Badasses

Usually when someone meets me and they find out I'm an ER nurse, they're all like "man, that is so badass. You must see all kinds of crazy stuff!" And then they pester me for stories until I tell them the real gross one of the time the patient vomited charcoal all over my legs and it stained the skin beneath my scrubs and got into my socks, or the time I was hit in the neck with a trach loogie from across the room. That usually squelches the need for gross stories, and it makes me giggle to see them turn a little greenish.

But really, the ER that is portrayed on TV is a super high octane, go-go-go nothing but excitement all the time environment. In reality, it's not all that badass. For every freaky random lawn decoration leg impalement I take care of, we see a hundred toothaches. For every time someone goes into a v-tach arrest in the department and gets shocked back to the land of the living, I argue with fifty drug seekers. For every gunshot resuscitation, I give five enemas. For every EKG that prints out tombstones and sends the patient directly to the cath lab, I start IVs on thirty vague belly pain patients. For every statistic I just gave you, I made 100 percent of them up.

Eh, I digress.

Seriously though, the ER is a lot of fun. I do get to see crazy stuff and it's astounding how unbelievable some of the stories are. Just be prepared, all you people who meet ER nurses, that if you ask us to tell you a story...you might just end up hearing about that really exciting time we did something crazy like stick our finger up someones butt to insert a flexi-seal. Aka butt foley.

In summation, we're not always badass. But this guy is. He surgically removed his own appendix. While at a research base. In ANTARTICA. Read all about it, in the aptly named badassoftheweek.com.

***
Since we're speaking of badasses...I'm currently watching Return of the Jedi on TV. Boba Fett is introduced as the most badass guy ever in Empire Strikes Back. Even though he only has a couple of lines, it's generally understood that he is indeed a bad motherfucker. And then poof. ROTJ. He dies like a little bitch in a big giant sand monster pit. What a puss.