Just pee in this cup …
We went to the clinic in the hospital today to see if Pearlsky has a urinary tract infection. We have known this doctor for about 15 years, she was not in today, and we knew that her nurse would do the test. Here is the email I just sent the doctor.
We saw your nurse this morning, you should know it took her four catheters! She just could not get it right. I am not too upset because Pearlsky handled it well. It worked … eventually.
What really got me was the concept of looking in Pearlsky’s ears (or not). The school nurse said they were totally clogged with wax a week or so ago. I used those drops a couple of times (Deprox) and stuff happened, I think. I did not want to ask the school nurse to look again since one never knows what they will come up with.
I bought an otoscope and looked, but I have no idea what I am looking at. Well, sort of. I think I saw an ear drum and some wax, but nothing like the armageddon that the nurse described.
The thing that shocked me was when the nurse said that she could not look in her ears! She said that she is a “nurse” and not a “nurse practitioner.” My only reaction was “You can stick a rubber tube into her bladder four times but cannot look in her ear?” … to which she said “yes.”
I am dumbfounded, but then, that is not unusual.
As brief snapshot of my life … I get a call earlier today asking for advice from a long time close friend, a single mom. It turns out she took the family digital camera this morning to take some pictures. She then went to retrieve them and found a video that had been taken with said camera. The video was of her 20 year-old son’s best friend’s wife. Naked. Masturbating. Explicitly.
My advice? Why, send it to me, of course.
(And to let him know you saw it, that it was inappropriate to be on the camera, and that you did not want to know who took it.)
(No, she has not sent it to me. Yet.)
(Bitch.) 😉
In the educational assistant union jurisdiction we used to live in, a “Level #3 E.A.” was trained to catheterize, but was not allowed to even touch a g-tube. Only a nurse could deal with a g-tube. My friend, whose daughter is fairly severely affected by her Down’s, can give herself her own flushes. What’s that tell you? Effing world has gone insane.
Here in Los Angeles we’re in an epic battle with Sacramento to make Diastat (rectal valium) available for a layperson to administer. As you might know, Diastat can be life-saving in a seizure emergency, but the nurse and teachers’ unions are fighting making it legal for a layperson to give in school. Fucked up —
Nurses are allowed to do procedures such as giving an injection, taking blood, catheterizing, and other manual things. They are not allowed to give a diagnosis such as “the ear is infected”., “the finger is broken”. They can clean the ear, immobilize the finger, but they cannot give their opinion on what is wrong since they have not gone through the medical training that is required to make such dxs.
Many nurses I know are far more able to make the dx than some doctors who despite their training just have bad judgment. A smart, experienced nurse is often far more able than some doctors. But that is the way the hierarchy is set.
Oh, and I love your response to the pictures. A friend of mine was horrified to find pictures of her son and girlfriend that would qualify as pornographic. I told her to put them on her big digital picture frame and tell her son that they provided the entertainment at the mother’s luncheon. Tell the girl too.