An older couple accompanies a woman on a stretcher with hematemesis and a severely distended abdomen into room 9.  She’s legally blind and keeps asking if they are in the room.  The old man continually assures her with a soft “I’m here, mom.”  I consider the overflowing landfills briefly as my non-latex glove count hits double digits in an hour.  Another bout of black vomit snaps me back to reality.  Mother Earth can take the hit tonight.  The nurse readies an NG tube while I wipe off the patient’s chin with a warm wash cloth and tell her she looks pretty again.  She smiles.

Every time I walk past room 20 I hear a woman sobbing into the phone.  She was out celebrating tonight and a dozen margaritas later she woke up on a stretcher with a fractured tibia and fibula from tripping over a curb in a parking lot.  Somewhere between the bar and the hospital she’s lost her purse, her clothes, and her self respect.  All she can do is apologize to her mother on the phone through sobbing breaths, over and over.

The hours pass by.  A 22 year old woman has an abscess under her eye; the doctor decides to drain it with a needle instead of a knife because he doesn’t want to cut up a young girl’s face.  A 27 year old male has a seizure because he stopped taking his medicine; he says his doctor never gave it to him.  A woman in room 10 watches hospital security put restraints on her husband so he doesn’t roll off his stretcher or hurt someone.  An 84 year old man with dysphasia (he can’t speak) watches in silent pain as a nurse tries to get an IV started for the third time.  An old man tells jokes to his wife and the assistant who is setting up for an EKG; the only interruption of his smile is every few minutes when he’s curled up and clutching his chest in pain.

The Emergency Department showcases the extremes of the emotional spectrum – the best and the worst of human nature.  In one bed is a 27 year old female with cuts on her wrists who washed down all the pills in her medicine cabinet with a bottle of vodka – 20 hours later she wakes up long enough to ask to go to the bathroom and then passes back out.  Two rooms down is a man with Alzheimer’s, cursing at the nurses for trying to remove his shirt.  His wife tells me that half the time he doesn’t remember his name, but he always remembers how to swear.  She tells him she loves him as she calms him down.  They’ll be together forever.

When I drive away from the ER that night Loveline is on the radio.  It’s some girl complaining that her boyfriend doesn’t try hard enough in bed.  The world’s problems seem trivial.

I became an EMT last year and as a part of the course I had to work a twelve hour shift in the emergency department. I wrote this essay for the class, but it seemed like something to share here also. Read out of context it may sound like I didn’t enjoy the night, but that was definitely not the case – I had a great time and learned a lot. I would definitely volunteer to work there again if they had the room.

My friend sent me a link to conque this morning which I’m so taken with that it’s prompted me to drop coding and write a blog post.

Conque lets me do exactly what I’ve wanted, create shells within Vim. In insert mode you interact with the shell as expected. In normal mode you can scroll back through your history, yank text into buffers, paste and manipulate text. Best thing ever.

Two files open on the left, three shells on the right; iPython, MySQL, and Django’s web server – all with syntax highlighting. ]]> http://micropipes.com/blog/2010/08/13/cli-split-windows-in-vim/feed/ 3 http://micropipes.com/blog/2008/12/19/kids-these-days/ http://micropipes.com/blog/2008/12/19/kids-these-days/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:06:17 +0000 Wil Clouser http://micropipes.com/blog/?p=67 It’s that time of year again. Severe weather warnings. Iced over bridges. Rolling power outages. Bad weather and worse drivers.

Back in my day kids would be wishing for woolen mittens or firewood or hot potatoes they could stuff in their pockets. Nowadays all you hear about are these interactive video games and this music television and how kids want smaller cellular phones with bigger speakers; less buttons and more flashing lights.

So what’s the top request this year? A late night gimmick that’s 2-for-1 by the time you get to the end of the spiel? A fancy shirt that cools you when it’s hot and warms you when it’s cold? A stuffed bear with electronic guts so it can turn it’s head and speak but it breaks after two weeks so instead of squeaking out “Let’s Play” in it’s flinty voice it only produces a constant dull hum?

Not this year. This year it’s less tangible, some say nigh impossible, a desire, a yearning. The want to be like Ken Kovash.

Merry Christmas.

I sat down at my computer, checked my email, read the latest rants from Reed on IRC, cheered that IE8 was passing the acid2 test, and got down to fixing some bugs. The chanting drowned out my keystrokes and it was hard to concentrate.

Then, as if a haze had cleared, I understood the chanting:

Ken Kovash. Ken Kovash. Ken Kovash.

Oh wait. That wasn’t a dream. That was everyone else celebrating Ken Kovash Day.

“Nah, I’m going to do these projects beer-style.”

In the dream I specifically remember it meaning “I’m going to finish one before starting another,” and I think everyone I was talking to understood that. I’m sure that was merely a consequence of my dream, but I’m going to try to weasel it into a real conversation soon and see if anyone notices. If nothing else, I’ll see if anyone is listening to me.