It's Saturday and I'm at work. There are no patients right now, which is nice because I've been able to search for a small car to save on gas costs, browse properties in Florida and check with a couple of mortgage companies about combining my home and HELOC under a 20 yr. note. I'd really like to get away from countrywide Mortgage since they're merging with Bank of America but right now, they're still offering the best rate. Bank of America, for clarification, offers loans to illegal aliens - and I disapprove of this for several reasons, not the least of which concerns fees, especially when one or more of them skips out on a loan. That drives me insane.
I came in this morning to 2 patients, one of which was a depressed gentleman. He slept until he left for the hospital. The other one was a 19 yr. old mentally retarded girl who lost her shit last night. Today, she was perfectly well put together. Mom came in and picked her up to take her home. No harm, no foul. I'm not sure just HOW retarded she was, but if she was retarded enough to know she is retarded, I'd say it's understandable for her to have a flip out or two.
So, I had a decent thing happen the other day while here. I got an unexpected follow up on a girl I'd taken care of 3 years ago. I didn't even remember her until she came in - and even then, she remembered me and after thinking about it for a bit, it came back to me.
I first saw her 3 years ago, aged 17, brought in by police for drugs and having run away from home. It came out while she was here that she was involved with a gang. Mom and dad were nowhere to be found and she was supposed to be living with her grandmother, who really couldn't do much in terms of keeping her under control. The gang pretty much ran her life. She prostituted herself, most likely for the benefit of the gang. School was non-existant. Drugs, like I said before and for all intents-and-purposes, she was living on the street.
We put her into the hospital because her life had spiralled so far out of control and apparently, it was helpful for her. I don't really remember much of what went down between us when she was here the first time, although we must have had a decent set of interactions because she felt comfortable with me when she showed up this time.
We got called out to the ambulance triage to find an irate black woman on the stretcher, handcuffs being removed as we entered the bay. She kept screaming about how wrong it was that she was taken to the hospital, that she didn't belong here, that she didn't do anything wrong, etc. All stuff I've heard a thousand times over so it didn't mean much. According to the EMT's, she'd been sent in by the cops because she was out of control and had assaulted an officer. Ok. Fair enough. Several of us - myself, Police / Security / EMT's and the doc with me, tried to get her to calm down, which really wasn't all that successful. She did respond fairly well to me in the end, which was good. She told me she remembered me from the first time she was in and knew that I'd take care of her. That was helpful. I told her I would listen to what she had to say and we'd try to work it out as quickly as possible. I told her that when someone was sent in by the cops, we had to see that person, end of story.
We made our way back to one of the bays because I still wasn't sure how this was going to play out. She was cooperative at that point, but hell - she could snap back into her freak out mode at any point. That's the nature of the beast.
When we got to the bay, she immediately launched into a tirade about how she'd been treated at her home, how the cops had mistreated her and that she wanted to leave - stuff I'd heard from people more times than I can count. Nevertheless, there are rules and regs for the unit and they need to be followed - so I told her she would have to get changed and that most likely, I would be drawing labs/blood work. Well, this set hr off to no end, yelling and ranting at me about how the last time she was thee, she had to get changed and then she wound up in a hospital. She called me "dog" three or four times and refused. I sat down with her at that point and let her know - the unit operates under rules that need to be followed. I would do my best to get her seen as quickly as possible so that we could wrap things up for her as quickly as possible, however if she was not going to cooperate, it was oing to take a helluva lot longer because I wasn't moving to the next step until the basics were done. I reinforced that chning her clothes this time didn';t mean she was automatically going into the hospital like last time. Anything further still had to be determined. She then told me that she was 6 mos. pregnant.
I put it up to her again how she wanted to handle it and she changed. When she was done, I went in and sat down so we could talk.
