I read a thread on another forum recently found here. http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=257985

It’s frickin hilarious. Some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, and also the most horrifying. But this made me think. You see, my wife has chronic kidney stones. It sucks, because about every 6 months or so, I end up in an ER myself. Combined with my work experience, I have learned a few things about ER’s and healthcare in general. Here goes.

#1. ER’s can be fun, but you have to make it work for you. For instance-

One of the first times I visited the ER as an adult, was actually on my own. You see, a friend of mines’ husband had taken exception with me as a whole. This later manifested itself with him doing his damndest to implant his fist in my skull. He’s a bit of the jealous type. As a result, I was left with some pretty serious bruising on my face, a nice little cut on my forehead, and some other assorted fun stuff. There is quite a bit more to this story, but that can be told another time. Anyhow, I learned, levity is the single best weapon you have in the ER. When you check in at 3am, the nurses are burned out. No one wants to work overnight shift, and the people you get in there at that time are “interesting” to say the least. So, a little humor goes a LONG way. Here I am bleeding from my head, with a possible skull fracture, likely a concussion, and who knows what else. I walked in, and asked the charge nurse at the desk to guess what I was here for. Her not missing a beat went with “You must be here for a colonoscopy!” I couldn’t have played that one better myself. We shared a hearty laugh, and I got my check in checkup as it were. As I was brought in the back (with the assistance of my brother. I was a little wobbly) I continued to crack jokes. I thought this was the funniest damn thing on earth. In turn the nurses on staff got quite the kick out of it as well. Most people come in moaning and crying over a stubbed toe, and here I am, skull totally toasted, looking like I just survived a car crash, thinking this is the funniest damn thing in the world. Every so often a CNA or nurse or the staff doc would wander by, and they had to poke their head in. I alternated between my cell phone (taking care of business) and making fun of my mess. Even the police officer that was there dropping off another “find” had to appreciate it. He had his digi cam, and we got pics of the whole incident.  By the end of the night, I had everyone in stitches (Including myself. 7 of them in fact) and enjoying it. I went home feeling good. To the nurses that put up with my insanity, you made my year.

#2. Pay attention to what the doctors are doing.

One of my lady’s many trips to the ER almost ended very poorly. We had gone to an unnamed suburban ER for another one of her kidney pain episodes. Fortunately for us, it was a day time visit for once, but we still had to go. As is the status quo, it was the middle of winter, and it was cold as hell. Anyhow, onto the doc. He was about ready to send her home with a load of pain meds and call it a day. She, being the persistent one, was not satisfied with this. She wanted to make sure they had talked to her urologist before this happened, so the urologist could confirm that she was good to go. The doc hemmed and hawed, but finally we prevailed. A 5 minute conversation with the urologist later, and we were on our way to ANOTHER hospital, with an open OR, where the wife was scheduled for immediate stone removal. 3 hours and two dozen stones later, we were good. The moral of this story? Make damn sure that if you KNOW the doc has missed something, speak up. He isn’t going to know unless you tell him, and sometimes it takes an outside pair of eyes to make sure that stuff goes well, or correctly in this case. God only knows what would have happened had they sent her home.

#3. Know everyone you can.

The LAST time we were at the hospital, we learned this one. As it turns out, a woman that I had used to work with had married a doctor, that HAPPENED to be the attending on the surgery the lady was scheduled for that day. While this didn’t really provide any tangible benefit, it made me feel a lot better. I knew from my conversations with the other staff, and knew that this guy knows what’s up. To the docs, I thank you.

I’m sure that there is more to this that I am forgetting, but you get the idea. Also, therapy dogs ROCK. I was sitting in the ER for about the 50th time, when a couple ladies came in with some dogs. These weren’t terribly “special” dogs, not purebred, not gigantic, not anything special. They were mad friendly though, and I tell you what, it made me SO much more mellow just to be able to cool out with these dogs, it was unreal. I think I spent nearly two hours petting on these dogs, and by the time they had to go, we were done. To the two ladies with the awesome therapy dogs, I am planning on one because of you.

I read a statistic today. This statistic was that 1 in 11 kids in either MN (or the US, doesn’t really matter where) do not get enough to eat. That means, almost 10 percent of the adolescent population does not get a full meal all the time, or sometimes, not at all. This is lame. Hungry kids do stuff. They steal, beg, and do whatever they have to do to get some chow. This in turn teaches them that no one is going to help them. No one is going to bring them a warm dinner, a blanket, a shoulder to rest their heads on when they’re sick. This is lame. Because as adults, we tend to use what we learned as children in our decision making as adults. Meaning, if you stole so you could get a loaf of bread or some green beans as a kid, you would likely steal again as an adult. Not completely your fault, as it’s all you’ve ever known. Hopefully you’d be smart enough to think that MAYBE theivery was a bad idea, and go on to better ways of making money, like a job. A lot of times, this doesn’t happen though, and we start breeding criminals. Sure, it seems innocent enough. Kid swipes a frozen dinner for him and kid sister. Next thing you know, he’s graduated to stealing video games from Best Buy. From there, you got your auto theft, your home invasion, on up to white collar crimes. Embezzlement is fun everyone! Wait, no. No embezzling. That’s bad.

Now, what do we do about this? Sure, there is the work food drive, the home food drive, the donations from big corporations. Everyone pitches in dough around the holidays so that single and underpaid parents alike can feed their kids the typical Thanksgiving meal, complete with a turkey and stuffing. This is great, for that one night of the year. Maybe even a few nights, as turkey leftovers tend to go a long ways. But, what happens after that meal? Kids go right back to starving, having to rely on an already overrun food supply system that is seeing increases in need from the economic fallout on an exponential basis. And then I got to thinkin……

Child obesity is at an all time high. More and more kids are turning off the bike, and on the Xbox. Less and less are our kids getting out there for exercise, and sitting in front of the TV longer. There are many contributing factors to this. More parents are afraid of kids getting injured or kidnapped, forcing them to limit the childs’ activities in the interest of safety. So, no more going out to play until the street lights come on, but if you’re lucky, you’ll have a play date next month. There is also the increased stress on parents, where instead of making a decent dinner, they stop at the McDonalds and get the kids Happy Meals. All in all, less activity all around. When you do less, realistically you should eat less, right? I mean, you could simply say, run around the back yard for a while, but we all know better than that. So that brings us to less food. Maybe you don’t eat that box of Twinkies, or maybe you only eat a serving of Hamburger Helper instead of 3.  Suddenly, we have a surplus of food sitting in our cupboards, doing nothing. So, what do you think we do with this food? How about…. we give it to the starving kids? It all works! Starving kids get to eat chow, and not steal from me. Fat kids eat less chow, and stop workin’ over my tax bill for health programs to make fat kids less fat!

I tell you, sometimes, I’m a genius.

So several months ago, there was a chili contest at work. Me, having a sick sense of humor, entered. Now if you’ve ever met me in real life, I take spicy food as a challenge. I’ve completed the Buffalo Wild Wings Blazin’ challenge. I was going to attempt back to back, but everyone else got bored. Safe to say, I like it hot. Anyhow, we had this chili contest, and I came in second. Normally I’d have been ok with this, but I swear, it was rigged. EVERY judge from that contest had stated that I had the best chili, even if I had made them sweat a bit. My reply to this was, I ran out of peppers.They cried. Anyhow, I came in second, to some sort of bland, chili-ish mixture. It had beans, it had some sort of flavor, there was meat, but yeah. TOTALLY forgettable. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that due to the WILD success of the first chili contest, we would be having more cookoffs. My plan was set.

I was going to make the single HOTTEST batch of chili I could muster. I wasn’t going for the win here, I was going for pain. The kind of pain that makes you question the sanity of the creator. The kind of pain that comes with warnings. The kind of pain that requires 3 bottles of milk and a shot of Novocaine to get over. Freakin’ PAIN. What happened next was a little odd. I won. Somehow, out of 4 contestants, I came in first. I was the recipient of a Walmart gift card, which is going to buy me a video game in the next hour or so, once I leave work. Probably Fallout 3, unless my car slips and I get Gears 2 instead.

But what was in this chili, you ask? Well, here is the recipe, in its entireity. Not one bit of it was plagairized from another chef, hell, I made it up as I went along. And yes, there really is bacon in it.

Keep in mind, this is directly from the email I sent to a co worker, and is officially the first recipe I have ever written. Total cost, about 30$. Watching my supervisors sweat, priceless. And I have an excuse to spend money on me now!

You’ve all seen a beater. A car that is usually quite rusty, has a lot of body damage, or both. Often it smokes, leaks/burns oil, and is probably unfit for travel. Loud, mismatched tires, no hubcaps, doors that don’t always open, close, lock, or all of the above. Cars that in all reality, should be crushed. But there they are, clogging up our roads with their laughable acceleration, frequent breakdowns, and let’s not forget, the questionable characters behind the wheel. Often single men, they look scruffy, dirty, and downright dangerous. But why are they driving these cars? Are they in some sort of financial trouble? Can they not obtain a job due to their anti-social appearance?

All of those are distinct possibilities, but I find it’s for another reason. There is a very zen experience to be found in a beater. My 89 Escort was the perfect example. This car was TERRIBLE. The rear suspension was completely shot, sagging much like the ass end of a dog trying to take a poop. 3 of the 4 doors worked, sometimes. You couldn’t lock the driver door, and you couldn’t open the passenger door. Both rear doors worked well, strangely. It was a wagon, and of course, the the liftgate didn’t work. At all. The hood latch was sticky, when you could get it to pop (This was accomplished by a lot of force and a pair of pliers.) It leaked gasoline, oil, coolant, transmission fluid, and I’m fairly certain there was some pancake syrup under there at one point. It only had 3 hubcaps, and the tires were mismatched as much as humanly possible. The interior was just as good, featuring a drivers seat that was shredded, a radio that didn’t work most of the time, and interior lights that didn’t work at all. The car wasn’t a total loss though. The heat worked, it got decent mileage, and it started every time. This gem cost me 350$.

Why was I driving such a lovely machine? Well, I had wrecked my other car, and needed some wheels to get me by until it was repaired. It was either rent a car, borrow a car, or buy a car. Buy a car was the cheapest option. Bought a car I did. At first, I hated it. I didn’t want to be seen in this pile of garbage. I was driving WAY below what I thought should be my level. And I was still trying to impress the ladies. I was never very good looking, so my car was all I ever had. But now, I was stuck with the Escort. And then….

It happened. I started enjoying this car. I savored the time I had with it. Why? Could be any number of reasons. I know I never cared about where I left it, or what was left in it, simply because I never left anything good in it. I think there may have been 47 cents in the ash tray, But other than that, there was nothing of value in that car. The car was actually an automatic, which was rare, so there wasn’t even a shift knob to steal. I also didn’t care about the exterior. I once came out to the car, and found a bonus dent in it. I actually kicked the car on the other side to make it match, and called it good. There was something special about driving a car like that. Something about hooning it around in the winter, creaming a snow bank, and continuing on my merry way. It made me feel….. at one with the car. The car understood me. It knew that it was basic transportation at best, and MAYBE some fun, when it wasn’t falling apart. But it was very liberating not caring about a car. Knowing that without question, I always had the worst car in a given situation. No one ever wanted to ride with me anywhere, which meant I was never tapped to be sober cab. My hatchback didn’t work, so no one ever wanted me to move stuff with it. It was the best thing ever. I never had to worry about it.

Sometimes, even now, driving either the Mini, or the Speed, I miss those days.

This one is going to be short. Who is Perez Hilton? I turn on my TV one day and see this mincing little moo cow flooped all over MTV and VH1. Somehow, he’s the reigning king (queen?) of gossip media.  Somehow, this guy has got his face splashed all over TV, and has made a bucketload of cash. I’m all for cash, but I cannot fathom what the hell Viacom sees in this guy enough to give him a contract. Really. Someone tell me please?