Junkie Nurse To Cops: "I Medicate Dead People"

Ah yes, a new spin to the famous line "I see dead people"... Now it's "I medicate dead people" Why is it so embarrassing to be from Pennsylvania?

Let me count the ways....starting with the Lehigh Valley...is that part of Pennsyltucky?

This morning I thought it was bad enough that I see on the news the typical racial bullshit I have been waiting for to emerge in this country post-election win for Obama, and to me it surfaced in a most unlikely place: prestigious Lehigh University - apparently there it's hot to call people racial slurs and to slip nasty leaflets a la psychotic Tom Paine into the school newspaper.

If that isn't embarrassing enough, and frightening enough, I get an e-mail from an old roomie who lives in Baltimore. She's a stay at home mama with a bunch of kids, so she gets her Baltimore Sun online...she is originally from PA, so when something pops up on the Sun's website about PA, it's like she can't resist sending it to me.

So she send me an article that is originally from The Morning Call about a junkie nurse who got popped for helping herself to the drug cart like she was trick or treating for Halloween...well this junkie makes up this lame excuse about medicating dead people? Can you stand it? Ayup, M. Night Shyamalan will be RIGHT over...after all he's worn out his Bucks, Chester, and Philadelphia County locales...why NOT do a movie on a junkie nurse who medicates dead people - can't you see Jennifer Love Hewitt in the title role? It's so perfect I could scream! (But I won't). Ah this is a Nurse Betty role of a lifetime! (Or a Lifetime made-fer-idiot-TV-movie)

Ok, so nurses with substance abuse issues aren't so new - had a gal in the apartment next door post college who was a nurse with light fingers when it came to the drugs where she worked (she was also a total slut with a revolving door on her apartment, but that is another story for another day)...of course I also DO know some fabulously dedicated nurses, but even they will tell you this isn't so unusual.

So this junkie in the article was working in a nursing home. How despicable is that? Stealing drugs from old people? Wonder if she was even nice to the seniors? After all senior abuse in nursing homes is ALSO not so new is it? It's practically a Pennsylvania tradition!

So how do junkie nurses get licenses and keep licenses? Do nursing homes do drug testing on employees? Do hospitals? Health care is tough enough without worrying that the nurse caring for Grandpa and Great Aunt Lucy is hopped up on something, right?

Man on man. Here's the article and I hope this makes LOTS of news. It should. When all these doctors and nurses are threatening to leave Pennsylvania over the insurance issue, maybe we should just let some of them go? And like everything else in Harrisburg, who is minding the store when they give out licenses? Man, is this run out of DeWeese's office like pay raises? UGH!

Baltimore Sun From the Allentown Morning Call
Nurse accused of stealing pain medication
By Paul Muschick Of The Morning Call
November 8, 2008

A registered nurse was charged Friday with stealing narcotics from the nursing home where she worked, after her cover-up story failed because she said she dispensed some of the drugs to a dead person, authorities said.

Heather L. Wolters, 30, of 414R Grandview Blvd., Bethlehem, faces 50 counts of drug and theft charges.

She is accused of stealing 10 vials of hydromorphone, a painkiller, that she claimed to have given to residents at Lehigh Center nursing home in Lower Macungie Township.

Supervisors at the home became suspicious when refilling an automated medication dispensing machine and noticing it needed an unusual amount of the drug, according to an affidavit by state police at Fogelsville.


The only employee who had signed into the dispensing system and removed hydromorphone was Wolters, the affidavit said.

She reportedly gave it to three residents, but supervisors checked their charts and none had been prescribed the drug.

One resident had died before the time when Wolters said she gave it to him, the affidavit said.

I medicate dead people....the dog ate my homework...whatever...junkie is as junkie does and who the hell is working on Pennsylvania's heath care system these days? Where are the checks and balances that these people go to rehab as in IN patient, not work there?