Kids These Days 25

My brother brought it to my attention that kids nowadays are even bigger pussies than I thought. Yeah. I'm talking to you, Erik with a K. You wuss. There are reports that kids are ending up in the hospital because of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. New Mexico, Illinois, and even fucking California schools are trying to ban what is one of the best snacks ever created. Why? Because they say it lacks nutritional value. Love doesn't either! You gonna try and ban that, too?!

They (meaning ze Nazis) say that this delicious treat that likely tastes the same as God's fingertips also creates a response in your brain box similar to illicit substances. Um, and this is being banned why?! The reason why kids are running to the hospital is because they are eating so many of these things that their shit is turning red and they think that they are shitting blood.

Five Things I Learned Working At A Hospital

In a previous blog (click here to check it out) I talked about things that you may not know form working at a pet store. In this one I want to talk about working in a hospital. Now, this is something that runs in my family. My grandmother did it, my aunts did it, my father does it, my brother did it, and I even found out a few years back that my mother did it. That is a mental image I cherish for all the wrong reasons.

I know there are people that work in hospitals and have a great time and love their jobs and go home all like “I saved someone’s life today” or “I just made someone feel less pain.” And that’s groovy. Though I did have some nice experiences at the hospital it was a daily exercise in not beating people up.

Story Behind The Photo 11

I’ve written before in a previous post about the fact that I used to move dead bodies when I worked at the hospital. This picture was taken right before I hopped on the bus and went to work. As you can tell by the look on my face I was very not excited to go to work. This was obviously after I had food poisoning since my neck is so skinny. Yeah, I got food poisoning and lost about 60lbs. while employed there. There’s no such thing as a good day at the hospital. There were just days that sucked a little bit less than others. The only things that helped me survive were Alex, drawing, and books. I took the bus to work listening to my Discman and knowing that I would be seeing head wounds, blood, vomit, and corpses. Oh, and I had splits days off meaning I stayed home Tuesdays and Thursdays. Good times.

Rosscast Episode 76: I See Dead People

This episode is a two parter, ya'll. In the first half I talk about a list me and Camille made about things you shouldn't be doing as you head towards 30 years of age. The second half is about even more strange things I did while working at the hospital. I also debut my new into music. Click here to download this and older episodes. Enjoy!

"Let Me Cut Your Cake With My Knife..."

LEXINGTON PARK, Md.- Some sexual experimentation landed a southern Maryland woman in a hospital with injuries tough to imagine and even more difficult to forget.

Maryland State Police airlifted the 27-year-old woman to Prince George's County Hospital Center early Sunday morning after she was injured in an incident involving a sex toy attached to a saber saw blade, TheBayNet.com first reported. The man who called 911 about the incident admitted attaching the sex toy to the saw and then using the high-powered, homemade device on his partner, according to the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office.The saw cut through the plastic toy and wounded the woman, according to TheBayNet.com. The injuries were severe enough for medevac, but the woman was released from the hospital Monday and is recovering from her unusual injuries.

Investigators talked to the woman, who told them she suffered the injuries during a consensual act and that she and her partner were trying something new and no crime was committed, the sheriff's office said.

At what point does normal ass sex become not enough? No, I don’t mean normal anal sex. See, when I first heard this story I thought, “Man, I have seen some wild shit before but this takes the cake!” I thought it was a drill that was used. But then I figured, why don’t I see what a saber saw is. I wish I hadn’t.

Now, I imagine that they placed a sex toy over the saw instead of just replacing the blade with a sex toy. Either way, this is some worse case scenario stuff. “What’s the worse that could happen from us doing this?” This. This is the worse that could happen. Everyone does stupid crap. At some point in our lives something dumb will happen and maybe we’ll get hurt. We wont wanna tell anyone or go to a doctor. In this case you have to. No band aid is gonna fix this. Its like when they dude let that horse destroy his…ass. He was too ashamed to go to a hospital and died from his injuries.

I worked in a hospital and the crazy thing is that people tend to lie to their doctors. The few occasions that I had to go to the hospital I was telling them everything they needed to know to make a problem go away. Thankfully I never had something happen so severe that I had to stay overnight. But with a saw slicing your vajayjay in two? At least they did something right that night. I cant believe she was released so soon. The miracles of modern science!

This is also one of those times where I wonder who initiated this. I have heard of chicks doing some stupid stuff and wondered how a guy could be that convincing. Because if the chick was the one to say, “Hey, baby. Go to the garage and get your saw…” then the world is way stranger that I had previously believed.

Rockets.

"Let's Go Corpsin'!"

“A morgue or mortuary is a building or room (as in a hospital) used for the storage of human remains awaiting identification, or removal for autopsy, burial, cremation or some other post-death ritual. They are usually refrigerated to avoid decomposition.”

I used to work at UCLA Medical Center moving corpses. No, that’s not all I did there, but its one of the strangest things I have ever been paid to do besides working at the porn shop. I was a Patient Escort, a name that sounds sexy, like if someone was in a lot of pain we would “relieve” them or something. No. We pushed people around.

I used to always wait for the day that a body would twitch or move or something. I would hurry up and do morgue calls really fast in case after a certain amount of time they would start twitching or some shit. It never happened but that never stopped other crazy crap from happening.

The best example of my job and the ineptitude of my supervisors was this one call I had to do. We were supposed to take this lady from the ICU to a Cat Scan. We showed up with a wheelchair and an oxygen tank. Now, I knew this was a bad start since I knew who this patient was and knew she could not be moved from her bed. But no one likes to listen to reason. So we get there and tell a nurse that we’re here to take the patient to get scanned.

“Oh” she said. “She passed Sunday.”

It was Tuesday.

How To Transport A Corpse

1. You get the call telling you where the body is and hopefully who will be helping you get it.

2. Contact your partner and figure out who is getting the morgue gurney. May not sound bad but there were only three gurneys there and two of them didn’t work.

3. Once you had the gurney you had to take one of the tiny ass elevators. You had to actually tilt the gurney to make it fit and pray that no one else needed to use the elevator. 9 out of 10 times someone did.

4. From there you’d take another elevator to get to the floor you needed. The entire time you’re trying to not look like you’re doing what you’re doing. Looking for a corpse. Its funny, but Latin families always crossed themselves when they saw it. There wasn’t a body on it yet but you couldn’t tell by the way it was made. It had a huge, white, holy sheet draped over it.

5. Once you found the room and hopefully not the family we would let a nurse know we were there. Its funny how we treat the dead in America. Even if the nurse was just talking to the patient an hour ago once they became a corpse they wanted nothing to do with them. We get our paperwork signed and then get to work.

6. Taking a sheet we'd roll the body up like a giant joint. Tight at the head and feet. Then we’d lift it onto the gurney and throw the cover back on. Imagine pushing an ironing board with wheels.

7. Now is where I start moving as fast as possible. I don’t wanna experience the twitching or farting that corpses tend to do. We’d take the elevators back down and head to the morgue.

8. Once in the morgue and signing in who we were dropping off we’d open the morgue up and see what we had to deal with. Some lazy ass escorts would just leave a body on the gurney for someone else to deal with. Or worse, the morgue would be so full of bodies that you’d have to start double stacking.

9. No matter how small someone is once they are dead they’re heavy as hell! I still don’t get it. We’d shove the body onto the giant bunk bed type slabs and then lock everything back up.

10. Wash up and pray that you didn’t have another morgue call for the rest of the day.

Now, that was a best case scenario. Sometimes the family wanted to stay with the body longer after you had spent half an hour just getting there. Sometimes a nurse wouldn’t have the body wrapped and you’d walk in and see a body staring at you. There was one in the ER I had to get and dude had just died less than 10 minutes ago. Another time the family didn’t want the body wrapped because it was against their religion. That was a long call.

Another time we had to grab a kid from the ICU and take them to the morgue. Now, with taking a kid to the morgue the best case scenario was that the family had already cried and moved on. This was the case. Now, this one was my first morgue call and I had to do it with this dumbass kid that was employed just because his mom worked there. We went through all the wrong doors. Made wrong turns. It sucked. We got there and the body was wrapped (something that isn’t always the case like I said) and rushed him downstairs.

Whenever I hear people at job interviews ask me about stress and how I work under it, I laugh on the inside. I moved corpses. Dealing with a bitchy client or a boss that needs things fast is nothing to me. I always said when I first worked there that I wouldn’t touch a dead body but that call with the kid happened less than two weeks into my training. Once you pop that cherry it does get easier. Sadly. So the next time you have a hard day at work just say to yourself: “At least I don’t have to move a dead body.”

Rockets.

Broken Finger & Toe

One day in the 10th grade I broke my pinky finger on my right hand. The way it happened wasn’t that bad and I didn’t realize how bad it was until later that day. I played volleyball in high school and was good at it much to my surprise. I’m not the most athletic guy on Erf. I read, write, and draw. I also claim to be a very busy lazy man.

Okay, so during volleyball (I had it as my first period class) we were playing and the ball hit the tip of my pinky head on. My nail hurt more than anything. I was like, “Ow…” but kept playing.

Afterwards I got dressed and went to my next class, Advanced Physical Science. I was sitting there staring at my finger and thinking it was odd that I would make a fist but my pinky wanted to stay still. I tugged at it and it popped. Not like a knuckle popping pop, but a small gunshot pop. My teacher and this chick sitting next to me stared at me.

“You wanna go to the nurse?” my teacher, Mr. Canny, asked me.

“I think so…” I said.

So I go down there and the nurse could care less. She’s tugging, pulling, and bending my finger. The whole time I’m saying “Ow!” until she finally sighs and gives me a napkin with some ice in it. During class my finger starts to feel worse and eventually I give Laverne a call.

“I ain’t leavin’ work for that shit!” she screams at me in her most motherly voice. “Call Luther.”

I called my brother Luther but he couldn’t come. I stayed at school the rest of the day and when Laverne came home she reluctantly took me to Kaiser. They gave me an x-ray and saw that my finger was broken in two places and that the snap I heard (and felt!) was me putting it back in as it was dislocated. They gave me a spiffy metal brace and some clear tape. I had that on during my entire summer school session. Nothing like writing like you’re drinking a cup of tea.

When I took it off my finger was pale white and smelled like ass. Not fun.

Before the 10t grade but after the 9th (I guess I could’ve just said the summer before 10th grade started) I broke my big tow on my right foot chasing my little sister. I don’t remember what she threw at me but I started chasing her and didn’t raise my foot in time and hit the step leading out of the den and into the laundry room.

“Wait for it…” I said as I stood bracing myself for the pain. It hurt like a son of a bitch! I limped for a couple of months. I didn’t go to the doctor for it. Funny how my parents took me to the doctor for a broken finger but not when I get hit by a car damaging my knee for life. What made it worse was that I was in my steel toe boot phase and wore them the entire time. It was stupid. I haven’t broken anything since. Knock on wood. Just don’t use your toe.

Rockets.