Admixture

I'm post-call. Which means my brain is a little more disorganized than usual. Which...is...frankly, a little frightening, all things considered. So anyway, today I bring you a mish-mosh, a melange, if you will, a random assortment of....stuff....

First off, I'm a little worried that there's something wrong with my dog. I mean, look at this irrefutable photographic evidence:


See the dog? And the hamburger? Laying, mere inches, uneaten, from the dog?

She eventually ate the meat. And some of the bun. And it's possible she may have been a little carsick, still. We went out to the Petsmart this morning. Maggie was supposed to get a haircut this morning, but, alas, somehow the Banfield here still hasn't gotten her rabies info from the Banfield back in Chicago. Who, of course, is closed today. So maybe she'll get one tomorrow, if we can coordinate all the paperwork. Anyway, so we wandered around the Petsmart for a while, bought some food, bought some of the treats she really, really likes (they're from Authority, some sort of organic carrot-y things, I think, but the point is, they're round, and so if you roll them across the floor, she gets to chase them. Which is apparently very exciting. Last week, I handed her one, and she took it....and then promptly tossed it into the air and swiped it with her paw and then chased it and pounced on it), and then we wandered over to Raleigh for post-call hamburgers from the Char-Grill. Maggie occasionally gets her own - no toppings - when I go for post-call hamburgers. And she's usually quite pleased with the arrangement. But maybe today there was just too much excitement and driving involved.

Second of all, click here. Scroll all the way down to the bottom. Click on the link under "Dating Application" and download the form. It's freakin' hilarious.

Third, watch this:



Sara Bareilles. Her first big single, Love Song, is on that Rhapsody/TiVo commercial, and it kind of caught my attention. So I poked around, and ended up downloading her new album, Little Voice, off of iTunes, which, it's cheaper than most, which is an even bigger cause for excitement, because wow. Its fantastic. Bluesy, jazzy, with solid vocals and clever lyrics. Go to iTunes. Buy it, buy it, buy it now.

This is actually my favorite song off the album, Vegas:



I love finding new music I like. And I really get excited when you take a chance on somebody and buy an album having only heard a song or two, and the whole thing turns out to be good.

And finally, a tiny little blurb about call last night. Okay, first, the setup...on call, I get to wear scrubs. Which, I usually only wear scrub pants, and a regular shirt. The nice thing about this is that scrub pants? Have a pocket. Which, you'll notice that most women's pants aren't so good on the pocket-ness. And this is especially nice because I can toss a pen and my palm pilot into my pocket, throw my stethoscope around my neck, and not have to wear my whole labcoat. But, this leaves me with an unfortunately palm-pilot-shaped lump on my ass. So...I got a call, to one of the men's long-term units. And I went up, and I'm unlocking the door to the nurses' station, and there's this guy sitting in a chair next to the door, who reaches over and TOUCHES MY ASS. Now, my impression was that he saw the unusual shape of whatever was in my pocket, and reached over to touch that, i.e., to figure out what it was, rather than actually just fondling me (like certain other patients have, a-hem. Although if they're going to feel me up, they usually go for the boobs). And you know, these psychotic folks, not so good at the impulse control.

Which is why I merely turned and gave him a very warning glare instead of decking him.

Although I'm getting better at controlling my impulse to hit the patients when they come after me. I.e., last week, when I was on psych, I went over to see the renal failure kid on the adolescent unit, because he was acting out. And he's all screwing around, and being all aggressive, and he starts faking punches at the staff (who, by the way, were two gigantic muscular black dudes). And I speak very menacingly to him. So then he starts trying to punch me.

At which point he went into restraints.

Now, technically, we're not supposed to put patients into restraints if they're in danger of hurting someone else, only if they're in danger of hurting themselves. But, you know, he's all flailing around, he easily could've smacked into the wall, cut himself....and let me tell you...he took one more swing at me, that boy was going to be hurting.