Geriatrics: The Flat Tire

This morning Corey, Justin, and I went to the Arlington Heights Health and Rehab center to see some more longterm care patients. From the start, we could tell that AHHR was nothing like Lakewood, Westover Hills, or any of the other assisted living facilities we have seen. The interior had a more hospital-like setting, and the halls smelled of urine and medications (the reason for this was that AHHR was for Medicaid patients who can't afford other luxuries that the other places offered). And of the 4-5 patients assigned to us, all of them had either dementia, a psych disorder, or both. One lady with bipolar and dementia was convinced that she had pneumonia and even went to Sherry to inform her that she had a doctor's appointment later that day (and her roommate looked at me and gestured that the woman was "cuckoo"). Another guy with schizophrenia went down the hall mumbling to himself, and when I called his name, he turned to talk to me but had extremely pressured speech and some mild lip smacking tardive dyskinesia. My last patient had multiple sores on his body b/c he'd been paraplegic (paralyzed below the nipple) for almost thirty years after a C5-C7 injury. Sometime later, when we were all in the conference room discussing patients, a nurse poked their head into the room and asked, "Does anyone here drive a Honda Accord?" I said I did, and after describing my car perfectly, she said that it had a flat tire. Whaaaaaaat?! I went outside to check, and sure enough, my car's left rear tire was completely flat. I had no problems driving to AHHR this morning so I had no idea what went wrong, but even still, I was grateful that my tire didn't burst while I was driving. After talking it over with Corey and Justin, we decided to leave my car at AHHR until after our afternoon shift at Westover Hills.

The three of us did lunch at Chick Fil'A (Corey's favorite fast food restaurant; he joked that the chicken had crack) before going to Westover Hills. We had time to kill before Barb (the NP) arrived, so Corey and I played a round of checkers (and I got soundly defeated). When Barb arrived, she assigned us two patients each and gave us a little information about each one (which none of our attendings have ever done, so this was nice), warning us if any patients were particularly cranky. One of my patients was rumored to be quite argumentative, so I made a note to be on my best behavior. She was a 95 year old lady who used to be an opera singer in FW, so her room was filled with pictures from her glory days in the 1950's. She was nice enough and told me she developed RUQ pain after taking St Johns wort, but fortunately she knew to stop taking it by herself. Barb said that there are many residents here that she'd love to take home and care for as a surrogate grandmother, and others where she can understand why their family doesn't visit b/c they're so cranky. Pretty interesting overall.

I called Triple A after work and they send someone to my car within 10-15 minutes. Justin drove me back to my car, and the repairman showed me that not only was there a nail deeply embedded in my flat tire, there was also a thin slash across part of it (on top of that, the tread was wearing thin so I would have had to change the tire anyway). A part of me wonders if someone purposely cut my tire. At any rate, the spare tire was put in place and I was cautioned not to drive more than 50 mph. Luckily for me, Lancaster St goes all the way to Arlington so I was able to return home without ever driving on the highway. I'll get the car fixed at a later date.