Freud Rage

As I alluded to in my last post, I'm a fan of psychiatry. It fascinates me to learn why I wake up every morning at 2:36am, drenched in sweat with images of Matt Damon in a giant diaper running through my head. I mean...why other people, who are not me, have that particular experience.

However, I have one big problem with the field that goes by the name of Sigmund Freud. Besides the fact that he owes me 12 bucks, I find him to be a bit loony. Which is unfortunate, seeing as how he is the face of psychiatry. Freud is to psychiatry as Ludovico Ariosto is to 16th century Italian poetry - you can't bring up the subject without conversation moving to that person.

But I'll let you judge for yourself. Here are some choice quotes from Kaplan & Sadock's Concise Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry, 2nd edition:

• "Sigmund Freud originally believed that anxiety stemmed from a physiological buildup of libido"
  
• "Freud viewed the phobia...to be the result of conflicts centered on an unresolved childhood oedipal situation"
  
• "Freud theorized...that unconscious homosexual tendencies are defended against by denial and projection" - re: delusions
  
• "[Freud] assumed there was a defensive retreat involved in the face of anxiety-provoking oedipal wishes" - re: OCD
  
• "Sigmund Freud saw fire as a symbol of sexuality. He believed the warmth radiated by fires evokes the sensation that accompanies a state of sexual excitation, and a flame's shape and movements suggest a phallus in activity" - re: pyromania
• Sigmund Freud believed that depression was the body's natural response to not actively interacting with a penis. He postulated that the cure for depression, regardless of gender, was to have a penis in hand.

See what I mean? Guy's crazy as a road lizard! Okay, so maybe I made the last one up. But I'm not entirely sure he would disagree. I can only assume he was projecting hs own feelings onto his patients, which would make him one horny, gay, mother-loving bastard. In which case, maybe he's not so bad after all.

Chicken Little, RN

The inpatient psychiatric unit is a lot of fun. I enjoy the field, the doctors are often hilarious, and it is great fun to have conversations with the patients. The nurses...well, the nurses are another story.

Don't get me wrong - for the most part they are quite good. But some of them are so far removed from the world of "medicine" that they tend to lose touch with reality. It's hard to tell where the patients end and the nurses begin. Take this conversation, for instance:

Chicken Little, RN: Have you seen this guys blood pressure??? (points to vital signs which show a BP of 134/89)
Montgomery: Oh yeah, we saw that yesterday. We started him on hydrochlorothiazide.
Chicken Little, RN: If you don't start him on some blood pressure medicine he's going to stroke out while I'm taking care of him!
Montgomery: Um, right. We started him on hydrochlorothiazide yesterday.
Chicken Little, RN: That's not a blood pressure medication, that's a diuretic.
Montgomery: I gotta go... (little smoke cloud where I used to be standing)

That's almost word-for-word our conversation. Have you ever dealt with somebody so wrong on so many levels you don't even know where to start? For you non-medical folks, here's an equivalent conversation:

Chicken Little, RN: Have you seen this guys blood glucose??? (points to glucose slightly above normal)
Montgomery: Oh yeah, he's a type I diabetic. We re-started his insulin when he got here.
Chicken Little, RN: If you don't give him something that lowers his blood glucose he's going to explode into a cloud of sugar!
Montgomery: Um, right. We re-started his insulin when he got here.
Chicken Little, RN: That doesn't lower blood glucose, it's a synthetic hormone.
Montgomery: I gotta go... (tire tread marks on the ground where I used to be standing)

Or if you're even farther removed from medicine:

Some dude: (pointing at my car's near empty fuel gauge) Have you seen your fuel level???
Montgomery: (as I stand next to the gas actively pumping into my car) I'm putting gas in it as we speak.
Some dude: If you don't put fuel in that thing it's going to implode and form a black hole, killing everyone on Earth.
Montgomery: Um, right. I'm putting gas in it as we speak.
Some dude: That's not fuel, it's a petroleum-derived liquid consisting of hydrocarbons.
Montgomery: I gotta go... (escaping through a quickly dug tunnel at my feet)

Being a student is rough enough, what with the >40 hour work weeks for negative pay. But when you are right about something and people refuse to listen because you're "just a student," it becomes incredibly frustrating. On the plus side, the nurse had the same nasty-toned conversation with a resident who set her straight. Also, I sold her car to a chop-shop, ruined her credit rating, and filled her house with angry badgers. Revenge is a dish best served with angry badgers.

Life Update
10 for 10 on my residency applications. Ka-chow!

Lesson o' the Day

One of the patients on my service* is a an exotic dancer. You know, the girlies what take their clothes off on stage fer the fellas. She's had several dancer friends visit her during her stay.

There's a reason strip clubs are kept so dark.

Lesson learned.

* but not actually my patient, and I know nothing else about her, so I think I'm allowed to discuss it

Hail to the Chief

Well it's official: America has its first halfrican american president. Pretty cool, eh? To get you, my faithful readers, prepared for the next 4+ years, here's the rundown of our soon-to-be 44th president.

Barack Hussein Obama

Nickname(s): B-Rock, "The Alabama Slamma" (unknown origin)
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 347lbs (including fully robotic left leg)
Catchphrase(s): "...change...," "Who wants toast?," "I smell a rascal"
Hobbies: basketball, playing with children, murder
Kill count: 135
Weapon of choice: wakizashi
Firearm of choice: 1999 HK SL8
Finishing move: Redistribution of Health
Favorite Pastry: gougère
Favorite TV show: The Lone Gunmen
Favorite movie: Battleship Potemkin
Favorite Song: "Pretty Girls Everywhere" by Eugene Church and The Fellows
Favorite color: 473nm
Personal Hero: General Ambrose Everett Burnside
Greatest fear: dwarves
Superpower(s): shapeshifting
Weakness: pennies

All in all, not a bad choice. He's a pretty formidable opponent, even for Cristina Elizabeth Fernández de Kirchner (5'1", 115lbs, power of pyrokinesis, diamond-strength skin). Although McCain wasn't half bad either. Check it out.

John Hussein McCain

Nickname(s): Jack, Lord Feltingsworth, "The Thunder from Down Under" (unknown origin)
Height: 5'3"
Weight: 32lbs (body is completely hollow)
Catchphrase(s): "My friends" "McCain hungry" "I'm going to open an hermetically sealed container of processed assault & battery"
Hobbies: uprooting trees, not dying, murder
Kill count: 1,045
Weapon of choice: bamboo spear
Firearm of choice: 1982 Colt Python with custom extended barrel and scope
Finishing move: The POW
Favorite Pastry: eclair
Favorite TV show: Jackass
Favorite movie: 9 1/2 Weeks
Favorite Song: "100 miles and Runnin'" By NWA
Favorite color: taupe
Personal Hero: Warwick Davis
Greatest fear: the reaper
Superpower(s): invisibility, flight
Weakness: the sun

When you compare the two like that it kind of makes me wish things had been settled by steel cage death match. Like in 1852 when Franklin Pierce snapped the neck of Winfield Scott. Now that's democracy in action!