ciroccoj | Weekend Follies

Re. my diet: after an uncomfortable first few days, I settled right in. I'm looking up healthy recipes, making good choices for snacks (applesauce instead of cookies or cheese), and cooking. Yes, cooking. Chris finally has a real wife ;)

However, I discovered a down side to this yesterday. We went to Kingston for Turtle's birthday party, which was being held in a movie theater. There was cake and soft drinks and popcorn and more popcorn, and then after the party there were perogies, and... I swear to God if I didn't really, really hate throwing up, I would've been able to totally get bulimea last night. The feeling of being way too full, of greasy yucky food, and wanting to un-pollute my body. Ick. After eating fruits and veggies and whole grains in sensible amounts for weeks... yesterday was just gross.

Anyway. Took a gravol and went to sleep. Felt better this morning.

The party itself was great. Eleven little kids (7 girls, 4 boys), lots of presents and cake and movie posters. And the movie (Scooby Doo 2) was OK by grown-up standards and awesome by kid standards, although Justin needed some cuddling during the scarier parts.

For me the best part was being with Todd and Susan and Turtle and Zany. Turtle was in a great little mood, what with being the birthday girl, and Zane has learned some words! He even learned our names - IIss! for Chris and MMEN-ah! for me. Justin, as always, was totally charmed to be near him. That's one of my big regrets in having left Kingston, that Justin doesn't get to be around Zane much. He would've made such a good big brother.

It was also wonderful to see Todd playing with the kids again like he used to. He enjoys being with kids so much, and he's so patient with them. And they adore him. A huge guy who can chase them around and read to them and tell them jokes that they understand? And listen to them and actually be interested in what they say? And trade tidbits and opinions about Scooby Doo and My Little Pony? What kid wouldn't love that?

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Found out that the lady Chris helped on the road back from the sugarbush on Saturday died shortly after arriving at the hospital by helicopter. I guess she really was a lot worse off than anybody thought. Also, she was 79 years old, so there may have been some underlying health issues that made the accident fatal. Her husband was being held for serious injuries, and the couple in the other car was OK. There was still no conclusion as to what happened or who was at fault.

We also read that the elderly couple was thrown out of their car and into the ditch, which we had gathered because the first people on the scene said they found the woman underwater in the ditch and the man half-submerged. I guess they weren't wearing seatbelts.

Found out something else that was disturbing. When Chris went to help, he didn't tell anybody that he was a doctor. After all, even though he has been certified in emergency care and has worked in Emerg before, he didn't want to present himself as a medical authority in case somebody with more training (say, a St. John's Ambulance volunteer) should come up. Chris knows his own training is good, but also knows the word "Doctor" is enough to make most people want to defer to him, even when he's not the best person for the job.

Shortly after he got there, a woman ran up, starting asking medical stuff, and at one point said to Chris, "I'm a nurse."

Oh! Chris happily deferred to her, since she seemed to be quite confident and there wasn't much for them to do anyway. He did think it a little strange that she seemed confident but not terribly well-informed, but thought maybe she was primarily a surgical nurse or something where regular emergency work isn't common. In any case, she seemed to know as much as he did, so no big deal.

After the ambulance got there and took over, Chris and the nurse were standing there, waiting to see if they'd be needed for anything else, and Chris asked, "So what kind of nursing do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a PSW."

"Personal Service Worker?" Chris was a little puzzled - as far as he knows, a PSW is a person who cleans bedpans and feeds patients, not a nurse at all. But he didn't say anything.

Got home. He went and looked up PSW. Yes, it's a person who changes bedpans and feeds patients. Not a medical professional at all.

Chris was right pissed. Here he is, he's been trained in emergency work but wasn't going to butt in and take over because he knows his limits and he knew he might not be the most qualified for the job. And here's this stupid woman, with no medical qualifications whatsoever, basically impersonating a health professional in order to take over an emergency situation.

Unfortunately it seems that qualifications didn't make much difference in this situation, and besides, there was nothing the woman did or didn't do that Chris disagreed with in any way. But if there had been, he would have deferred to her and that woman might have died because a bedpan-changer decided to play doctor.

I'm rather incensed too. Don't get me wrong, bedpan changers provide an important service and I'm not putting them down. But changing bedpans for a living does not entitle you to take a human being's life into your hands if you don't have the knowledge base to do it competently.

***

On a totally unrelated note: last night I read a few comments to my post (Republican Code of Ethics and 11 Admonitions in Leviticus). I went to answer them - and erased them instead. I think one was from

senza and one was from

noir_moll, and I think there was one other. I have no idea how I did this three times in a row.

I would like to take this opportunity to advise everybody "Don't Drink and Surf", except that I wasn't drinking. This was just my own natural dorkiness shining through. I am such a spaz. Sorry, guys.