A peek behind the veil…

So, let me pull back the curtain and share something…

Every hospital in this country has their “super users”, “frequent flyers” etc…  For the most part, I don’t mind them.  But, there’s 1 in particular that I absolutely despise.  Sure, I give him the customer service, friendly smile, gentle voice, etc.. treatment that I’m expected to give.  But every time this guy wanders in, I have to fight the urge to hiss at him, “You know that we all HATE you, don’t you?”

Let’s call this guy “Al”.

Al LOVES his medical marijuana, and he smokes LOTS of it.  Unfortunately for Al, today’s pot makes him become nauseated and vomit.  (Even though, no one’s ever actually seen any vomit in his vomit bag, and his lab work doesn’t support his claims of “vomiting for days and days”  In fact, his labs always come back with every electrolyte balanced perfect)  And since he smokes LOTS of pot, he’s sometimes in the ED, up to 4 times in a 24 hr period.  We can count on Al coming in, nearly every shift.

When our waiting room’s full, he’ll put on quite a show for the rest of the patients, who are waiting to be brought back.  He’ll writher around on the ground, retch as loud as he can and pretend that he’s so weak, he’s about to fall out of his chair.  Because the other patients don’t know him, the way we do, it’s inevitable, that people will start coming to the window and telling us that we’ve got to get this guy back NOW.  And because of privacy laws, I can’t just say “Look, we know this guy and he’s full of shit.”

And we usually do bring him back right away, because we know that if we don’t, people will start posting on social media how awful our hospital is, to keep this “poor, sick man waiting in the waiting room”

Once he’s back, he starts in on his laundry list of demands for the only thing that’ll cure his Nausea and vomiting… YUP, Narcotics with a Phenergan chaser.  And since his veins are destroyed from decades of IV Phenergan, everything’s given to him in a shot to the butt.  Most of the time, his butt still has multiple bandaids, still in place, from his last visit-3hrs ago.

I think what makes me hate “Al” so much is that he’s such a self centered person.  If we had a school bus full of kids, that were brought in after a bad accident, “Al” would be parading around, making as much of a ruckus as he could, trying to divert our attention from those kids, so he can get his shots.

One night, we had a full code in progress and he crept out of his room, and staggered around outside the room with all the action, trying to get someone’s attention.  I REALLY wanted to kick his ass that night.

Sure, we’ve tried telling “Al” that he should stop smoking pot, but his rebuttal’s always “Well the studies are mixed on whether or not Pot causes hyperemesis”  When I asked him how it was working for him, he just gave me a blank look, then proceeded to writher, thrash and retch even more violently.

What’s really sad is that some day “Al’s” going to be REALLY sick and will REALLY need something, but like the boy that cried wolf, we’ll all think he’s looking for his fix, and we may not find out something’s really going on with him.