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I only got called in once last night, about 04:30 or so, just as I was getting to sleep on that torture machine known as a hospital bed. I might have commented on this faction of sleeping at the hospital before... they would throw these mattresses aw2ay if patients had to sleep on them. The two recent times that I've been in a *real* hospital bed lately, the mattresses were much better. Of course, I was paying for them then, and so were you, if you pay insurance.

Which reminds me, I haven't seen the bill for the defibrillator yet, but the one for the cath was over $20K. I would imagine that we're looking at $50K at least.

Anyway, my last patient before the 04:30 one was at about 22:00 Friday night, so it was a quiet night. And I got back to bed about 06:00 and slept really well until 09:45, when I was awakened by the beeper. And then it was balls to the wall all day, or at least until 15:30 or so. Delays, delays, delays of all kinds. One patient, who had not been done Friday evening because of a question about the order, had eaten lunch, so I was going to do him at 18:00, got arrangements made for the radiologist to be there and all that. I had finished up a patient at about 17:15, and I was really tired of being here, so I went for a ride for a half-hour and came back and got a call... the patient had eaten supper! So he's on the schedule for tomorrow morning now, let's see what happens next.

And I had two patients today with IV failures... the hub of the needles wasn't securely attached to the valve. This is, unfortunately, a more-than-occasional thing. When we first researched this problem, I took a needle and a valve out of the package and put them together firmly and held them up to the light, fascinated as the needle slowly twisted off of the hub. That was about a year ago, and we thought that the problem solved. Not.

One of the failures was a needle that I placed, though, so I have to take the blame for that one.

I did go home twice, and the last time I was just about ready to get into the shower when the phone rang. I told them that I was going to take the whole half-hour allowed to get there, and when I did get here, I had three patients lined up, heh.

I'm hoping that tonight will be just about like last night, except for the part where I can't go to sleep.

Jumping around a little bit here... I went up to the night cafe to get something to eat about 23:50. Well, what I wanted was a patty melt, the one thing that practically nobody can screw up. However, it being good Friday and all, I had to wait until exactly midnight to get one. So I spent the time talking to the cook, Dee. Well, during that time, she forgot that I'd told her I wanted a patty melt and she fixed me a hamburger. I should've caught on when she asked me if I wanted onions, but I didn't. So I ate my cheeseburger and then went to find my old buddy Joe and talk with some other old night-time friends. That was nice, I need to do that more often when I'm on over a weekend.

OK, a nice link for y'all, from Zach's Mind. That's http://zachsmind.com/entry.asp?date=2/8/2004 for those of you who can't see links in e-mail.

Zach is an old-timer, started in September of 1998... well, to some of us, he's a newbie, but there are very few of us originals around any more, it seems.

And now, since I haven't had a patient for a coupla hours, I'm gonna go upstairs and watch a little news and go to sleep, heh, I hope.