Oddbean

Unfortunately, the people I see are usually not happy to see me, so dark humor is a coping mechanism. I get to see pretty much every type of person and bizarre situation. Foreign bodies that people like to stick up their butts. One of the funniest encounters was a dementia patient that clearly must have been a pimp or something at some point. He would tell us about how he had to beat the shit out of people for getting rough with his girls. There's also a lot of really sad shit mostly. Lots of drug use, homelessness, and mental illness (usually at the same time). I've been called every bad name there is, and have been explosed to almost every fluid in the human body. I once had a gun shot victim thrown over the counter of my waiting room after which his masked "friends" took off. Gangs are getting worse. CPR on a baby while the parents scream and cry was the worst experience so far, but you always know there can be worse. I get to see a lot of the effects of fiat, actually. Degrading food, care, and increasing shortages in healthcare. It's been a wild, interesting, fun, miserable, enlightening, and dark experience that I am somehow thankful and not thankful for. I've had several "defining moments" as Dr. Phil calls them. I get to meet really old people too, which has been mostly nice. Learn lots. I had a conversation about calculus with a dementia patient a while back who was what we call pleasantly confused. Turns out he was a Math professor and he lit up when I started talking about my love and hatred of mathematics. It's a joy to see people briefly come back to reality.