Hypochondriacs

By now, if you've been paying attention, you all know what a code 16 is. For those of that are new or are asleep at the monitor, it's the radio call for a medical emergency.

It is supposed to mean a life threatening emergency. There should only be six different criteria for calling a code 16:
1. Heavy bleeding. Possible loss of one or more body part.
2. Chest pains. They take that seriously, for some reason.
3. Difficulty breathing. Another big one.
4. Unresponsive. Unconscious. Hopefully still breathing.
5. On fire. Self explanatory.
6. Seizures. Not pretty.

When you call a code 16 a nurse leaves medical at a high rate of speed on a cart and races to wherever the code was called from to assess the offender.

I had to jam my tongue really hard into my cheek to type that with a straight face.

If a code 16 is called for any other reason than those stated above, you are just wasting everybody's time and adrenaline.

Yet the most calls we hear on the radio are for "Dizzy".

WTF???

Since when is "dizzy" a life threatening emergency?

You dizzy? Well, go sit down! Drink some freaking water and lay down until it goes away, fer gawdsakes! Grow a set!

You'd think, being a prison and all, that we would have alot of hardened criminals inside here. Instead we are knee deep in panty-waisted hypochondriacs who want to cry every time they get a skinned knee or a runny nose.

I will still come to work if I am running a fever and leaking fluids from all of my mucous membranes. I would probably come to work in the last stages of ebola with all of my organs turning to mush.

But only so I could give it to one of them. That's just me.

I probably get two or three knuckleheads a day tell me they need to call a code 16 because they are dizzy and they don't feel good. And I tell them the same thing. Go sit down and you'll probably feel better in a little while. If it gets any worse, let me know.

Nine times out of ten, if I ask, I'll discover they had just done a hundred pushups in their cell and now they are dizzy. Or they have a cold.

Duh.

And, of course, like everywhere else in the world, I have heard the term "Swine Flu" used about a hundred times a day. I'm already getting sick of hearing about it. I can't wait to hear the first code 16 for possible swine flu.

It will happen. No doubt in my mind.

I can't wait.