Hospital Mayhem

Want to hear about some of my hospital experiences? I've got quite a few. Now I can't reveal much about them because of HIPAA laws, but I can let you know about their actions....

First one...Mr. T doesn't like tubes down his nose, but hey, can you blame the poor man? So anyways, he pulled it out. Four times he pulled it out! And get this, one of those times, we had his hands restrained in mitten restraints tied to the armrests of a chair. Some Houdini, huh? Also, Mr. T decided that his love life had been sorely lacking, so he simply had to get all the kissing from us angelic nurses. I happened to lean over him to do something, it must not have been important cause cause I can't remember it. As I was leaning close, he opened his eyes, made feeble eye contact and said, "I thought you were going to kiss me." He sounded so despondent that I burst out a little laugh. I couldn't help it! That was about....10 or 11am. From then until I left that day (and the next day), the remarks got worse. They ranged all over from "Will you kiss me?" to "You can kiss me now" to "I'm gonna kiss all of you" to "I'm going to catch you and kiss you." Then he got a little more imploring with, "You can kiss me if you want." Then there's my all time favorite, "Where can I get a marriage license?" I have to admit, I was a little taken back. I asked Mr. T what he wanted a marriage license for, I knew he was already married because his wife was in to visit every now and then. He looked at me like I was out of my mind, "So I can marry you!" I had to let him down gently, his fragile mental status couldn't handle too much of a shock. I told him, "I'm already married, and you are too. You can't have two wives, we'll cost too much money." His answer was logical, to him, if not to us, "I'll have two wives, I'll have alot of money." Apparently he didn't understand that two wives would take his money, not give him money. Oh! Also, when he was asking to kiss me, I mentioned my husband would get jealous. So he solved that one, "I'll kiss him too!"

I think he's been my favorite confused person ever. I have stories about non-confused patients, such as one lady refusing anything and everything because her husband was recovering from surgery and was unable to care for her at home. So she was convinced he didn't love her, so she just wanted to die. Can we say drama queen??

Then there's several patients who were in great respiratory problems, great like, couldn't breathe great, but all they wanted was ginger ales and food. I like what Dawn told us, "You can't breathe, you can't eat!" Duuh. You'd think the basic survival instincts would jump in. To me, breathing and air comes before....ginger ale...and crackers and peanut butter....but that's just me.

Oh, there's also this one guy, who couldn't even wait to get past hospitals turny door thingy before lighting up a cigarette. I think he was in the hospital all of 3 or 4 days. Then he got kicked out of the patient pick-up/drop-off area because of it.

Of course, you can't forget all the ones that poop and pee all over themselves...those just make my day...and there's the staff that come in 45 minutes late when we're waiting to give them report.

Inspite of all that, I still like the job, and I'm getting the hang of it around there. I think. I have 4 patients, two weeks I go up to 5 patients. I also have my preceptor watching me, several of them that is. Some are more hawk-like than others. So don't get me wrong, I'm not griping, I'm just showing you the alternative view of working in a hospital.

There, doesn't that make your job seem like heaven?