This has been a crummy week for acquaintances... the count right now is four. Besides the nurse from ED, Eric Bass, another nurse that I kinda knew died Tuesday while he was working in Ask-a-nurse. He was 41. And yesterday, a lady who worked evenings in housekeeping lost her long battle with cancer... she was working Tuesday night.

And yesterday a neighbor of Herman's, Chuck Lawson, had a coronary at work and died before he got to the hospital. Chuck was 45.

Three out of the four unexpected deaths.

Everybody's looking over their shoulders around there.

And speaking of "there", we had a very light night last night... we were on bypass due to Eric's death. We've never been on bypass before that I can remember.

It was weird. No ambulances in the ambulance bay. All night long. The personnel in the other hospital's ED volunteered, I guess, knowing that we'd do the same if they lost one of theirs. A really nice gesture, I though... but I really could've used it the night before, when I was running my butt off...

I decided not to write this morning, because the server was down again, so I talked Karen into rubbing my legs before I went to sleep... a great way to get relaxed. Unfortunately, my cold hasn't gone away, and my nose stopped up so that I couldn't breathe through the C-PAP and that woke me up. So, naturally, I got up to check e-mail, and the server was up, so here I am...

But not for long. More tomorrow...