Nothing to lose

Hey Joe,

It was awesome hanging out with you the past week. I've gotta hand it to you. I cried during Rocky Balboa...it's a damn good movie. Anyway, on to my post.

There are few things scarier than a man who has nothing to lose. My patient today was a career military man. He received a dishonorable discharge and has been struggling to transition back to civilian life. He is akin to an incarcerated criminal. He can't find a job, his 9 kids and 4 ex-girlfriends don't love him. He has no friends and he gets treated like shit because of the color of his skin. His health is crap - metabolic syndrome plus prostate cancer. This guy has nothing.

When I asked him why he didn't take his psych medications, he didn't respond. He kept looking away like he was responding to internal stimuli. Then he turned to me with his eyes bulging out and said, "Sometimes I go crazy. You never know what I'm gonna do. I don't even know what I'm gonna do." Then he started going off about how all he thought about every day was finding new ways to kill people. He said this was to protect him from the evil conspiracy that was keeping him from succeeding. This guy was huge with 23 years of military training. I started to worry a little when he turned to the side and I caught a glimpse of the knife in his pocket. This was the first time in my med school career where I didn't feel safe or in control of the situation. The guy was between me and the door, so I kept reflecting his frustration about not being able to transition into society and waited for him to diffuse. Luckily, he changed from wanting to kill others to wanting to kill himself. Then he broke down and started crying. That's when I got the hell out of there and called the cops with my attending to 5150 this guy.

Update: This guy escaped from the "hospital" yesterday. The sheriffs are out looking for him and I have a nagging suspicion that he is going to come looking for me to get his knife back. Whatever.

-bender

My college friends are such dorks. We rolled down the streets of LA blasting "Party like a rockstar" with our windows rolled down. Yeah...true thugs. Between us, we were harvard lawyers, a doctor, a US consulate diplomat and myself. Yeah...badass. alright...