July 2006 Archives

Its midnight:30 and I'm in the emergency room. My 6pm to 3am shift happens to fall on the hottest, sweatiest, most climatically uncomfortable day that Portland has ever experienced. I assumed that this meteorologic insanity would also lead to insanity in the emergency department; I was bracing myself for a saturday night in a slammed ER, filled with angry, impatient patients whose medical (and/or psychiatric) conditions were driven to the breaking point by the heat. Heat does weird things to people. It makes people anxious. It makes them less tolerant of pain. It makes them want to get drunk and get on motorboats and crash into things.

But tonight the anticipated frenzy has not occured. YET. Believe me, if there was a morcel of wood within a 20 foot radius of this computer, I would be vigorously knocking on it right now. Everyone says that this is the calm before the storm. We'll see.

I had a patient this evening who I had come in the last time I was on. He was so excited to see me again that he repeatedly shook my hand and told me that "you and me - we understand eachother." Apparently we had made quite a connection at his last visit. Then he extended his fist for me to knock, in a sign that we were "tight", and told me I was pretty. You know you've made it when crazy drunk people give you props and then hit on you.

I feel like I am home.