You do not truly understand the addictive properties of heroin until you take care of a patient who continues to shoot up despite being hospitalized repeatedly for Strep viridans endocarditis, Enterococcus osteomyelitis, methicillin-resistant Staph aureus abscesses, HIV nephropathy, and a dash of Hepatitis C.
The social workers avoid him like the plague because of his outer coating of surliness. He rolls his eyes whenever you enter the room. He refers to his brilliant infectious disease specialist as "that Oriental dude".
But one day you catch him watching "All About Eve" on cable and he admits that he love love loves Bette Davis. A week later he describes an episode of "20/20" about Broken Heart Syndrome and wonders aloud if he has it after all the grief he's experienced in the last 2 years.
Soon you feel like an old married couple when you find him back in his room after an interventional radiology procedure, still wearing the bouffant scrub cap that resembles a glorified shower cap, eating half a watermelon with a spoon. "Look at my pee," he says, pointing to his plastic urine container. "Does that look normal?"
The next time he's admitted to the hospital, you breathe a huge sigh of relief when it's just run-of-the-mill community-acquired pneumonia.
