Last edited Wed Apr 16, 2025, 02:09 PM - Edit history (1)

and your son is a hoot, but it does bring up a serious question that a number of us in the medical profession wrestled with in my time and still wrestle with daily---and that's about treating patients with racist tattoos etc.

Personally, I cared for patients, especially in one hospital that got them from three separate correctional facilities, who may or may not have had racist leanings or racist tattoos. I tried to be dispassionate about that; they were sick people who deserved compassionate care and that was it. I think I've told the story of "Ricky", the prisoner whose complaints had been ignored until his colon ruptured and he was in my care for several nights. He was tattooed all over and I didn't really look at them. He was also polite to the max and I just treated him like any other very sick person, even chasing the guards out into the hall so he could sleep. (They were conversing loudly, had the TV and the lights on---very disrespectful.) I didn't ask "Ricky" what he had done or anything about his views, just took care of him. I think most of my fellow nurses were pretty much the same. I do recall one patient somewhere who objected to having a Black nurse; the charge nurse went in and informed him that she was as good as any other nurse in the place and better than most, and he had a choice, to accept her or do without, basically put up or shut up. He put up. This was all brought back last night while I was watching "Berlin ER" on Apple TV and a racist guy objected to a Turkish doctor. She told him she was what he got if he wanted painkillers, which he'd been screaming for, and he shut right up.

Getting off the soapbox now.

She deserved an award for this.