Sunday, February 10, 2008

Bitchin'

I was on-call for the heart team one Saturday night, all by myself.

Our hospital is one of the top 20 hospitals in the US in heart disease, and they left me, someone who has very little interest in heart disease, to do calls by myself that night as well as 7 other night that month.

I didn't know whether it was a football game, or a crash in the stock market or another speech by Bush, but we had a lot of people coming in with heart attacks.

All patients did well, except for one who came in unconscious and we sent him to the ICU. He was on plenty of medications and it didn't look good for the old fellow.

I was there at 3 am when I asked his nurse to draw a blood test .

She came back with the result.

I wanted to ask about the pH. The pH is a reflection of how much acid there is in the blood, which is a bad sign.

I don't know if this happens to you, but whenver I am really really tired and stressed out, my accent suddenly thickens out and my English becomes a bit difficult to undertsand. I never had a problem with "P" and "B" , but I don't know what happened that night.

"What's the bicarb?" I asked
"12"
"Ah, 12! That's too low!"
then I wanted to ask what the P-H was. The P-H.
"How about a PH?"
I think the (previously) nice black nurse heard something else.

"What did you say?" she asked, and she looked furious.
I was thinking to myself what made her angry.

She looked at me really mad, and said, "I'm asking (aksing) you, what did you say?"

I couldn't answer and was wondering what the hell did I say, I only remember asking about the P-H.

She went ,"Did you just call me a Biaaatch?"
As I kept silent, she got became more furious, "You're calling me a biaaatch, ha?"

"No I said P-H"!
"you're saying it again, you're calling me a Biaatch!"
"No,No, No!"

The last thing a doctor should do is make a nurse angry. If you did, all the nurses in the hospital will hate you and make your life miserable. I was ready to kneel on my knees and kiss each of her feet separately.


Then another nurse, at the end of the hallway who was never even close to us came by and whispered in her ears that was well-heard, "honey I heard him, I think he called you a bitch".


The patient inside looked very critical so I had to go inside and try to keep him alive. I didn't hear from that nurse or anyone else since then and it's been more than 2 years now, the time limit during which she can complain for sexual harrasment has passed, yahoooo!

I just learned that when you think your night is not going well, it can get much worse. Also, you should work on your Ps and Bs you pastards.

13 comments:

bella said...

hahaha... yala good the time limit has passed, mabrook :D

mab3oos said...

when tired, Arabs tend to bark in the wrong place also.

Hani Obaid said...

I think it only got that bad because you hesitated. The phonetic alphabet helps, P as in Peter, H as in Henry.

When I'm tired my English degrades too. It's strange eventhough you normally speak it flawlessly, it actually takes a concious effort to do it if it's not your first language.

Anonymous said...

Man I hate it when the s and the Bs decide to surface at the wrongest of times!

asoom said...

so did the nurses conspire you after that?

Anonymous said...

LOL! ya 7aram. Do you have ANY idea how much mn7ki 3lekom behind your backs? we have like profiles about each doctor. To be honest, I would do anything to the nice doctors to make thier job a little easier. Bas those that freak out about the marker being side up and in the perfect corner tick me OFF! and yeah, they all huddle up together like that other nurse from the other end.

Hareega said...

tinker... ybarek feeki, nice new look for ur page

maf3oos... yeah i know the parking story

hani obaid... yep it's not only us, i know some co-workers who come from latin america who , when tired, start talking so quickly that you feel like listening to salsa

Q, yes shit happens

asoom, surprisngly not, they've been nice -so far-

batoul, i know, keep being nice to doctors :)

Anonymous said...

LOOOL man :P You crack me uB :D

Anonymous said...

Loooooooooool!! I second the "when you think your night is not going well, it can get much worse" thing, disastors seem to come in bundles! Bas your misfortunes are the source of my, and other people's daily dose of laughter, 3anjad ta7sheesh. :)

lubna said...

it's either that you have some good sharp memory. Or things happen to you and you stay hurt for a while but you don't show it. No you just wait a couple of years until you are comfortable about them and you bring them out in a comic kinda way...
hmmm... let me think.
I think it's a combo of the two options... but i think you'd say: no lubna, i just dont care.

i think i'm ranting:P

hi!

Hareega said...

hala and khulood, thanks for readinf

lubna well i heard someone calling someone else a bitch so that brought my memory back to this incident. IT's all insiprational.

I don't wanna start talking about how I was inspired to write the post "fart in the dark"

Anonymous said...

that was funny
i was once very tired and consumed up after working on a project and there comes the american man in our team,he accidently dropped something on my work which was simply ruined.i was mad i told him : THANK YOU
i he though i said **** you and got really mad

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