You work codes and unfold sheets. You put your arm around onlookers and family members and guide them away. You listen to them in the hallways of the ER. Wiping their eyes roughly with the heel of a grimy hand, going over and over the last thing they said, yesterday morning when they fussed at him for getting into the sugar.



Whether we want to admit it or not every death takes its little dig out of us. Every shattered helmet and flat green line and 'unknown downtime' puts a little… Continue

Note: This is my most recent blogpost from my everyday blog. I figure turnabout is fair play; if I can get humor out of patients' situations its only fair that I tell on myself.



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I drive for a living, and one of the annual annoyances of driving for a living for a trucking company is the ‘random’ drug test. ‘Random’ earns ‘quotes’ because I usually am ‘told’ when its going to… Continue

Kids, kids, kids. Where has the time gone?



Without boring you with details, its 'peak season' in my paying job, which means that most weeks I'm driving hundreds of miles through the New York and Pennsylvania countryside, keeping my own company, practicing show tunes, and deepening my affinity for Jack Link beef jerky while I studiously adhere to the speed limit and handsfree cell phone laws because you can only talk your way out of a cell phone ticket in New York State on account of… Continue

Aside from the wildfires that keep seeming to happen when I'm not home, I've had a quiet couple of weeks and not a lot of time 'on the bus'. I'm sure that this week will take care of that, but in the meantime here's a story from my pre-certification days when I wore a different uniform and rode a different kind of bus. And wore glasses roughly the size of the Hubble telescope lens.



Clicky clicky...don't be… Continue

Well I’ve had this damn sinus infection for three weeks now and I was downtown and thought I’d go to the hospital but I couldn’t hardly stand up and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get out of the car at the hospital so I drove home and came back up the ramp and I was just sitting here and all of a sudden I couldn’t hold my head up (dog barks) SHUT THE F**K UP! (dog stops) so right I should give him any more cigarettes? F**k him. He smokes his and mine too and I have to buy him more and he… Continue