Blink-Blink

Some doctors (And not all of them are, but definitely some) can be pompous jerks. Do they think that they are making an impression by using big words that they don’t think you’ll understand and acting like you are some thing beneath them, that you will be persuaded by them? So what if you’re a walking medical dictionary? If you have the personality of a prune pit and the bedside manner of a warthog, you should probably find a desk job somewhere. This is the man who made my wife mad. On a scale of 1 – 10, the most angry she ever gets under any circumstance is maybe a 3^1/2 with tears. If you can make her a stone-cold, dry-eyed 10 in anger, you have accomplished something nobody wants to do. She looked him in the eye and told him, “I am NOT going to let you kill my mother.”

So, the major bone of contention has been that since she had 8 rounds of CPR and may have been without oxygen for up to 10 -12 to even possibly 15 minutes, she is brain dead. But maybe, Doc, it’s you who is brain dead. She doesn’t obey any commands. Maybe she just doesn’t like you. You come into the room and give her a very cursory examination, never greet her or speak to her to tell her what you are going to do, ignore her family members and then go on your way.

Order a CT scan. That’ll show us what kind of brain damage she has. Um, no, doctor knucklehead, well, you go on ahead with your bad self. CT scan shows nothing different from November’s CT scan. Well, we’ll do an MRI, that’ll show a lot more and really reveal what’s going on. Except it doesn’t. There’s nothing on the MRI that indicates anything wrong. So now he wants to order an EEG because she just won’t respond to his commands. I think it’s simply that she doesn’t like him. Everybody who knows her that has visited her have all said they know she’s there.

Here’s the kicker. They moved her from the Trauma ICU to the non-trauma ICU today. We had finished setting up camp in the waiting room and a nurse walks in and verifies we are the family. “I said to her, Miss Bernadine, if you can hear me, please open your eyes and look at me.” She looked at her and smiled. “Could you please try to squeeze my hand?” She squeezed her hand. “Could you please wiggle your toes?” She wiggled her toes for her. All the commands.

Doc, there are two things you have not taken into consideration. One is the will of a stubborn ninety year old lady and the will of God. Some day, Herr Doktor, you will stand before the Great Physician and have to explain yourself. In the meantime, the Great Physician has heard the lady state earlier, before all this started, “I think I’d like to live another 10 years.”