hypocaffeinemia

ICU nurse here: We typically put post-operative heart surgery patients on stool softeners as one of many things to help discourage "bearing down" although this doesn't affect the sternotomy as much as you would think (it's more to prevent vasovagal symptoms). It's been closed with some ridiculously big steel wires that will show up on your x-rays for the rest of your life. The big problem with the sternotomy is coughing and using your arms to push yourself up out of bed/chairs as this puts direct pressure onto the sternum. We have patient brace themselves with pillows and train them how to get up without pushing off using their hands.

Isn't it illegal to do that? In most modern, civilized cities you can't do that.

Seems like it happens everywhere. Two sequential taxis did this to me on Sunday in freakin' midtown Manhattan when I told them I was going to Grand Central.