The minute I turned away from the cauldron on the cafeteria line that held "Fresh Seafood Gumbo," though, everything got better.
Ba-donk-ksssshhh!
But seriously, folks: this was One Of Those Weeks. I got a lecture from the director of nursing about being on my Best Behavior (Best Beloveds) when it came to taking care of the family member of a VIP. "We're going to give him, of course, the same standard of care that everybody gets," said the DON, "but we might need you to expedite some of the testing, like the MRI, for him."
"Soooo," I said, unaware of what my mouth was actually doing, "We're *not* actually giving him the same standard of care as anybody else." 'Cause if you're on Medicare, that MRI's gonna take thirty-six hours.
It's a wonder I haven't been fired thirty times over. I called the bed board to report the arrival of Le Petit Prince with the words, "The Eagle has landed. Repeat, the Eagle has landed. With his diamond chariot and his staff."
Let's face it: If you work in practically any non-profit healthcare facility these days, especially one in the state where Guvnuh Goodhair has yanked funding for various things you used to do, you are dependent on donors to do things like fix the a/c and make sure you have enough money to buy IV fluids. I live in Texas; therefore, I am used to whoring for money to make sure my less-fortunate patients get the private funding they need to get treated. Ever since I watched a guy die of a treatable brain tumor because of lack of indigent-care funding, I have whored more cheerfully and fluffed-and-puffed in a more dedicated fashion than you would ever believe.
LPP hopped the line in the emergency department with a problem that had been going on since sometime in September and which had recently, despite not changing, gotten insupportable. Therefore, our Prince presented hisself at the ER with vague complaints of. . .something.
I admitted him and his Something ahead of two actually emergent patients with actually emergent problems--though, thankfully, they'd gotten good care at their local EDs in the meantime. They just kind of had to wait around for a bit, one on the helipad, the other in a buggy (ambulance, for you civilians), until we'd gotten His Highness settled in.
(Just now Max put his head in my lap, bad breath and shedding ear-puffs and all, reminding me that no matter how stupid we humans are, there are still dogs who love us.)
HRHLPP will be fine. There's nothing wrong with him that six weeks drying out and a few B vitamins won't cure. My other two patients will be fine: one got TPA in a timely fashion, administered correctly by an on-point ED MD (shout out to all the ED docs!) who'd never actually done it, but who read up on it on the Internet from his tiny, six-bed ER; the other got a nifty new experimental drug we're testing and seems to be getting over her aphasia even as we (ahem) speak.
It's not his fault his daddy's rich. He was a nice guy: said "Please" and "Thank you" and was admirably brief and succinct in the description of his symptoms. Daddy is currently funding a study on the benefits of various anticoagulants in the acute phase of stroke (the beneficiary of which was in the next room over), so I had little trouble being nice to him. We even had a few things in common: birdwatching, politics, and music.
Even if your client is nice, it doesn't make it any easier to whore, though.