No, it's not normal

My life is not THAT exciting, thank you so much!I thought walking miles at MegaConference and staying in a place without flushing toilets was exciting.

No. I was topped again. I talked to my pharmacist friend who told me about her week. Besides the usual crazy cast of characters in the large metro neighborhood, one of them decided to steal a police automatic rifle, out of a police car, one block from her store.

Said thief must have been what she lovingly calls an "unlicensed pharmacy professional" who obtained said firearm for protection of his "inventory." Thief then sells his wares to local yokel and shows him the rifle.

Local yokel takes random drug of the moment (she had no idea what) and has a bad experience. Could he get physically sick? Oh, no! He does get psychotic thought and starts trashing aisles of BigPharmacy, where she works. Store management calls police and 911.

Once local yokel sees they are on to his bad trip, he runs to the pharmacy and proceeds to jump over the counter, screaming, "The machine gun man is coming to get us."

My friend, freaked out and having no idea, that Local has been reported, calls 911. They put her on hold. She wanted to run out of the store (via a back door) but her tech froze, so no dice.

After  all the hubbub, Local is taking to station, and stuff  written up. Local only got a night in jail.

So what's the first thing you do after you crazily climb into the pharmacy and tell everyone a murderer with a machine gun is coming?

You call your pharmacist (at the same store) and ask for a refill, because you forgot it.

Madame Pharmacist was not amused...

Nuggets for August 13

There were a whole lot of interesting items out there recently, so here are a few of them for your viewing pleasure.

You've got questions...

They've got answers, and no, it's not an electronics store. ConsultantLive had this great article on the ubiquitous purple urine bag. I've seen it a few times before (also blue) and asked questions about it, and never got a straight answer until I found this article. They also have a number of other articles of interest, so peruse at whim.

Crispy and brown

Feeling burnt out? Need to read something to get you going? Laura Wisniewski has this great article over at www.nursinglink.com called Re-Engage Your Passion for Nursing that has a few interesting points to ponder.

A telling anniversary

It's been ten years (yes, it was 1999) that the IOM published To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System.

There are still lots and lots of mistakes happening out there. The Houston Chronicle (a Hearst Newspaper) recently ran a series called Dead by Mistake on what the state of error reporting is in the US, and it's not so hot. Don't miss it.

Study, study, study

I'm still doing some certification study (yes, it seems like forever...) and I ran into some terms I didn't recognize, so I went searching and found some articles of interest.

Glossopharyngeal breathing is used with some ventilated SCI patients. This article explains what exactly it is and how it works.

Figure ground deficit is explained in this Google Book called Neurological Disabilities: Assessment and Treatment.

I always feel weak in my studies of the brain, so I found this article about a particular TBI patient very interesting as an aside. (from http://www.nytimes.com/)

Privacy (or lack thereof)

And you thought a prescription was private (from http://www.nytimes.com/)
I just shuddered reading this article...what will they think of next? I'm sure all you pharmacists out there have some stories like this.

And everything else about bloggers

It seems like life is very electronic these days...with good and bad results. Here are a few articles about various topics related to blogging I've seen lately. And, no, some things just don't need to be blogged or explained electronically, at least not in my little world, thankyouverymuch!

Mommy bloggers and ethical conflicts (from http://www.cnn.com/)

A no tweet, no blog party (from http://www.nytimes.com/)

Another full moon

Yes, today, folks, we'll finally see it...if the storms blowing through don't cloud the sky this evening.

On our unit, we've known it was coming for days, since all of the patients start acting up in a variety of ways. The full moon will do that to some folks, I guess...

I've been encountering a lot of interesting stuff lately. I took care of a patient who had this listed on his diagnosis chart: Hypermetropia. Since I must have been snoozing during that part of the opthamology section in pathophysiology, I decided to look it up, and alas, it's simply farsightedness. I did find a really cool page on WebMD called How to read your eyeglass prescription which tells you why it's written the way it is. Very interesting...even if I don't need anything for my eyes just yet! I'll be ready for a family prescription to come my way.

One thing I was getting confused on was an SGPT result. Turns out it's just the same as an ALT, which I was looking at somewhere else.

Next, I ran into a diagnosis for mitral valve insufficiency and aortic valve stenosis. While it's not heavily clinical, I found a great set of heart articles on this very subject from the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. If you have to explain this diagnosis to a patient, go check them out. Note: they also have a special section for professionals, as well.

We had an interesting situation recently. One patient with generalized swelling was a difficult stick for a blood draw. When you missed the vein, you got fluid. Anasarca is a very challenging condition to deal with, especially when doing blood pressures or any other procedure that may put pressure on the skin. Just putting a stethescope on to do a blood pressure left a mark on this patient.

Finally, be careful how you use OTC medications. This information about ibuprofen is very good from www.rxlist.com. Remember, there's a reason why they say, "All things in moderation."