Category Archives: Fun & Humor

Monday Musings – Five Qualities I look for in a Nurse

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I am a big fan of nurses. Without them I might as well jump out of the hospital window. They are the wonderful people who drive my recovery. I cannot imagine a hospital without them, especially the caring majority I’ve met.

Filling up I.V. meds or jars of moonshine?

There are some specific qualities that I look for in a nurse.  Here are the top five. Note: For the purposes of this post, I will refer to nurses as “she.” There are some great males nurse out there, too, though the one I had recently may of been dipping into the red wall bins for a quick joy ride to “used meds” nirvana – would a skull and cross bones on those boxes discourage double dipping? Something tells me “no.”

Here we go:

  1. The nurse is healthier than I am. If she walks in hacking and coughing I want permission to open a trap door in the floor and drop her to the bowels of the hospital. If I hear her lie “it’s just allergies” when she looks white as a ghost, there will be a problem.
  2. She went to nursing college in the States, not Grenada or Tahiti or the Republic of the Internet.  All right, I might flex here and say major countries like England and Germany and Canada.  Let’s make a rule that if flip flops were acceptable footwear at your nursing school, you can’t be my nurse.

  3. Study or party? Photo by melalouise, Creative Commons

    She can insert an I.V. the first time. Have you ever been to the ER?  Nurses there start an I.V. quickly and on the first try. Why do some nurses treat the insertion like they’re buying a house? How many locations can there be to stick me? Look for the bulging veins. Start there. When you’re on your third try don’t tap on my arm to find a vein. That must be an F’ing magic trick only you know how to do because when I tap on my arm all I get are red spots.

  4. She’s not drunk. I may be fascinated by the woman who likes to tie one on to the point of slurring – who do you think appears in those homemade videos on the Internet? But when it comes to taking care of me and making sure you’re hanging the correct meds while I’m dreaming of crushing CF with my steel-toed boots, leave the champagne in your car corked, please. Some doctors might think it’s cute when you’re a little over the edge at the holiday party and may want to marry you one day, but I’m trying to remain alive during my stay.
  5. She’s over 25 and under 70. Do I need to explain this one? I don’t want to be your first patient or your last.

    Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you? Photo by Rivertay Creative Commons License

    This doesn’t apply if you’re super smart and graduated at 19 or if you’re over 70 and can actually pass your driver’s eye test without memorizing the chart. Also, regardless of age, I don’t want you to be super hot. Surprised? I’m cooped up for a week in a walk-in closet. The last thing I need to be thinking about is doing something I’ll need a divorce lawyer for when I get out. Eliminate my temptation and skip the blue eye shadow.

  6. Bonus: She skips rather than walks into my room. I want a happy nurse. I want an entourage of small animals to follow her into my room. Skip on in, Mrs. Happy and gang, nice to see you. One rule: This can only happen after I’m fully awake. If I see a squirrel looking over the edge of the bed at seven in the morning I’m going to cap him with the .357 I keep under my pillow for protection from the crazies roaming the halls at night. You may, however, kiss me goodnight on the forehead each night and skip on out the door, leaving a trail of berries as you go.

Best of health to you and the nurses who take good care of us. They’re the best, except the ones who can’t work the IV machines. They need to be banished.

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Let’s Have Some Fun Living Friday – The Unknown Comic

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Rights unknown

My friend @onlyz told me today to stop talking about dying because there was living to do. He never pulls punches in his “140 characters or less” tweets. But he is correct – there is living to do.

Tonight, I celebrate life and the inspiration for my blog identity, Mr. Murray Langston, aka, The Unknown Comic, who has delivered loads of laughs and happiness to others. I loved watching him on The Gong Show. And I respect, honor and parody him here on this blog.

Here’s a link to his Wikipedia bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Comic

If you read the bio, you’ll notice the last line: “He is active in charity work, particularly for children’s advocacy causes.” How nice is that. I wonder if one of those charities is cystic fibrosis?

Here are two youtube.com videos of The Unknown Comic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj3Q9l9Ivng

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zrORaRB5S4

Enjoy and have a fantastic weekend. I’ll do my best to live as much as possible. Thanks for the redirection, @onlyz.

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Renaming My CF Drugs

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It started with a puppy

Hello, Cystic Gal

When our then five-year-old daughter wanted to name our new lab puppy, we created a naming rule to weed out the names we couldn’t live with or inflict on the pup.

The naming rule: If we couldn’t stand at our front door and scream the name into the neighborhood without feeling embarrassed, the name was scratched.

Examples of names that didn’t make the cut: Cupcake! Creamsickle! Vanilla Latte! Banana Cream Pie! We laughed hard testing them, confirming to neighbors that we’re nutty, or least that I am.

Which brings me to CF drugs. Who names this stuff? Someone in Marketing obviously doesn’t understand what it’s like to take a medicine every day or every other month of your life. Or, at the very least, they don’t understand the psychology of the disease.

So, I’ve decided that a little renaming is in order.  Here we go.

Giving CF drug names some teeth
My wife once asked what drug I was doing and I answered, “I’m doing TOBI.” A small body shiver hit me as I realized how that might sound to the untrained ear. Not something I would want to yell from my front door.  Not to mention that our friend’s yellow lab was named Toby, and he couldn’t do much harm to bacteria.

We need drug names that sound tough. When I inhale or swallow a medicine, I expect it to go into my body and crush the last breath out of the bacteria. No more taking drugs with names created by nuns moonlighting as scientists. How about some muscle and weaponry?

Let the hellfire rain down on the cockroach Pa

Old name: TOBI. A name for a yellow lab.

New name: Armageddon Hellfire Mist. This drug name should be the equivalent of spraying RAID on a cockroach, then backing your monster truck over its carcass four or five times. If I’m going to invest 20 minutes twice a day breathing this stuff, I want it to be the end of existence for the cockroach known as Pseudomonas. I want this bacteria to face its worst nightmare – Armageddon – because this is a battle of good vs evil.

Old name: Colistin. A name a celebrity would give their kid.

New name: Lung-Jax. There’s no substitute for the scrubbing power of Ajax. I want my lungs shining like my sink and toilet do when my maid hasn’t been on a three-day bender of Mojitos and Manhattans. So shiny and new, the bacteria can see their reflection as they melt like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz.

Old name: Hypertonic Saline. This isn’t the worst name I’ve heard. I like the “hypertonic” part. Saline, not as much.

Love this stuff! Blast the mucus away

And Hyper-Sal? “I’m doing Hyper-Sal,” sounds like something a mafia wife might tell her friend over lunch.

New name: Hypertonic Jet Wash. Mythbusters placed an old school bus behind a 747 with its jet engines blasting. The “wash” from the engines blew the bus away like it was made of paper. That is what HJW does. Load up that old bus with bacteria and give them a ride they’ll never forget – right into a trash can on the wing of a paper towel.

Old name: Cayston. I want to tread lightly here because when I tested this drug I thought the nurse told me its name had a special meaning. Still, the name is a little too “prep school” for my taste. Let’s give Cayston a pet.

New name: CRR (Cayston’s Rabid Rottweiler) Unleash the attack dog with this drug. It chases down Pseudomonas aeruginosa and bites it in the ass.  “Oh, it’s just a doggy bite,” the bacterium says in its fake British accent, until the rabies start kicking in. No laughing then. And, no shot clinics in the lungs, either. Whose mouth is foaming now, bacteria scum.

Old name: Pulmozyme. I get it. The drug thins and loosens the mucus. Nice. I can work with that.

Clean-up hitter.

New name: Lobe Lube. This is like taking your 67 Mustang into Jiffy Lube for an oil change. Out with the crud, in with the new slippery oil.  Man, this baby purrs now. Not sure I’d take my new car here, but my beater, yes.

Old name: Xopenex: This sounds like something my crazy aunt calls her ex-husband when she’s pissed and lubed, which is most of the time.

Wedge those lungs open

New name: Crowbar. This has a double meaning. First, I want this drug to go in and wedge open my lungs, making way for the other drugs that follow.  Second, a crowbar is what my aunt used on her ex-husband to open his skull to the tune of 40 stitches when she caught him with Hyper-Sal’s wife. Good enough for her, good enough for me.

I’m feeling better already. Think of the marketing potential and packaging possibilities. Nice, huh?

Well, it’s time for me to go Crowbar my lungs open, flush them with a some Hypertonic Jet Wash, coat them with Lung Lube, then inhale a little Armageddon Hellfire Mist to kill the cockroaches that have been living large in my lungs.

I’ll get to the pills another day. I’m thinking Al Pacino in Scarface – Say “Hello” to my little friends, Cipro and Z-Pack.

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Eats, shoots and leaves – 140 character limit on Twitter

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I enjoy Twitter most days. Not all, but most.

The challenge is sending comments into the void and not knowing their impact.

I’ve taken a “if I like it and think the tweet is funny, I’m sending it” attitude. Certain times I have laughed by rear end off writing a tweet only to have it bomb and get no response back, which is the case most of the time.

Here’s my favorite tweet that bombed because I messed up the meaning.

@cffatboy in the hospital is like keeping a wolverine in your bathroom. At some point, U R going to have go in there & it won’t be pleasant.

I wish I had written:

@cffatboy in the hospital is like keeping an angry wolverine trapped in the bathroom. At some point, someone is going to have to go in there and lose an essential body part.

I would have violated the 140 character limit. Oh, well. I feel better now that I got it out of my system. I thank CF Fatboy for his guest post, which made me laugh so hard it helped clear out my lungs.

And though I blow off steam on Twitter, I truly appreciate the people, CF Fatboy especially, who I have met and learned more about. That part of Twitter is special and I value it above all else.

Tweet on, my friends, tweet on.

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10 things I don’t want to hear from my PICC line nurse

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I’m going through man-a-pause. No, that’s not on the list, but it should be.

It was all I could do today to keep from using ALL CAPS in my tweets. The number of tweets I didn’t send was higher than the number I sent. I told CF-mum Lorraine I dug her. I started three blog posts and stopped. Strange day.

I also listened to Captain and Tennille’s Love Will Keep Us Together and enjoyed it.

So, when in doubt, go with frivolity and horseplay.

10 things I don’t want to hear from my PICC line Nurse:

  1. Where did those buff arms go?
  2. Hellooooooooooooo, to my first solo insertion.
  3. Neck or groin? Tongue depressor or leather strap?
  4. Nursing school in Tahiti rocked, dude!
  5. Rambo never asked for a shot of lidocaine, dear. And he had to stitch his own arm.
  6. Does Red Bull ever make your hands shake like this?
  7. Do I feel warm to you?
  8. Mind if my lover, Bart, watches?
  9. It’s okay, 5-second rule in effect for dropped needles.
  10. Cystic fi-what? That can’t be good.
  11. (bonus) Holy crap! It is sticking out of your ear and I just . . . threw up in my mask.

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Post Battle Blues – Please add to the list

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Post not sponsored by Old Milwaukee (though it should be based on my consumption of their product the last three days)

[CF Fatboy’s guest post is in the comment section. Watch out, it burns.]

Feeling tired today from the battle with @cysticgal. It could just be the cipro, day 7, or the Old Milwaukee, bottle 7.

I wish we had added number 11 to the blog throwdown:

11) Describe the perfect hospital stay.

My first answer would be: Not going at all. But considering I’ve been going every four months, here’s my answer for today.

I want everyone to line up in the hallway when I arrive, Nurses, Doctors, techs, RTs. Stand in the hall and greet His Highness, please.

My antibiotics need to be ready to go the minute I arrive, no waiting four hours for the first dose.

The PICC line nurse needs to be waiting in my room and gowned up. No more temporary peripheral IV sites. I’m tired of the 24-hour IV site in the fatty part of my forearm that takes every o.z. of my inner reserve not to cry out like Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart: FREEDOM . . . . . S**T, THAT HURTS.

I want a workstation. No more putting the laptop on the bed and pulling the chair up to it. Think Marriott.

I want a massage every day. You truly want me to feel better? Massage is the Disney Fastpass to good health and Heaven, my friend. Heaven. I’ll cough up mucus from 1969 if you do this for me.

No RTs. That’s right. Unless I can’t move my arms, give me all of the meds I need and come back in 14 days. I can do it myself, LIKE I DO EVERYDAY OF MY LIFE. Most of the RTs I know should be wearing brown UPS outfits because their only job is to deliver stuff.

So, what do you think?  What did I miss? Feel free to add some of your own in the comments section. It’s interactive today cause I’m feeling lazy and I have have to go wash the Bird (that’s guy code for Tran-Am).  🙂


CF BLOG THROWDOWN: Dude Versus the Lady

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Are you ready for the CF Rumble in the Jungle?

In the pink corner, we have CysticGal, sensitive and kind, who adores pictures of bunnies and anything  pink.  She is loving, caring and the perfect model of CF womanhood – A poet of the highest order. And, fan of fuzzy animals and all things “chic.”

In the blue corner: me. I don’t take showers in the hospital; I smell of man musk most days. Raw, nasty and gross and 110 percent CF man. Defective chromosome and mucus-filled lungs ready to roll in my “Smokey and the Bandit” black Trans-Am.

Bring it on, CysticGal. Respect for showing up.

1. What is your favorite thing to spit your sputum in?

CysticGal: I’d prefer you call it “yucky.” I spit the yucky in a pretty blue cup.

UnknownCystic: An Old Milwaukee beer can so I can shoot it off a fence post later.

2. Things you’d like to say to your Nimrod RT:

UnknownCystic: Is that my inert pulmozyme in your body-temperature-heated pants pocket? Or, are you just happy to see me?

CysticGal: If you hit my boob again, we’re done.

3. What do you think about when you’re at the gym:

CysticGal: That’s right, I’m naturally thin and walk this slow on the treadmill. Suck it. And stop staring at me.

UnknownCystic: I don’t like cardio or being a thin guy. No matter how many weights I lift, I won’t look muscular. Where’s the radioactive spider that turns me into Spiderman?

4.What excuse do you give to avoid taking the stairs?

UnknownCystic: Sorry, my knee is acting up again. Old bear-hunting injury. But we ate like kings that night. We ate like kings!

CysticGal: These heels are killing me! I’ll meet you up there. (Said while wandering off toward the elevator.)

5. What is your biggest worry about your body?

CysticGal: That others will be jealous of my supermodel thin bod. Poor ladies!

UnknownCystic: I worry about the inside of my body. Don’t want to be coughing up blood when I’m hanging with supermodels, do I? BTW, the bag over my head helps in those situations.

6.  What is your most attractive CF-related quality?

CysticGal: My raspy voice gives me that Demi-Moore-esque quality… or is it that I’m sleeping with Ashton Kusher?

UnknownCystic: I have no attractive qualities, hence the bag over my head. CysticGal, digging your choice of Demi. I’ll call you late one night for a . . . talk. You can call me . . . Ash, baby, Ash.

7. What would you change about your CF Clinic?

CysticGal: I’m not saying that it’s okay to use prescription drugs for the wrong reasons, but I am saying I’d like to be high the whole time. I think its best for all involved.

UnknownCystic: My clinic experience will be similar to eating at Hooters. I want hot wings and ESPN in every exam room. The nurses, well, you get the idea. And can you tell the “high” woman in room 7 to pipe down, please.

8. What line of poetry best describes living with CF?

CysticGal: “A good day ain’t got no rain, and a bad day is when I lie in the bed and I think of the things I might have been.” I don’t expect UC below to understand that. So I’ll offer him this: “Genetics: It’ll screw you every time.” That is not poetry but just a phrase I like to incorporate into all of my explanations of CF.

UnknownCystic: I don’t understand either one. Hey, this is a chick question. I read “Hunting Dog Monthly.” But here’s one from my hardhat to impress. And it’s from a woman, Sylvia Plath. “Her blacks crackle and drag.” I think that’s what she wrote, but I’m a dude and too lazy to look it up.

9. Who would you be if you didn’t have CF?

CysticGal: Clearly, Angelina Jolie. Without all the adulterous and bizarro family stuff. Just the kids and the famous actress and Brad-Pitt-as-husband parts. Oh yeah, and she’s dead sexy- like me. I’m sure if you asked Angelina Jolie who she would be if she had CF, she’d say, “Cystic Gal.”

UnknownCystic: That’s funny, CysticGal, because I’d be Brad Pitt. Actually, I don’t like Angelina’s tattoos. I’d be Brad Pitt but with my wonderful wife and daughter. Sorry, love is love and hard to find.

CysticGal: Awwww, that’s sweet. And lame! Just kidding.

10. What career would you have if you didn’t have CF?

CysticGal: If CF exists, I would be a child-life specialist at a hospital. I think that job is the best but can’t really do it because of all the infection control issues. If CF doesn’t exist, I would be . . . ME, but with lungs that worked.  I think I’ve done a pretty good job along with having CF. And maybe I’d be fat, which I wouldn’t like, but, you know. Win some, lose some.

UnknownCystic: If CF exists, a scientist to help cure it. If CF doesn’t exist, a Chippendale’s dancer to help cure something else. Does anyone have change for a dollar?

(Thanks to everyone for reading and to CysticGal for her wisdom, charm and grace. I can a learn a lot from her, I think. I’ll ponder that question right after I finish playing Wii all night, eat a California roll or two, and drink a six pack of Old Milwaukee. What was the question again?)

Getting ready for Friday’s Thriller in Manila

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Well, Gentlemen, it’s on – Cystic Fibrosis defined by the sexes.

CysticGal has accepted my blog challenge.

Tomorrow, the battle of CF wits takes place here and on my opponent’s web site.

Here’s my training plan for Friday:

  1. Wash down the venison burger I ate for dinner with a bottle of Tequila.
  2. Roll out of bed around noon to write.
  3. Forgo the shower cause I need a healthy man musk going for this one.
  4. Spend some “me time” reading on the can.
  5. Change the oil in my Trans-Am.

I’ll be ready to rock n roll. See you here on Friday.