I had the most horrible experience of my career in the emergency room this week. I got to extract wads of bloody tissue from a homeless man's anus after he plugged it to stop himself shitting on the streets. Every few minutes I had to make up an excuse, something like "I need more gloves," and run to retch while gasping for fresh air. I can smell true alcoholics before I see them. I'm not talking about your amateur weekend binge-drinkers, nor the tequila-in-the eye, vodka-snorting, "striving for oblivion" contingent." I'm also not talking about the middle-aged women who down three bottles of red wine a night after they put their kids to bed because they have no joy in their lives. I mean the "I want to pickle my brain, bleed from my arse and lose any sense of coherent reality forever" group of people. They're the really stinky fuckers. Like arse-wad man.He'd downed so much liquor he'd scoured the inside of his stomach raw with ulcers, which were bleeding out so quickly they ran straight through the 6.5 meters of his gut, mixed with shit, and leaked all over the street. His brain was so marinated in sweet dark rum that he was blissfully unaware of his own wretchedness. To be fair to him, he was a little embarrassed, which is why he had shoved toilet paper up his arse--a gesture of politeness, actually.Just when I thought this experience couldn't get any worse, he starts telling me what a "pretty little thing" I am. I ignore this. It can't be happening. It can't be possible that while I have my hands up his bum pulling out shitty rags from his anal cavity he could be chatting me up. Then three of his friends enter the premises halfway through and in all seriousness he shooed them away hissing, "Guys, fuck off. I think I'm in with the doctor." I wanted to vomit on his blistered bare bottom.To an alkie like this, his stay in the hospital is only an inconvenient break in his quest for deeper and more putrid inebriation. I have caught patients drinking the hospital hand-sanitizer because it has at least 60 percent alcohol content and is handily positioned within arm's reach at the bottom of every patient's bed. Some are kind enough to just squirt it in their mouths while others remove the lid and drink straight from the bottle.There are clever ones who drink yummy blue Deicer because the only way to save them is by putting them on an alcohol drip. It cuts out that annoying middleman--the mouth. It's an irony I'm sure that is not lost on their livers. I found one alcoholic in his mid-twenties who was tired of the waiting room dribbling green Toilet Duck down his stubbly chin. He tried to deny it like a naughty kid who just ate all the cookies.Once I stabilized the bum leak I admitted him so he wasn't my problem anymore and finished my shift. On my way out I passed a doubly incontinent racist slob in a wheelchair ranting about the Chinese. After a shift like this I needed a stiff drink and fast.
DR. MOORE
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