Medicine for the pre-apocalypse

Last night was one of those nights in the Emergency Department where things seemed to have come slightly unhinged. This is something that simply happens sometimes. The right combination of weather conditions, economic climate, phase of the moon, and some intangible mysterious vibe of the city all come together in the exactly the right way to form a sense of collective restlessness. A faint aura of instability seems to permeate everything.

The edges of sanity start to fray and tangle.

The result is that for some reason, everyone in the city feels this inexplicable desire to go to the Emergency Room. Its like this supernatural force gets its grip on the populace and instills this nagging idea that a variety of minor complaints must get examined IMMEDIATELY. Either that or it compels people to leave their homes, get wasted, and inflict varying amounts of violence upon themselves or each other. And then they go to the Emergency Room.

It leads to this odd, divergent combination of patients - either they have a mild cold or a yeast infection, or they have multiple horrific fractures and are about to die.

When i walked past the waiting room on my way into my shift yesterday afternoon, it looked like a small convention. People milling around, not enough seats for everyone - a foreboding sign in and of itself. Then I arrived to find that the computer system was down, multiple patients had not even been logged in, we were using - gasp- a white board, and the department was forced to operate with PAPER. Like, if I want something to happen, I have to find the appropriate piece of paper, write the appropriate things on it, and then find the nurse, who then has to find someone to get someone else to do something. Whereas before, when the computer system is functional, everything happens by magic at the speed of light.

This interesting exercise in post-apocalyptic medicine, combined with the trillions of anxious people milling around in triage and in the hallways (not to mention the roving bands of stray dogs and farm animals and the blazing trashcan fires) put everything at a standstill and caused me to run around ineffectively for many hours, drowning in my own private sea of inefficiency.

Good things that happened:
- I got to put in a chest tube
- I got to drill a pin through a man's tibia. This process involved a humerus (!) exchange between myself and the orthopedic resident who has what I am interpreting as a thick Russian accent. At one point I am holding this heavy power drill and am in the process of grinding a large drill bit through a man's leg (in order to put him in traction and reduce his femur fracture), and he is yelling something that I interpreted as "Slow speed!" "Slow speed!" so I am barely engaging the drill, thinking that I want to proceed slowly and cautiously so as to not damage any delicate cortical structures. Turns out he was yelling "Full speed!" "Full speed!" To be honest, full speed was much more fun.
- I got to show a young lady ultrasound images of her 14 week old fetus
- I got to do approximately one million pelvic exams
- I got to stay 2 hours late catching up on my charting

Wait, the last two weren't exactly awesome, but they are par for the course.

On a sidenote, I have discovered the joy and the tragedy that is hulu. A blessing and a curse. It allows me to indulge in my various guilty sitcom pleasures and watch Master and Commander of the Far Side of the Earth at 3 in the morning that one time when I couldn't sleep. But then again, I find myself wasting an hour today of my precious day off by watching the first half of Dragonheart. Everybody's favorite dragon-slaying movie, starring Dennis Quaid and Sean Connery as the critically acclaimed award winning portrayal of the voice of Draco the dragon. OH MY GOD. And then, as if that weren't enough, I found myself accidentally watching The Legend of the Seeker, a ridiculous hollywood medieval fantasy-drama-comedy. Why would I?? Why would I ever do that? (Why would I ever admit to that?) There is, deep within me, a 14 year old fanboy who is drawn to epic stories of ancient realms and dragons and magic and ... ahem.. hobbits. But for the most part, they are all embarrassingly awful and not worth anyone's time. Specifically, mine.

Dear lord, I need to get out more.