All In A Day's Work

There used to be a single-panel cartoon in the newspapers with that name, I think.

We had a patient break the hospital record yesterday, needing to be tazed four times before he went down.  It took an hour to bring him fully under control.  This is because we bring many people to bear on a situation and take great care that no one gets hurt.  In the old days, you might have to take someone down solo in the middle of the night, hoping that neither you nor s/he were injured while waiting for backup. This particular young man is a boxer, and the chief of campus police, a 20-year USMC MP speculated that he may have developed some ability to stay on his feet regardless of what is happening in his head. 

My rather sad and vulnerable 24 y/o patient requested to speak with me.  She has memory issues from a childhood TBI, owing to abuse from her mother, who also prostituted her out before age 12.  That’s a very rough start in life. She had two names written on her hand, mine and “James Comey.”  She told me those names had come to her in a dream, and should she be worried about this.  I reassured her that the first name was mine, and as I was covering this week on her case it was normal that she would have heard people say it.  Also, Mr. Comey has been in the news, so that very well could just be something she heard walking by if she was near a TV. She wanted to know why he was in the news, and when she heard he used to work for the FBI wondered if she might be in some sort of trouble. It took a while to convince her that she isn’t.