I Am Officially Losing It

I'm not sure how much more stupidity I can possibly take. I've been working with residents for 13 years. I know what to expect. I know that sometimes they are going to do things that will make me insane. Will make me want to punch them in the ovaries, whether they possess them or not. Will make me wonder how on earth they received their medical degree. And how stupid they think I am. This last week I had a resident that I nearly strangled with his own innards. He was working with an intern (sweet girl, a little scared of this thing we call "labor" and "delivery")and he spent the entire day smirking at patronizing me. We had a patient that was clearly, to anyone with half a brain and lick of experience in OP presentation: blood in the catheter, coupling contractions, belly that looked like a ski slope. Classic. I continued to explain to him why keeping her with her head down and changing from side to side was the most prudent course of action despite his wanting to sit her bolt upright. When she finally got to 9 centimeters and he declared he "really wanted her sitting up" I decided, "fuck you, fine." So I sat her bolt upright. And an hour later she had a swollen cervix. So now, she's in trendelenberg and changing from side to side. After about another hour, the intern comes in to check her cervix and announces, "The foley came out." I said, "It came out? Is the balloon deflated?" "No," she says, "it's right here." And she holds up the end of the foley with the 10 ml balloon still intact. Ouch. I look around to make sure my delivery table is actually in the room (oh, good, there it is) because anyone who had been doing this job for any length of time knows the only reason that bulb came out is because a a big, fat HEAD pushed it out. So, I said, "Go ahead and check her." The intern gets a strange look on her face, and says, "I don't think I feel any cervix." After she said she wanted me to follow her, I did, and immediately ran into head. I declared her ready to have a baby just as Dr. Hairball walked into the room. At this point, he grabs a glove, saunters over to the patient and then tells the the intern, "You might be able to call her +2 station." Now, this is where I am biting a hole in my lip to keep from saying, "It's a good thing you followed me, because with your three years of experience I'm sure you know better than I, who has only been doing this job, in a high risk hospital that does 3000 deliveries a year, since you were 15 years old." I wanted to, but that's what I wanted to say. Luckily, the patient is right there and I still have a thin veneer of professionalism. Very thin, but still existing. I tell them I was going to straight cath her before we started pushing because I didn't know how long that foley had been out, and as I go to put in the catheter, all I see is head. Then I got shitty. "You call THAT +2???" Oops.

Of course, this pales in comparison to the idiot attending I dealt with the other day. This guy is an OB, a perv, and dumber than a bag of hammers. He scarred one of my poor corpsman for life by changing his scrubs in the stock room. "It was all man boobs and nipple hair." she nearly sobbed. She'll probably never want to see a naked man ever again. We had a post-partum hemorrhage the other day, that was significant enough I wanted to weigh the pads. So, I put the same number and quality of pads on the scale, zero it out and weigh to get the amount of blood she has lost. First he asked me how I knew that was right because she had all kinds of pads on there. Yes, I know this. I weighed the dry ones first and zeroed the scale; I know how to weigh pads! Not my first rodeo and the blood loss was 1952 grams. Which equates to 1952 milliliters. So then he says, "I'm going to call her loss 800 mls." You can't call it that, I weighed the pads; its 1952 mls. "So, your guesstimate is what?" It's NOT A GUESS! IT'S A MEASUREMENT! IT IS 1952 MLS!!!! So then I had to explain how 1 ml equals 1 gm "But it's liquid not a solid." Hello??? Yes, and 1 ml weighs 1 gram. A pint's a pound the world around, have you never heard of this? My mother says it all the time! Liquid has weight and the weight is known. "Okay, but it wasn't all blood, all liquid, some of it was clot." For the love of GOD MAN! MATTER IS CONSTANT!! THE SAME AMOUNT WILL WEIGH THE SAME NO MATTER WHAT STATE SAID MATTER IS IN!!! THIS IS HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS!!! YOU CALL YOURSELF A DOCTOR???? Needless to say, I need my Ativan refilled.

Movember Movement!

My friend Shawn in involved in a charity event. It's called Movember. Now, I know you all think Movember is only "No shave November" for those lazy bastards who would rather have small rodents living on their faces than have to brave the cold steel or whirling blades of a razor. Not so, my loyal reader (what? is there more than one??), not so. Movember is actually a world wide event where mustaches are grown as a charity fundraiser to support men's cancer research and awareness. You know, those cancers with nasty names like "testicular" and "prostrate" and yes, even "breast." I know breast cancer is covered in the boobie-centric month of October and is represented by, what looks like a 500 gallon vat of Pepto Bismol being spewed all over the world, but men get breast cancer too, folks. I'm sure the manly men would much rather be represented by a full, sexy, mustache than anything in pink. Did you know Brian Piccolo died at 26 years of age from a testicular cancer that wasn't discovered until it was in his chest cavity? Or that a next door neighbor of mine lost a testicle at 15 years old from testicular cancer? This isn't something that strikes only when these Y chromosomers are old peeps.

So, anyway, back to Shawn. He has a Movember page on the Movemeber site. Here you can make a tax deductible, charitable contribution to either Shawn, his team Major League Moustaches, or both for that matter! You can also check out his growth (ha!) on both Facebook and on Twitter So, come on peeps! Make a donation! Loosen those pocketbooks and those wallets. Unstrangle the moths and release the fists! Donate so, if my boys or anyone else's boys, God forbid have to face cancer, we can be that much closer to a cure. And you can be a part of it! Go YOU!

I know I usually talk about "cooter electrocution," but this last time I swear my aesthetician had the laser set on "Kill/death/murder/serial killer/death row/electric chair". Holy Schnikes!

The next month is going to be me pre-gaming for Rodney Carrington. So you get to go along for the ride!

I was telling someone at work a story about my horse (probably about breaking my ankle falling off of her, that one is always good for a laugh) and it reminded me of this one.  I was in middle school and had a job feeding the other horses in the mornings.  I would ride my bike to the barn at the ass crack of dawn before school, looking like Super Janitor with all the keys to the tackrooms hanging off my belt, and feed about 15 horses  so the other owners didn't have to worry about getting mussed before work or school.  Then, I had to ride my bike home, shower, change, and get myself the 5 miles to school before the bell rang, but hey, I was making about 40 bucks a week and that was bank for an 8th grader in the early 80's, baby!

Like all large stables without in-house cats or dogs, we had a significant rat problem.  Stems from all that readily available grain. Despite using metal garbage cans to store it in, enough fell on the ground from either the humans being careless or the horses being sloppy to keep our rat population fat and sassy.  Now, when I say rat, I don't mean the kind you get at the pet store and keep at home as a companion, waiting for it to chew your head off.  I'm talking RATS.  Rats the size of small dogs.  Rats that would kick the shit out of a Chihuahua, and make a Pit Bull pause.  And these suckers had no fear.  If you came upon one, they'd look at you like, "What the hell do you want, bitch?"   The owners began leaving rat poison out in the tackrooms to try and reduce the number our disease carrying pets.  Rat poison in basically warfarin, which is a blood thinner, commonly known as Coumadin, and used in people with artificial heart valves.  The rats eat this tasty treat and, at some point, suffer catastrophic internal hemorrhaging.  Not a fun way to die, be ye man or beast.

So, here I am, one foggy morning, feeding the horses and in one of the stalls was a rat that was obviously in some distress.  Grossed out as I was, I knew I couldn't leave it in the stall where it might bite the several thousands of dollars worth of show horse in it's dying moments.  I grabbed an Apple Picker (wide, flat, non-sharp tined pitchfork used for cleaning stalls) and picked the poor rodent up and carried it to the manure pile, thereby saving the horse a bite and, well, what better cemetery for a large swamp rat?  As I was carrying it, I heard this scratchy, grinding sound.  I had no idea what it could be.  Until I tried to dump the rat off the fork and it held on, not only with it's front paws, but it also had a death (ha) grip on the tines with it's teeth. Gah..  Using my burgeoning critical thinking skills, I held the handle vertical and the rat slid off the tines onto the manure pile.  And started coming at me with what I could only imagine was blood lust in it's eyes.  Not wanting that thing anywhere near me, I picked it up with the fork again.  I also didn't want it to latch onto the tines again, so I started bouncing it up and down on the fork, so it couldn't get a grip.  My dilemma was now, "what to do with the little bastard?"  I started to get a little freaked out by this time, and decided to just bury it.  Yes, alive.  But it was barely alive, which is almost dead...so...there.  I flipped it one more time, and instead of catching it, let it fall onto the manure pile.  As it started coming toward me, I began to cover it with manure, thinking, wrongly as it turned out, that the weight of the manure would stop it in it's tracks.  No, this was the freaking Terminator of barn rats; it just kept coming at me.  I covered it with more manure and started beating the hell out of it until it stopped moving.  I don't know if the extra covering of manure was so it couldn't see what was coming or to protect my own sensibilities.

It was scary hair time again and so, since today was a holiday, we went to see Michael-The-Extremely-Gay-Hairdresser.  His hairstyle suggestions for SoS were severely limited as SoS had, once again, taken it upon himself to modify his coif.  He wasn't clear to the scalp, as he has been known to do, so that was a relief.  However, he also took the scissors to his eyebrows.  Seriously, what is wrong with this kid?  He was upset to find that he couldn't get "just a trim" like he wanted since he had cut the front so short.  Perhaps now he will leave his hair to the professionals.  FB got his usual barely-enough-trim-to-even-see-that-we-cut-it cut and Michael changed my color to a nice fall/winter brunette.  Which is good, because my poor hair was begging on it's knees and promising all manner of craziness to not be bleached again.  My mother, of course, hates it.
I like it.

FB came to me last night and said "Mom, I've got this bump and it's purple."  Do you know what fear that strikes in the heart of a mother?  When your teenager (or close enough) comes to you talking about bumps??  With the trepidation I imagine I would feel before sneaking up on a rabid tiger and poking it in the ass with a sharp stick, I asked, "Um, where is this bump?"  He said it was on the bottom of his stomach and pulled the waistband of his underwear down to the top of his hairline to show me the biggest, angriest ingrown hair I have ever seen.  "Good grief!  How long has that been there?"  He had no idea.  "Doesn't it hurt?"  Yes, yes it did.  So I got a straight pin, doused both it and the site with rubbing alcohol, and proceeded to lance this sucker.  At first I just poked it with the needle to see what would happen and then applied just the slightest pressure.  It was evacuated easily, but the whole time I just kept thinking, "Don't be MRSA, don't be MRSA, I really can't handle MRSA."   I'm pretty sure we're okay on that count as the ingrown hair came out with evacuation.  Although, I must admit, I always thought if this situation ever happened that FB would be old enough to deal with it himself.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be happening where I had to take care of it.  But since when has that kid ever done anything on the accepted timeline:?

No matter if I get beat into the ground, have six deliveries in 12 hours, have to crawl home on my knees over glass, slaughter my own livestock and grind my own wheat for even one meal, I will never be this tough.  Or amazing.