I know, who the hell wants to read about work . . . or write about it, for that matter?\u00a0 But I’m on the\u00a0intra-hospital run for a month, shuttling patients between Tucson and Phoenix, and it’s been an interesting first week.<\/p>\n
It started with a homeless man who soiled himself at a rest area where I’d stopped for him to use the restroom.\u00a0\u00a0He acted as if nothing had happened, of course.\u00a0 Well, I guess that’s how I would have acted too.<\/p>\n
The next day four patients rode with me from Phoenix to Tucson.\u00a0 The minute I pulled away from the curb, one man started ranting about\u00a0the ward nurse at Phoenix who’d taken him off Seroquel and put him on something else.\u00a0 Something that DIDN’T WORK!\u00a0 Then two other patients, a woman and a man, said the same nurse changed their meds too.\u00a0 It quickly became apparent all three had been on the same ward, and that the meds they were talking about . . . all the way to Tucson . . .\u00a0were antipsychotics.\u00a0 The fourth patient got real small in the back corner of the van and didn’t say a word the whole trip.\u00a0 I considered sliding my seat forward, but decided that would only egg them on.<\/p>\n
The next day Seroquel Man rode with me back up to Phoenix.\u00a0 As I approached the freeway rest area we had a short conversation:<\/p>\n
“Hey, I’m going to pull into the rest area.”<\/p>\n
“WHY?<\/em>”<\/p>\n “Uh, so we can pee?”<\/p>\n “Oh okay then.”<\/p>\n I closed out the week with two aging hippies.\u00a0 They talked to each other about all the drugs they’d done, how many times each had dropped out of AA, which halfway houses in Phoenix were good, and on an on.\u00a0 I think they were trying to impress me . . . I suppose I look like a straight arrow to people who don’t know me.\u00a0 I kept quiet.\u00a0 But I was around in the hippie days too.<\/p>\n And some hippie I was.\u00a0 First time I smoked dope (listening to the White Album with friends) I was so scared I\u00a0actually fainted.\u00a0 Never did try anything harder than that . . .\u00a0if you don’t count booze or tobacco, which are probably right up there with crystal meth.\u00a0 I loved booze in all its forms, but I’ve been away from it for almost a year now and find I don’t miss it all that much.\u00a0 I quit smoking in 1978 and\u00a0missed it a lot.\u00a0 For the first few years, I actually dreamt<\/em> about smoking!\u00a0 So, yeah, straight arrow.<\/p>\n God, please don’t let me find myself in the back of a van some day, trying to impress some total stranger with what a hard case I am.<\/p>\n Sometimes, when they transfer mentals from one hospital to the other, they drug them to the point where they’re almost comatose.\u00a0 Those are the ones I worry about.\u00a0 What if they come out of it before we get there?<\/p>\n Rule # 1: don’t show fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know, who the hell wants to read about work . . . or write about it, for that matter?\u00a0 But I’m on the\u00a0intra-hospital run for a month, shuttling patients between Tucson and Phoenix, and it’s been an interesting first week. It started with a homeless man who soiled himself at a rest area where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}