part neither do I, since I don't know you.
But you're going to take out people all around you, and eventually, you'll get to someone I do care about, and for that bout of serial killing, there isn't a circle of Hell low enough to give you what you deserve for what you're wreaking upon the rest of the population every time you come up to bat.

So to the jackasses at the State Department and the White House who think, despite your rosy good wishes, that checking asymptomatic people is helping, and that transporting bushels of potentially infectious people here 24/7 is a good idea;
to the clueless bastards in Dallas who pressure-washed infectious hazmat Ebola vomit into an entire community,
who put an entire family in a plague house for six days,
who sent a paramedic team and ambulance back onto the streets for 48 hours after transporting a known Ebola patient with no decon,
thus exposing further patients on subsequent ambulance trips for two more days, 
who sent a three man sheriff's team unprotected into that same plague house,
which team was stupid enough to walk in the door despite such silly-ass criminally negligent orders,
whose "judges" wandered in and sat with the exposed family in the contaminated quarters in their street clothes, then wore the same infected garments back to the office, and home to their family, after a nice snuggly meet-and-greet with hordes of similarly clueless reporters;
to the incredibly brain-deprived shit-for-brains Infection Control "specialists" at hundreds to thousands of hospitals who think they can handle Ebola with "Standard precautions", and keep peddling that utter bullshit to staffs who have to weigh your jackassery against the need for a paycheck to feed and shelter their families;
to the idiots in Spain who showed all the competence of the Dallas authorities;
and to the hundreds of thoroughly heads-up-your-asses-because-the-sun-shines-out-of-Obama's-bellybutton reporters, news hairdos, and editor/producers;
stop driving the Ebola Retard Bus, because you're KILLING US, Smalls.

No, not figuratively, LITERALLY, you flaming dumbshits.

And I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if this thing gets unleashed and goes hog-wild, and gets to the populace at large, before we go, we'll hunt you all down, and set you on fire,  to watch you dance and listen to your final screams, just to make us feel a little bit better in our last days on earth.

And that's the only thing you can look forward to in this entire outbreak that's going to make me smile.

Bummer for you though.

One other thing, illustrative of the point:
The new phone books are out.
The new numbers:
8,033 total cases, 3,865 dead, as of Oct. 5th. Spain has been added to the tally board, but they haven't yet updated it with their case, nor Duncan's death, nor the new Dallas case. But they will.

Sierra Leone's death toll has surged upward with their recent come-to-Jesus revelations, adding more deaths in the last 4 days than the total they've recorded in the entire previous seven weeks.
Given their laxity and mendacious prior casualty and infection reporting, it's prudent to assume they have unreported (hence un-contact-traced) cases numbering into the thousands. Nothing less would support so many new dead, so rapidly.
They had more deaths over the same period than Liberia, which has nearly double the reported cases of Sierra Leone.
Why? Reflect on the fact that this is also the period exactly 10-15 days after their vaunted "nationwide 3-day quarantine" in late September, keeping everyone locked up inside their homes uninfected alongside the infected.

Then flash forward to the fact that we did the exact same sort of quarantine in Dallas for six days, from Sept. 28th to Oct. 4th, with the other members of the Duncan family, locking the uninfected inside known contagious facilities.

Brilliant!
So the Dallas city government is demonstrably twice as smart as the government of Sierra Leone.
Walk tall, Texas.

Hopefully, Dallas hardware stores will soon experience a run on pitchforks and scythes, and residents will stage a torchlight visit to some local leading citizens. Or at least take some hot tar and chicken feathers, and a rail.

 

 

 

 

Pest Control

Sign TPTB made us (me) take down from the Triage window:

The common cold likely won't kill you.
We cannot make the same promises about the triage nurses if you keep coming back to the window to ask them about the wait to be seen for it.

I'm betting if I put it up by the TV set outside, it'll last a lot longer.

There Are No Stupid Questions, Only Stupid People

From time to time, just to do an internet pulse check, I tab through my own stats to see what's bringing people here.

Sometimes it's surprising, or a I find a new blog, or I see someone has thoughtfully given me a shout out and there's a spike in page views.

And then there's today's little moment of mirth for moi.

Because one of the categories I find the most interesting is to see what keywords and searches dumped people on my little island in the Matrix.

One of this week's snort-worthy queries to the gods of Google and Bing was:
"how can you fight your ncclex score".

So if you end up here in general, or at this post because I put NCLEX in it, allow me to give you a leg up on this difficult and pressing question, especially for would-be nurses.

Here is the seldom-revealed-in-such-clarity, Top Secret:Codeword Access Sooper-Dooper Guaranteed Method to crack this deal wide open, and solve your NCLEX problem.

DON'T BE A DUMBASS. Study. Learn. Succeed.

I'm pretty sure I covered both study and test-taking strategies for your boards in the middle of 3 essays towards the new grads, a few weeks back.

So, sportsfans, in case you figure your state nursing board is going to jump back once you sic your lawyer, J. Noble Daggett on them, and cough up a passing board score because the sun was in your eyes that day, allow me to offer you a great deal on a barely used bridge right next to some beachfront property in New Mexico. Just send me your credit card number, bank account information, social security number and your ATM PIN, and I'll get right back to you.

(If that sarcasm went over your head, go back to beautician school, or perhaps consider a career in either food service or janitorial endeavors.)

You aren't going to "fight" your NCLEX score, as a rule. And in case no one ever let you in on this tip, let me let the cat out of the bag:

Your patients don't come with four handy multiple choice options tattooed on their chests.
That means you have to use Mr. Brain to come up with actual thoughts, and then behave appropriately and arrive at a rational course of action, based on what you see.

Y'know, pretty much how 99.9998% of the rest of life works.

So if you've somehow arrived at your nursing boards, and bungled them, either regroup and do better, or go home. But abandon any thought of arguing your way to a passing score if you didn't earn one. If you flunked your boards, let me be the first one to encourage you to try again. And if that amount of integrity and honesty with yourself eludes you, let me be the first one to say I'm really glad you're not a nurse, and I hope you never get to be one without undergoing a successful brain and character double transplant, if a donor match becomes available.

Because if test-taking kicks your ass, in a situation where you have oodles of time to successfully pick one of four letters on a keyboard, in an ideal test environment, the last place I want you to be placed is at a patient's bedside when some serious crap is going down. Try to remember that your kindergarten teacher lied to you, you aren't the most special snowflake, and if you can't hack the easy stuff to get this gig, you sure as shooting aren't going to be able to handle the life-and-death stuff day in and day out for twenty to forty years.

So please, either perform a Valsalva Maneuver (look it up!) until you hear a loud popping sound, and your head breaks suction from where you had it stuck, or pursue another career endeavor.

But thank you, whoever you are, for providing me the chance to mock your anonymous and unintended flash of honesty, once I found your jam-smeared fingerprints all over the NCLEX cookie jar. But please, pull your pants up from around your ankles, and decide if you're serious about this profession, or just comedy relief.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Douchebags

Okay, I took one for Florence Nightengale from way back, and sat through the endless lectures on cross-cultural nursing, and I really do get it. I expect certain things from certain groups, because they covered it in school ages ago, and frequently it helps me do my job and better care for my patients, and their families.

So I know that the 29-year-old, 6'4", 275 pound scary prison/gang-tatted 2-time felon sitting on the gurney in the back row with you, cold, lifeless, and fenestrated in the X-ring by 3 well-placed .40 slugs will, to you, always be your "sweet baby".

And I get that to you, his mother, he was a poor, misunderstood sweet little child who could never do any wrong, and all those other people just made everything up for 20 years.

But seriously woman, if I can step beyond my culture, maybe you can inch away from yours too, if only long enough to grab some air.

Because when you're so ostentatiously bewailing the cosmic cruelty of the universe that robbed you of your sweet little snookiewookums, it's not a human being mourning the loss of a loved one, so much as it's a delusional enabler bitch-slapped by reality, and still not recognizing the handprint on your face.

Especially when the nice little 5' 5" grocery clerk your sweet baby was repeatedly punching in the face and stabbing in the chest across the checkout counter is sitting, very much alive, in the trauma room just a dozen feet away, battered, bruised, punctured, bleeding, but very much still with us, and now assaulted again by listening to your hissy fits.

So all you're accomplishing is to get the cops, the doctors, the nurses, and literally busloads of humanity you'll never know, to disregard you and dozens like you in days beyond your reckoning, while those of us right there right now are most inclined to compliment our live patient on his excellent marksmanship, and steely determination to stop a thug from killing him, or anyone else.

While as a human being, I'm sorry you or anyone should ever have to suffer the death of their child, at any age, as a citizen of the same city they both live in, I'm thinking that for the day so far, we've all come out ahead.

So why don't you STFU, let one of the 27 relatives take you home, and cry by yourself for all the times you pretended everything was all right when sweetums was out with the gang, covered for him with the school, the teachers, the cops, friends and family, and beat yourself up as hard for covering for him all those years as he beat up on so many other innocent people, mainly just because he could.

My patient didn't know your son, and he had less than 30 seconds to decide to live, and make a terrible choice, and he'll carry that emotional burden with him, and the nightmare of your son's last seconds, for the rest of his life.

Hopefully, so will you. Because you had a lot longer than 30 seconds, even if not a full 18 years, to turn things around so this day wouldn't come. If only you were weeping that you were sorry, instead of questioning why this happened, maybe I could see it.

And it's frankly self-indulgent childishness to weep and moan with such histrionics, when all that happened was that in the vast restaurant of life, you just got the check. Your son already paid his share. And I suspect like the thief on the cross next to Christ, right at the end he knew too, however fleetingly, that he had it coming.

And when someone gets what they certainly had coming in this instance, it's callously offensive to pretend that it's otherwise.

So under the heading of tough love, c'mon back to reality, and see what you can do for the rest of your life to start making up for what you failed to do. It may be hard, but not nearly as hard as listening to you pretend, with every sob and shudder, as if your son died throwing himself on a grenade to save a busload of schoolkids, or testing a cancer vaccine, or somesuch worthy sacrifice. Not to mention how hard it is for your audience to tolerate another moment of the Raspberry Award-winning performance you're giving in tonight's episode of "Why, O Why, Is The Universe So Unfair, And Fate So Cruel?".

The universe has a quota for b.s., and you've exceeded your limit. Stop cheapening every honest tear that's ever shed in this place.

Besides, like Sean Connery said, he shouldn't have brought a knife to a gunfight.