Dumb Doctor 1, Gold Medal

Doctors have saved my life, and I appreciate that.

A couple of doctors have found my weird body motivating
and have worked extra hard to find out what was wrong.

I will tell you about them when you are older.

But I have also had some really incompetent,
lazy, un-curious doctors. I do not believe they ever actually set a
goal to kill me, but they almost accomplished it.

The Golden Bedpan goes to a young man whose name shall remain
a secret in these digits.  He was an intern in 1984 at UC San Francisco.
I  had returned from India after months of loose motions brother and  no
adequate cause had been found, so they were going to just treat me and
get me out of there if they could.

TPN was rather new in those days and that was what I was going to get.
It means nutrition without using your ruined gut.  We give you all you need
in a bag, already digested.  YUM!

Because the syrup is a bit thick for your arm veins, they need to  put a pipe
into the BIG blood vessels near the heart. Large volumes of blood flowing rapidly
to dilute the solution and nourish your cells. The route to the big blood vessels lies
somewhere around the shoulder blade, collarbone area.

So, one day two very young doctors in training approached my bed on 11 Moffitt Hospital
and proceed to thread  a catheter from outside my body to a location near my heart.
I feel pain and hear repeated cries of 'still hitting clavicle' over and over.  I am thinking this is not good.

Then 4th year says to intern,

WE SHOULD HAVE USED STERILE PROCEDURE!

I am not making  this up.  Yes it was 30 years ago, but EVEN THEY knew better at the time.

They continue, kind of sweating, not having fun at all.

Then again,


WE SHOULD HAVE USED STERILE PROCEDURE!

I still am not making this up. Oh how many times I have wished I had called
for their supervisor at that point.

When they said it the third time, I did yell!

STOP SAYING THAT!
YES YOU SHOULD HAVE , but stop saying it!

If ever I wanted to sue someone, it was then.

By God's grace, I did not die from their incompetence.

Most people who go on TPN for very long do die from infection after a while.

They sent me home on it, at 400 dollars a bag each day. They lent me a fridge to keep the bags, they trained me on procedures for hooking up and changing bags, etc.  I had to scrub and mask like a surgeon and things went smoothly.  After about three months, my gut woke up and I
began to go off the iv syrup. Thank you Aunt Colette!!!