Talkin'

There are things that I am amazed come out of my mouth. I told someone last night... "I used to be sweet, then I started working here." I had a frequent flier psych patient that ALWAYS shows up drunk and suicidal. Last night he was bitching about getting bills from the hospital and EMS. He didn't understand why he was getting bills if he wasn't being admitted. Plus, he didn't even want to be there. My response was twofold. First... "you called us, we didn't call you. We were doing just fine when this bed was empty." I also said "Just because you aren't admitted doesn't meant we didn't treat you. Besides, we aren't gonna see that money anyway."

Maybe not my most therapeutic communications.

I have also found myself using the most basic and common slang out there. Diabetes and hypertension have been dropped to "the sugars and the pressure" (or depending on if you are a little more rural, htn becomes the "high blood").  I know that Epsom salts will fix any skin or GI ailment and that a BC Powder will damn near fix anything you've got from abscesses to the grouch (gout for you southern-slang naive). You can have a "touch" of pressure or sugars, or you're "suffrin with the arth-a-ritis."

Let me also mention my Darwin winner of the night. 18 year old college kid picks a fight with his roommate, who has 5inches and 50lbs on this kid, over the damn XBOX cables. Roommate proceeds to slam the kid's head onto the floor a couple of times. The kid shows up in the ED with the chief complaint of...... dehydration. Did I mention this was at 4am? His major malfunction? He had the inside of one of his cheeks stuck in his braces. We had to get oral surgery to come pry him loose and sew the lac. What have we learned from this semester there kids?