Overheard on a Night Shift...

Although we're not a trauma centre, we do get the occasional 'Homie Drop-Off'. This leads to exciting nights when someone's 'homies' decide to leave their injured buddy on the steps of our emergency department. Last week, we got a gunshot wound to the abdomen. It was a fairly small bullet, a .22 by the looks of it on x-ray, that ricocheted off his iliac crest, perforated his bowel and came to rest sungly against the opposite iliac crest. Small entrance wound, no exit wound.

Young, panicked thug lying on the gurney: "What's wrong with me doc?"

Staff Doc: "You got shot."

Thug: "What? Like, with a real bullet?"

Staff: "Yup."

Thug: "So how come I'm not dead?"

Staff: "Um... cause this isn't TV."

*********************************************************

Night shift is when you see the most interesting cases. As we're also the emergency psychiatry resource for the area, many of our interesting cases come in the form of overdoses and acutely psychotic patients. One that particuarly stands out was the 26-year-old 225lb man who came in dressed in a pink bunny suit waving a magic wand. Which would have been far more amusing had he actually been delusional and not a sexual predator of young children. Just in case you thought my job was ALL fun and games.

*********************************************************

Night shift is bad for the size of my ass. For some reason, the night shift means food. And lots of it. In the middle of the emergency room there is an island with a computer on it, used mostly for leaning on when things get slow. On a recent night shift, that island held 4 large bags of chips, one container of french onion chip dip, a giant caramel cheesecake that one nurse had made as a thank you to another, a large box of Timbits and a bag of chocolate-peanut-butter balls.

It made the cut up veggies I had brought to snack on look pretty pathetic.