Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

There's a poem by William Shakespeare that describes man as inconstant, with one foot on sea and one on shore. I feel like it is a good metaphor for experiencing life. There are things that are easily understood, firm, everyday, just there . That is shore. [because it's sure; get it?] Then there are things that whip around you, confusing wheres and whys, and cause you to miss your footing, or at least your grasp of the situation. That is sea. And I feel like Wal-Mart can be the very juncture of sea and shore. I went there with perfectly logical intentions. I had moved apartments, and decided it was too difficult to cook and eat with just a bowl, a crockpot, and some tupperware. That, and a lack of basic food ingredients. I didn't even have salt. So, trying to keep costs down, I visited Wal-Mart. That, and it was the only grocery store I knew of in my new area.  So I drove the really strangely back-roads route to the Wal-Mart parking lot, grabbed a basket, and, seeing a...

There's a mantra that the medical field goes by when assessing for pain in a patient. "Their pain is whatever they say it is." We have to go by what the patient says because there is no accurate way to measure pain; sure the heart rate and blood pressure could go up, but what if your body experiences pain for a long time and learns to adjust those measurable measures? There is just no sort of pain thermometer (pain-o-meter, or dolor-meter, if you will) that we can stick anywhere in the body that will give us that information. And because in our culture we are fairly well-trained in hiding weaknesses, it is possible to have very high pain and look mostly normal. Just depends on the tolerance level of the person. So if we have no data to use, the closest thing to accuracy is what the patient says. Just go with it. If they say their pain is 10/10, and are chatting with their family, you still better be getting that narcotic. [actually, the only time we can override what the...

I had a patient for two consecutive days. The first day, he seemed pretty normal. The second day, though, I was in another patient's room when my nursing assistant came up to me and said I was needed in his (the person of interest) room. When I  went into the hallway, I could hear him yelling for his wife, cussing out the doctor, and complaining of abuse. I apprehensively entered his room, and asked what he would like help with. He started complaining about how his wife was controlling his life, and not letting him finish breakfast, and withholding his phone. When I talked to the wife, this list of complaints focused into a clearer story: his daughter was going to drive him home in her car, and he wanted to smoke, but she didn't want her car to smell like smoke.  He promised that he would smoke 50ft away, but I pointed out that HE would still smell like smoke. He told me that he was old enough to make his own decisions. This amused me, because while he was pointing fingers at ...