making a blog comeback...

anyway.

today... what are the chances that my 3 most tatted patients all came in today?! N is an older man, kinda, or at least looks older than he is, and i pulled down his lip and saw some black marks and was thinking, 'oh s***, what the heck is this, i don't want it to be melanoma' and then i pulled the lip some more and it was a tattoo on the inside of his lip! i have only seen those in books. i didn't expect to see one in real life so soon. but that's north philly for ya. anyway, i pulled it all the way down to read it and it was a little too faded. it was the name of his girlfriend from age 17 or 18. and they had a kid together. nobody uses the word 'girlfriend' or 'wife' here. just, 'we had a kid together'. so, i asked if he also has a tat of his kids' name. and then he pulls up his L pant leg. and there are, like, 20 tattoos below the knee. no real order. it looks like some kindergartener had a rubber stamp spree. kinda. maybe not as messy. and then i asked how many tattoos he has (i ask this question a lot... so shameless of me! i don't care, people think i'm a foreigner.) and then he pulls up his R pant leg. and then it's like rubber stamping times 2.

just when i didn't think i had enough, S came back. and she was totally fun for the first 15 minutes. and then she nearly made me cry. on my birthday. but also because i was starving and grumpy.

so my side commentary about north philly... lots of women here speak with a 'tude in their intonation. even if it's a totally loving conversation or a boring topic. so, instead of just saying "one, two, three, four, five"
it'll come out "one, teew. [head to the right] three, fo'. [head to the left] FIVE. [eyebrows raised]"
but really they actually still mean "one, two, three, four, five".
anyway, when people speak to me with a 'tude, i just try to filter out the intonation. sometimes it's funny. sometimes it works. and other times i become really passive aggressive and want to shove people's dentures down their throats. but i would never do that.

anyway, she's a tattoo artist. and she did a star tattoo (looks like a lucky charm marshmallow) on her face where the marilyn monroe mole should be. and she was wearing pants rolled up to her knees, exposing rubber stamping times a hundred on both her legs. she did those tats herself. which makes me wonder how she is so afraid of dental injections. then... i could see her chest that is covered with a pink spider web. the other thing is that she also had an attempted inner lower lip tattoo. it's like she tried to use the gun on herself and kept saying 'ouch!' 'ow!' 'ay!'... and then it looked like a kindergartener getting frustrated trying to write cursive on top of a moving vehicle.

as if that wasn't entertaining, M came today as well. he's the dude with the cartoon red devil on his face and spider webs and bones and teeth tattooed all over himself. the first time he came he seemed a little moody. but today he was super sweet. i wonder what happened. maybe i smiled better. instead of gawked. anyway. he got all the tats done in puerto rico in prison. my spanish still isn't the greatest. i asked what the number on his hand meant. he said 'un grupo en puerto rico'. he thought it was funny when i asked, 'un grupo de musicos?'. and he was like, 'no, un grupo en prison'.

anyway, i wonder if he thought he would ever get out of jail and thought about the social consequences of having so many visible tats during middle/old age. it was interesting seeing the little kids on our pediatrics floor react to seeing him.

speaking of youthful folly.

H came today with a toothache. he spent the last 9 years in prison for robbery. i'm guessing armed and with some kind of assault, otherwise i can't imagine 9 years. i dunno much about the criminal justice system here. and H confirmed it. when he told me he was on parole for the next 3 years, i asked if there were cameras at his house. he said, 'no, you watch too much t.v.' and then laughed at me for asking such outlandish questions. so i said i asked because i have another patient who is 17 and has to wear an anklet that is locked on her limb as a tracking device, because she's already been in and out of jail. anyway, he just he needs a clean record for the next 3 years.

i told him to stay away from trouble. the story from last night was that he was having a toothache. so a girl told him she'd get him some meds. she gave him some aleve and half a percocet. then he went to sleep right away. this morning he woke up and she was gone. and she took his wallet with her. he didn't know how he was gonna get home after the dentist. i felt bad and gave him a token. a token for septa. not a token of friendship. or a token of love. haha. or maybe all tokens are tokens.

we offered some empathy and said 'that sucks'. he then responded with, 'no biggie. she only took a few dollars.' but if it's the only dollars you have, it's kind of a blow. so he said karma will prevail and usually 2-fold. speaking of folds, he said he would find her and steal all of her clothes including, 'her socks, drawls, bras, shirts, pants, so she'll have no clothes to wear.' i didn't know women wore drawls.

he then asked, 'what would you do if you were me?'
'well, i would maybe find out WHY she took your money? maybe she's got a lot of issues going on?'
'yeah she has issues.'
'or maybe she needed it for an emergency but had every intention of giving it back.'
'she should give it back double right?'
'i dunno.'
i've never been in this situation.

it was compelling to hear him say, "i see a lot of little me's on the streets and try to warn them. before i did time, i heard a lot of people telling me to live a certain way and it was like it went in one ear and out the other. once i was put in jail i had more time to think and thought, 'WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN TO THEM?!'"

the other interesting thing he said was that the 'little me's' have no idea how bad the drug dealing life is. maybe you can make $100 a night. but, what can that provide? it can't support a child. (i guess he's assuming that many people father many children? and feel responsible to provide for their kids?) 'if you by a pair of pampers and some formula, that's already a lot of money'.

lotsa dark forces and spiritual battle around in these broken 'hoods.