Sometimes, you just gotta laugh and the best ones are full force snickers that turn into a big old from the belly kind. While some might think it's irreverant, I still chuckle over some of the things I've seen at work. As with most clusterf**ks, they get funnier as time passes. Like the coke bottle guy.

Way before HIPPA was ever invented we used to trade stories about what was going on in the ER just to keep our laugh muscles in shape. We would never EVER do that now for fear of retribution from the federal nazis. Now...mind you, if somebody's in real trouble and needs their life saved we're all about the job at hand but usually around our place it's piddly shit. Back when we had a urologist on staff, he got called in one evening to rescue a young gentleman who had been making love to a plastic three liter coke bottle and got stuck...kinda like dogs do, I reckon. As the story goes, said physician showed up to find an African American dong jammed into the plastic vise. I can only guess that he probably tried to fix it his ownself before he ended up in the freakin' EMERGENCY ROOM for treatment. Not to worry dude. Snip..snip and you're good to go. With all that swelling maybe you can find a girlfriend, ya think?

One Saturday night while I was sleeping soundly fitfully on the cot in the on-call room, the damn phone rang for me to get my ass up and draw some blood. When I got around there the orders were to draw some blood from a dead guy's heart for a blood alcohol. Ummm...right. Not only do I not do feet, I don't do hearts. Being a young 'un I tiptoed into the room just to see what the whole deal was about. Dude had been in an MVA down at Deadman's Curve and laid in a ditch during the fun part of party night until somebody found his body. First thing I noticed when I snuck in was that his socks didn't match. I know...I KNOW. I tried to draw his blood, I swear! Dead people's blood quits flowing about the time that the heart stops pumping it and he was pretty dead. Like already cold. Sooo...I'm not sure that anybody knew exactly how drunk he was because there was no way I was sticking a dang needle into his heart for a specimen. Not in my job description, y'all.

Folks bring specimens in all the time, usually blood and urine from home health agencies. Before we stopped the insanity, our staff did sperm analysis for fertility studies for those among us pining away for a child. I don't know about the girl readers, but guys can surely relate to the humiliation of wandering into a lab with your most recent ejaculate in hand to see if your boys are man enough to get to that elusive egg. They would come, usually with a paper bag held somewhere close to the body to keep that specimen nice and warm, into the waiting room that has ALWAYS been manned with a woman sitting behind the desk asking somewhat testily " Can I help you sir?" *mumble, fumble* "Doc sent me over with this." "Do you have orders?" "Have you been through the admissions department yet?" They brought the family jewels in plastic cups, pickle jars and...my personal favorite. The guy whose paper sack contained a rubber that was coated with spermicide as a receptacle for his fertility testing specimen. As Bill Engvall would say, here's your sign. Sometimes it's best not to reproduce.

The worst ass whooping I ever got was from a scrawny little 101 year old lady who was on a stretcher headed to x-ray. Those kinds of things tend to take awhile and I was anxious to get my blood and get'er done before I headed back to the cot so I stopped the radiology folks out in the hall and asked for permission to just "get a little blood right quick." This woman grabbed my lab coat with both fists like she was the bride of Dracula when I approached her with a tourniquet. Bitch wouldn't let go for nothing. That was one time I came back to the lab empty handed and said to hell with it. Old people know what they want and she definitely didn't want me messing with her at that moment in time. Maybe the x-ray tech got a decent film, I dunno. I went back to sleep. Bride of Dracula is probably still alive 25 years later kickin' somebody's butt like she did mine that night.

I think it's kinda funny that I'm gonna be 52 tomorrow. I mean sure...I've got aches and pains like in my feet when I stand on 'em all day and get bitched out by co-workers who don't have a clue what's up. But you know what?

I'm still kickin'.

^j^