Recovery Room Quote of the Day

A cranky older gentleman when informed that he must wait until he is transferred to Phase II recovery to get dressed and leave:

"You call this a hospital? It's more like a laboratory."

Follow up: In my report to the Phase II nurse, I mentioned that the patient was "a little grouchy". The Phase II nurse stopped by later and accused me of giving her a grossly inaccurate report. She said "Grouchy was not the word. That guy was actually an asshole".  Ahhh...technicalities. Tomato/tomaahto. I guess one person's grouchy is another person's asshole.

A Weighty Issue

 I checked out a new blog today and saw a blog post after my own heart. My fellow Recovery Room nurse put into words a conversation I have had with several patients. At http://recoveryroomriley.blogspot.com/2012/01/worn-out-joints.html this nurse talks about how an obese patient cannot for the life of her figure out why all of her weight bearing joints are deteriorating and need to be replaced.
I have noticed this same thing with many of my patients. They do not understand why they need to get their knees and/or hips replaced, why they are hypertensive, why they have lower back pain. Many do not even realize that they are obese. Are their physicians not discussing this with them? Now keep in mind that I am not talking about the pleasantly plump individual or the person who has "a little more to love". The patients to whom I am referring are truly in the category of obese, sometimes morbidly so. And it is not just the patient's health that is affected. Every time they pull a 400 lb patient up in their bed or transfer a 350 lb person from a stretcher to a bed, health care workers sigh in relief when their backs emerge unscathed.
  How do we  get the collective American waistline to shrink a bit? This gentleman at CNN compares the response needed for this issue to the war on smoking and even more so to the campaign to reduce highway fatalities  cnn.com.        
  Now my muffin top has grown from barely noticeable to semi-in-your-face over the holiday season, so I am  certainly not immune to the pleasures of pumpkin pie, fudge, and cookies. However, seeing the debilitating health issues that my obese patients face absolutely does help motivate me to not let my weight get too out of control, kind of like old ladies with broken hips inspire me to take my calcium. It is hard in a world where processed, sugary and fatty food is less expensive than fresher, more nourishing choices to always do the healthy thing. However, if we can just get ourselves to the the healthy thing a little more often, I think we could make some giant gains...or giant losses in this case.