The nightmare purple

My hospital just switched to purple scrubs. Aside from the hideousness of the color which looks godawful on everybody and makes my eyes hurt, it apparently had a purpose other than employee disgruntlement. Apparently, this is how we try to decrease infection rate: we'll force everyone to wear the purple scrubs but only inside the hospital. No one will be able to walk in from home (for some people literally from across the street) or go out to get lunch (we have no cafeteria) or run out for a soda while wearing purple--they force to you to change. Which would all be good and dandy IF we could actually change near the OR for example. Instead, we have to change in the bathroom and either lug our crap to the building furthest away where the lockers are, or stash it in the conference room and hope nobody swipes it. Stealing is usually a major issue. My fricken WATER BOTTLE got stolen the other day. I mean COME ON. I think it might've cost a whole $3, who'd want that?? In addition, there usually isn't all that much time between cases (assuming one is actually in the OR as opposed to doing scut on the floor) so it's not like people can get out of a case, run back to their locker, change, go get food outside, then come back, change again, go to the OR. As for the rest of us, the floor scut-monkeys, we can't even get the greens anymore, since the scrub machines only give out purple. We're stuck with what we had time to cheat the machines out of over the past few months.
And as for the theory about decreasing infection rate--are you KIDDING ME??? where did they come up with that? the hospital has more bugs and worse bugs than if i went rolling around new york sidewalk. And there are sterile GOWNS for the sterile field. I want to see the research that shows that forcing people to change clothes outside the hospital decreases infection, before they force us into something this ridiculously inconvenient and ugly to boot. And that's my two cents on the subject.

Wandering about

I got back from call yesterday mostly spaced out and mostly confused. Luckily I still made my eye appointment (which had been postponed and re-postponed courtesy of late evening rounds killing any sort of commitment I might have made) and decided to wander about town, since the day was so nice (and i could always sleep it off in the bad weather). So this way I got to:
1. get a manicure,
2. stroll through random stuff stores and get new sunglasses--must look cool while falling asleep!,
3. finally get a haircut, albeit at a random chain place (at least it had girls inside, most of the weird places i've been passing before had been barber-shops) and hey, at least i dont look like a a dust broom anymore!!,
4. drool at the puppies in a dog show across the street,
5. buy a shirt at a really 3rd world looking store, just because i got cold,
6. yummm, candied almonds from the street vendor,
7. get tossed and shoved around at Daffy's, H+M and Forever 21 without buying a thing
8. buy a cool humongous purse from a fake bag store
9. actually get back home around 7 just in time to play stupid computer games online.
Ah, the weekend off. How sweet it is.

Did you know?

This was an interesting story I heard yesterday, though not in quite as vivid a detail.
A 25 yo girl comes into ER with abdominal pain and vomiting though vomiting started after the pain. KUB shows free air. The girl is stable but she is tender. Attending is called in to take the girl to the OR to see if she perfed an ulcer or what. Right before going to the OR, the attending asks her if she had rough sex the night before (earning himself the looks of "say wha?") and anyway, any such activity is denied. The lap doesnt show any perforation, but there is some fluid in cul-de-sac which ob/gyn evaluates intra-op and says it looks physiological. Next day and (with her father this time in the room), the girl mentions that she may have had enough to drink the night before to not remember anything and or pass out and oh by the way she has a new partner. Apparently during rough sex, air can get pushed up into the uterus and out the fallopian tubes, causing intraperitoneal air with more or less irritating symptoms. Moral of the story: if you think the family is dysfunctional, get the family in the room to get the best sexual history ever.