Monday, Sept. 1, 2003.
Now Playing:
Star Wars Galaxies AND Soul Calibur 2.
My hotter-than-holy dongseng, Key
also has a blackout story.
Happy 30th Birthday to Gorgeous MILF: Cyn.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING-NOT-YET-DEAD
Thursday. August 14, 2003. 4:09 P.M., fifth floor of the hospital.
I logged into the hospital computer system to enter more orders for one of many sorry patients of mine with a drop in his blood count - serial blood counts, check stools for occult blood (not vampire feces, trust me), and I contemplated ordering a CT scan to look for internal bleeding in his abdomen.Then the lights went out.
Big deal, I thought. Give it ten seconds and the backup generators will be online as usual. This isn't some podunk clinic in the thumb of Michigan. This is The Empire.
After a few minutes, the lights still didn't come back on. Well, adapt and overcome. I, like the other docs and nurses continued with our business. It was a wondrous change of scenery. Dark hallways, flashlights, shadowy figures trying to decipher their patient lists amidst streams of natural sunbeams coming from room windows. It was like every modern zombie movie du jour.
I called the radiology department to expedite things.
"All the machines are down. There's no one here," the voice on the other end said. No more sleepy eyed radiologists sitting in the dark whispering to ghostly images of skeletal remains and living bodies sliced thinner than pepperoni. The girl who answered the phone didn't even work in the area. Just a spirit passing through to inform me that the Department of Shadows was eclipsed as well.
"Don't you have any hard copies of the X-rays?"
"We don't have power to turn on the machine that makes hard copies of X-rays," she replied. Films are digitized now. More efficient and you can't lose them … as long as you have power. Besides, all that silver embedded in those X-ray films was getting expensive.
I checked the Medical Intensive Care Unit wondering if I could help in some simple mindless way like bagging oxygen for ventilated patients, but the ICUs still had some backup generator power.
Gradually I overheard just how large this blackout was. People talked. Terrorists? A virus? Y2K … 3? The buzz words of our new world disorder. No electricity. No alarms. No working cordless phones. No water. Then a nurse mused about the possible rioting.
Amy and Sun Su.
I headed down the staircase. Passed by overweight visitors who were huffing and sweating their way to the cardiology floor, one way or another.
The street traffic wasn't all that bad. People took turns letting others go at intersections. Drivers listening intently to the few radio stations that still worked. Cell phones were unreliable as usual.
Eventually I got home. Amy had gotten home a little earlier. My mom had been watching Sun Su that day. She said the air conditioner had started rattling fiercely before the power went out. Sun Su had been frightened into rare wakeful silence, along with the rest of the house.
We hung out on the lawn. I wondered about the implications of all of this. Realizing that my childhood dreams of living in a post-apocalyptic society based on vehicular warfare and gladiatorial thunder domes wasn't the lifestyle I wanted at this point in my life anymore.
We went to sleep when the sun went down. There are only a couple things to do for two people in bed in the dark. We did both of them.
Friday.
By the next day, some of those podunk cities in the thumb of Michigan had figuratively given the larger cities the finger by getting the first to get their power back. They were less populated and had less chance of overwhelming "the grid." Most people had the day off as well.Meanwhile, the sick were still sick and tenders of the sick were still tending them. Families were asked to not visit the hospital that day. Patients were triaged - if there was any way you could go home, then you were going home. Sicker people were coming in. No excuses, this was an emergency state, not a hotel.
The media (not to be confused with Medea) said our hospital was still accepting patients, but there was a very real concern (unspoken to the media) that even our emergency water supplies would be out in the next day as well. Not good news for the onslaught of dehydrated nursing home denizens that was expected.
I purposefully had only worn a T-shirt that day, but after climbing ten flights of stairs with no air conditioning, even that seemed over-dressed.
The cafeteria was closed. Vending machines didn't work. It was bring your own food and water to work day; many had learned only after getting to work.
Then there was the smell. Desperate perspiration, sickly sweet Pseudomonal wounds, fungus-laden fat folds, ferrously odiferous feces, and other natural and unnatural bodily emanations. And of course, no ventilation in the bathrooms or anywhere else.
Without any tests, you had to rely even more on physical signs. Jugular vein pulsations. Was that a third heart sound or the latter half of the second? Watch his neck veins bulge when I press his liver. I'll take human body tricks for a 1000, Alex.
Despite all this, that Friday actually went quicker than I expected. It was a Just Work No Bullshit day. I wasn't answering questions half the day, outside pages couldn't get in, and I didn't have to arrange any discharges to nursing homes (they didn't have power either). As always, it's the paperwork that kills you.
I bought thirty-six dollars of bottled water and one of the last non-cordless phones available on my way home. It wasn't as much water as you would think. It was for Amy and the baby.
I didn't hear of any outright looting, but the new Dark Age was still young. I wondered how things might devolve if simple amenities continued to be rare quantities for over a week. Wars raged over water, food, and gasoline. It could make an entertaining movie but I wouldn't want to die there.
The electricity came back on around 11 P.M. Friday night. First thing I did was get on the internet. Ah, the world of online gaming. Where you can fight for your life, but you never have to die. The ultimate benchmark of higher civilization.
Saturday and Sunday.
It still ended up being one of the worst weekends ever. And guess who happened to be working those two days.The list of new patients just went on and on. Elderly people who had become dehydrated and fell to the ground for 24-hour slow crush-injury naps. A girl who attempted suicide with marijuana and Xanax. "You picked the wrong weekend in the history of the Midwestern United States to overdose on Xanax," I said to both her and her mother. One old man couldn't operate his home oxygen tank in the dark. Another guy couldn't get dialyzed at his usual center during the blackout. Then there were the usual congested hearts, drowning lungs, bleeding bowels, diabetic craters, and occasional "Oops you got cancer," ad nauseum.
I could have called in reinforcements but who wants to come in on their weekend off. I sure as hell don't. I don't even like coming in on my weekends on.
"Whew. That's a lot of patients," Dr. Silvermane from administration commented when the weekend was over, "Any disasters?"
"No(t that I know of)," I said, too tired to talk about it or even care.
"Hmm. Good," he replied with matter-of-fact surprise.
One could come up with a ton of flowery epiphanies about life after such an enlightening experience. But it's times like this that make you really appreciate the finer things in life. Like watching a horror movie in an air-conditioned theater and not having to live it once you leave.
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AWAY FROM KEYBOARD
I may get around to explaining my near 2 month break someday or not. I've just been very busy with work, play, and such, so please forgive me for not responding to emails for the past several weeks - it's nothing personal.
One thing I have learned in my time away though. I get about one-hundred fifty spam emails a day.
Plus, it's possible in clearing my email box I may have deleted your email accidentally, especially if I don't recognize your email name and you have any of the following words in the subject line:
1. Your name in the FROM box as well as the SUBJECT box in CAPITAL LETTERS,
2. My name in the FROM box or the SUBJECT box in CAPITAL LETTERS,
3. URGENT ASSISTANCE NEEDING REPLY from Third World country ex-royalty,
4. Unintelligible strange text strings
5. Intelligible strange text strings
6. Subject telling me this is "My First Time"
or "Chatted with you last night, hun" (I don't think so, hun)
or "j Cute Teen posses in white thong" (huh?).
7. FROM and SUBJECT lines forming a complete sentence like (FROM:) Nothing compares to this (SUBJECT:) for total penis growth
8. New Miracle Drug, FDA Approved, Only available online ...
9. ... especially for my penis
10. Virus detected - Open attachment immediately!So if I haven't replied, it's because of one of the above, or I haven't had the spare mental capacity or time to formulate an intelligent response. That's all. Sorry, again.
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MEDEA SIN HOT MODEL
I thought I was almost done with this section but as long as I keep getting pictures (especially like the one below), then my work will never be finished.
Talk about a warm welcome back. Very. Very. Warm. All over.
I am otherwise speechless.
(I don't want to blow my ... composure on my first entry back, or anything.)Thank YOU Mira.
*makes heart sign*
You can L-IZZO but you can't T-IZZO.
