Incarceritis: [in-kahr-suh-reyt-is]

- noun

1. medical condition induced by the threat of being confined.
2. a psychological state in which the sufferer, upon hearing the words, “You are under arrest,” experiences the sudden onset of chest pain, difficulty breathing, seizures, swine flu, avian flu, Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo, demonic possession, Jello allergy, unconsciousness, Legionnaire’s disease, or any one of a constellation of symptoms or maladies incompatible with penal confinement.

- use

“Although the patient complained of difficulty breathing, the fact that he was 17 years old, had no asthma history, and exhibited clear lung sounds and normal vital signs, coupled with the stench of alcohol and fear, led the medic to suspect that his problem was not reactive airway disease, but acute incarceritis.

– synonyms

jail fever, stainless steel allergy

Firefighters use the “Rule of Thumb,” in which they stage upwind far enough away that they can cover the entire scene with their thumb.

Cops use the “Rule of Donut Hole,” in which they back off until they can see the entire scene through their donut hole…

… and if they keep having to brush powdered sugar off their uniform shirt, they move upwind.

This is why firefighters often refer to cops as “blue canaries,” and refer to such things as “copological indicators” when surveying accident scenes…

FIX BAYONETS!

Hat tip to The Smallest Minority.

… I figured I’d repost a little blast from the past.

**********

Dear Ambulance Driver— I am 28 years old, and I work as a nurse in an Emergency Department. Some of my co-workers say there is no such thing as fibromyalgia. My ER nurse manager says, “If you see it in A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driver, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there such a thing as fibromyalgia?

Virginia Monologues

Virginia, your co-workers are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds, and excuse it by giving it high-minded names like ‘evidence-based medicine.’ All minds, Virginia, whether they be doctor’s, nurse’s or paramedic’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Fibromyalgia Claus. He exists as certainly as malingering and whining and perpetual victimhood exist, and you know that they abound and make your working life a living Hell. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Fibromyalgia Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no Reiki or acupuncture. There would be drastically decreased profit margins for the makers of Vicodin and Duragesic patches. Pharmacists would be reduced to panhandling on street corners. Soma, Xanax and Lortab would only be prescribed to sick people. Emergency Departments would become desolate, lonely places. Malingerers should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which potent narcotics fills your mind would be extinguished.

Not believe in Fibromyalgia Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your nurse manager to hire an in-house ER rheumatologist to screen patients for fibromyalgia, but even if only one in fifty of those purported fibromyalgia sufferers actually had the disease, what would that prove? Nobody sees Fibromyalgia Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Fibromyalgia Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Just because I’ve never personally seen a legitimate fibromyalgia sufferer does not mean that they don’t exist. It may just be that they’re too busy living their lives to show up in an ER six times a month begging for a fix. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. If you have, then you likely have fibromyalgia and the Dilaudid you demanded is working wonderfully. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world, including the ever-elusive genuine fibromyalgia sufferer.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, and you could try, and fail, to discover a disease pathology or objective set of diagnostic indicators for fibromyalgia, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the smartest epidemiologist, nor even the united strength of all the EMS and ER staffs that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, drug-seeking and shady pain-management clinics can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Fibromyalgia Claus! Thank Sumdood! He lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of addicts and whiners everywhere.

I hope I answered her question.

I am honored to host the Christmas edition of The Handover blog carnival.

In the great tradition of Grand Rounds and Change of Shift, The Handover is the only blog carnival out there dedicated to EMS and Emergency Department professionals. If you’re an EMT or medic, ED nurse or physician, it’s your stories we want to hear.

The theme for this month’s edition is “The call that made the shift.”

Unless you’re extremely lucky or brand new, every emergency medical professional has pulled a holiday shift. Doesn’t matter if you’re a nurse working a busy ER all night on Christmas Eve only to go home dead-tired and wake the family to open presents, or the medic who left his family on Christmas morning to post on a lonely street corner somewhere, or the firefighter who spent the holidays with his surrogate family at the firehouse, or the doctor managing the madhouse that is the Emergency Department on New Year’s Eve – we’ve all been there, and done that.

What I want to hear about are the calls or patients that made that sacrifice, if not worthwhile, then at least tolerable. Be they funny, or great war story material, or the co-worker who reminded you of the reason for the season, or the patient who reminded you why you got into medicine in the first place, those are the stories I want.

Deadline for submissions is midnight, December 18, and I’ll post them by noon on December 23.

Email me the links to your submissions at ateupmedic3033@yahoo.com, and I’ll do my best to send you an Ambolanche.

So get to writing, people!

You teach a hound when to hunt.

You teach a pointer how to hunt.

You teach a retriever when and how to hunt.

And herding dogs… well, you don’t teach them much of anything. Mostly, they teach you.

I LOL’ed.

Are they waterproof?

Submerged in four inches of standing water.

We’re about to find out.

They’re certainly buoyant, I’ll give ‘em that. It took a box of 12-gauge shells and half a brick in each boot to sink ‘em.

Edit 2030 hours: Well, after 2 1/2 hours in four inches of water, the right boot is completely dry, and the left boot is, well… full of water.

You may recall, that is the boot that was irritating the hell out of my left ankle.

Methinks I’ve got a defective boot here.