I know that when most of you imagine my life you think “Ooooh, she works in a hospital” and along with that thought, scenes from popular shows such as ER, Greys Anatomy, and Scrubs fill your head. You fancy me a quick-thinking on-the-go rehab guru, revered by patients, envied by physicians for my patient-whisperer reputation. But alas. Landmark Medical Center is about the most boring place I have ever worked. Oddly it seems the more money I make the less work I do. I know this might sound like a good thing but its getting old now. Glamorous and sexy it is not. I did however get an offer for sex at work yesterday; the 80 year old gentleman with pnemonia on the 2nd floor responded to my polite query “Is there anything else I can do for you?” with “Well, you haven’t offered to make love to me!” I blushed and mumbled that was not in my job description as I doffed my contact precautions gown (this unfortunate patient was harboring a super-bug known as MRSA bacteremia; this stands for I forgot what the M is for- resistant-staph-aureus). I suppose I would have considered it if only he didn’t have that nasty bug. JUST KIDDING. Anyway that’s about as scandalous as it gets, unlike the pop culture images where healthcare professionals are jumping into every clean utility closet they can to get it on…

Anyway, today I was thinking, geez its been a while since I posted on my forsaken little blog but I can’t think of anything worth writing about! All the triathletes love to blog about their sick training but lately I feel like a slug. I have been working out, but its nothing to write home about so to speak. But today… today SOMETHING HAPPENED TO ME!

I am an occupational therapist and if you don’t know what this is, go to www.aota.org which is a fabulous website. I approached my patient, a sweet little elderly lady saying that the only way for her to get stronger and to be able to do more for herself was to practice doing the things she wanted to do, and so we hatched a plan: With the use of her walker, I was to assist her to walk to the bathroom where she would stand at the sink to brush her teeth. In the event she was too weak to stand the whole time, there would be a chair she could sit on while she completed brushing her teeth at the sink. Merely moving from lying down to sitting at the edge of the bed was quite a production. I was not sure how she would fare getting to the bathroom but she was willing to try and so was I. It became evident very shortly that the best we were going to do was to get her into the chair right next to the bed. From there she could brush her teeth at the table. But alas, this sweet little woman (and I mean little. She was about 4’10” and maybe 85 lbs) had to go to the bathrooom. There was no bedside commode (there was one in the utility closet but it had no bowl, rendering it useless. I checked) and she was simply not going to make it all the way to the toilet and she thought the bedpan was too uncomfortable. The only option was for her to do her business in the diaper she had on. I gave her a minute and came back to find she was through. Unfortunately the only nursing assistant on the floor was tied up with another patient and the nurse was conveniently nowhere to be found (I had previously mentioned to her I would probably need a hand shortly). There was no way I was going to get this woman all cleaned up on my own.