ER is the Worst.

Young women are the worst.
They come into the ER shrieking about their pain being "the worst of my life", they cry when you examine them and they snap at you when you tell them the test results will take an hour to come back. "But we have dinner reservations for seven!"

Middle-aged women are the worst.
They talk down to you for being a young woman, bitch about how their kids are waiting at home for them, then tell you they've had this pain for at least a year and "can you hurry up and fix it so I can go for a smoke?"

Young men are the worst.
They're drunk. They cup your ass when you're stitching up their faces. They throw up when you put freezing into their cuts, and yell at you for hurting them, when they've been in a bar fight that resulted in 7 new ER customers. They hit on you as they leave the ER, despite behaving like jackasses all night.

Old men are the worst.
They tell you they have no pain, that they feel just fine and would like to go home. They don't acknowledge that their chest is filling up with blood and that they're having trouble breathing. They decline pain meds for a chest-tube insertion, then cry silent tears as you jam a finger through their rib-cage.

Old women are the worst.
They pat your hand and call you dear. They say how lovely it is to see a young doctor these days. When you tell them their cancer has metastasized and there is nothing more we can do, they smile and tell you it's ok. They thank you for your help, when you did nothing.

Babies are the best.
They are fat and smiley.

Off to Napanee ER for a month of hard-core community medicine. No CT scanner? No problem!