A little early Halloween antics

Yes, it's been going on lately, but I just have to wonder with the pre-Halloween antics going on at the Hotel. What do you get? A dash of irony in it all...

1. Convince one of your patients not to distribute his candy to everyone. He's really proud of it.

2. We get a "prank call" at the nurses' station that one of our people has fallen in the lobby. We investigate and find no person in the lobby. Turns out it wasn't a prank. The other rehab unit's lobby (on the other side of the building) was the place and yes, one of their people did go down...for you guessed it, trying to pick up candy he/she dropped to the floor. Moral of the story: new amputee + wheelchair + stuff out of reach often equals a tumble.

3. And the best one yet to close....Dr. Z., one of our internists kept telling Mr. C. he should not eat the Halloween candy he got recently. So what does Dr. Z. order on today's round of tests...a HgbA1c and gives him a bag of his favorite mini candy bars.

Oh, I foresee a boo-tiful time in the Hotel until Halloween! More to come...

Another fun evening

Yes, today's the first business day of the new year, and we're looking forward to the booking agents filling up all the empty rooms in the Hotel again. Our census has been low, low, low, so now we have to start combing the hospitals, homes and clinics hither and yon, to fill up the place. Should make things exciting this week.

Happily, I've been enjoying having less people, because I've been able to spend more time with my patients. One is confused. He's getting better, but why is it that all the confused people, who sometimes can't remember where they are, can remember down to the minute, when they get their next pain pill (and badger me until they get it)?

I'm praying the prosthetic people bring one of our amputee patients his stump shrinkers. He sure needs them. I can't properly wrap his stumps with ACE wraps, and it's driving him (and me) crazy. He finally believed me when the charge nurse told him we weren't really wrapping his stumps according to the book protocol (with ACE going around the waist).

Outside of that, I finally got my grades sent off and am awaiting next semester's bill to submit. Let's hope the education people don't run out of money!

Stay tuned...more to come from the exciting land of Hotel Rehab.

Nuggets for March 20

Here are a few items of note for today:

Heparin Discovery May Point to Chinese Counterfeiting (from http://www.nytimes.com/)
I suspect I may get a few refusals to take this if people have been watching TV.

For amputees, an unlikely painkiller: Mirrors
An interesting therapy being studied to relieve phantom pain.

We take care of our own
Another installment on gratitude (and what happens when patients leave) from Podunk Memorial. Short...but sweet.