Night shift at St Damien’s:
It’s killer hot at noon, lousy sleeping weather, and I was awakened by the Muezzin, for God’s sake. WTF!? Where’s voodoo when you need it?
Fr Rick strongly discourages taking pictures of patients- an invasion, med tourism, etc.
So I sneak them. 'Cause following them is so useful, just another data point in COPA talk.
Just before I left this AM a bossy broad, said she was an RN with Med Sans Frontiers showed up, grabbed my arm and said look nobody’s taking care of my brother, he’ sicker than when he came. On an open ward, there’s no hiding- everybody sees and hears everything. These Haitian families will pull you away- literally yank your arm- from whatever you’re doing to show you their concern, usually trivial, but but sometimes not, so you can’t quite duck it- so distracting, given my ADD, that it takes me a long time to get back on track.
Anyway, I put her off til I could line up a translator, and then I came by. Sure enough, Martil Line, aged 46, had gone off a cliff. WTF indeed. He’d been fine 12 hours before, when I’d joked with him and teased and tickled his next bedmate, the prognathic little 16 yr old girl, Stephanie Martin. She still looked OK, but he looked worse than when he’d come in 36 hours ago. I’d sunk alot of ORS and Ringer’s into the guy…So I showed the sister the sequential pictures I took of the two of them, Stephanie and Martil, 12,24,36 hours ago. This impressed her I was at least paying attention to him, and the fight was over right away. I gave him 300 mg of doxyxycline, and I’ll get another picture tonight. I better get it right- this was just a reprieve. If he does well, I’ll get her picture- an impressive amazon, scared the hell out of me- hope I have such a woman near in my hour of need.
Oh, those hand sanitizers, thank you, Nancy. All new Butler buildings, no running water.
Add: He’s better, discharge Thursday.