Great grampa says

Greetings people. I realize that its been a really long time since I have had a story for ya. I really thought that with the winter having been soo long, I'd would have had more time to blog stories to you. That's not to say that a bunch of stuff hasn't happened at work. But one story at a time otherwise, they start to run together. You could end up with a story like, "CoWorker caught making love to a pacemaker" or "Power injector makes quick work of 'bowel prep.'" Sorry, I should stay on task.

So the other day we had to perform an angio on a 87 year old man with mild confusion. In order to get into his femoral artery we had to shave his pelvic area. Then clean it with soap and cover him with a sterile drape. I told him that I was going to start by shaving his groin area and he says to me,"Just be careful with the tall timber." Which I thought was just a bit disgusting!
Then he says to me,"You got any cold food around here?" Not knowing what he had in mind, I asked him what he meant.
"You know, cold food,"
"Like what?" I asked.
"You know food that's cold" he responded.
"Do mean like jello?" I suggested.
"No no no, COLD food!" he yelled.
"Salad or ice cream?" I asked again.
"No. I talking about really cold food." he said with just a hint of anger.
"Well, you can't have food now but when we are done with your test and you get back to your room, what would you like to eat....and please don't say cold food!" I said onto him.
"Well I would really like.....Polar bear....yeah that's what I want."

Cold food, I get it. Polar bear.

Later people.

Gonzo

Hand over that kidney, stupid!!

Hello again. I welcome you back with a brand new story. I thought this one was a sweet story of how loving a family can be. Recently, I met a 55 year old woman who's kidneys had failed. Both of them. The patients name was Milly but for this story I will call her Jane. She had come to us so that we could insert a perm cath that would allow her to have dialysis and not die. Her doctor's plan was for her to stay on dialysis until they could find a kidney donor that would match. In the meantime the kidney transplant people/ team tested her whole family, looking for a match. As luck would have it, her brother was a perfect match. When I met Jane and she told me her story I was very happy for her and I told her so. I was all,"Good for you" and "How about that" and "Way to go" and of course, "Woo hoo!" But she didn't seem too thrilled. So I said onto her,"You don't seem too excited about this." Her answer was weird. Jane said to me,"Well, it IS great that my brother is a match and is willing to give me one of his kidneys but....there's a catch." She paused. "See my brother Dale (Harvey) is an alcoholic and he just found out that his liver is failing and....well....he wants to make a deal. He'll give me a kidney if I give him part of my liver." I was speechless. Yeah, me...speechless. It was weird. What do you say to that? I asked her what she was going to do. She said,"Well its not MY fault that he wrecked his liver....I think that I will just go to him and say, 'Dale, YOU broke your liver and that's YOUR fault, now give me that kidney! You jerk'. " I asked her if she thought that might work. She said onto me," Well Dale IS the stupid one in the family. He will do whatever we tell him to do!" All I could do was wish her luck.

Take care of your livers. Both of them. I mean your kidneys. Bye.

Hey when you gotta go...you gotta go!

Hey everyone! I hope that you are all doing just fine. I am ok. The winter seems to be over....for now. I am cautious.

This month's story takes us to the mundane world of the routine chest x-ray. Its one of those tech things, you do it so much, that you end up doing it on "auto pilot". I estimate that in my 18 year career I have shot about 17,000 routine chest x-rays. That means that I have said,"Take in a breath and hold it.......'beep'....you may breath" about 34,000 times!!!

So one day about 10 years ago there was a male patient in his 80's, hard of hearing and in a wheelchair, who needed a chest x-ray. I brought him into the x-ray room and asked him if he could stand. He told me yes and that he had to pee. I looked down and noticed that he had a Foley catheter in and thus he didn't have to pee. The pee was being collected by a tube that lead to a big urine collection bag. I told him very loudly,"Sir, you have a catheter in place, you don't have to pee! Its the catheter making you feel like you have to pee." To which he answered,"No no, I gotta pee." So to speed things along I said,"You have a tube in place....go ahead and pee away if you want!" He then proceeded to stand up, grab the catheter with one hand, his penis with the other and YANKED THE TUBE OUT!!!! With the catheter's retention balloon STILL INFLATED!


OUCH! This the kind of ouch that comes with making love to a cheese grater!!! Yikes! I couldn't believe what I had just seen. What followed was just as bad. After he pulled the catheter out, he PEE'D on the door frame to my x-ray room. I yelled at him,"What are you doing!!??" He says,"You said pee away." Technically he was right.
Take it easy people....I gotta go pee.

Gonzo

I'd love to, but I gotta go to work.

Hi all,

This is aweful! For about a year now my hospital has been designated a "stroke center" which means that if someone has a stroke, we can attempt to treat them. That is, IF they are brought to us within a 8 hour period.

About two weeks ago we were asked to perform a cerebral angio on a guy who had a stroke the night before. They brought him to us on a stretcher. He was about 50 years old, pale and really weak on his right side. He had slurred speach and an obvious facial droop. Poor guy. We did the angio and sure enough we found that he had a block artery in his brain. Unfortunately we could not treat him. Too much time had passed.

While getting him off the table, I asked him when the symptoms started. He told me the night before. I asked him why he didn't come to the hospital at that time. His answer floored me.

"Well, my girlfriend WAS gonna bring me but she had to git ta werk"

I was stunned! So I said,"What about calling 911?" He answered, "Nahh, SHE figured that she could just take me in the mornin' after she gits off werk."

I set him in the hall while waiting for his transporter show and take him back to his room. The transporter arrived with the patient's girlfriend. She was 27!! She was missing a couple O' teeth!!! I believe that she was really familiar with cigarettes. Oh and of course she was blonde. From a bottle no doubt. I never found out where she worked. I hope she makes lots of money. For his sake. I felt bad for everyone.

She seems nice...maybe I'll ask her to dinner.

Hello all and welcome back. I was trying to remember a good story for you all and I couldn't think of any. But then I remember this one!

Years and years ago, I was covering the ER X-ray dept during the dinner hour. Things were a little slow that night. One chest x-ray here, an ankle x-ray there and so on.
Then I received a request for an abdomen x-ray of a young woman in her 20's. Business being slow as it was, I volunteered to go get her from her little curtained room. I walked up to the curtained area, pulled back the curtained and there sat a lovely blond haired, green eyed beauty. With legs that went on forever. In a patient gown that did her no justice at all! She was cute! I tell no lie. So I wheeled her over in the stretcher. As we made our way to the X-ray room I struck up a conversation about the day and traffic and how long her wait was....blah blah blah. She was well spoken and seemed very bright. Animated. Talked with her hands a little bit. But still very nice. Truly not our typical patient.
I get her on the X-ray table for her abdomen X-ray, I ask her if she's preg-os, she says no, I take the film. Simple. Cut and dry right? Then I developed the film to find that.....girlfriend had some weird eating habits. In her stomach I saw what looked like coins, a small spoon and a 9 volt battery. She had Pica. That's a condition where you eat things that have no nutritional value at all. For instance: Coins, spoons, salt shaker tops, paper clips, batteries....etc. Its really strange.
I asked her what happened and she said,"That's just something I do from time to time." I asked her what she meant. She told me that as long as she could remember, she just gets the urge to eat something made of metal. Knowing full well that it's bad for her. That she could choke and that it could poison her system. Aside from her weird eating habits she seemed really normal. And cute!!!
Having finished her X-ray I put her back in the stretcher and took her back to the ER area. As we turned the corner, I maneuvered near an admin desk and there on the edge of the counter were a bunch of paper clips. Guess what happened next. Go ahead take a guess. If you guessed she grabbed the paper clips tossed them back like peanut....You guessed right! She reached out with her left hand, grabbed that fistful of clips and tossed her head back like you and me taking our multi-vitamins in the morning. Those paper clips were GONE. I had never seen anything like it!! Except for maybe the occasional Fear Factor episode. She made it look easy. I put her in her room and went to the ER Doctor to rat her out. The Dr. says,"Heather's here? Oh she's one of my favorites. Which curtain? Did we call Endoscopy yet?" Apparently "Heather" (not her real name....her real name was Tracy)was a regular customer. After all that, one of the other techs came down from dinner and says,"Hey do you wanna go eat? Oh Heather was here? Ah she's nice. Hey go eat." As I went to eat I saw Heather going down the hall with one of the Endoscopy nurses. They were chatting like old friends...I ate a salad that night.

Go easy people and Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Gonzo

Hey, you gonna eat that?

Welcome back and sorry for the delay! Here we go.
About three years ago I was working overtime on the evening shift for some extra cash. The evening shift functions with at a more casual pace than the day shift because typically you have fewer techs. You end up working alone more often than not. This is especially true if you are the technologist who is doing the portable exams. One night I was asked to go to Bariatric, the over-weight wing, and take a regular old, run of the mill chest x-ray of a woman who was every bit of 600 lbs. THAT'S 600 LBS. PEOPLE! Think of the largest person you know, and make 2 or maybe 2 1/2 of them! This was going to require using all my little tricks of the trade if I was to get an "ok" film. Which means you'd have to see the lungs. After much struggle, the film just ok. The lungs were visiable but everything else was under penetrated. In one of the lungs you could see this weird "metallic-like" webbing on the edge of the lung.....really foreign and definately abnormal. Soooooooo the Doctor asked to repeat the film and insturcted me to physically look at the area to make sure that there wasn't anything laying on the body that would give off this appearance. I trucked my annoyed little self back up to the floor and explained to the woman why we needed to perform the chest x-ray again. So I placed my x-ray cassette behind her. Again. This time, before I shot, I asked her to raise her arm up so I could see that area. To my delight, there was nothing there. I told her she could lower her arm. As she did, I heard a muffled crunch. I said to the patient,"That must have hurt." She said that she didn't feel anything. So I asked her to lift and lower her arm again. She raised her arm. I heard nothing. She lowered it and I heard the crunch again. I asked her,"You didn't feel that?" She didn't feel a thing. So I did what any nosy tech would do. I asked her to lift up her arm and I told her I was going to look under her tent, I mean her gown. Against my better judgment, I took a look and I saw something kinda blue and chromey stuck between a couple of folds. Thank God almighty, I was wearing gloves because what I did next I DO NOT RECOMMEND! I spread the two-three folds with one hand and gently pulled on the chromey object with the other. She didn't seem to have any pain so I kept pulling until......I removed a half eaten bad of Doritos and not one of those little snack packs either. I'm talking about the Grand-Daddy size bags that you buy for the Superbowl party at your house!!!!! She says to me,"Dat's where dat went....I been wonderin' bout dem for bout a week."
I shot the film and left as quickly as I could but as I left, I heard the distinct sound of someone eating chips! Ewwwwwwwhhhhhhh!!! As a result of that I can't always eat chips. If anyone needs me.....I'll be doing sit-ups.

Chao

Butt Sarge.....nevermind.

Many years ago, I was in the Army. I had the great fortune of being stationed in the gem that is Schofield barracks, Hawaii. Good times. The weather's always perfect. Even when it rains its great. Oh and the work was cake!!! A couple of chest x-rays in the morning, a couple of ankle films, then the occassional neck x-ray of someone who fell off their surfboard. During the regular work week we'd average about 20 patients per day. During the weekend however, it was totally different. In a 12 hour shift on a Saturday or Sunday we'd do about 4-5 patients. Borrrrrrring. Thank God we had cable!
One particular abdomen x-ray stands out in my mind when I think back on those days.
I was nodding off at the front desk when the front door opened and in walked a soldier who looked like he had fallen out of the recruitment poster. A perfect soldier. He was about 6 ft tall with his uniform perfectly pressed, boots highly shined, haircut was perfect, his muscles were busting through his shirt. Simply impressive! So he handed me a requestion from his doctor for an abdomen film. One shot, one film. E-Z! I made him put on a gown, took him into the x-ray room, layed him down on the table, shot the film, told him to go ahead and get dressed.(I never miss by the way) I took the film into the darkroom. Processed it. Pulled the x-ray out of the processor and bang there it was...........

The killer was......it was STILL ON!!!!! The x-ray showed motion. Normally if an x-ray has any motion we repeat the x-ray but I wasn't about to. Not this time. You know with this type of soldier, I was very surprised!!!! I didn't think an Army soldier could ever afford the Ass-Crammer 2000 XL Delux on his salary!! Goes to show. You never can tell! Peace.