Meet Leslie, Austin's greatest homeless dude/gubernatorial candidate.
First thing's first: Max update. I really missed him, so I went ahead and just texted him the other day. Bad idea? Probably, but I was going through severe MTD withdrawals.
Me 6/12: Hey (I thought that was appropriate.)
Max 6/12: Hey
Max 6/12: Whats good tania
Max 6/12: So ure going out with jr thats cool
Max 6/13: Hey
Max 6/21: Hey
Max 6/25: Hey
Me 6/25: I'm sorry, I accidentally texted you the other day. This really is not tania. You have the wrong number.
Max 6/25: Ok
That's it? He just gave up like that? I was expecting a little bit of a fight. Now let's break this jr thing down. Am I going out with J.R. or Jr., like William Randolph Jones, Jr.? Or it could be Jr. as in the little brother of a scary gang homey. I'm going with the latter. Either way, I'm proud of Tania for getting herself a real man, and moving on from Max. He was so yesterday.
In other news, all I have been doing is working. I go in around 6am, run around the hospital talking to my patients about their visual hallucinations (3 large people coming to get him), or their bowel movements (still dark and loose, but a little lighter than yesterday), or their alcohol withdrawal (can I have some more of that Ativan?). My first night on call, I have a nice homeless gentleman who comes in with the "chief complaint" (what brings them into the hospital) of "Found down in the creek." Seems he was hanging out by Shoal Creek, just doing a little bit of boozing, as per the usual, then it gets a little fuzzy in his memory, but he remembers some jerks pulling him out of the water since it looked like he was drowning. We chit chat for awhile longer, all the while I'm thinking about how I would really like to prescribe some mouthwash for him, when he starts coughing.
"How long have you had that cough?"
"Oh, since the '90s."
"Uh... have you ever coughed up blood?"
"Oh yeah, when I had TB I did."
I asked him a few more questions, and decide even though he says he's been treated, he's probably not the most reliable historian. I get up, tell the nurse, get my gown and masks on, and watch as the nurse puts "Airborne precautions" on the door, and some maintenence guy airseals the room. I think he really was telling the truth about getting treated after we kept him to make sure he didn't go into DTs on us, but I wasn't too trusting of him when we first met.
Another little lady came in with a fever, and we couldn't find out why she was having it. We drew blood, took cultures of urine, checked her Xrays, the whole shebang, but she still was fevering. Then a few days into her stay, she complains of some foot pain. We figure, ok, we'll Tylenol her up, no problem. Then the nurse says, "Be sure to look at her feet." We pull back the covers and WOW. Both of her big toes had nails about 8 inches long, growing out and back INTO her foot. I have to figure out how to scan a picture of this, because it's really awesome. They were all twisty and dark and just went right into her middle toe, making a sweet little black wound. At least our mystery was solved.
So this is the fun of working at the county hospital. There are a lot of drunks, and a lot of people who don't bathe themselves, but it's a good learning experience... I think. Call is pretty miserable, but at least I sleep some of the 24-30 hours I'm here. I've been saying "oh balls" a lot on this rotation, like when the nurse hammer pages me for a low potassium level. Somehow it makes me feel better. And I have thrown a few temper tantrums in the hallways when I'm tired and decaffeinated. I stomp my feet and pout and whine "I don't wanna!" which entertains me and sometimes the med student. He's pretty funny too. I break out in my Spanish to the patients and when we leave he goes, "Oh si. Arroz con pollo," because that's the extent of his Spanish. Well, it's time to take a nap in our sweet call room before I head down to the ER in a few hours. Isn't life grand?
