rule: bad things happen to good people. bad things also happen to bad people. however, bad people are invincible, while good people have horrible luck.
case in point: this week i had a normal trauma patient. this in itself is news-worthy. this poor woman is a doctor who was heading home from work. it's 2 in the morning and some drunk idiot is out on the roads in his 3/4 ton pickup and hits her head on. surprisingly, her injuries were relatively minor. or so we thought until we got a scan that showed that she has bilateral carotid dissections. this is very bad, basically a stroke waiting to happen. so we put her on anticoagulants and got a repeat scan after 5 days. i honestly thought that she was going to go home the next day. she was a model patient, up walking and talking, looked great. but the scans were worse. and now she probably needs a stent, which has a good chance of knocking a clot off of her carotid artery and making her have a stroke. or we could leave the artery as is and it could completely occlude and she could have a stroke. see the dilemma?
this is why i am upset:
1. she is a nice normal person just doing her job and she has this horrible accident happen to her. why? because other people are stupid and reckless. you can bet that pickup man is just fine. why? because he is a bad person. and bad people are invincible.
2. she has young kids and they should have a fully functioning mom who is not a ticking time bomb.
3. she might not be able to do her job anymore. she's a doctor. doctors aren't doctors because they want to be, they are doctors because they have to be.
4. i am getting very tired of watching bad things happen to good people. it's just not fair.
counter case in point: another patient, this one not mine. double D from the block. he had the misfortune of getting shot through his liver and still somehow living to drive us all crazy despite having no blood pressure in the field. but have no fear!! gangsters are invincible. double D can continue to manage his drug cartel or do whatever it is that he does from the comfort of the hospital. every night like clockwork, we have what i like to call "D on parade". around 8 pm, all of D's friends and family would show up. the group included 3 baby mamas, various infants and toddlers, aunts, cousins, homeboys...for a grand total of at least a dozen people. despite the fact that D has 2 perfectly good legs, he would sit in his wheelchair and insist on being pushed up and down the hallway for a good hour, obstructing traffic and generally being a pain. as the group walked (at a snail's pace) up our very narrow halls, they would stop at various rooms along the way and pick up other members of the community. note: when you are in the hospital and coincidentally know 2 other people on the same floor who also happened to get shot at the same time as you IT IS TIME TO MOVE. and on it went, sloooooow up the front hall, slooooooow up the back hall. back down to the room. repeat. then someone had the bright idea of wedging a couple of kids in a second wheelchair just to make sure that the entourage really took up all available hall space. this literally happened EVERY NIGHT.
now i realize that this sounds judgmental, and i'm certainly not saying that anyone deserves to be shot. but when you still have a house arrest bracelet on your ankle and i watch your 3 different baby mamas rotate shifts, i am inclined to believe that you are living in a gangsta paradise, and may just have played a small part in your fate. and when you refuse to do any of your own cares, snap and clap at the nurses to communicate your needs, and pee/poop the bed out of laziness and entitlement then insist that we clean you up despite the fact that you are perfectly capable of doing these things independently, i am inclined to resent you.
so to recap: we have a productive member of society. kind, polite, participates in own cares and follows medical instruction. then we have a felon. rude. obstinate. unwilling to do even the most basic things despite the fact that he is perfectly capable.
lets take a guess. who walked out (or was wheeled out by an entourage member, most likely) unscathed, and who is facing a very serious diagnosis with a crappy prognosis?
that's right.
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