A dirge

I'm in a foul mood today; be advised

I wish there was a way that you could learn to NOT be a hard working, sympathetic motherfucker, and instead just be a motherfucker, doing the bare minimum while not giving a shit about quality of work.

For the past 3-4 weeks, I've been working 8:30a to 5:00p, Monday through Friday, with my first appointment scheduled for 9:00a, and my last appointment scheduled for 4:00-5:00p. Out of three weeks, I've missed lunch about four times.

Most troubling of all, though, has so far been working with doctors in the local hospital. We had a client who had a stroke, but the ICU MD kept telling us (i.e. me) that the guy needed psychiatric services. Even called me immature & unprofessional for trying to tell him that to send the guy to a psych unit was an inappropriate referral. The doctor said no medical evidence suggested that this man's condition was anything but psychiatric. However, I flipped through the chart and found that they did a CAT scan on the guy and found a burst blood vessel in his brain; this would have signaled the use of an MRI for an accurate diagnosis. Buuut ... they didn't get an MRI done on the guy until three days later, when, as you might expect, nothing showed up. They won't say the client had a stroke, because the MRI didn't show anything. However, here's a guy who can't walk without falling, garbles and growls his words, and has trouble with his memory; he was oriented, grounded in reality, and wasn't psychotic. Unfortunately, this doesn't matter, because falling and poor memory are strictly psychiatric.

We had a guy today who was starting shit at the jail here, because he was detoxed off his narcotic medications (four of 'em, to be exact). He proceeded to cut himself, break sprinklers and toilets in the jail, and refuse his food and insulin. Well, I've worked in prison for at least 2.5 years, so I smell "bullshit jailhouse manipulation" all over this. Buuut ... the MD at the ER says that because the guy is refusing his insulin, he's "mentally ill" and "a danger to himself," despite his inalienable right to refuse medical treatment if he chooses. The doctor doesn't want the liability of this guy dying in the jail from diabetic shock, so now we have to refer this shitass to a forensic unit, who will probably diagnose a mental illness (because he can't get treatment without a diagnosis, natch), and will then give him medication, and this jackhole will be referred for follow-up with our clinic, I guess so that we can treat his shitassedness.

There are somedays I love my job, and somedays I hate my job. Today I hate my fucking job.