Isn't there an easier way to give your kidneys a crutch?

The most challenging and taxing thing I did at work last night was putting TED hose on the rather swollen legs on one of my patients. TED, in this case, is not United's little-brother airline or your Uncle Theodore's nickname, but rather something involving the word "thromboembolic."

Basically, they try to squeeze all the fluid out of your legs and feet back up into the rest of you so your kidneys can filter it out and let you excrete it, like good cooperative kidneys should.

But heaven forbid I have a patient with cooperative kidneys.

This little man looked up at me and said, "How do they expect me to do this myself? You can hardly do it, and you don't have any trouble reaching my feet!"

It's like putting on women's hose, except much tighter, and the hardest part is getting the cuff over the widest part, which is the diagonal of the heel to the ankle. I held my breath, stood on my tiptoes for leverage, shimmied and wiggled the thing over his poor swollen tootsie, until I had the heel on the heel and the toe on the toe and realized I had a whole second stocking to put on.

Too bad he wasn't my below-the-knee amputee.

It only would've taken ten minutes instead of twenty.