reefshadow

I call it foreplay.

RN here. What do you think about moving toward a system where care is meted out more carefully as the finite resource it is? By this, I refer specifically to the common practice of physicians giving in to families that want every possible intervention in clinically hopeless cases. I would really like to see a movement toward more honesty and bluntness and in many cases an outright refusal to intervene. To be clear, I'm talking about putting an 85 year old stroke victim or similar on a vent, placing a PEG tube, and having them linger for far too long in a skilled nursing facility or worse, the ICU. Or giving a metastatic pancreatic case one last round of gem and curative type rad therapy even though their platelets are tanked, their CA-19 is 40,000, and they have new brain mets? Not because the physician sees utility in this, but because family does. The cost is absolutely enormous.

This seems a bit common. My A&P professor casually slung a preserved human brain into the lab sink and invited our inspection. I felt a sense of awe while handling it; kept thinking that it was the seat of a person's awareness, emotions, thoughts. I suppose though that experience confers some callousness.

Hey baby, I touch colons. I can make your cecum skip a beat - I promise i'll be gentle (so as not to give you peristaltic spasms and explosive diarrhea).

one of the first surgeries I observed on my surgical rotation was an open bowel resection. The intestines move through peristaltic action, like a lot. It looked like a bowl of semi torpid snakes. So even before the surgeon fucks around with them, they are moving in your abdomen.