Trauma - Day 1

Well, the high expectations of trauma surgery fun have been replaced with the frustrating reality of ICU and critical care. I spent all morning filling out a progress note sheet on 4 patients. FOUR in SIX hours. Disgusting I know. Then it was off to the cafeteria where I spent $4.08 on the worst chicken tenders ever made. (Maybe that's a little exaggerated, but come on, I was irritated at this point). After lunch we went to round with the attending. Even though he was pretty cool and kept a decent tempo it still took us like about 3 hours. As rounds ended we got called for a trauma! My heart started racing thinking it was go time for some blood and guts, but alas it was a boring motorcycle crash. His face was bruised and his collar bone was broken, but no need for surgery. I did hear a pretty crazy story about some guy that lost electricity during the ice storm of '07 and in desperation decided to rig his way into a powerline near his house. (Assuming of course it still had power...) To determine whether this random line had power, he decided to park his truck directly underneath, erect a 20 ft aluminum ladder in the bed, stand on the top rung and touch the line with a metal pipe. What the heck was he expecting to find? Really? Apparently it shocked the pee out of him as he fell 25 ft. Idiocracy at its best... Hope tomorrow's better...

Trauma - Preface

Pulled in today watching Jerry leave for dinner. He pointed me in the right direction and I eventually unloaded my crap in the apartment. Sadly, I could hardly find a place for my meat. I went on to tell some stories with Jason and Brad while we all waited for Jerry to return. I told them all the story of the Craftsmen Emergency, the fat lady that dropped a chip and crushed her leg while rear-ending a back hoe tractor story, and the old lady who fell off her toilet broke her leg and nearly died story. Jerry returned and we all retold the stories. Eventually, I took a shower (by the way, don't EVER buy a "travel louffa") and called Ma Lady making sure she remembered to call me back when she hit the sack (and found the deodorant). She did and she did, pretty funny. Now that I'm laying down to go to bed, I'll find out where I'm supposed to be at 6:00 AM tomorrow. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I'll never know where to park.... good night...zzzz

Medicare Cuts

I just read an article discussing the new 10.6% cuts in Medicare reimbursement for physicians and I was appalled. There was a bill in place to suspend the cuts, but since Congress went on vacation for the 4th of July it was shelved until after. Unfortunately the cuts were set to be activated on July 1st! The article went on to detail how cuts in reimbursement will make caring for Medicare patients financial suicide for many private practice clinics. Uh....duh. It's already a charity to see Medicare patients who traditionally bring in pennies more than they cost!

What is our government thinking? Why do they attack the 7% of Medicare costs (physician reimbursements) instead of the 93% (overhead, administration, hospitals, technology, pharmaceuticals, etc)? Why has our government been painting the picture of money grubbing doctors as the source of our surge in healthcare costs when it's the unbridled use technology in the name of "standard of care" and hospital protocols or the intentionally bloated hospital bills to cover those who won't pay? In a time when the country faces an alarming shortage of physicians, wouldn't it make sense to support them, encourage the development of more, and NOT turn them into villains?

Medicare cuts and the seeming inevitability of universal (AKA socialized) medicine are making medical school a terribly irresponsible investment. Why would anyone invest 100's of thousands of dollars and 7 - 10 yrs of their life to be yanked around by the government and make less than their friends who got a general business degree? To help people (understand it's possible to help people in any line of work)? They can't when our government makes caring for the most needy (those on medicare/medicaid) financially impossible!! Who's going to go to medical school in 5 yrs at this rate? The best and brightest? Absolutely not! They'd be stupid to give up their autonomy and creative freedom for a future of robotic compliance, hurried office visits, and fear of litigation. But we need to ramp up the graduation of new physicians by thousands per year to replace the rapid retirement of baby boomer doctors, so who's going to do it? I'm not sure, but I don't look forward to finding out... Put it this way; with the demand for nurses being so high, has anyone noticed the quality of nursing care improving? No, I haven't either.

The future does NOT look good for Americans truly in need of health care unless something drastic happens. Either we quadruple our taxes to pay for the way we do it now, or we stop regulating the art out of medicine and allow doctors to practice what many people hate to admit is an imperfect science.

Socialized Schooling

The other day I stumbled across an incredible idea. It is inspired by the marvelous job done by the Democratic party in using the Rich's money to help the Poor. I see how happy it makes everyone so I figured why not extend the obligatory generosity to school?

So here's the plan....we take points from the A students and give them freely to the worst performing students in each and every school! How amazing is that? I know......it is. Just think about it.

Student X is genetically gifted at learning. He soaks up everything he hears and finishes assignments quickly. He rarely studies and yet consistently outperforms his peers. The end of the semester he finishes with a 98% in the class.

Student Y is genetically disadvantaged at learning. He has trouble following lectures, he studies every day after school for several hours, and works regularly with a tutor. He does everything he can to improve his grades and yet consistently does poorly on exams. The end of the semester he finishes with a 62% in the class.

Now imagine if we could use the extra 8 percentage points gained by Student X to help Student Y get a C? Wouldn't that be incredible?! How many students that would otherwise fail a class could be helped by genetically spoiled , academic brats? The answer is: countless!

Some of the critics may argue: well what about those kids that really work hard for their A's and those kids that slack off and make D's? Shouldn't they be removed from the program? Absolutely not! There is no way we can be sure who's working hard and who isn't, and wouldn't it be a crime to eliminate anyone from such a beautiful idea? I argue, yes it would. Another person might ask, "How long can a student make use of the "free" points?" To be honest, that's just an ignorant question because anyone who's not making good grades now will continue to struggle for the rest of their lives. It's genetic. Willpower has very little (if anything) to do with it.

Also, if anyone's ever watched the tax habits of the democratic party, you'd know that the next step is to show Student X that he should be ashamed of his A's because he didn't really do anything to earn them. Instead convince him that a B would be much more respectable and in so doing, would free up 10 more percentage points to bring F students into passing grades too! Eventually Student X will realize the good that he's doing and feel better about himself. In addition, the increased number of passing students will make our newest generations that much more successful! If everyone succeeds, how can we fail?? Am I right?

I hope you all will join me in this effort.

Death of a Cell Phone

Tuesday I was working out, you know, lifting some HUGE weights, and then all of a sudden tragedy struck!

When lying down on the bench my cell phone slid out of my pocket and on to the floor. I didn't think much about it because it wasn't a great fall and my phone is pretty tough, so I went ahead and did the exercise. At the end of the exercise I was exhausted. I could barely hold the weights any more and I couldn't sit up. I only had one option: drop the weights. Little did I know, my cell phone was directly underneath the weight on the left side!! The weight fell briskly and crushed my poor little phone!

I frantically picked up the injured phone and examined the shell to see if it was ruined. Nothing looked wrong so I was momentarily relieved. Unfortunately it was just momentarily. I watched as the display went dim, never to light up again. And I cried...(a very little).

I went to Cingular the next day to get a new phone and the guy there scanned my old phone's SIM card to transfer the numbers. But alas, it was not my day. I had been saving numbers to my phone memory and not to the SIM card! I had nothing, no one, nada in my new phone. I was appalled, nauseous, a little light-headed, and overwhelmingly distraught at the thought of getting all those numbers back again. I mean I must have had a million friends....right?
Anyway...the point is, I NEED YOUR NUMBER!! Send me a message and until then, have fun and be safe when lifting weights. You never know what you might crush next.

Karma

It was a normal Sunday morning. I woke up, frantically got ready for church, and found myself running late. I sped over to Bridget's house only to find her running even later, which of course relinquished me from the blame of tardiness. I stood around waiting for her to finish getting ready and she asked, "What was wrong with you last night?"

Caught off gaurd by the question, I answered, "uh...what do you mean?"

She came back saying, "You seemed mad last night when you left."

I was amazed by her complete misunderstanding of my body language and tried to inform her that I was in fact tired, since the stupid movie, RENT, was more than 2 hours long!

She retorted that I need to learn to be tired in a nicer way.....whatever that means.

We got to church and hopped out of the car, scurrying to the front doors. The trollies had stopped running for quite some time so we walked (not holding hands since she told me I'm an angry tired person). Continuing in the awkward, not-quite-a-run-walk, Bridget offered some suggestions to my "lifeless" ambulation. According to her, my arms hang to my side like a pair of summer sausages when I walk. So, as a result, I begin flailing my arms in a passive agressive protest to her criticism.

She then continued, adding that I never wear my jackets correctly on the peaks of my shoulders. Apparently they're "always too far back."

Feeling my heart squish between the toes of the foot of suggestive criticism, I sauntered into church holding her hand with a red rover grip (thanks Dane Cook).

Leaving church she asked me, "why don't you sing louder? You look like a limp pickle during worship."

The reason was I didn't know any of the songs and I always feel like an idiot if I think I know the notes and belt them out, only to find that I don't when the person in front of me turns their head in a reflexive cringe. Needless to say, I don't think she believed me.

Driving out of the parking lot she blurted, "Don't run over these people," when I was like 50 feet from them. Then, "are you going to stop," as I glided up to a stopped car at the stoplight. And then, while coming to a stop at the light at 6th and Western, she yelled again because I opened the door to spit a loogie and momentarily forgot to hold the brake. (I was actually pretty close to hitting the car in front of us but that doesn't matter right now) As I began to make an excuse, she asked me why I was driving so bad. (Understand I was driving the same way I always do, she's just weirding out for no reason.) So I told her I thought she was mistaken and that I was actually doing a pretty good job of chauffering her around.

We then started talking about what to eat. I offered the tuna helper I brought with me and she wrinkled her nose at the mere thought. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said, "I don't care, whatever you want to do." So I again offered the tuna helper. She answered, "OK, I'll just find something at the house, because I don't want to eat tuna helper." Uh..... I thought it was whatever I wanted to do.

OK, so I asked her if she had any coupons. Yes, she did. I asked where to. She rattled off almost every restaurant in the city and I said, "we're going to Pita Pit."

We walked in and over to the counter. I ordered my chicken breast pita and the two medium drinks that made us elligible for the coupon usage and Bridget spouted, "I just want water, I don't need a drink." I explained that we had to get the drinks to use the coupon and she got this strange look on her face as the guy stated the obvious, "uh...you can still get water with a drink cup." Gee...thanks, dude.

Ironically she walked to the drink station and attempted to get some lemonade, but alas, it had run out giving her nothing but water. No problem, right? (especially since she "wanted" water in the first place.) Nope. She told the guy, "yeah your pop machine is broken. Everything is flat."

The guy appologized and offered to fix the problem and she said, "no, it's fine. I guess I'll just drink water," in such a way that it seemed a little...mean.

I laughed at the table when I saw her return again to the drink station and gather some ice tea! She walked to the table and sat down flustered by her troubles. I informed her that she might want to be a little nicer when telling someone their machine is broken but she insisted she sounded pleasant. After praying, I began to tell her that I think she'd been a little over-critical this morning and that she needed to be a little more considerate.

Falling on deaf ears my complaints vanished in the air and silence once again filled the Pita Pit. Taking another huge bite of her pita, Bridget sent sauce all over her hands and reached for the napkins at the middle of the table. After crumpling up every good napkin we had left, her hand returned to its place on the pita unabated. Yeah, she wishes.

As her hand tried to clear the top of her fully loaded 20 oz styrofoam cup of iced tea, it hit a snag. A straw. In the blink of an eye every ounce of her drink was in her lap, on her sweater, and eventually in her chair as it soaked through. In another instant shorter than the first, I burst into a belly laugh unmatched in neither volume, nor duration as I pointed with vindication at her sopping pants. Standing in shock she wimpered, "can we leave?"

We gathered our stuff and walked out to the laughter of not only me, but the register guy too. Watching Bridget struggle into the car and whine about her freezing cold pants, I simply said, "maybe you'll think twice before being so critical in the future." She just kept her bottom lip stuck out. So, I just kept laughing.

The Classics: "Pride Before the Fall"

“Goodbye everyone. Next week make sure you bring back the…” No one was really paying attention to the TA, especially not Sandy. He quietly but quickly packed his backpack. Pencil, pen, calculator, and lab notebook, all accounted for. It was 9:04 already and going over is a TA’s biggest mistake, at least it is in Sandy’s mind. Standing slowly and sliding his stool under the shiny black workstation, Sandy sent a subtle yet blaringly rude statement to the TA concerning his apparent disregard for time. Getting the hint, the TA shyly ended class while apologizing and extending another assignment. With the dull glory that was his victory, Sandy briskly exited his Physics lab at 9:05 pm.

At the bike rack, he quickly located the coolest bike albeit a Wal-Mart purchase: a blue and silver Motiv dual-suspension mountain bike. Unlocking his transportation Sandy proudly peddled off from the Physical Science building en route for his chair and the warm glow of his 19” Sony computer monitor. He jetted across Monroe and into the nearly vacant parking lot where he found himself side by side with a blue GMC Astro minivan. In a fit of childish and notoriously male behavior, Sandy began to peddle a little harder, a little faster. He changed gears, and continued to fly. Overcoming the van and charging ahead, Sandy felt like a stud. Looking back to the pavement that passed underneath him like water, he spotted several parking blocks ahead, and remembering his childhood mastery of the “bunny hop” decided to jump one with the hopes of making one last impression on the driver while placing himself firmly in the annals of all time best campus bike riders.

As the parking blocks approached, Sandy steadied himself in a crouched position on his peddles. Hands firmly on the bars, butt slightly above the seat, knees bent, eyes focused. The parking blocks closed in...QUICKLY! His ridiculous level of speed mixed beautifully with his nonchalant and therefore horribly mistimed bunny hop as the front tire of his beloved bike planted firmly into the cement block. Immediately, the momentum trapped in the rocket that was his body and bike redirected, upward. The front tire held its position dutifully sending Sandy over the handle bars with tremendous velocity. Close behind was the rest of the beloved. Rotating forward, Sandy’s backpack whipped in front of his face. He tucked his head and assumed the fetal position as best he could, but his foot was stuck. It wasn’t his life that flashed before his eyes, but his humiliation. He landed with a thud, on his back, then shoulders, then elbow and eventually, knee and hip. He skid to a stop opening wounds, which felt superficial when compared to his pride. Looking back to the minivan with defeated eyes, Sandy heard “Hey! Are you OK?...Hey!” Rolling over and readjusting his backpack, the laughter of female onlookers overwhelmed him. “What a NERD! HAH HAHA HA!” He lifted his bike and frantically collected himself, all the while worried about the contents of his backpack. His seat was completely misaligned, but as the demoralizing shouts of the driver persisted and the laughter of women rang in his head, he mounted his bike and sat down defiantly, riding towards home, leaving his pride in the street.