Down to the board.

It’s 12 am, I’m on my way back from a terribly tiring day at work and I can’t stop thinking about how much my head hurts. As I drive home and I see a water tower and a smile suddenly comes to my face. I like water.
However, in this case, that’s not the reason why I smiled(if it was this would be a pretty amazing blog… but its not that amazing). I had a 59ish year old patient today who was having/had an heart attack and had to have been one of the funniest patient’s I’ve had in a while. He was what you would imagine of an “angry old man”… cursing just enough to have you on edge and not being able to hear you to not. When I first met him I walked into his room and he’s on the phone with his friend and I tell him I’m about to set up an IV for the meds the nurse needs to administer and so on the phone he goes “ahhh shit I think I’m having a heart attack or something… I’ll talk to you later”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a patient phrase it quiet like that. I was having a bit of a time holding my laughter. As I started talking my nonsense he told me “I’m not trying to go down to the morb”. I thought about it for a second and then I started laughing and began busting his chops. At that time I thought it was his stuffy nose that caused him to talk like that. Then later he started laughing because he thought that I thought that he said “down to the board”. (incase you haven’t figured it out we’re talking about the morg). Anyway we continued to trash talk one another throughout the day and then we started talking about where we grew up… turned out that he lived right by the water tower which was a mile away from my old house.
So as I approached this water tower I couldn’t help but to think of the old man who even in the most critical of times in his life was able to make someone else laugh and not even be worried with his predicament. There is no real “punch line” to this story… it’s just amazing how in such a crappy mood the entire way home from work all I had to see was a water tower that immediately changed my mindset.

What a blessing this life is.