"Is it just me..."

[LeslieDean]

I just passed my one year anniversary of returning to work.  Several of my co-workers and I were sitting around charting and reliving some of our "crazier" patients we have taken care of the last year.  I believe I have posted this incident here but am too tired to search for it.  So here me out.

 

I work on a heart floor so we take care of  mostly chest pain patients.  The hospital is downtown so we have our share of the  homeless population.  It is really sad.  Unbelievable sad at times.  They are sharp though.  And paly the system well.  They know if they get arrested to yell "chest pain" and the police must bring them to thee ER before booking them in at jail.  They also know they stand a good chance of not being arrested because if they are, then the police must provide a 24 hour guard while they are hospitalized.  We had one such character.  The police decided not to waste the taxpayers money and decided to just let him stay at the hospital and get treated for the 24 hrs it takes to check all lab work to see if indeed damage has been done to the heart. 

 

This man that they brought up had body lice, crabs all over.  He was also mentally incapacitated due to whatever he had been taking (meth and whatever he could get his hands on).  He also was placed across from the nurses station where at some point I looked across the desk into his room and he had taken his foley catheter apart and was "sipping" on the end of it! I told his nurse to look at what he was doing and before he could do anything the patient took off his gown and came to the desk stark naked and pointed at the staff, each one, and yelled "F--- You" and you and you!  He then proceeded to turn and bolt down the hall to the elevators and his nurse, who was a male, jumped and and took flight after him yelling back to call security.  I remembered this clearly, because, how many times does this situation ever occur?  But what I did not remember was his nurse added "Leslie, it was so funny because you looked at everyone else and said quietly "It it just me or is he getting harder to love?"

 

We all cracked up after that.  There was so much more to the story but I'll stop for now.  I should get ready for bed because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

[Qapla]

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring the sunrise

[RaymondG]

It's probably not just you...

The police would have seen more work out of it all, I imagine.

[pnutts]

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring the sunrise

and not the moonshine or shining moon

[MizPeg]

I just passed my one year anniversary of returning to work.  Several of my co-workers and I were sitting around charting and reliving some of our "crazier" patients we have taken care of the last year.  I believe I have posted this incident here but am too tired to search for it.  So here me out.

 

I work on a heart floor so we take care of  mostly chest pain patients.  The hospital is downtown so we have our share of the  homeless population.  It is really sad.  Unbelievable sad at times.  They are sharp though.  And paly the system well.  They know if they get arrested to yell "chest pain" and the police must bring them to thee ER before booking them in at jail.  They also know they stand a good chance of not being arrested because if they are, then the police must provide a 24 hour guard while they are hospitalized.  We had one such character.  The police decided not to waste the taxpayers money and decided to just let him stay at the hospital and get treated for the 24 hrs it takes to check all lab work to see if indeed damage has been done to the heart. 

 

This man that they brought up had body lice, crabs all over.  He was also mentally incapacitated due to whatever he had been taking (meth and whatever he could get his hands on).  He also was placed across from the nurses station where at some point I looked across the desk into his room and he had taken his foley catheter apart and was "sipping" on the end of it! I told his nurse to look at what he was doing and before he could do anything the patient took off his gown and came to the desk stark naked and pointed at the staff, each one, and yelled "F--- You" and you and you!  He then proceeded to turn and bolt down the hall to the elevators and his nurse, who was a male, jumped and and took flight after him yelling back to call security.  I remembered this clearly, because, how many times does this situation ever occur?  But what I did not remember was his nurse added "Leslie, it was so funny because you looked at everyone else and said quietly "It it just me or is he getting harder to love?"

 

We all cracked up after that.  There was so much more to the story but I'll stop for now.  I should get ready for bed because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Oh Lord, girl! You have to write a book about these situations. Just too, too funnee!        

[Old]

Similar strory.

A few years ago a floor nurse told my wife a hectic story that just taken place. Gertrude was not staff, this was her day to work in the bloodless medicine program. As the nurse told the story, an older gentleman was brought in late the day before. Coming by ambulance from the coast, a three hour drive. He was a real pain in real pain. He gave the ambulance attendants grief the whole trip. They were glad to dump him off.

 

Same over the top behavior in the hospital, they had to sedate him to do the most mundane procedures. The next morning when the sedation was wearing off, he let everybody know he didn’t want to be there. Pulled his catheter out, (Ouch!.) Pulled his oxygen off, refused to cooperate in any way. Apparently he had thrown his bedpan across the room, before running out in the hall with a hospital gown flapping in the  breeze. He demanded that they take him home. Since his condition had stabilized they sent the very angry and shouting old gentleman(?) back home. Things were just calming down when my wife came on the floor. The nurses were laughing now that it was over.

 

Good story right?

That is until my wife said “Oh, must be Jerry’s uncle ______ _____”.

No longer funny. The HIPPA laws had only recently begun to be enforced. The nurse begged Gertrude not to tell anyone else, but of course she told me.

We thought it was funny.

He was a cantankerous but faithful JW from the old school.

He died within a week.

[RaymondG]

I had an uncle who went silly like that on the eve of his death...

A sad story, particularly when it's a Witness.