I have been asked several times by several different people if the tv shows like "ER" or "Grey's Anatomy" are accurate. My answer is always no. I currently work with over 214 doctors and only one of them is what I would qualify as good looking. The heart rhythm "flat-line" doesn't exist and if you were to say "flat-line" in a medical setting as a professional you would be escorted from the building. The stockrooms are one of the highest traffic places in the hospital and there is no surface big enough or stable enough to "get it on" on. The tv shows are just that, tv shows. However, there is a show which on more than one occasion has been pretty darn close to accurate, Scrubs. This tv show is actually a comedy so stating this show is the most realist doesn't make sense to most people. But to us medical professionals, it kind of does. Here's an example for yeah.
(Um... if your grandma has died recently, please don't read this. This is meant to be funny not traumatizing.)
Ring, Ring
"Hello," I say into the supervisor cell phone.
"Hey Jessica it's Mark. Listen, there is a guy and his sister here wanting to see the body of their grandmother before the funeral home comes and picks her up. They just got here from Texas," Mark says.
"Body of their grandma? What are you talking about no one has expired today, well unless you know something I don't," I reply.
"Yeah, no she died Tuesday. Her body's in our mortuary," Mark replies.
"Tuesday, Mark that was four days ago. The family wants to look at their dead grandma whom has been in a fridge for the last four days? That's horrible talk them out of it. Tell them to go see grandma at the funeral home after the mortician has made her look all nice again," I replied.
"I tried. They are insisting they see her before she goes to the funeral home," Mark answers. "Look, I'll just take them over to the morg and they spend as much time saying goodbye as they want."
"What, no! Have you been in Frankenstein's laboratory? That morg is creepy. There are body parts and pieces in jars and autopsy tools all over the place. Not to mention would you want to see your grandma laying frozen on a metal slab? Um... just give me a few minutes and I'll move the body onto a bed and take her up to a room in the ICU. Then they can see her up there. Deal?" I ask.
"Ok, that sounds good," Mark replies.
"I'll call you back when I'm ready," I say hanging up the phone.
I speed walk down the hall to the mortuary. The first thing I do is turn on the lights then make sure the door is shut behind me. Like I said, I call this place Frankenstein's laboratory because it really, truly creeps me out. The real kicker is whomever designed this place built the body fridge at eye level so when you open it it's like...right there.
So I pull the fridge door open and sure enough there's grandma. Now I was hoping for a little 98 pound elderly lady but the body that lay before me was somewhere upwards closer to 350 pounds.
"Superb," I say out loud.
I position the bed and reach into the fridge to pull grandma out. I gave it a good, hearty effort of pulling and jerking and even propped my foot up against the wall in an attempt to pull her out. I got nowhere. I max out at 125 pounds and grandma wasn't coming out of there without some reinforcements.
Ring, Ring
"This is Dennis," I hear a familiar voice on the other end of the phone.
"Hey Dennis, are you busy?" I ask.
"Define busy," he replies.
"That would be a no. So I need you to come to the morg and help me get a body out," I say.
"Get a body out? What the heck are you doing taking a body out of the morg? Are you stealing it?" Dennis asks.
"I need to get grandma up to the ICU," I answer.
"I hate to break it to yeah kid, I don't think they can help her up there," Dennis answers.
"Ha ha, very funny, just get your butt down here," I say and hang up the phone.
I quickly dial another number.
Ring, Ring
"ICU charge nurse this is Mindy," answered a female on the other line.
"Mindy, hey it's Whitney, do you have an open room up there?" I ask.
"Yes, 10 is open," she replies.
"Good, I need to put a body in it," I reply.
"Like an ER admit or like a transfer?" Mindy asks.
"More like a dead body," I reply.
"What are you doing with a dead body?" Mindy asks.
"The family wants to see the body before I call the funeral home and I need a room to put them all in," I explain.
"What was wrong with the room she expired in?" Mindy asks confused.
"She died on Tuesday," I answer.
"Wait a minute, you want to put a frozen, four day old corpse in one of my ICU rooms so the family can see it?" Mindy clarifies.
"Yup," I answer.
"That's gross," Mindy says.
"That's what I said," I reply.
Just then Dennis walks in.
"See you in few," I say and hang up the phone.
"Alright, oh... grandma's a big girl," Dennis says looking into the fridge.
"That's why I called you," I say to him.
"Heave-Ho on the count of three," Dennis says.
What happened next was not graceful or easy. We struggled, pulled, jerked, yanked, rolled and finally flopped the body out of the fridge and onto the bed. There was a second there where I thought we were going to drop her. But, by some miracle, we managed not too.
"What would we have done if we had dropped her?" I asked panting from the workout.
"Told no one," Dennis replies.
I laughed as I pulled a sheet out of the cupboard and started covering the body.
"Hope they didn't want to do an autopsy. After that maneuver they going to find some suspicious bruising," Dennis say with a chuckle.
I finish covering the body but hesitate at the head of the bed.
"Should I cover her face? It's kind of the wrong color and a little distorted," I say.
Dennis thinks for a minute before answering me.
"No, I think that would be more suspicious. Let's just go really fast and hope no one looks directly at her," Dennis replies as he starts wheeling the bed out of the mortuary.
That was exactly what we did. We booked it down three hallways, up one elevate and down two more hallways. We passed several people on our way and none of them seemed to notice, well almost none of them. We passed a respiratory therapist who stopped short and pointed at grandma with a greatly concerned expression on his face. As we whizzed past him I shouted "It's OK, she's supposed to be that color."
We made it to the ICU and parked the bed in room 10. The family came, said their goodbyes and left. I called the funeral home and then walked over to lean against the nurse's station where Mindy, Mark and Dennis were all standing.
"Good job team," I say.
"If only the outside world knew what went on in here," Dennis stated.
We all laughed.
I have started calling these lovely days at work Scrub Days.
