snake oil charlatans alive and well, thank you very much.

Modern Hospitalization, a mini-rant.

Working in a hospital, is, I feel, a lot like being part of not only the porn industry, but part of a porno itself, and not in a kicked back, fun, sleazy way, either.

I'm not talking about the body parts and various gadgetry going here, there and everywhere into said body parts, either.

I'm talking about the whole overdone, overblown, fakey drama of what we do, the whole friggin' kit and caboodle. It's exploitative to both the participant and the onlooker, and yet, as hokey and demoralizing and yet ghetto fabulous as it can get at its zenith of ridiculous gratuity, we just can't look away from it.

Take the dress-rehearsal-for-death which is our Stock Script For People With Really Bad Diseases And Shit. Basically, we tell sick people, in this vague, mealy mouthed, litigation-fearing way that seems to place responsibility in some ridiculously Enlightenment slavering, cosmic ethos of scientific progress to fuck off and leave us alone, we've got twenty other priorities on our shit-fest list du jour.

Cue ridiculous fake orgasms of concern and empathy, etc.

And inside, you know what I'm thinking while we natter on in fake sympathetic tones about this that and the other thing? (I mean aside from, "I'm tired, I haven't eaten or peed in 10 hours and I still got three hours of charting left. Will you please shut up so I can go away and drink toilet water to kill what's left of my sense of moral culpability for the crap care we're giving you?"

Well, this is the other part of that diatribe:

"Hey! Don't worry! You have plenty of time to die! You think you feel like shit now? Well buddy, don't start carping about your tanking blood pressure or clot-throwing arrhythmia just this second, because you've got hours, no... days, if not weeks or months of us basically fucking around with our thumbs up our butts, generating pointless numbers we may or may not treat, yet spout at will to make it seem like you're getting relatively better or, as more often the case, worse. Then we'll pat ourselves on the back when you finally do code, because we ran such a fine death show with all the bells and whistles. It's really not about you, dude. It's about us and our skilz, man.

Oh, and, just a friendly asses up, buddy, take my advice and hold onto yer ass in this place--because if we leave you in bed for as long as I think we're gonna, you may not have one when we discharge you."

Yes, indeedy. We are in the business (and what a business it is!) of keeping people alive to kill 'em later.

And what bugs me is instead of being transparent about the crap care we're able to give, we put on this vague, mealy mouthed, litigation-fearing, freaky puppet show that seems to place responsibility in some ridiculously Enlightenment slavering, cosmic ethos of scientific progress. I mean, I love the Enlightenment and all, but come on, those people lived what, several hundred years ago? Let's move on and acknowledge that paradigm often sucks/doesn't work for things like fixing broken people's organs and stuff.

I mean, in a way, I feel we're all completely condescending crackpots. Consumers of health care know they're getting ripped off and shit on, and that the only way to get adequately treated (or even over treated) is to be some obnoxious sonuvabitch with a Percocet-and-meth-habit death wish. (And I think I may have scored the day's most politically incorrect statement about a certain patient population we're no longer supposed to call "drug-seeking.")

The least we could do is own up to the fact that we're a bunch of fakey charlatans running around selling snake oil. I think people actually might be more sympathetic and understanding if we just came out and told them, "Yeah, all this medical intervention is bullshit. You wanna just go home and watch The Simpsons and eat cheesy puffs and beer until your heart swells to the size of a garantuan beach ball and die, or what?." End mini embedded rant.]