Protected: Borderline Personality Disorder

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Equation of money

This is an oldie but a goodie and I thought I’d share it. I heard it many years ago, when I was cramming in as much knowledge as I could as a Health Sci Student at University.

It’s funny how things come back to you and you wonder ‘what if’?

Equation of money

As every physicist knows:

Work Done =Power x Time

And common knowledge dictates that Time is Money, and Knowledge is Power

Substituting that into our formula we get Work Done = Knowledge x Money

If we rearrange the equation we get Money = Work Done/Knowledge

Which basically means that, the more you know, the less $$$ you make. The less you know, the more you make, regardless of how much work is done.

You can take what you like from that…maybe revisit it in a few years.

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Punching Walls

Those of you who know me will  know that when I’m not working on some crazy project, I work in a hospital Emergency Dept.

Now, one thing which astounds me is the consistency of things you come across in Emergency.  Like, every week, without fail, you will see one of these.  Sometimes several.  I’m not talking routine stuff like heart attacks and strokes, I’m talking about self inflicted injuries.  And not the borderline personality emo with their papercuts either.

The subject of ridicule in this post are people who punch walls.  You might not think it’s a particularly common thing to do, but it’s bread and butter Emergency Medicine.

Me: How did you do this?

Patient: I punched a wall

Me: Why?

Patient: I got angry/pissed off/pissed/felt like it/dunno/grunt (<—-typical responses)

Me: !!!!

(Well, what can you say?)

So we do the Xrays: Fractured metacarpal, sometimes several.

And it’s not the first one either…the things are bent out of shape, because they’d broken it before.  Doing the same thing.

Walls are usually stronger than bones.

Some people are stupid.

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Snakes and Unicycles

Australia is home to some of the mos venomous snakes in the world.

How do I know this?  I work in a hospital Emergency Dept.  We see the odd snake bite. Luckily, only a few of those who get bitten are actually envenomated.  That only happens to stupid people who walk barefoot in long grass right?

Wrong.  Take yesterday for instance.  I went for a unicycle ride to the Zoo.  There I was, hammering down the trail, minding my own business, and guess what?  An Australian Brown Snake wriggles it’s way in front of me.  A fully grown, 1m long, Australian Brown Snake.  If there’s one thing that makes you yank on your unicycle so hard your knuckles go white, it’s decelerating your unicycle from 30km/hr to a stop in less than 1m, just inches away from a deadly serpent.

Now, this is not the first time I’ve run over a snake.  I ran over something that looked like a dead baby snake in Austria a few years ago, quite by accident.  But this was one of the most poisonous snakes in the world, alive and wriggling.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against snakes.  They are part of the ecosystem, and humans were never meant to intrude into their environment, just to run them over with unicycles.  So I felt for the poor snake.  She was as petrified of that giant round thing barreling towards her as I was of those vicious fangs.

Did this story have a happy ending?  Yes, it did, because I skidded to a halt just as madame serpent slithered her way back into the undergrowth.  But others aren’t so lucky.

Today, some guy was bitten by a snake and came in to the Emergency Dept.

He was fine, but he shot the snake.

What a asshole.

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Daydreaming

Ever had one of those days where you find yourself staring blankly into space?  I’ve been having a few of those lately.  But you know, where I work, there is not much space.  Just lot’s of things that go beep.

Normal Sinus Rhythm

Now, a heart tracing is an interesting thing.  It shows the rhythm of your heart.  Basically it goes blip, blip, blip.  A QRS complex, if you want to get scientific about it.   Just like how  you see it on TV or in the movies.

Well…there I was.  Staring blankly into space.  The space, which happened to be occupied by a big flat screen that goes blip blip blip.  You know what?  It suddenly turned into a wiggly line.  Yeah, wiggly like a scribble.  Hmmm….

Ventricular Tachycardia

I stare blankly into space.

That looks  like VT.  Ventricular Tachycardia.

Stares blankly into space.

Shit.

Why isn’t the alarm ringing?

No, not my head, the machine with the screen on it.  It’s supposed to be screaming and flashing by now.

Shit.  That’s VT.  Bed 4.

That guy looks ok.  What the heck?

Wiggly line get’s wigglier.  Ooh. VF!  Ventricular Fibrillation.

Shit….it’s the bed next door.

We ran next door to see a family coming out screaming and in tears.  Pops was lying on the bed, purple and unconscious.

CPR.  Where the heck is the defibrillator?

To cut a short story even shorter, we stuck some pads on and gave him a helluva shock.

And he’s alive.

Some days you just have to stare blankly into space.

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