A Block-buster of an Idea

You read about all these terrorists--most of them came here legally, but they hung around on their expired visitor visas, some for as long as 10-15 years, unable to be found so they can be deported. The current system doesn't have the slightest idea where most of them are.

Now, compare that to Blockbuster: They know your name, address, phone number, workplace address, and who knows what else about you.  If you're a day late with a video, those people are all over you.

Now that Blockbuster is going out of the video rental business, let's put them in charge of Immigrant Tracking.  It shouldn’t take them more than a couple of weeks to find all the illegals.  Maybe, in the course of tracking down all these foreign intruders, Blockbuster might even find some of their old videos that were never returned.

RE-DO Rational vs. Emotional Problems & Solutions NOT FOR PUB

Remember: ... the ideas expressed here are ONLY IDEAS.
No one has ever suggested anyone take action on any of them.
No one has EVER taken action on any of them (that I know of).

They are just FIGMENTS of the mind an overly-active Asperger Syndrome patient who can't understand the illogicalness of the world and the people who live in it.

They are only part and parcel of:

an attempt to understand the illogical behavior of the herd;
an attempt to identify Rational Problems and find Rational Solutions;
an attempt to identify Emotional Problems and 
find appropriate Emotional Solutions for them;
an even greater attempt to identify misguided people who have Emotional Problems,
but fear the consequences of revealing those Emotional Problems and, therefore,
seek what appear to be (to the outside world) Rational Solutions.

This is also:

an additional attempt to identify Rational Problems 
for which the person has been given Emotional Solutions and, 
as expected, found the "crossed-problem-solution"  

i.e., RP <> ES ... to be ineffective; 

e.g., "I have an RP."  "Well, why don't you try this ES?"

Another example:   RP: "My car is out of gas."  

                            ES: "I know.  But I still like you."

Different example: EP: "I feel like you don't appreciate me."  

                            RS: "I'll buy you some ice cream."

Graphic representation of Problem-Solution Matrix

Understanding What Goes On "Under the Floor" (inside person's head).

RP reqire RS; EP require ES, overt, discussed by all participants.  

Crossed RP <> ES, or EP <> RS is, covert, and bound to fail.

The problem with clones: clonez, clonez, clonez ...

“Of all the things that should be cloned, the one we need most will probably be replicated last.”

HELLO, DOLLY!

Scientists, with all the best intentions, are getting on the cloning band wagon.  Dolly the sheep, hundreds of mice and rats and who knows what other species have been cloned in labs around the world.

Now embryonic and adult stem cell researchers are threatening to clone human beings.  Of course, they are cloaking their attempts to clone humans in the shroud of satisfying the situation of couples who are faced with infertility on the one hand and the desire to have children on the other.

WHERE WILL IT LEAD?

With that foot in the door, and the experience with embryonic and adult stem cell manipulation, the researchers can branch out into other areas.  Such as cloning individual organs to replace infected, damaged or injured parts and pieces of the human body.  Some feel that there is a real need for more (cloned) hearts and livers and lungs because of the shortage of donor organs.   The transplant surgeons have too many patients who need their heart or kidney or liver or lung replaced.  Being frustrated with the need for organs (and the chance to make quite a lot of money doing the complicated and dangerous transplant surgery), they see cloning of parts and pieces as a veritable mother lode of organs they can use to put people back together.

CLONE HEARTS IF YOU LIKE ... BUTT FIRST

While I quite agree with the surgeons that "a chance to cut is a chance to cure," I take issue with the fact that cloning efforts should be focused on hearts, kidneys, livers and lungs at the beginning.  We can do those later. Butt first, we should look at the pain, misery, work-loss-days and decrement in daily performance caused by a problem far more common than heart, kidney, liver and lung disease combined.  I am, of course, talking about hemorrhoids, hemorrhoidectomy and rectal cloning.

The first organ cloning we should get behind (so to speak) is rectal cloning.    This should not be the tail end of the cloning story.  It should be the place we start.  The first organ we clone, the Royal Rectum.  The appellation, of course, comes from the type of pain in the ass that hemorrhoids cause us all, a Royal Pain if there ever was one.

Rectal cloning should begin with the very best adult (or embryonic) stem cells, which would insure a flawless product.  With that flawless organ as the goal we can proceed to do two things at the same time: 1.  we can relieve the pain and discomfort that thousands of folks have to endure on a daily basis; and, 2.  we can create Truth where only Innuendo and Supposition were present in the past by actually turning certain people into the Perfect Assholes they were formerly accused of being.

WHAT TO DO IF THE RESEARCH FAILS

Even if the initial research fails, it can easily be flushed incommodiously, allowing assignment of someone else to carry on the movement.   Any failures to clone the perfect rectum will probably end up being the butt of many jokes.  However, in the end, assuredly, success will be achieved and the researchers will get the last laugh on those who dumped on them.

The successes might include cloning the rectum of some tight-ass, anal- retentive accountant and transplanting it into a patient with chronic diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome, thus avoiding embarrassing public loss of control.  (This is called Locked Bowel Syndrome; the variation where the bowel is locked in the open position.)

For patients with chronic constipation, (Locked Bowel, locked in the closed position), perhaps the cloned rectum of a large, African bull elephant would afford the patient a permanently free and open passage for a lifetime of ease and enjoyment at stool.

One waxes ecstatic at the possibilities for those folks with excess intestinal gas.  When one considers the rhapsodic output of a flatogenic patient equipped with a rectum cloned from, say, a tuba player or perhaps the business end of a former clarinetist, oboist or bass saxophone player. All of this leads to a mild depression when one realizes that, with the bodily tissues of Spike Jones and the City Slickers legally and permanently out of reach , we are seeing the rise of cloning at a time when many of the really creative opportunities have been missed.

Personally, having suffered from hemorrhoids myself, and having endured the post-op pain, I lament the fact that I missed the chance to have a replacement cloned from the rectum of Victor Borge.  Then I, too, could go "Phut! Psst! Phut!" (from his performance of audible punctuation of the  typewriter song).

CLONUS PROHIBIUS

There have been a few suggestions about rectal cloning that I think should be rejected out of hand.   For instance, the hunter who wanted a rectum cloned from the larynx of a duck so he could continue uninterrupted, to call the birds while sitting in the blind drinking beer and eating beans and weenies.

Finally, there are a couple of peripheral cloning areas that I think should be addressed before going in for hearts et al.  One is ear canal hair.  I think it should be cloned and transplanted to the heads of bald men. It obviously grows better than what was up there in the first place.   The second thing is Beer Bellies.  They should be cloned and grafted on to young girls with Anorexia Nervosa.  It would give them a "full figure" and might possibly help them beat their disease in one fell swoop. 

Finally, I believe we should clone all kinds of skin, white skin, brown skin,  yellow skin, black skin, and red skin.  Making skin of all colors available to anyone and everyone would allow each person to be whatever color he or she wanted to be.  That, in turn, would let everyone who changed skin color begin to understand that we are all the same underneath, we all have problems and none of us are really any better or worse than anyone else. (The skin cloning should be "reversible," so when the person comes to his or her senses they can revert to their original form and carry on as originally  intended.)

THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF CLONING

Last, but definitely not least, when we have perfected the cloning of all these completely insignificant organs, parts and pieces, we should turn our efforts to the One, Final Thing that really needs to be cloned over and over until we have an unlimited supply of it freely available: Common Sense.

Gotta go! (Gotta go! [clone])

Why I Don't Listen To TV Commercials

Sub-title: Coincidental Foretelling of Improvements in TiVo

My favorite button on our TV remote is the "mute" button.  For years I have been using it to stop car salesmen from yelling about the fact that I am just about to miss my very last, life-long chance to save $300 on the purchase of a $12,000 vehicle.  Of course, that was 20 years ago that I could have saved $300.  Now, the economy being what it is I am shouted at and told I can save $300 on the same vehicle, which now costs $65,500 dollars.

To avoid the pain of such a great loss ($300) and the constant reminder that I am a moron for passing up the chance to save a buck, I became a chronic, repetitive, almost compulsive user of the "Mute" button.

Over the years I have often thought that I would be happy to send $200 - $300 dollars (assuming I was smart enough to have saved that much by buying a new car) to the fellow who first thought of enhancing the TV Remote functions by adding the Mute button.  I only gave up on the idea when I finally decided that this genius, whoever he is, used to be a low-level employee of some Japanese TV manufacturing company and he has long-since gone to his great reward in whatever Heaven Orientals go to when the batteries in their personal Remote Control fail and none of their buttons work any more.  But I still think of him when I "stick a sock" in the mouth of the latest pitch man by pressing the mute button, the mute button created by The Honorable Mr. Mute-subishi, a great Jap if there ever was one.

With the passage of time, I have begun to realize that I am now using the Mute-subishi Button for a whole series of different reasons.  It used to be just for the elimination of extraneous, chaotic and irritating  noise.  Now I Mute-subishi the content because I have determined that to listen to it will change the way I view everything and everybody in my life.

For instance, I have started to mute the Caltrate™ commercials.  I notice that, since becoming aware of how susceptible women of all ages are to the scourge of osteoporosis, I have a hard time watching women, young and old alike, playing sports where they might fall down or walking up or down steps, or getting in and out of  cars, especially SUVs where they have to climb up or climb down, making it likely they will slip on or off the running board and break a hip or worse.

I find I am now unable to comfortably ride public transportation like subways or buses, having seen how distracted the constipated black female bus driver is in that prominent laxative commercial.  What if she is the constipated bus driver I get when I decide to go shopping downtown and have to get there on her bus.  Who knows what she will run in to or where we might all end up if she is in so much gastrointestinal distress that she misses the turn or doesn't see the locomotive coming down the railroad tracks.  It's just too much to risk.

Squirming people seem to be everywhere, now that I have been so careless as to watch all those hemorrhoid preparations commercials.  Every time someone squirms in a church pew or at a movie theater, every time I see a person in a restaurant adjusting his bottom on the chair cushion, seeking a more comfortable arrangement of his gluteus maximus, I feel as if I am privy to a personal, intimate condition of his (or hers) about which I should know nothing, as someone else's buttocks is really none of my business.  So I am faced with averting my eyes from yet another group in society, The Seated Butt Wigglers.

Talking about intimate knowledge brings to mind the topic of feminine hygiene spray and the even more intimate topic of feminine napkins, with or without wings.  And, while we are at it, the topic of adult incontinence diapers. These are, I am sure, all good products and the patients who need to use them are eternally grateful that some factory somewhere (just NIMBY, I hope) makes this stuff.  My quarrel is not with the products, but with the public announcement, right in the middle of an engrossing TV show when I have finally achieved that blissful state called "a willing suspension of disbelief."  I have found a character I can identify with, he is (unlike me, except in my fantasies) young, handsome, strong, powerful, confident and about to succeed at the most impossible task, when my attention is shattered by the too-real need to prevent leaking all over your jodhpurs by wearing diapers, which you thought you had out-grown in childhood.  That experience is like someone taking your brain out of the top of your head and shoving it in to the crotch of the person on the TV screen who is about to pee in their pants.   And it sticks with me to the point that I wonder, when I am walking through the halls of the hospital or the mall or the grocery store, who is wearing adult diapers right now in this place?  The guy in front of me, the lady who is picking rutabagas and turnips out of the vegetable case, the person down the hall who, I can see clearly, is walking with a funny tight-ass, mincing step because why? Because the Velcro fastener on each side is about to let go and let his diaper start to creep down his pant leg?  Or because it is all bunched up in his crack and he would really like to reach up and give it a good yank to relieve his "full feeling" back there?  It's the fault of the commercials that I think of stuff like this.   The advertisers who have told me about all these far-too-personal problems have ruined my ability to enjoy almost any situation where I can see people walking funny, squirming in their seats or being distracted by their own physiology.

Some of the worst commercials are those that deal with gaseous bloating & flatus production, or avoidance thereof.  I can barely stand to catch a glimpse of a big, fat person, who has just polished off the third heaping plate of food at the local Golden Corral All-You-Can Eat Til It Looks Like You Will Explode Buffet.  First they burp.  Then they "pat the fat" and roll up on one cheek or the other, and whether I can hear or smell anything or not is immaterial, I just KNOW what they are doing and so do you, because you have watched those commercials, too.

You may not think that the commercials about Lipitor and other anti-cholesterol drugs would be any thing but good.  However, my viewpoint has changed so much, because of Lipitor, that I no longer watch any pro football game where the team is being coached by Dan Reeves (a definitely dated reference) because I am afraid when they come out after half-time he will have had a heart attack in the locker room and "not be there."

Toilet paper commercials are another bane of my existence.  I see a roll of toilet paper now and I am overcome with sadness for Mr. Whipple, because he had retired and now they have dragged his ass  back to the TV screen to tout bun wad  ... and isn't that a great way to spend your Golden Years?   From there it is not a very far throw to wondering if anyone's butt really cares if that stuff is "quilted" or not. Speaking on behalf of all the  people going into restrooms at this moment, I think quilting takes a back seat (no pun intended) to whether there IS or IS NOT any paper, quilted or not, on the roll when we get ready to use it.

I could go on about stool softeners, foot fungus medicines (do you think the guy next to you in the country club locker room has it and will give it to you?), and the milk of magnesia commercials, but I would just like to end with irritable bladder.  Personally, I dislike irritation of any kind, but bladder irritation seems especially disgusting, not as an entity, but as a topic of public discussion.  Among other things, awareness of bladder irritation as a common problem in the general population is very, very frightening.  This is especially true if we are talking about foreign Taxi Cab Drivers, who, by and large seem to be borderline hysterical anyway, totally distracted by their highly intellectual assessment of our idiotic political system and their God-Given Duty to verbally analyze, criticize and polemicise about it while they are (or should be) navigating their way in and around all the maniacal people pursuing their own destruction with a high-speed vengeance.  To even think for a second that the would-be NASCAR idiot shepherding your taxi through traffic has, on top of his cultural and ethnic and emotional problems, a spastic urinary bladder that is taking up a vital part of his concentration is the crowning blow.  When I realized that I would never be able to ride in another taxi without coming close to a nervous breakdown, I decided that I absolutely could not listen to or watch one more commercial. 

The Covert Pavlovian nature of the box had finally become crystal clear to me: it was not only delivering sensationalism and calling it news, or disgusting tripe and calling it entertainment and "specials" that never were and never will be.  It was also sensitizing me to the point where, instead of seeing the beauty and intellect of my fellow human beings, I was seeing only what was going on in their colon, around their rectum, in between their toes and in the spastic muscles of their urinary bladder. Having decided that I will no longer neither listen to nor watch commercials, I am setting out for Japan in a few weeks to find Mr. Mute-subishi to get him to create a new, custom Remote Control based on my idea: a button that blanks the screen for 15- or 30- or 60-seconds at a time so I don't have to hear or see another commercial again.  I hope Mr. Whipple doesn't get his feelings hurt, but one more exposure to quilted bun wad and I might just loose all control.  (I hate to quit at this point, but I have to run and tinkle.)

180830 Addendum: TiVo and other DVRs now do have a 30-second jump function.  My prescience astounded even me ... and may be exciting to Mr. Bishi, if I can find him.

High Alert ! Gettin' It On !

Here is a question someone sent me:

Why do they put pictures of wanted criminals up in the Post Office?
What are we supposed to do -- write to them?

OK, so I post some ideas that are not “actionable.”  But here is a pretty interesting idea that would seem to be one way to "stay on high alert."   (Since the Feds have not provided us with a specific definition of how one gets on and stays on high alert.)

Why don't they put faces of terrorists on postage stamps so mailmen, and the rest of us, nationwide, can look for them?

Seems like that would be a specific way in which we could stay “on high alert.”  The stamps could be thought of as “small Post Office posters.”  Broadcasting the stamps nationwide would be similar to “America’s Most Wanted” broadcasting pictures of criminals and might produce “actionable intelligence” in the same way the TV show does.

"Lazarus! Come Back!" ( and he did ! )

In a sane world, it was going to be an insane night.  The signs were everywhere.  The relentless, driving wind was buffeting the building like a summer storm, it blustered and it blew, but no rain fell.  Where was the rain I sensed was on the way?  The "mid-day"-level moon glow made landing lights  unnecessary on the hospital heliport.  What time was it, really?  1:01 am.

"Oh, God!  Another night on call and I can't sleep.  I'm not even getting calls to keep me up.  Someone!  Please!  Call me with a problem so I have reason to be conscious."

Want to know how to make the phone ring?  Put your head down on the pillow and actually doze off.  It works every time.  Just like getting in the shower or sitting on the pot.

"I'm well acquainted with the way the nurses do it.  They sit at a south-facing window on the fourth floor and watch the Call Room curtains for 'lights out,' then wait 10 minutes and start dialing the phone."

I pulled the pillow under my sore left shoulder, wiggled and Jiggled and adjusted the covers, inserted ear plugs to block out the laughter coming through the tissue paper wall between the nurses lounge and my call room.

"Damn!  The wind, the noise.  I'm beat, why can't I sleep?" Who the hell are you talking to?  I'm aware you can't sleep.

Who's here besides you and me anyway?  I AM paying attention, you know.

"So what do I do now?"

Resign yourself, Insomniac: pace the hospital corridors and count sleeping patients.

"Damn them!  Why do they get the sleeping pills when I'm the one who needs the rest?"

You could go raise hell on all the wards and wake the patients up.

"Don't tempt me.  I'm close to something wacky like that now. "

The voices in my head customarily began after 24-plus hours on emergency call, like it was a job they had to do.  They couldn't be stopped.  Who wanted them to anyway?  They were the only company I had during the 60 hour Friday-night-to-Monday-morning stretch as the only doctor in the house:

If you're going to leave the Call Room, put on a clean scrub suit.  The one you're sleeping in has blood on the leg from the last IV you started.  My hands flew up to cover my ears, fingers straight up, curving slightly to allow the nails to dig microscopic trenches in my scalp.

"Shut up, just shut up, would you please.  Goddam, I wish I knew if I should take more medicine or stop it altogether!"

I found some old, clean scrubs, velvety from being washed for years in boiling water, pulled them on and reached, without looking, behind the door for my white lab coat.  After fifteen years of weekend confinement in this isolation cell there were certain things I didn't have to look for, they were at my finger tips, where they always were when I reached out, like the coat behind the door, the phone next to the bed in the middle of the night and the goddam desk chair that was always in front of my left big toe when I got up without turning on the light.

The "Son-of-a-Bitching-Chair" was Alive, I knew for certain. Yes it was.  There was no doubt about it.  The chair had a secret life.  It was an agent provocateur.  It had a Chair Control Agent, telling it when to move, how close to creep to the bed, instructing it on how to rotate its five legs around so my left big toe was in the greatest danger of hitting at least one, if not two, of the destructively sharp casters jutting out from the legs, ready to slice my foot if it came within destructively sharp striking distance.

"Hah!  The light is on!  You missed me, Bastard Chair!"  It didn't answer, but I heard it hiss ...

... that was the gusting wind outside, Nit Wit ...

... and I was positive it heard me as I swore and stumbled passed.  I cursed the Chair and wandered out, unquestioned, through the places where Security Guards require Visitors to show passes.  Bet you didn't know you could be drugged by sleeplessness?

"Be quiet!  It doesn't make sense to be drugged by the LACK of something-"

The strong Atlantic wind caused the hospital walls to creak and groan as they pushed against the huge east wall, six stories high and as long as a football field, bending to the unrelenting pressure for minutes on end.

Administration has been off-center for years, opposed to change, recalcitrant, I say!  If the gale keeps up I'll get my wish and they'll rename this place The Leaning Hospital of Our Father of Disinclination.

Administration never understood the feeling, the mood, of the structure.  They were only there during the "normal work week," which is akin to diving on a Caribbean coral reef in broad daylight.  Oh, yeah, you see a fish and turtle or a sting ray now and then.  But dive the reef at night and it's ALIVE with crawly creatures and monstrous monsters who see, but are unseen by ordinary fools.

"The night is the Last Frontier for real people.  Sure, sure, Space is a frontier, too, but not for wholehearted night owls.  Just for astronauts worth billions to the Air Force brass who trained them.  Night is when the critters come out and the monsters of the health care hallways roam the corridors, the beasties doing beastly things.  You have to fight them in the dark, no light to guide your way.  It's tough to spot them 'cause they're Just around the bend or in stairwell, underneath the landing, making plans."

I'm sure I heard one moan and grunt, behind you, there, he's primed to pounce and eat your brains for dinner.  (Figuratively, Man, figuratively, not for real !)

"Dammit, will you PLEASE, SHUT UP?!!"  (Sometimes the maneuver worked, you know, thinking in CAPITAL LETTERS; and sometimes it didn't.)

As I was saying, "... after 31 hours into this 60 hour shift, the hospital becomes more than a 'building,' because we have labeled it a 'hospital.'   The word is Magic.  Buildings are only buildings, but Hos-PIT-als are  More, they Help, they Cure, they Make You Feel Better.  Pure poppycock, of course.  They're just concrete and steel, filled with uncirculated, triple-used, moist air and wheezing sounds from closets or from empty patient bathrooms down the hall."

The majority of patients believe the poppycock, you know. They can't 'forget' pit is a hos-pit-al's middle name because they never knew this was a pit, The Colossally Expensive Health Care Coliseum, where the docs and nurses are the Christians who the bureaucraps throw to the lions in the middle of the night.

"A noise!?  Listen!  Where'd it come from?  I thought we were alone."

We are.   Let's go check on a room upstairs I think you ought to see.

"Wait!  A body, that's a body in the elevator by the CCU.  What the hell ... ! ... lying there on the floor?"

Gray hair?  "Yep."

Female?     "Yep."

Ancient?    "Yep."

Look at the bracelet on her wrist.  It's got to say Lucy-something from 4-South.  It was a Tuesday night.  Before they could get her to the Coronary Care Unit she had a cardiac arrest in the back hall elevator.

"Where the pregnant 7th grader delivered in a wheel chair?"

Yep.  Same elevator.  Same spot.

"The kid was so scared she couldn't stop straining with her contractions.  The doors opened, the little mother pushed and out popped what's-her-name, to the amazement of three bewildered Visitors who had been told to use the Lobby elevators, not the ones in back. "

A dead white lady Tuesday night and a brand new 7-1b, 6-ounce black baby girl Wednesday morning.  Too bad Lucy's soul had to queue up in the elevator all night waitin' for the kid to come along.

"I spent a year one night waiting for the same elevator. The delay is built into the passenger flow management computer."  Must 'a been terrible when Ammonia Joe mopped up old Lucy's mess then turned on the noisy fan to dry the elevator floor. 

Yep. That was 5-1-2.  The Torture Chamber where we beat them up if they don't behave.   A part of me recalls it well.

"Oww!  Goddam!"  The paging system battered my ear drums.

"Code Blue 512! Code Blue 512!"

I do believe the old grouch likes to scream the calls for Cardiac Arrest to protest the perceived injustice done to her.  Since the hospital changed to silent pagers three years ago (to keep the general noise level down to a dull roar) "calling a Code" is the only time she is allowed to use the overhead paging system.  That put a big muzzle on the self-styled, Audible Performance Artist with the underlying sociopathic personality.  She has never forgiven Administration.  Now she takes each opportunity to belt it out with volume that could cause cardiac arrests in patients who don't even have heart trouble.  'Red Alert! Red Alert!'  she bellows.

"What's next: the Russians are coming?"  No.  Shut up.  Red Alert!  It's just a fire alarm test.

"It makes me vehement, being at Ground Zero under the speaker, when her damn voice explodes above my head.  Vehement, hell!  What it really does is piss me off."

Well, if you wouldn't make a fool out of yourself jumping out of your skin and running before you know what direction you're supposed to go maybe you wouldn't be so embarrassed and angry, I mean vehement.

"So what?  I recovered my composure.  The blast was just the start.  Don't you remember?  She called the Code when I was on the second floor and the patient was up on five, which made it fairly painful.  Further to go, more steps to leap two at a time, more burning chest pain with each gasping breath.  Trying to win the race against the Grim Competitor can be strenuous!"

You poor dear.  If you're so goddam frail, why don't you quit and get a day job?

"Piss off.  I was civilized, sophisticated and urbane when I made it to the floor.  I just headed for the door that looked like an Astronomer's Black Hole, sucking in everything within black, hole-sucking distance."

Too bad you didn't get guzzled up yourself.

"I'm tryin' to tell you about Lazarus, you stupid shit.  You want to hear about how people come back from the dead or not?"

Not really.  Lookin' at you at 2:30 in the morning when you haven't slept is close enough for me.

"Well, tough.  I can't stop thinking about it anyway, so I'm gonna remember it for you, like it or not.  They were all there, see, nine members of The Team, converging on the same door from different directions.  The only thing stronger than the Irresistible Force sucking them in was the Immovable Object, the New Security Guard with an I.Q. equal to his shoe size, trying to keep people out.  He thought they were frightened family members.  We, of course, set him straight."

Of course you did.

"No.  We really did.  Remember John Brown?  Respiratory Therapist.  6-foot 4, 305 pounds, ponderous and powerful, with a sense of humor based on terrorizing society.  He never cracked a smile.  He pushed the portable defibrillator up behind this guy, turned it on and handed me the paddles while the charger wound up like a jet plane gettin' ready to take off.  I grabbed them from him and said 'What are we doing with these charged out here in the hall?' and John says to the new guard 'If you don't move your ass, the doc is going to zap you into next week, understand?'  The guard's unheavenly body moved away with enough force to escape from a real black hole ... and John was standin' there tryin' to decide if he was gettin' more excitement out of watch in' this guy hightail it or watch in' his own 300 pound gut bounce up and down as he chuckled.  It don't take much to entertain some folks."

So, Lazarus was lying there, expiring, in 5-12 while you guys joked his life away out in the hall?

"Yeah, sure he was.  Well, NO, not actively expiring!  Now, get this.  The guard wasn't the only new face in the crowd.  Earlier some Newbie female from Respiratory Therapy slipped by the guard and made it to the head of the bed, she had a mask on the patient's face and was squeezing the black rubber ventilation bag for all she was worth.  I mean pumping, pumping, pumping, to bring him back to life.  Scared to death she wasn't going to do it fast enough, I guess."

Good.  At least you jokers got him ventilated.

"He had an I.V. in and running.  That got pulled out by accident in a sec or two.  John Brown was giving CPR like one of those machines that compresses cars into squares of squashed steel four feet square; effective, but excessive.  I shouted at him, 'Leave two, whole ribs unbroken and I'll buy you coffee after this is over, John!'  He backed off a little."

"The New Girl with the bag and mask was still pumping oxygen into the withered, 76 year-old remnant of a man. I grunted and got her attention, then moved my hand up and down slowly like I was patting a baby on the fanny.  She slowed down, squeezing the bag in time with my hand motion.  I felt like Leonard Bernstein, no, Seiji Ozawa; no, Leonard Bernstein (I decided I couldn't be Ozawa because, at that moment, I couldn't spell his name correctly."

And we all know correctness is essential during a Code.

"Right.  So, the EKG monitor leads were on his chest, the monitor screen lit up, everybody stopped bagging and pumping and shouting and fell silent for the count of three, watching expectantly.  And what did they see?"

NOTHING.

"Right!  You remember now?  No cardiac squiggles on the screen, just a straight line on the monitor.  So, I shout 'GO!' Like releasing Stop-Action on a DVD, the crew goes into violent motion again.  Little paper boxes full of drugs almost tore themselves open, vials pulled themselves out of wrappers and needles shoved themselves onto I.V. tubing.  Big John kept pumping, ribs kept cracking, sweat started rolling off people who only 'glow' at any other time."

"STOP!"  I shouted.  The word is magic.  It's like I pressed the DVD Pause Button again, the Action stops.  Nothing again.  No monitor pattern.  No palpable pulse.  No pressure in the cuff. Then the looks began.  I checked the nurses.  The nurses checked each other. The Head Nurse nodded agreement.  The New Girl wanted to start again. I nodded "No" and everyone agreed.  No use.  The Code is "called" again, but this time "called" means "stopped."

The papers were signed, the switches turned off, the sighs of resignation filled the air.  The sheet was pulled over him and shattered nerves begin to mend themselves.  No one noticed, until the silence let us feel it.  Our bending backs and arching necks and pumping arms had worked for ninety minutes ... it had seemed like seconds.  We had worked so hard our lives stood still a while, and in the end his life stood still forever.

"We're crazy, huh, for thinking we could bring guys back like this.  Oh, well."

Go downstairs and go back to bed.

"I'm not through yet.  Don't you want to hear the end of the story?  I started to leave the floor.  The elevator door slid open, like the entrance to a mine shaft.  I wanted to crawl in and have it take me to a secret Call Room in a subterranean sanctuary, solitary and sleep-o-pedic.  But what to my wondering ears should occur, some idiot screaming ... "

"Wait!  He moved, My God, the patient moved!"

Yeah, sure he did.

"No.  Really, he did, look!"

"It ain't enough we've damn near killed ourselves work in' on this guy already, now here we go again.  It seemed so violent before, yet moved at twice the pace this time the Black Hole sucked us in.  We had pumped and bagged and prayed, and now we stood in disbelief.  The patient moved, he spoke, he looked around and made a feeble try to reach his chest where John had caused his sternum to nearly touch his spine more than once this evening."

"What happened?"  He spoke with difficulty.  "What'er y'all doin' heer?  Ah din't call no Nurse nor none of you."

"He coughed and winced.  He hurt.  The pain he felt was very real for those of us who caused it, too.  We held our breath collectively and then we exhaled.  Does he remember, is he aware we gave him up for lost, we stopped and he restarted on his own, does he know how it happened?  An LPN in the back giggled.  The New Girl cried. I laughed and didn't believe my eyes.  We have truly seen Our Lazarus return, just like the Good Book says.  It made us fantasize that other forces might assist hard science with its work throughout the universe."

In a sane world, it had been an insane night.  The whole episode came back in painful detail as I walked by the door.  Now, two years later, I still recall my speech to the New Girl From Respiratory Therapy:

"You're right, of course. You pump the bag real fast, you blow more oxygen INTO the patient's lungs. But each time he exhales he will blow off too much carbon dioxide, you know, C02. If he blows off all his C02, he won't have any left to stimulate his respirations.  He won't take a breath in or blow one out.  So it will look like he has died."  She vowed she wouldn't bag too fast again.

If I have told you twice, I've told you once too often ... "Oh, no.  You're not going to lecture me again, are  you?"  Yes.  I do repeatedly thanks to your short attention span: I only hit you verbally because you need it.  It always hurts you more than it does me   ...   uhh, sorry, it always hurts ME more than it does you ... whatever ...

The Lessons  …

            Don't forget to watch what everyone is doing all the time,

don't forget to make sure every  job is being done right; and,

don't forget that nothing's really over until  ...

"I know, I know.  'Nothing's really finished until the Overkill Official doing chest compressions has broken every rib so the Fat Lady couldn't sing if she wanted to.'  Now can we stop?  I think I am getting tired enough to go to sleep if I can find the Call Room."

If you want to.  Not that you'll be able to sleep, but you may have forgotten the Total Hole Count in the ceiling tile, so you can start counting all over again.  Bet you won't bag it until dawn.  Wanna lay five bucks on it?

"Plug it up, will you.  For your information I'm not a betting person.  Besides, I'm NOT stopping my medicine, I'm going to take MORE.  Maybe then I can get rid of you and enjoy some silence on the Night Frontier alone for once.  Now go away."

I pulled the bottle from my lab coat, took a pill and turned and felt alone.  I looked around and Lazarus was gone, 5-12 was empty.  But, I was not alone and never would be in THIS hospital.  I have company galore.  Patients long-gone, but their stories endure in every passageway, about the lives of patients permanently admitted to the rooms of the "mental" hospital in my mind.