Since the whole gay "marriage" struggle session seems to be a running theme that benefits from lots of comparisons to other industries...
...and because someone (probably phank) made an offhand distinction between vocations who could be expected to refuse service to whomever they wish (hairdressers) and those who should never refuse service to anyone (clerks who sell hair products)...
I decided to take things in a different direction, predictably medical given my history, with ER doctors who have to deal with morbidly obese patients. The experience should be biographical to at least a few of you, and while I have assisted in lifting and rolling people in the 250-400 pound range, this has to take the cake:
Corpulence brings the only true gender equality-the shared androgyny that swallows up first secondary, then primary sexual characteristics. Only fat can bring victory over the oppression of the merely physical!
Disability checks (of a certain type, of course,) are pure poison to the the left half of the bell curve, and build up the kind of disgustingly entitled mindset found on display shortly.
The feeling first felt by anyone who sees the pro-gay marriage arguments, I think.
When the Washington Post starts calling the standard homosexual AIDS patient "a walking Petri dish", I will know the victory of the truth is in sight.
Behold the true master and operating expert of your inspiration, laws, and philosophy, liberals!
Sadly, since this is the Washington Post, they couldn't end it there, and needed to add a liberal moral to the story.
Mine would have ended right around the time he said "they have failed me."
Speak for yourself. There are such things as normal people with a normal disgust for taking every advantage the law offers you just because it may happen to be legal, and demanding time and attention away from people with actual problems, whom the profession was originally intended to serve.
Utterly the wrong response to an experience of the personification of Gluttony coming through your ward. If your authority to triage your own patients in your own hospital is being stolen by legal, personal, or institutional bullying, the correct response is to offer your resignation immediately and loudly, not wait several years after the fact to write a sanitized version of the story while ensuring that every other potential ER doc gets little public warning or sympathy due to institutional close-mindedness. While 8,000 calories is obviously too much, 700 calories is obviously way too little to maintain an attitude toward your professional space aggressive enough to resist leftist encroachment. The confrontation-avoiding get-along-to-go-along 150-pound foodie who can't intimidate his way out of a paper bag is the mirror image of the gluttonous bully. For everyone else, don't listen to "lessons" from either side, especially if published in a major newspaper.
Ignore evil, and greater structures will fall to its demands.
...and because someone (probably phank) made an offhand distinction between vocations who could be expected to refuse service to whomever they wish (hairdressers) and those who should never refuse service to anyone (clerks who sell hair products)...
I decided to take things in a different direction, predictably medical given my history, with ER doctors who have to deal with morbidly obese patients. The experience should be biographical to at least a few of you, and while I have assisted in lifting and rolling people in the 250-400 pound range, this has to take the cake:
The patient is large. Very large. At more than 600 pounds, he is a mountain of flesh.
“My stomach hurts,” he says, his voice surprisingly high and childlike.
“My stomach hurts,” he says, his voice surprisingly high and childlike.
The patient is in his 40s. He spends his days on the sofa at home, surviving on disability checks related to his back pain.
Facing him, I feel momentarily put off. I’m not sure just where to start the examination, and when I begin, my hands look small and insignificant against the panorama of skin they’re kneading.
It’s hard to tell, exactly, but I think his pain is coming from somewhere around his stomach.
I call the surgeon. When he finds out how much the patient weighs, he says that he’ll be down to see him “in a while.”
Awaiting his arrival, we try to shoot some X-rays. When we roll him onto his side, though, he turns an unnatural shade of blue-gray and can’t tolerate the position long enough for us to put the X-ray cassette behind his back.
We try a chest X-ray, turning up the power to the maximum setting. All we see is white: The patient’s body is just too thick to allow standard X-rays to penetrate to the bones; he is a walking lead shield.
I call the surgeon. When he finds out how much the patient weighs, he says that he’ll be down to see him “in a while.”
Awaiting his arrival, we try to shoot some X-rays. When we roll him onto his side, though, he turns an unnatural shade of blue-gray and can’t tolerate the position long enough for us to put the X-ray cassette behind his back.
We try a chest X-ray, turning up the power to the maximum setting. All we see is white: The patient’s body is just too thick to allow standard X-rays to penetrate to the bones; he is a walking lead shield.
We start an IV and get some blood work, all of which is normal. Our standard GI cocktail of shot-in-the-dark digestive tonics plinks into his stomach without any effect. Morphine at doses high enough to make me dance on tables merely makes him a bit drowsy.
I talk to the patient between procedures, trying to get a sense of him as a person. He recites a litany of consultants he’s seen for his back pain, his headaches, a chronic rash on his ankles, his shortness of breath, his weakness, his insomnia and his fatigue.
“All of them have failed me,” he says, adding that the paramedics didn’t have the proper ultra-wide, ultra-sturdy gurney to accommodate his body.
“The Americans with Disabilities Act says that they should have the proper equipment to handle me, the same as they do for anyone else,” he says indignantly. “I’m entitled to that. I’ll probably have to sue to get the care I really need.”
I talk to the patient between procedures, trying to get a sense of him as a person. He recites a litany of consultants he’s seen for his back pain, his headaches, a chronic rash on his ankles, his shortness of breath, his weakness, his insomnia and his fatigue.
“All of them have failed me,” he says, adding that the paramedics didn’t have the proper ultra-wide, ultra-sturdy gurney to accommodate his body.
“The Americans with Disabilities Act says that they should have the proper equipment to handle me, the same as they do for anyone else,” he says indignantly. “I’m entitled to that. I’ll probably have to sue to get the care I really need.”
Sadly, since this is the Washington Post, they couldn't end it there, and needed to add a liberal moral to the story.
Finally, a slew of huffing, puffing, grunting attendants wheel him down the hall, leaving me to reflect on his plight.
He lies at the very large center of his own world — a world in which all the surgery mankind has to offer cannot heal the real pain he suffers.
The patient lies trapped in his own body, like a prisoner in an enormous, fleshy castle. And though he must feel wounded by the ER personnel’s remarks, he seems to find succor in knowing that there’s no comment so cutting that it can’t be soothed by the balm of 8,000 calories per day.
Later on in my shift, still feeling traces of the patient’s presence, I sit and stare at my 700-calorie dinner, all appetite gone, wondering where empathy ends and compassion begins.
He lies at the very large center of his own world — a world in which all the surgery mankind has to offer cannot heal the real pain he suffers.
The patient lies trapped in his own body, like a prisoner in an enormous, fleshy castle. And though he must feel wounded by the ER personnel’s remarks, he seems to find succor in knowing that there’s no comment so cutting that it can’t be soothed by the balm of 8,000 calories per day.
Later on in my shift, still feeling traces of the patient’s presence, I sit and stare at my 700-calorie dinner, all appetite gone, wondering where empathy ends and compassion begins.
I know why my colleagues and I are so glad to have this patient out of the ER and stowed away upstairs: he’s an oversize mirror, reminding us of our own excesses. It’s easier to look away and joke at his expense than it is to peer into his eyes and see our own appetites staring back.
I push the food around on my plate, then give up and head back to the ER, ready to see more patients.
Though I have no way of knowing it, within a few months a crane will hoist the patient’s body through a hole cut in the side of his house, a hole that allowed EMS personnel to lower the body onto their new ultra-wide, ultra-sturdy gurney.
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