here ya go, liza

a blog from my hospital days.

Fifty Ways to Say No?

How many ways are there to refuse? Apparently, there are many, but this week I witnessed one of the most unusual ways, and hope to never see one more…punctuated. Let me tell you the story:

Last week, we received a health law violator. The man is ‘eat up’, as we say in the south when someone has an overwhelming case of something, with tuberculosis. On the outside, the man travelled from state to state, coughing the germ which hangs in the air for thirty minutes and waits for you to walk through it breathe it in after it’s expelled. The short of it is – his tb was discovered during an emergency room visit, and after refusing to stay hospitalized, the man was released and referred to a local health department for treatment.

Well, he didn’t go. SO – authorities tracked his butt down and sent him to us, where we can confine him to respiratory isolation and force-feed him the meds that will make him non-infectious and non-threatening to the public.

The first thing he did was make his dissatisfaction known. He told the sgt – “F*CK you!", scared the pee out of the lab lady who went to draw blood by springing from his bed and beating on the walls when she knocked on the door to the isolation room, and told Pat in X-ray – You not talk to me! You not talk to me!

SO..it was my turn to meet mr. eatupwithit. I typed up a nice, neat little authorization for release of information, went upstairs and tagged an officer to go with me to isolation and then we went hunting for a mask to wear – which we couldn’t find. The officer passed the paper through the door to the inmate.

“We need you to sign this so we can get more medical information for the purpose of continuation of treatment, sir.”

Did he say – no, i won’t do that. Did he say – HECK no, I won’t sign it?

Nope. He said

“F*CK YOU!", balled the authorization up, threw it on the floor and peed on it.

I guess a simple ‘no’ wouldn’t have been emphatic enough.

The next day, he called up to the nurse’s station and said..I need somebody.

My favorite nurse, Brown, went to his aid.

“What do you need?”

“I don’t like you.”

“I don’t like you either, mister. What do you need?”

“I don’t like you.”

By now we’ve figured out this guy doesn’t like anybody who could help him get better.

I hope he doesn’t find a more inventive means of saying no while he’s with us.