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Friday, October 26, 2012

gotta get a fix

It seems at a small suburban ER, patients go to great lengths to smoke a cigarette.

There is a hospital where a gas station is across the street.  Apparently quite often patients will walk over there in their patient gown to get a pack of cigarettes, butt flapping in the wind, steering an IV pole.

One guy actually drove over there with his IV pole out the window next to the drivers seat, one hand steering the pole and one hand steering the car. The lengths that addicts will go to....

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm finally close to quitting for good after almost 10 years...

The wake up call for me was this allergy season. I have been having asthma attacks and was prescribed an inhaler. I like being able to breathe. I don't have health insurance and I had to borrow money to pay for the inhaler. I paid my friend back using the money I would have spent on cigarettes. I've gone from half a pack a day to 1 cigarette a day (2 on a really bad day...but I don't smoke more than half of the 2nd.)

My Christmas present to myself will be quitting for good.

Lynda Halliger Otvos (Lynda M O) said...

Quitting cigs was so much harder than quitting alcohol I couldn't believe it. Good for Anon above; you'll be so glad six months in when the cravings are gone and the synapses have reformed. I wondered what took me so long to quit about that far in but, yeah, it's a hell of an addiction. Way worse than alcohol for me-I quit that bitch in one day.

EDNurseasauras said...

Who the hell can afford to just burn up money like that?

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Unknown said...

If I had a dollar for every time a patient got nasty with me then blamed it on needing a cigarette, I would be much better off than I am now. Too bad we don't get to blame our off moments as nurses on our addictions we haven't gotten our "fix" on recently.

Unknown said...

I get a couple of such type of patients once in a while at a 24 hour urgent care in phoenix. I agree with you. If we'll charge them a fine, we will be richer. They're like kids, quite a handful.

Viola S. Driscoll said...

Indeed. It is sometimes hard to believe that these people, despite the dangers will still go to lengths to get their addiction appeased.