I was riding my bike to Gross Out* just now, and while I was waiting at the red light across the street, a woman about my age I think walked by, wearing scrubs. She looked tired but optimistic, and kind. Something about her posture and gait gave me the impression that it revealed very plainly her nature and it was almost like I knew her.
And suddenly I wanted to get on the SDMB when I got done shopping, and thank everyone who works in the medical industry. Doctors, nurses, lab techs, orderlies, housekeepers, receptionists, surgeons, anaesthetists – everyone. You are brave and unselfish people to have taken on the enormous task of caring for those who are hurt or ill, and it’s a frequently thankless job.
Especially, I want to thank every single person in our large and underfunded public hospitals. I have met many kind, truly competent and casually brilliant people who were working in such places when I or my loved ones needed them.
Like the time my then-boyfriend was “doored” by an SUV, and needed 90 stitches :eek: in his face. It was I believe a young East Indian guy who stitched him up – they went from forehead to chin in a question-mark shape. He looked like Frankenstein’s Monster when he got home. But a year later, you couldn’t even find the scar.
Or the very young intern who prescribed Motrin for me (you couldn’t get it over the counter back then!) when I was in agonizing pain from menstrual cramps at SF General as a teen. Up til then NOTHING touched the pain. He just wandered by me lying on a stretcher in the ER hallway, said, “What’s the matter?”, and wrote me a script right there. God bless him!
That is all.
Thank you. 
irishgirl, off to bed after a busy 12 hours at work in an Emergency Department.
Just stopping by to thank the ER nurse (12 years after the fact) when I was dragged into the ER from O’Hare Airport in a Medicar, after being flown up from Florida in a bathrobe and a cast up to my hip, after breaking my tibia and fibula in seveal places. I was in a LOT of pain, and dehydrated as hell from four days of being at my aunt’s house, eating nothing but leftover noodle pudding and hardly drinking anything because I was in too much pain to make it to the bathroom. By the time I got to Chicago, I was also covered in half-cleaned-up vomit from the dehydration and the painkillers; I’m sure I was quite a sight.
So after they checked me into the ER, called for the ortho specialist on standby, and hooked me up on IV fluids and morphine (I was MUCH happier after that), the nurse came in and said, “Your mom is in the waiting room and wants to come in and sit here with you. Should I let her in?” I told her she could let in anyone EXCEPT my mom. (If you knew my mom, you’d understand - she was convinced throughout my leg debacle that she knew more than the board-certified foot and ankle surgery specialist who was taking excellent care of me. And Mom didn’t hesitate to order people around, regardless of the wishes of her adult, competent daughter. It drove me bonkers.)
I don’t remember your name, if I ever knew it in my half-delirious state, but thank you for handling an icky situation (and an icky patient) with extreme grace. And thanks again for the IV morphine - I’m not a fan of narcotic painkillers, but there is definitely a time and a place for them, and that was certainly it.
Well, you’re very welcome I’m sure.
Rigs–an RN who has been up since 0330 to work the early shift in Same Day Surgery. I help people through their outpatient surgery and teach them how to care for themselves post-op. I used to save people from dying (or try to). Their both good in their way.
PS: Eva, most nurses agree that it’s not the pt who gives us trouble, it’s the families… just a thought. 