Nine Years Ago Today

Every year on this date since 2001 I watch TV and I am transfixed by the images of the attack on the World Trade Center. Radical Muslims on suicide missions changed us. I find myself waiting for the next attack, the next horror to be visited on this country that I so love. It changed the way I live my life. I do not like to fly and I avoid huge gatherings. If given tickets to the Superbowl, I would not attend. I find myself thinking that an attack there would be the perfect venue to demoralize us even further. These men believed that by killing innocent Americans their way would be paved to their heaven. Good luck with that. I work on not allowing myself to live in fear and I work on my anger against a religion that mandates wholesale slaughter as a religious right against those who don't believe as they do. We are a nation of differences and as Christians we have our loonies as well. I don't do fanatics of any culture or religion. I do not want the Mosque built near ground Zero. Go Away. If you really really really wanted unity you would go elsewhere and not build your mosque, this shrine that honors those crazy zealots, because that is what it is all about. You would want to take into consideration the pain, suffering, and memories of the 9/11 survivors. That is what a Christian would do.

Pain the New Vital Sign

As nurses we assess patients as they come into the ER. Vital signs, physical evaluation and history of illness are initially done to assess the urgency of the problem. We also assess the pain level the severity in which is measured on a scale from one to ten. Ten is of course the most severe. This is done so that when we administer something for pain after a 30 min. wait we can reassess your response to what we have given you. I have addressed the issue of behavior in the ER but really, if you are coming in complaining of 10/10 pain and you have had it for over a week and have taken NOTHING for it, then don't expect us to really believe you. Especially when you are giggling with your pals while you wait.
When you hit the triage door with a splinter in your finger and you wail around like you got hit by a car we have trouble understanding. Pain is relative to the person who is experiencing it and to his/her personal weenie level. I gave a shot to a 3 year old who never moved and said a mild "ouch" and in the next hour gave a shot to a 30 year old man who screamed like I was yanking his lips over his forehead. It kinda sounded just like this... if you can imagine the voice raising and lowering:ohmygodjesushelpMEEEEEEEEohshitwhatinHELLyougotinthatohJESUSsave MEohohohohohSHIT.
Having experienced pain at different times of my life I want to yell at some of these drama queens(and kings) "you want to talk about pain... I tell you what pain is: Pain is a 9lb+ and a 10lb+ baby coming out of a narrow canal(not so narrow anymore.ha)with heads that feel the size of a cantaloupe WITHOUT ANESTHESIA. So bite me. I am a nurse therefore I am naturally compassionate. NOT. I have to work on it everyday. Each day someone comes and sits in my triage chair with a story and it is usually about pain. Honestly I have to stop myself from comparing their pain with some of the stuff I have been thru or comparing with other patients who live in pain daily without a complaint. Each person deserves to be evaluated by himself without the collective history of previous patients and my own experience. Do not think this gives you a pass however when you tell me that you have lived in severe pain for 2 weeks without A) calling your own MD B) without trying to relieve it yourself with ANYTHING over the counter C)while laughing and yuking it up with your friends D)complaining about your severe pain while putting on your mascara in the triage chair telling me that you been crying for days with the agony and lastly don't think I will let you pass without question when you complain of 10/10 pain while telling me you have to be seen right away because you have a date.

Dinner 100.00 Entertainment Free

I wasn't sure whether this should be on my diet blog or on this one. Obviously this won. I took 4 people out to dinner tonight at my favorite restaurant to thank them for helping Joshua paint his old studio. More at a later date on the new studio. Anyway we had 2 pitchers of margaritas between us and I cut myself off as soon as the tip of nose got numb. We had a great dinner and better conversation. I sat for a while sipping water so I swear to you that I was sober leaving. The place was packed and I was working my way between tables and was going between two large tables that each had a toddler sitting in the isle between the tables. They were sitting in one of those low wooden high chairs. You guessed it. I took them both out. My foot caught on one of the legs and I went sailing. I caught both chairs before they tipped over but managed to knock the crap out of both kids. Both of the toddlers were sufficiently terrorized enough that they hadn't had the time to start screaming. They both just looked at me.. the little girl had glasses on that were knocked askew and she was just staring at me with her horrified wide blue eyes. I apologized repeatedly and took off and about 10 feet later the screaming commenced. Oh. My. Goodness. I can't go anywhere. I trip all the time. I can only hope that no one knew me and I sure will not be going back there for a while. Maybe 10 years or so.

Racial Discrimination, Terrorists

During the 2008 election at a Philadelphia polling place two members of the Black Panthers stood outside by the door in their uniform, one had a night stick. They were intimidating to the voters. They were caught on film. Nothing has ever been done to either offender except that the leader, one Minister King Shabazz is not allowed near a polling place. The Justice Department lead by our own Eric Holder has put a stop to the career lawyers who recommended the case be tried and put a gag order on them as well. Now if I wore a white robe(sheet) with a red cross and a hood and plunked my butt ACROSS(not even in front of) from a polling place, I promise you I would be currently getting three hots and a cot in a jail somewhere. Please understand me I am against ALL forms of racial discrimination.

Years ago when we had a governor's race here in Louisiana between David Duke, an avowed member of the KKK and Edwin Edwards, who on national TV admitted to graft and corruption(rather proudly I might add)ran against each other. Well Edwards won and I happily voted for him. We are used to our crooks down here but we don't like racists at all. Well after Minister Shabazz was in the news they had him on TV news at a Philadelphia festival stating the following(this is the EXACT words) "I hate white people. All of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate him! You want freedom? You're going to have to kill some crackers! You're going to have kill some of their babies." Boy that makes me just warm and fuzzy. He is a member in good standing with the Black Panthers. If a white member of the KKK got on TV and said that Eric Holder would be wetting his drawers trying to find something to jail him on.
Michelle Obama gave the keynote address to the NAACP this last week. She was credited as talking against the Tea Party and that is untrue. That was entirely the NAACP leaders who spoke against the group. Michelle spoke about her Let's Move project on childhood obesity. She did speak about the inequalities by saying: "stubborn inequalities still persist -- in education and health, in income and wealth -- I think those founders would urge us to increase our intensity, and to increase our discipline and our focus and keep fighting for a better future for our children and our grandchildren"

I don't think she realizes that the very people she is speaking of have been taken care of by the government for so long that their desire to improve their lifestyle has been dampened. Down here it's not unusual to see 14,15, and 16 year old mothers(on their second child). They can't work because "I have to take care of my babies".
And going back to previous blogs by saying giving a group of people MY MONEY to equalize the inequality in income and wealth is not going to make said people jump up and get a job. What needs to be done is that the money given by the government needs to be attached to a work program. We need to develop a work ethic that is so very absent. Here in Louisiana a bill was introduced to attach welfare checks to a drug test. This would dump an untold amount of people off the welfare rolls. This is not prescribed medication but presence of illegal drugs that would be in question. Moot point anyway because it got voted down.

Mr. Obama came out on the news about the terrorist attacks in Uganda that killed multiple innocents watching the World Cup Soccer finals. He is quoted saying "What you’ve seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself. They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains." He also stated that ...Al-Qaeda is a racist organization that has no value for African life". Hello Al-Qaeda has no use for any race that does not value their way of life and worship. What does he think is happening over here to all races. We are fighting a war on terrorism here and abroad. Obama has consistantly avoided the use of the term 'war on terror'.
I pray for the safty and health of our President daily despite that fact that I don't agree with practically everything he stands for. My displeasure at his policies and where he is leading our country will be shown at the voting booth where as an American my voice will be heard.

Bad Hair Day #2 and ER Humor

I think it's karma or maybe my hair is in the wrong place at the very wrong time. Night before last I came to work sporting not so nice hair and nothing happened. What I mean was someone could have thrown up on my head and my hair wouldn't have looked worse. Tonight I came to work and was fairly comfortable with my hair color, style and cut. Jamie said she thought it looked nice and I had several other compliments from the in patient side of the hospital. I should have taken that as an omen and put on a shower cap. Jamie was catheterizing an elderly woman and due to the patient's size and anatomy she attempted once by herself and missed, placing the catheter in the vaginal vault. I came to help her by holding the patient's leg to make visualization easier. I bend down to make sure that I had appropriately positioned the part of her anatomy that was causing a problem and got slapped in the head with the catheter. The very same catheter that had previously been in her nether region. I just looked up at Jamie, who was a deep shade of red(in an effort not to laugh) The catheter was replaced with a new one and the procedure was performed without a problem. Jamie used a Clorox wipe to clean my hair. It really is pretty funny when you think about it. Maybe you have to be a nurse though, to find the humor. Things happen at work that would make a non medical person blush and we find great humor. One of my very best buddies came to work one night and commented that she had gas. She watched as a patient was taken from the first room to xray and knew that she would be gone for a while. The other nurse and I sat there as she backed her butt into the 'vacated' room, not realizing what she was about to do( I promise I would have stopped her if I had known.... well maybe I would have...ha). She bend over and "tooted" then walked out. The other nurse and I just stared at her in such a way that she realized that something was wrong. What she didn't know was that the patient had been accompanied by a relative who was still in the darkened room. I just put my head on the desk and nearly cried I was laughing so hard. Another time I was attempting to force activated charcoal into a small tube that had been inserted into a patient's stomach via his nose. The patient had overdosed on drugs and the charcoal is used to (simplified) soak up all the loose pills so that the pill fragments can be carried out of the body. Faye warned me that I was squeezing the tube too hard and that it might burst. The next thing I know Faye is covered in liquid charcoal from her head to her waist and I didn't have a thing on me. Honest to God I didn't know what to do. "Oops" just doesn't seem enough. I frequently will warn a patient prior to giving a shot by saying "BIG STICK" while I am injecting. Linda one time walked into the room of a very heavy patient and after wiping the injection site on her butt, said to the patient "BIG BUTT". Talk about a Freudian slip. She refused to return to the ER till the patient had been discharged. Stay tuned, in the next few days I am going to post a list of our most mispronounced words that we hear in the ER.

Health Care and Donald Berwick... It's Coming and You Were Warned

I will make an earnest effort to stop blogging about politics for the next few weeks but so much has happened that I have just had to comment. This is going to be short because I have gone over this ad nauseum in past blogs. We are facing health care rationing. I'm not talking about when your insurance company gives you a list of the Doctors that are on your specific plan or when you have to call and pre-cert a major test or procedure(by the way I have NEVER been denied any procedure that my doctor wanted me to have.) I am talking about real honest to God rationing like they have in England. King Barack has appointed Donald Berwick as the Head of Medicaid and Medicare services. Well, you may think, this has nothing to do with me because I have Aetna, Blue Cross or whatever insurance coverage. Get real. This man will affect the way that ALL insurance companies will function because where medicaid and medicare go the others have to follow. I have mega complaints about the corruption within the medicaid system. For instance just last week we had a patient come in with Blue Max(good coverage) and a medicaid card. This is not a rarity, it happens all the time. I have also questioned why a 98 year old nursing home resident that is ravaged by disease, bed sores, contractions,and Alzheimer's is being rigorously treated for his or her heart attack. I feel that we need a huge over haul but this man will impact us in our choices and the length of time that we get care for treatable diseases. I want to be able to choose what I want done when I am 98 even though my insurance wants to just let me go or worse yet euthanize me(you think this is far fetched...it's coming. I promise you that is on the horizon). I do not want the government involved in my choices or my health. I want them to deal with the corruption only. Medicaid and Medicare are the governments babies they need to police their own agencies before they try to save money by delaying or denying care.

NASA and the Presidential Directive

NASA's new directive is to make Muslims feel better about themselves. Talk about doing what no man has done before. Wait, killing Americans make radical Muslims feel better soooo are we going to be giving them information to assist them to do that or will we be screening the Muslims that we teach and make sure we only get gentle pro-American Muslims?

NASA administrator Charles Bolden stated that he had three directives from President Obama: 1) to re-inspire children to encourage science and math interest(this is noble and very pro-American)2)to expand our international relationships(okay we do well with Russia on this one) 3)the most important one is to reach out to the Muslim world and help them feel better about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.

The Islamic peoples have contributed vast amounts of knowledge to the world from Calid in the 7th century to Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor an astronaut and orthopedic surgeon who has already spent time on the International Space Station. Their scientific and artistic endeavors have indeed made the world a richer place. HOWEVER there is a significant group of radicals within their community that would consider their greatest accomplishment the total annihilation of America. So the question should be asked is why waste NASA's time doing a PR mission when we need to be back in space and headed to the great unknown. Is this just a feel good mission of Admin. Bolden or is he going to be sharing NASA secret "stuff"? It makes me very uncomfortable giving information to a group of people who hold us in such disdain.