Things I Got Away With Saying Last Night

Because it helps to keep me sane:*

To Foot Pain Woman in triage, after I had inserted the thermometer probe in her mouth: “I should warn you, I keep getting the rectal and oral thermometers mixed up. But if this one tastes bad, just grunt and I’ll swap it out for the other one.”

To Stubborn Little Old Man with ventricular bigemeny and CHF symptoms, after breaking the unwelcome news that he was being admitted to a telemetry bed: “Well, I do have good news… I just saved a buncha money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.”

After finally convincing Macho Guy that a gram of Rocephin would really be nasty in the deltoid, when he reluctantly dropped his pants and bent over for a gluteal injection: (lisping) “Oooh, tasty. You must work out.”

To Drug Seeker Dude with non-traumatic shoulder pain for one week and a reported “10” on the pain scale, after he told me I could shove the prescription for Naprosyn and Flexeril up my ass: “Actually Sir, these are pills, not suppositories. And they work much better if you take them, not me.”

To the same guy as he stormed out, cursing: “Was it something I said?”

To Zero Pain Threshold Guy, on the third and finally successful IV stick, because he kept whimpering like a wuss and jerking his arm away: “There now! That wasn’t so bad was it? And since you’ve been such a brave boy, the cute female nurse will bring in some Snoopy Bandaids for those boo boos, and she’ll even roll you over and pull the sheets out of your ass.”

To Non-Compliant, Smokes Like a Chimney Won’t Stick To Her Low-Sodium Diet CHF Woman, who protested the insertion of a urinary catheter: “This is what we call our CHF Trifecta Special. For anyone who gets CPAP, Nitroglycerin and Lasix, we throw in a Foley catheter at no extra charge. It’s our way of saying ‘we value your patronage and want you to come back’.”

To the lab tech as she was drawing blood on the Apprehensive Urinary Tract Infection Woman: “Consuelo! How many times do we have to tell you that wearing scrubs does not mean you are a medical provider? You’re a housekeeper fer Chrissakes! Now where did you leave your damned mop?”

To Apprehensive UTI Woman who chuckled and called me evil after the lab tech assured her that she was indeed a credentialed medical professional: “Yes Ma’am, I am indeed an agent of Satan. But my duties are largely ceremonial.”

To Podunk Parish EMS Operations Manager, after he refused an out-of-town transport to another psychiatric facility for a young catatonic woman, because ‘she doesn’t meet stretcher criteria and catatonia is a psychiatric condition, not a medical one’: “You know, you shouldn’t ever let your mind wander, because it’s too small and weak to be let out on its own.”

To Smokes Like A Chimney COPD Lady With Respiratory Distress, who wanted to interrupt her nebulizer treatments to go outside and smoke: “Why don’t I grab the weed we found on the guy in Room Four, and you can smoke that? I’ll wheel you out to the smoking area personally, and that way we can be stupid together!”

*relatively speaking.