You Shake My Nerves and You Rattle My Brain - Emergiblog Goes Snarky

The year is 1956.

Your son is playing "cowboys and indians" with a bit of Daniel Boone thrown in. You have just completed vacuuming your entire one-story, one bathroom, formal dining room with the blond dinette set, three-bedroom tract home in the suburbs. You are sitting with a cup of coffee and reading the papers. You attended the local university for six months before receiving your Mrs. degree and have just read in the paper that Elvis may have a girlfriend. The highlight of your week is watching Bennett Cerf on "What's My Line" Sunday nights on CBS.

You just can't take it anymore!

You need Serpasil! By CIBA!

After exhaustive research (in other words, I googled it in one click), I discovered that it is an antihypertensive.

It is known generically as "reserpine".

I used to give it long ago in Coronary Care. I didn't get the connection until I read that it also works on "severe agitation in psychosis"!

Serpasil: for when the fifties weren't so nifty!

hhhhhhhhhhhhh

Caution! Uncharacteristic Snarky Post To Follow!

Seizures are extremely scary events to witness, be they due to pediatric fevers, not yet diagnosed brain tumors, head injuries, delirium tremens (DTs) or epilepsy. It is quite tramatic for not only the patient, but the family and witnesses as well.

They are pretty much impossible to fake. If you have ever seen one, you know what I mean.

But, in the ER, we occasionally have our share of amateurs actors and actresses who believe they can play the role well enough to win an Emmy for "Best Performance by an Actor or Actress in a Seizing Role in a Medical Drama Set in an ER".

And so...

In the interest of public service, I should like to make the following announcement:

You are not having a seizure if:

• You can call out, "Hey Nurse! I'm having a seizure!"

• You act like a member of the SpongeBob SquarePants Fan Club and
  

• "drop on the deck and flop like a fish" .
  

• Defined as: flipping your torso from side to side while lifting arms and legs three feet in the air and slamming them into the gurney.
  

• You miraculously avoid all potentially harmful surfaces (like siderails) while doing the above.

• You can speak full, coherent sentences with clear speech
  

• while doing the above

• including cussing out the staff who are trying to assist you in your distress.
  

• You place your head on your arms
  

• if your episode occurs on the floor
  

• you are less likely to get a headache that way.
  

• You only experience the above when certain significant people enter the room

• specifically law enforcement personnel of various agencies
  

• a member of the opposite sex who has decided that evening to release you from any obligations you may have had as a couple.

• Your parents, who have just found out you and marijuana have an ongoing relationship
  

• You immediately reach down to cover yourself when you realize your skirt is pulled up to your waist.
  

• This is not sexist as I live in near San Francisco.

• You can never assume who will be wearing what on any given day.
  

• You experience no post-ictal alteration of your consciousness level.

• You sit right up and marvel at how horrible your seizure experience was.

• And did we notice how your head went up and down on the pillow, like, twenty times.

Yes, as a matter of fact, we did notice!

And now that you are through with your performance and your trillion-dollar head CT that-had-to-be-done-to-cover-everyone's-derierre has been completed, here are your discharge instructions.

Remember, we're here to help you, twenty-four hours a day.

And don't worry about that trillion-dollar CT bill. The government will add the approximately $150 a month that they they take out of my paycheck to cover your medical bills and add it to everyone else's involuntary contributions so that you won't have to worry.

You're welcome.