Hide that stuff in the rocks

2003-06-23 - 7:48 a.m.

It's nearly eight. I've been in the poison control center since seven and I've yet to receive a call. Honestly, I'm a lazy bum and that's all right with me. Although, actually, answering phones here is pretty fun.

I mentioned earlier that going to the residents' roast last Friday was a fairly miserable experience for me. I forgot to mention the one to two seconds that were actually quite nice. Basically during the roast the residents sat in chairs at the front of a big room full of pharmacists who took turns getting up and telling embarrassing stories about the residents and giving us presents. The reason I found it so miserable was because nobody had any embarrassing stories to tell about me. It was just sad. But at any rate, at one point Cheesecake got up to talk about us. It may have been my imagination, but I was fairly sure this sort of thing wasn't his cup of tea either. He talked about us, but mostly he just said good things (so yes, he was able to come up with several stories about me). When he got done talking he gave us our presents. He went down the line. First was Fluffy. Cheesecake gave him his gift and shook his hand. Next in line was me. He gave me my gift and I reached out my hand for a handshake. He took my hand and pulled me in for a hug. It was a little awkward because I had been sitting and was now in a half sitting position, but my face was right in his neck and he smelled soooo good. Then I let go and sat back down as he moved on to Slick. There you have it, the two enjoyable seconds of the whole night.

Although my co-workers may not have any embarrassing stories to tell about me, I have one to share with you. This happened Saturday after lunch. I was doing the afternoon drip run and I was up in the CCU. I was standing outside a patient's room trying to calculate how many drips he would need during the night. This isn't generally too difficult. You just see how fast the drip is running and how much is left in the bag and it's easy enough to figure out how much they will need to get them through the night. But there was a lot of activity going on in this patient's room so I didn't go in. I could see the patient's feet so I knew he was there and his chart was right outside his room so I began going through the chart to find the information I needed. While I was doing this one of the medical residents came up to me. I knew him because we worked together on the CCU team a few weeks ago and also he is married to one of our per diem pharmacists who started about the same time I did. Wow, I've really made a short story long. Anyway, he walked up to me and asked, "Are you doing the drip run?" I told him I was and he said, "This patient is dead." I turned bright red, stammered something silly, and beat it.