One-On-One

Mt. Sinai's ER was a trip. While I was there I saw one guy who was bareboot and blind, stinking drunk wandering around, and a few very pungent homeless people as well. The woman next to me had fingers that had inexplicably blown up to the size of sausages, quite literally. The ER doctors had decided that it was probably an allergy but had no clue how to proceed. Me? They just pumped me full of Lasix and waited for it to have the desired effect. It didn't take long before I was peeing like the proverbial racehorse. They had determined almost as soon as I got there that I was going to be admitted, so it was just a matter of waiting for a room. It wasn't long before I was slipping back into a full-blown depression. When I got up to my room Sunday afternoon I asked to talk to a shrink. Bad idea. I was in a miserable mood and despite assuring her that I wasn't gonna hang myself with my oxygen tubing, I must have come across as profoundly depressed (and rightfully so, because I was) and, I guess, possibly self destructive (which I definitely was not). In the most cheerful voice she could muster (which I of course interpreted as nothing short of condescending) she asked me if I was okay with someone staying with me, just to keep me company. That of course meant, "just to keep an eye you". I found out later that this was called "One-on-One". They assign someone to stay with a patient that the psychiatry department has deemed a possible danger to himself. We're talking 24/7. I said okay, figuring, hey, what the hell, it might be nice to have someone to shmooze with. Big mistake. After the first hour or so I was searching for things to talk about; I felt like it was incumbent upon me to entertain my glorified babysitter. I woke up a few times that night and each time there was a new face. I decided that in the morning I would call it off. Only problem was, when I tried to dismiss the girl sitting at the foot of my bed at around 8:30 AM, she would not be dismissed. She told me she got her orders elsewhere. What chutzpah*! Being me, I stormed out to the nurses station and demanded that this ludicrous one-on-one situation be curtailed immediately. Of course I threatened my usual threat, that if it wasn't taken care of forthwith I would check out A.M.A., Against Medical Advice. Hell, I'm even sick of saying it! When the poor, overworked nurse didn't respond quickly enough, I huffed and puffed my way back into my room, pulled out my IV and proceeded to bleed all over the bed and floor. I had intended to get dressed in my street clothes, but first I had to stanch the bleeding, and it took a while. My babysitter sat and watched all this with a wry smile on her face; in retrospect, I'm sure she's dealt with lunatic patients before. I finally stopped the bleeding and stormed back out again (at this point my lungs would not cooperate, so it wasn't really a full-fledged storming...it was more like a spring shower) in my shirt, jeans and jacket and very melodramatically made the turn toward the elevators when the nurse on duty finally responded by telling me that a doctor would be coming to my room momentarily to discuss my concerns with me. Success! I had been bluffing of course, but they had apparently bought it. I was so pumped (boy, I can be a real jerk sometimes), I barely noticed the thin man with the long, flowing white hair standing quietly at the nurses' station, observing the whole scene.

* If you don't know what chutzpah means, you soooooo don't belong here...go find yourself another blog!