My patient showed me her farts.

CrunchBerries · Jul 20, 2015

Or... or... or..............

Maybe I will just go to sleep.

I am so old. So very old.

Heck no, I'm going OUT! I'm in Mexico! I am going to live life if it kills me! That is why I moved here!

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Jul 20, 2015

The goofy 10-year-old who lives inside of me and loves stories about farts thoroughly enjoyed this one. Hope you're having a great time out at the bars!

CrunchBerries · Jul 20, 2015

The goofy 10-year-old who lives inside of me and loves stories about farts thoroughly enjoyed this one. Hope you're having a great time out at the bars!

You know what? I went out last night and I danced. No disco, no sequins, but I danced and I danced and I had fun and I did not drink anything other than diet soda. I think I danced with every man there.

I had fun! I just got home about 2 hours ago....5:30am. I have been up for officially 27 hours and *I* am 53 years old. I did it, I did my job and I went out with my friends and I danced until I could drop.

Life is good.

I have to go to bed now.

xoemmylouox, ASN, RN · Jul 20, 2015

I laughed so many times in the thread.. I'm glad everyone had a good time and pt's were able to pass gass. Two very important events to occur - luckily for different people at different times.

malenurse69, MSN, NP · Jul 21, 2015

OP I'll make sure to skype you some farts s/p any future surgery to make sure I'm okay

canigraduate · Jul 21, 2015

You know what? I went out last night and I danced. No disco, no sequins, but I danced and I danced and I had fun and I did not drink anything other than diet soda. I think I danced with every man there.
I had fun! I just got home about 2 hours ago....5:30am. I have been up for officially 27 hours and *I* am 53 years old. I did it, I did my job and I went out with my friends and I danced until I could drop.
Life is good.
I have to go to bed now.

I am in awe.

allnurses Guide · Jul 21, 2015

I love this thread! And I love how most patients who know how to strategically fart (the can I go home fart) or the "just want to entertain anyone within earshot" fart somehow remember the best effect is achieved when one remembers to manually lift one butt cheek prior to the main auditory and olfactory event! :roflmao:

BrandonLPN, LPN · Jul 21, 2015

At the risk of getting all nit-picky, I'm not sure someone can "show" you their farts. Short of lighting them on fire, or getting so up close you can "see" the fumes, like gasoline.... (Okay, I think, I'll go to bed now)

sallyrnrrt, ADN, RN · Jul 21, 2015

Or... or... or..............
Maybe I will just go to sleep.
I am so old. So very old.
Heck no, I'm going OUT! I'm in Mexico! I am going to live life if it kills me! That is why I moved here!

Ohh post topic, I am envious in you working in Mexico....physicians have so much more freedom related to alternative therapies etc....how is the autonmy in nursing, how is the nursing philosophy? Sorry for sorta hacking your posted thread....

but bback to to your thread, "just quit farting around, discharge her".....I sorta like your patient. ðŸ’ž

CrunchBerries · Jul 21, 2015

At the risk of getting all nit-picky, I'm not sure someone can "show" you their farts. Short of lighting them on fire, or getting so up close you can "see" the fumes, like gasoline.... (Okay, I think, I'll go to bed now)

Next patient like this that I have I will invite you to come and watch for yourself! HA!

Ohh post topic, I am envious in you working in Mexico....physicians have so much more freedom related to alternative therapies etc....how is the autonmy in nursing, how is the nursing philosophy? Sorry for sorta hacking your posted thread....
but bback to to your thread, "just quit farting around, discharge her".....I sorta like your patient. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½

In many ways nursing is very 1950s here. Nurses wear white uniforms with their cap and all. They will give up their chair to a doctor. if a patient is doing something like smoking in their room they will not address it, they tell the doctor and he addresses it.

I work in the private sector so I don't know how the social security hospitals work, I am told the public hospitals are not great to work for at all. In MX if you have a job you have medical insurance, those hospitals are referred to as social security. If you do not have a job premiums for a family of 3 are about $200 a year. 100% hospitalization coverage, office call, the whole bit.

I'm not licensed in MX so I can't pass meds unless the doctor hands me the drug. Example, we give Lovenox before surgery. The pharmacy does not stock that particular drug so the doctor has to buy it and he give me a stock of it and I give it the AM of surgery. But if he wrote orders for pain meds I couldn't give that. I have a pretty easy job, mine is more educational than anything. I work for a bariatric surgeon and US/Canadian citizens are the majority of our patients.

My job is to educate them before and after surgery. What to eat, how to eat it, I keep in touch with them for years in many cases and work with them on their weight loss and maintenance.

And before anyone says it, there really is good care to be had here. Just like any country there are really good doctors and really bad doctors. I personally believe I work for the best of the best. He i President of the Mexican College of Bariatric surgeons, he is a member of the committee that started board certification for bariatric surgeons, he helped to write that test, I mean.... he's the real deal. Tijuana is where the garbage surgeons seem to congregate. Those guys are flat out dangerous. We really honestly do things the right way.

But as far as nursing, the hospitals that we work with cross train all their nurses. One month they are in OR, one month they are in med/surg, one month ICU, etc.

They don't have PCTs but sometimes the ambulance drivers act as PCTs between calls. The better hospitals have their own ambulances. Red Cross is for the general public (and ambulances here are free, btw. There is a 2 peso optional donation on my water bill every month, about $0.30.) but they can be over worked and it can, at times, take too long to get to the patient so the private sector hospitals have their own ambulances. If you are ill, in a car accident, etc, you call the hospital and they will come and get you. Those guys work as PCTs between calls.

Minimum wage here is a whopping $7.00 a DAY. In the private hospitals a BSN will start out at $18.00 a day and while that sounds low, my rent (for example) is $80 a month for a 1 bedroom house. So it is not as bad as it seems. I do make US wages but clearly, that is very unusual.

Football is HUGE here, seriously HUGE! One of our hospitals bought the nurses a TV for the nurse station but it is only permitted to be on for football games.

Hospitals ... well, the ones we work with, I have never seen social security hospitals, are spotlessly clean. Housekeeping is working 24/7. Patient rooms are cleaned two times daily. Not just emptying the garbage but bathrooms, floors, everything is cleaned on the day shift and again in the evenings.

College tuition is almost free in Mexico. Students have to buy their own books and clinical equipment but the govt pays 95% of your tuition. In trade, regardless of profession, you have to work for the MX govt for free for one year after graduation and then you get your license. There is no college debt here. So there are usually a few nurses at any given hospital doing their 1 year of social service. Your job assignment for that year totally depends on your GPA. The better it is, the better job you get, if your GPA isn't great you end up in some crappy village in the middle of MX. Believe me, it's a BIG deal to them so they work very hard in school.

Frills are unheard of here, it's safe but not fancy by any stretch. Cotton balls in a jar of alcohol, an ice pack is a baggie with ice wrapped in a towel, etc. It's totally doable but they just don't waste a single peso. If there is a cheaper way to do the same job you can bet they will do it the cheaper way but that is the whole country. There is very little waste here.

I like it here, I enjoy my job and I enjoy my patients, I get to meet people from all over the world, life is good! You would be shocked at how many US doctors are moving here due to Obamacare. They are just going to bring patients here for surgeries that are typically self pay. It's affordable for the patient yet still quality care. They also come here to do their research as well, they are making huge advances with stem cell therapy here because they don't have the same limitations as the US FDA. It really speeds up research.

linda1959 · Jul 21, 2015

Crunchberries - thanks for sharing your experiences. Really interesting reading!

CrunchBerries · Jul 21, 2015

Crunchberries - thanks for sharing your experiences. Really interesting reading!

There are a lot of fun things about living here, prices are one of them. I moved from my old house and it was beautiful, 2 stories, 3 bedroom, 1.5 baths, gorgeous Mexican tile and it was $250 a month. I moved closer to the border and closer to the hospitals and my 1 bedroom house now is $80 a month. My water bill is $4.00 a month, I use propane for hot water and that is about $40 every six months. This is the desert so in the summer my A/C is on 24/7 and my highest electric bill was about $100. My phone has unlimited minutes to several countries and my high speed internet... that bill is about $50 a month.

My Spanish is not great, my friends and neighbors are used to me and they understand me but nobody else does. If I need something such as calling the cable company or ordering a pizza I tell my neighbors and hand them my phone, they call and translate my Spanish to *real* Spanish.

I think I have seen the mailman here about 5x in 4.5 years. Mail is not common. The mailman is a Chinese guy with a massive hat and a beat up bike. He puts a notice in your mailbox to pick up your mail at the PO. Utility companies hand deliver their own bills to your home.

You can pay your utility bills at any bank or convenience store IF you pay it 3 days in advance of the due date. If it is not before the due date you have to go to the utility company and pay in person. They will never turn your water off for non payment but after 6 months or so they turn it down to a slow trickle. After your electricity bill is about a week late they turn it off.

Vet care is dirt cheap, for an emergency call on a Sunday, two injections and meds to take home it was $35. I just had my puppy neutered and it was $35.00.

Drinking water delivered to your home is less than $1.00 for 5 gallons, it's great water as well.

Non produce food is *very* expensive but produce is dirt cheap.

A taxi to the border is shared, it's on a route and that is less than a dollar, about $0.80. But a taxi within 20 miles or so is about $4.50.

Hospitals and hotels have a furnace but houses do not. It gets mighty cold in the winter time, especially at night. I sit at my desk wrapped in an electric blanket. My dogs each have an electric blanket as well.

Driving here is NOT enjoyable!

You need an Rx for narcotics, psych meds, and abxs but everything else is OTC including Soma!

Your PCP cannot write for a narcotic, only a pain management specialist can. I had kidney stones a couple of years ago and my doc could only give me Tramadol and Toradol. That was an ouchie.

An Urgent Care visit is $35.00, my friend was here for plastics and recovering at my house. She had an issue and had to go to ER by ambulance (mostly because I am CLUELESS about plastics) and her total bill was shy of $100.00.

They have these pharmacy doctors, usually they are lady doctors that don't want to work full time with little kids at home. They are in a room next to a large pharmacy. If you have strep, need a school physical, something like that you can see a doctor for about $35 pesos or $3.00 USD. You walk out of there with a ton of Rxs so I think they get the bulk of their money from the Rxs they write.

If you run a stop light or are caught speeding you can usually give the policemen $200 pesos or about $17 USD and get out of the ticket. If you have to go to the police dept to pay a ticket it is usually $60 on up.

The city policemen cannot enter your property without your permission ... now, this one cracks me up! If I were to be caught speeding and they turn on their lights to pull me over I should stop and I am required to stop, but......... If I just go home and ignore him and get into my driveway without him blocking me from doing so, he can't do anything about it, he can't arrest me for running from him. I'm quite sure he would be looking for me next time but at that moment, I would have just gotten out of a ticket. (I'm not that brave!) However, a federale is a whole different story.

If someone is caught molesting a child and arrested, he takes a trip out to the desert for some one on one time with the officers. IF he survives that he goes to Mexican jail.

Med Mal is more of a criminal issue than a civil one, if your doctor really is a hack and causes you harm due to sheer med mal, you can sue him but he probably won't be able to pay from prison because that is where he will be.

Anything with an electrical cord is seriously expensive here. A simple fan that is $29.99 in the US in $70 here. My neighbors usually ask me to pick up those kinds of items for them when I am in the US.

Eggs are sold right off the shelf in the stores, no refrigeration. They are usually next to the bread! HA

Candy for kids usually has chili powder in it, I've tried it ONCE, it was NASTY!

Sears is an upscale store here! Beautiful tile floors, the clerks wear nice dresses and high heels, the men wear suits and ties. It's also verrry expensive.

People here are VERY nice! Several times I have been done at the hospital or maybe going out to lunch with a friend. People see an American by herself at the entrance of a hospital and they don't realize, I work there. They will stop and ask if I need help with anything, a ride? A phone call? Directions? Anything?

My Spanish is not great, if I am out and about somewhere and I want a taxi I have (many times) gone up to complete strangers and handed them my phone explaining my Spanish is not great, would they mind calling a taxi? They have always stopped what they were doing to help me.

I like Mexico, I don't know what tomorrow will bring but for today, I am very content here.