I love crazy people

I have lots of good blog-worthy material saved up from my excellent moose hunting/camping trip to my Chicago-South Dakota-Texas roadtrip with Daniel to the emotional rollercoaster that is living in Seattle, but what inspires me tonight are the crazy people of Harborview.

It's been kind of rough working in the ER... long hours, difficult patients... a lot of unrewarding medicine interspersed with some really great chances to help people. So two nights ago I was hanging out in ED Green (read: the least sick patients in the ED) when somehow, a slew of crazy patients ended up in there all at once.

The most consistent of them wasn't actually crazy, but a teenager who had ingested a few too many 'shrooms and no matter how persistent we were, would not believe that he was still alive. I say consistent because every 3 seconds or so, he would loudly question: "AM I DEAD?!?!?!?" Which we answered in the negative the first few times, but after around number 50, we just let it go. Some one may have even tried convincing him that he WAS indeed dead, but that didn't pacify him either.

Next to him was a good old boy (if you've ever seen Strange Brew, think Dave Thomas's character) who just randomly shouted funny things. I can't remember most of them, but a lot of them made me laugh... none so much as a simply shouted, "ONE TIME! I SURVIVED FOR A WHOLE MONTH ON NOTHING BUT APPLE JUICE!" He was definitely my favorite because he was funny and completely harmless, and only piped up every so often.

And next to HIM, was a guy who was MAD. He stayed quiet mostly, but every once in a while he would get riled up and start cussing at anyone he could: the kid shouting about being dead, the pleasantly crazy guy next door, his nurse walking by, the doctors hanging around... And man, this guy could swear. He was practiced, no doubt and even had my ears burning a little.

The last guy was across the room from the others, but it didn't seem to bother him. He let loose with the eeriest, crazy laughter at the strangest times and would kind of mumble to himself and occasionally yell at nurses. But mostly, he contributed the creepy laugh. He actually was in the ED two nights in a row and was my patient the 2nd night... Pretty entertaining guy.

So it may not sound that funny from the outside, I dunno, maybe it does... but after working for 11 hours and having all 4 of them piping up at once:
Young Guy: "AM I DEAD??!! AM I F***ING DEAD?!?! SOME ONE ANSWER ME! AM I DEAD??"
Happy Guy: "Sometimes tomatoes are PURPLE!"
Mad Guy: "SHUT THE $%@!* UP YOU PIECE OF $%$#@ing *#%@!!!!"
Laughing Guy: "EEEEEEEEHAAHAHHHAHHAAHAAAA!!!!!"
Young Guy: "AM I DEAD?!?!!!"

You get the point. I couldn't fill out charts. I just sat there at my desk and laughed. Good ol' Harborview...