Stochastic Contemplations.

[worth1]

I was driving home today and was listening to NPR on the radio.
They were talking about how folks that work in hospitals were taking the drugs that were supposed to go the patients. because they were addicted.
I'm no fool I knew drug stealing was in hospitals but I had no idea that people were doing it like this and injecting patients with contaminated water in replacement of the pain killers that they needed.
That, my fine feathered friends is crossing the line with me big time.

[rxkeith]

occupational hazard worth.
i have known pharmacists, techs, doctors, and nurses with substance abuse problems, and
have had to inform supervisors on at least one occasion.once you take a controlled substance
it gets easier, and easier to do or justify, until you find yourself far down the rabbit hole.
that is a line i have never crossed. there are treatment programs in place for medical
personnel to get their lives back on track. some do, some don't.
yield not to temptation.


keith

[worth1]

I can honestly say I have never enjoyed working with someone than I have the guy I have worked with for the past year or more.
Yes ever now and then we get frustrated but know to back off which some people dont know how to do.
But 99% of the time it is just great.
The guy is more or less 30 years younger than me very smart and was raised by older Hispanic parents that met each other in the fields working as teenagers.
He was raised old school.
He loves all the old cartoons as most of these guys his age does.
I caught my other coworker the other day watching some old cartoon from what must have been the 40's.
He is from Ecuador.
Much of the time we are hollering at each other, "I say there Boy, say Boy,-----Boy like Foghorn Leghorn.

[karstopography]

Tweety bird and sylvester the cat were my favorites. Foghorn Leghorn sounded too much like some of the men around town, found it a little disconcerting.

I think the last cartoon I watched and enjoyed was “sponge bob square pants”. I’d watch it when my kiddos were little. My kids tell me I laughed more than they did and it’s true.

[worth1]

Tweety bird and sylvester the cat were my favorites. Foghorn Leghorn sounded too much like some of the men around town, found it a little disconcerting.

I think the last cartoon I watched and enjoyed was “sponge bob square pants”. I’d watch it when my kiddos were little. My kids tell me I laughed more than they did and it’s true.

That's what got it started Ole Bubba GC at the job site.

[Clkeiper]

I was driving home today and was listening to NPR on the radio.
They were talking about how folks that work in hospitals were taking the drugs that were supposed to go the patients. because they were addicted.
I'm no fool I knew drug stealing was in hospitals but I had no idea that people were doing it like this and injecting patients with contaminated water in replacement of the pain killers that they needed.
That, my fine feathered friends is crossing the line with me big time.

this Worth is a very sad reality. I know of two people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to get through school to be RN's and became addicts. the one had a patient who blew the whistle on her but I do think that must be a genetic/psychological factor as she watched her son spiral downward into eventual death from drugs. I don't know how the other got caught but it is a terrible sad situation since there are no winners. I can't imagine working that hard to obtain the degree and becoming jobless and unemployable too.

[karstopography]

I had a narcotic, Norco (hydrocodone and acetaminophen), once in my life, after surgery, the surgeon made me take it for 24 hours. I hated how it made me feel and dropped it at the first opportunity. Made me feel like I was imprisoned in my own skin. Hard to imagine feeling good on and wanting more of that stuff, but everyone seems to be wired differently.

My daughter the nurse says there’s procedures within the hospital to prevent narcotic abuse, but there are ways around it for the determined, not that she would ever, knock on wood, want to abuse narcotics.

Funny what mind altering substances people gravitate towards. I like a tiny bit of the toxic insecticidal alkaloid caffeine daily, preferably from quality italian roast espresso beans. The poisonous fungal excretion ethanol in small amounts also can produce some desirable mood enhancing outcomes in my system. The Highly toxic alkaloid nicotine can be pleasant in very small quantities, but quickly goes over to the unpleasant and nauseating in my experience. I’ve found that other herbal psychoactive derivatives now legal in some jurisdictions are very unpredictable and potentially unpleasant in their effects. Based on that, some of the other things people take would be far too risky to consider.

[worth1]

Give me the family sized bag of Cheetos with a cheese burger and I'm good.

[Sue_CT]

Addiction hits all walks of life and Nurses and Doctors are no exception. Once they develop an addiction, the proximity to drugs makes it a temptation. We have probably had 3 or 4 people over the last 20 years that got caught, but I have never heard the bit about the contaminated water. That doesn't even make sense to me. We have access to sterile water and sterile saline all the time. Where would they get contaminated water to use and why? Unless you were actually looking to hurt people, which most aren't. And most do not divert drugs from patients. The use the left over drugs after they draw up the amount the patient needs, which are usually discarded. They steal prescription pads and try to write out their own prescriptions and for the doctor's signature, or pretend the patient dropped the pill and they need another one, etc. They can be quite creative. The saddest case I will never forget. A women I worked with as you said, pulled herself up by her bootstraps, from drinking excessively to go through nursing school. I didn't realize she was an alcoholic. She developed a spinal problem and was given narcotics for pain and became addicted to them. She was eventually caught and fired when she refused a drug test, must have decided she just couldn't fight her way back one more time. She went out to the grave of her father in law, left a note for her husband where she was, and shot herself through the chest with a .357 Magnum. 2 Weeks before her daughter's high school graduation. The line was around the building to get in a pay respects before her service. Her 2 daughters were in therapy for years and might still be. It was heartbreaking.

I digress, lol. I still can't imagine why or how someone would substitute contaminated water for drugs.

[worth1]

[mention]Sue_CT[/mention]
About the water thing.
I have no idea but it is what I heard on NPR they were using sink water or some such thing.
Remember not all tap water is clean especially if injected into the blood stream.

[Sue_CT]

The odd thing is that they would have to go out of their way to get the tap water, but sterile water is close at hand in every med room where they are getting and preparing the medications. In most cases, in order to give IV pain medication you need to prepare two saline syringes at the same time, so you can flush the iv before and after the medication. Most nurses carry those saline flushes around in their pockets because we use them so often. I have heard some med rooms have cameras so maybe that is some sort of incentive, but it would be easier to simply pocket the left over medicaiton rather than try to alter it in a patient bathroom. It is hard to explain unless you are familiar with how it is done in the hospital. You could simply prepare an identical syringe with saline and slip one in your pocket and give the other one. But I think most are simply the "discard" amounts that are never actually discarded. A nurse is a nurse even if they have an addiction, and while there are no absolutes and there are exceptions to everything, I believe that most would not want to hurt patients. Expecially if they could easily avoid it. But there are also people who are mentally ill and commit terrible things. Like I said, there are always exceptions, too.

[SpookyShoe]

Actually, what Worth heard is credible. He says he heard it on NPR. I searched for NPR and contaminated water and found this from Oct. 5th. Look especially at the last paragraph.
It specifically mentions tap water.

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[Sue_CT]

Wow, I didn't say it never happened, but I certainly didn't think it was common. The cases I have seen never did anything like that. I still don't understand why since it would actually be easier to inject saline than tap water. I wonder what the breakdown of "healthcare workers" is. It was apparently not limited to nurses. Crazy. There is the same problems with Doctors, Pharmacists and Pharmacy Techs and probably PAs as well. Anyone who has access and develops a problem can try many things to get their hands on them. Unfortunately, nurses have some of the easiest access. But people can be very sneaky and manipulative. One of the people I mentioned that got fired was a secretary who stole a prescription pad, and one was a discharge planner who would ask the nurse caring for the patient for a prescription so she could get the paitent a walker or something, and then she would fill it out for narcotics and use it. Those are people that never have any direct access, but found a way anyway.

We had a nurse in nearby Mass. that was tried for killing patients. One of our nurses sat on the Jury. Just crazy, didn't even have a drug problem.

[Sue_CT]

OK, the NPR story was maybe a little misleading, or at least we, or "I" anyway, made assumptions that were not necessarily true. I found the original Mayo Clinic study that they cite. There were 6 instances that they looked at over 10 years and involved different types of healthcare workers. One of the largest instances of people put at risk involved one Radiology Technician who was a "travelor" and he was infected with hepatitis and potentially exposed patients in a dozen different hospitals over several years. You can imagine how many patients a radiology technician sees in one day since their job usually only lasts a few minutes with each patient, and multiply that times 12 hospitals over several years, and you get the picture. Of those 6 instances over a 10 year period, 3 were nurses and 3 were technicians. One of the three nurses was a nurse anesthetist. That doesn't mean that less people were effected just that the number of professionals involved were not as large as I maybe assumed from the numbers given. Given the 3 million nurses in this country, I still wouldn't call that common. No less scary, but still far from common. I think other ways of diverting or obtaining drugs are much more common than that, still a huge safety issues since you don't want any healthcare worker taking care of you under the influence of drugs, and you sure want to make sure you actually get the drugs you need. But like I mentioned above, the handful of cases I have seen myself, patients luckily were not harmed or did not appear to be. That doesn't mean they never are.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4669560/

[worth1]

One buck and five doe just walked not 30 feet from my bedroom window making their way to the front yard.
Took a pictuer but it focused on the screen not the deer.

[Shule]

I was driving home today and was listening to NPR on the radio.
They were talking about how folks that work in hospitals were taking the drugs that were supposed to go the patients. because they were addicted.
I'm no fool I knew drug stealing was in hospitals but I had no idea that people were doing it like this and injecting patients with contaminated water in replacement of the pain killers that they needed.
That, my fine feathered friends is crossing the line with me big time.

this Worth is a very sad reality. I know of two people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to get through school to be RN's and became addicts. the one had a patient who blew the whistle on her but I do think that must be a genetic/psychological factor as she watched her son spiral downward into eventual death from drugs. I don't know how the other got caught but it is a terrible sad situation since there are no winners. I can't imagine working that hard to obtain the degree and becoming jobless and unemployable too.

They don't always become addicted via their job. People can get addicted via drugs prescribed by a doctor, and then go on to steal from their job after they're already addicted. I don't claim to know what drug addiction does to people's ability to choose, but it's sad for everyone involved, for sure.

I'm not saying you didn't consider this already.

[worth1]

Texas boy wins national mullet contest. :lol:

[worth1]

And then came the man bun.

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[worth1]

20201120_092158.jpg

Listening to some of the people that call in on the radio about the homeless sort of ticks me off.
They speak of them all like they are some sort of unwanted wild animals.
They assume they are all dope addicts.
Many are old folks that have been left to rot on the street after all usefulness as been sucked out of them from a long hard life.
They had a petition out to collect enough names to reestablish the camping ban in Austin.
Didn't come through so the homeless continue to have a right to camp.
I honestly don't get it.
The people that gripe and moan about them never seem to contribute to the situation they just want them to go away.
To where I might ask.
Many of you know or might not know i feed these folks from time to time.
Not much but a little.
Maybe a bottle of water or a fruit pie.
Sometimes a smoke.
Never money.
As far as I am concerned they can camp out in Austin as long as they want.
Right in the face of the selfish people that don't care and only think of themselves.
Many are mentally ill and have no place to go.
Many are so crippled they can't work left out in the cold like an old useless tool tossed on the garbage.
Homeless camp next to where I work.

[pondgardener]

The next time one of those radio callers mentions homelessness in the same breath as ‘laziness’ or ‘disgusting’ or ‘something should be done with them’, they should be introduced to the various causes of homelessness and ask what they would do when their options ran out. Maybe they would change their tune...