December 2020 – WorkTales

December 24, 2020October 10, 2020

Papers please

7 Deadly sins

Wrath
Greed
Sloth
Pride
Lust
Envy
Gluttony

You should not show an excess amount of pride or else, is what I should have been thinking. But instead I decided that my son is, just like me, an American and so we will use our American passports to leave Germany to visit grandma and grandpa for Christmas.

The three of us crossed passport control, boarded our airplane and had a great time with grandma and grandpa. On our return the border guard stamped Timothy’s passport on our entry and we went home none the wiser.

It was the next year, we were going to visit again for Christmas. There is not enough pre-travel and pre-christmas stress as going through an airport at this time of year. It was as we were trying to get out of the country that everything all came together. There is really no reason why either myself or my wife should experience any problems leaving. My wife is German so she had no problems, and I had the necessary German paperwork covering about 6 pages of my passport so that also was not a problem. The real culprit was little Timothy.

The boarder guard had eagle eyes and saw that the little tyke had no living permit in his passport, and so although he did not think we stole him, he could see that he came to Germany about a year ago and thus he had overstayed his permitted three months. I am not quite sure what the penalty is for overstaying your leave but the guard didn’t want to let the little scofflaw escape so easily.

The mother was obviously German, due to both her passport and by this time also her attitude. Thus the child of a German actually is a German and doesn’t really need any special living papers. The crazy thing he has a passport we just didn’t bring it as his father had almost unilaterally decided that the boy is an American and thus will be traveling on his US passport leaving the German passport at home.

It was a recipe for disaster, and it would have turned out very badly if the computer system had not proven that indeed my wife did have a child and his name matched that of my son. The guard did let us pass.

We enjoyed our Christmas but of course we had similar problems on our way back into the country as well. My wife was able to explain the entire story again and the border guard didn’t really like the situation but he did at least let us back in but he made us promise to visit the proper authorities to get this cleared up.

Lesson learned: Travel with both sets of papers

It was the next year when we did have all of our papers that we saw someone else who appeared to be in the exact same situation. However, this foreign bride was traveling alone with the child and the border guard was not as forgiving.

Lesson learned: Always bring a native from that country to help sort out problems

December 20, 2020October 10, 2020

Guardian angel working overtime

But I am not drunk …. When you hear this line it is typically from someone who has indeed had too much to drink. But perhaps I am getting ahead of my myself.

Our doctor received a 15 year old female who was found in a ditch. This may or may not sound so surprising but you must remember that in Germany roads don’t normally have ditches. Well, that is a bit too bold of a statement. Ditches do occur but you might find them next to an autobahn or perhaps far out in the country.

I work in a small Frankfurt hospital. The reason that our patient was delivered my hospital was because the hospital closest to where the patient was discovered did not accept children.

I could see that the patient did have something in her system so asked how much she had to drink. She was told that she didn’t have anything to drink, and truth be told there was no smell of alcohol on her breath. It is a hard world full of bad people, did someone slip her something or take advantage of her? Well, you might as well tell me about you evening as the blood test will tell all.

Obviously the young girl was reasonably full of herself when she responded.

Ver fick dich du alte kuh
(approx Fuck off old bitch)

Well, she was a bit more talkative after that. She claims that she goes out every night and parties and that of course her parents know all about it.

Wow, but how did she end up in the ditch, and how did she end up here? Well, the patient was out with her girlfriend and they were having such a good time that they had to walk their bikes back home. What an evening it was. Her blood alcohol level was 1.6 pro mil, she literally was too drunk and too tired to keep going. She simply laid down in the ditch.

Her friend kept going, walking both bikes home. Luck was with them as friends of her parents saw her walking home and offered her a lift. It was a cold night and her parents were out of town, which truth be told might have helped her to get out to party. When she was dropped off at home, she did mention to the adults that her friend was laying in the ditch out there.

So the adults went out and found the girl and called the ambulance. When the ambulance got there she was cold and wet, she had lost a couple of degrees Celsius and so they had her remove her wet things and wrap up on a thermoblanket.

The temperature was near freezing. Considering the long term memory of a drunk there must have been guardian angel on overtime. Our patient’s drinking partner’s folks were not home. At this temperature you could easily die from hypothermia in two to three hours, she never would have lasted until morning.

Well, about 30 minutes later the girls parents show up and claim that such an outburst does sound out of character but did not deny that it occurred.

December 17, 2020October 10, 2020

In the beginning

There was a very humble emergency ward. Long long ago it was setup and was now running like a top. This is where the internal medicine staff were located. This is where the internal medicine problems would come in to be checked out by internal medicine and if there was a genuine problem they would be put into a bed and treated.

The problem was, at least to the administration types, not really enough people coming to the emergency ward. Four or five a day is simply too small of a number. Thus came the decision to combine the internal medicine from the emergency ward with the (surgical) emergency room, thus having a single emergency room to accept all of the patients.

It was only after both the internal medicine surgical ER were combined that a new trend was discovered. It seems that the number of patients have started to climb. Well, this was a bit of a surprise as the surgical ER had scheduled its own patients to fit with its own schedule. It was later discovered that the reason that the number of patients were increasing was because in the surgical ER the first point of contact was a secretary. It was her decision on who to see, and if it didn’t appear to be a surgical topic, they were basically told to go see their own GP.

Uh, what happened to the emergency ward? The rocket scientists in administration have taken the internal medicine people out and have turned it into an intermediate care ward. This ward will have patients on monitors and long term patients. This is a skill set that is more in line with the intensive care unit and thus the experience ER personnel are jumping to other departments and hospitals. The actual future for the emergency ward is still not known even after many months.

December 13, 2020October 10, 2020

Dealing with Heart attacks 101

I was sitting on the bed and my partner was typing furiously on her laptop. I was sitting right there, so it probably wasn’t an email to me so I poked my big nose into things.

It seems that she was working on a presentation about heart attacks. She is a doctor, patients can have heart attacks but somehow compared to some of the other topics she has demonstrated to her colleagues this seemed, well, just a little bit basic.

I took a look at the first dozen slides and actually I pretty much knew much of this information and I don’t even work in the medical field. I just was not satisfied knowing what she was up to I needed to know why such a basic topic was being delivered to the other doctors. Well, it turns out that the speech isn’t given to the doctors but actually to the nurses. I am confused why the doctors are teaching the nurses but to make it more confusing these nurses are in charge of the emergency room.

I found out that the nurses came over from the surgical emergency room and actually have no experience in the general sort of emergencies. It appears that they have just recently had a bit of a shake up in all things related to the emergency room. (see next story)

December 10, 2020October 10, 2020

Coming out of the closet

I guess I have heard and even seen a few situations where things have gotten out of control and usually alcohol was involved. This is not a good excuse but I guess I do understand it. It is sort of a lapse in judgment that may last anywhere from a few minutes until the end of the evening.

Did you hear about the doctor who got caught in the closet with one of the cleaning staff? Well, there are not a lot of details about this one (yet) but apparently he was giving her a “physical” during the day in a storage closet when he was caught. It might be nice to suggest that this was some young intern who was somehow was caught up with life in the big city and lost her head.

The sad truth was that it was a normal internal medicine doctor which should have given him at least a decade of real world experience. It is rumored that his “soupirante” also should have had a decade or more of real world experience. I guess it was a relatively sad parting, as he kept his job while she had to move on.

December 6, 2020October 10, 2020

… and a smile

The patient had a major abdominal surgery. One of the side effects, as the patient, is that you need time to recover and so you don’t get to eat. Well, you do get “astronaut” food but that isn’t so satisfying.

It was four days later and during a discussion with the surgeon that the patient was informed that she would now be able to have ½ liter of water. Not carbonated or anything crazy like that, just regular flat water. This is really not a fun diet no matter what the circumstances and so the patient asked if it was possible to replace the water with a coke.

Nope, that particular request was not approved by the surgeon, I guess he is an “old school” doctor.

December 3, 2020October 10, 2020

Where babies come from …

People are the same everywhere, you might find a genius in a small town (Albert Einstein, Ulm Germany), or you might find one or more idiots in a big city such as my neighbor. It turns out that in Slovakia there is a tiny village where the cumulative village IQ is being dragged down because some of the inhabitants cannot figure out how to move away.

The story is actually quite common, boy meets girl, boy loves girl, and finally boy leaves girl. Unfortunately the fairly tale changes tone when the boy receives a visit as part of an investigation to determine the paternity of the child.

It seems that the young couple must have been quite friendly as reason for this visit was due to the celebration of an August birth. When confronted by what seemed to be incontrovertible evidence the boy suggested that it really could not be his baby. After all, he had not been with the girl in question since new years eve, and that was really some time back.

Well, It did take come explaining but after learning not only how babies are made but how long of a process it is before the actual birth. Once all of this was clear he did admit that perhaps he could indeed be the father.

Apparently, the entire process is not started with a letter written to a stork after all.