[greensister]

Hi guys---no, to the question about Queen

[greensister]

oops sorry, pressed the wrong button! I didnt know about Queen Victoria and to the second question, well, they accused me of being Sairy Gamp--in the end I lost my job! The above account is written as fiction but it is actually true. I was stitched up! Its not really a fuuny story but taken from my book of memoires!

greensister

[Redman]

Probably the funniest patient story I have was this young Marine that came in with nausea and vomiting. He was in pretty bad shape. I was a Corpsman at the time(Navy Medic for those that done know) so the doctor prescibes phenrgan suppositories for the guy. So we see the guy back in two days he is feeling better but, cant go to the bathroom.

So, we load this young marine up on the table and decide its going to require a digital disempaction to clear out whatever it is thats giving him this problem.

So, I go to work and to my suprise I fined a suppository still in the foil package dig a little more and end up with 6 suppositories still wrapped neatly in there little foil covering and completely intact.

Now, maybe the nurse just took for granted the guy could figure out that you should take the big square foil package off the suppository before he inserted it but, come on how bad did that have to hurt when he put the thing up there not once but SIX times.........

[Redman]

I was sitting here thinking and came up with a kind of crazy story for you guys.

I was working as a paramedic on a military base and got a call in the middle of the night for a car accident patient ejected from the vehicle. So we load up and hit the road lights and sirens. We rarly got calls for off base stuff so we thought it must be in BFE or really bad so we were in a hurry to say the least. We get there to find a single vehicle accident and the patient out in the middle of the field sitting up arguing with the cop.

I do my assessment his right leg is a little questionable we grab the back board and go to put him on it when we just cant roll him. I go digging around and come to find out his femur is staked into the ground beneath him about 3 inches deep....

the guy never complained of pain and to this day I dont know how he is but man was he feeling good that night .....

[TDub]

OK, to the last two:
ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!

[greensister]

Another episode from Ladies of ther Night


13) Ladies of the Night

a few nights later

.................................A call had come in for a Mrs BettyMangle of Grimstone Hill, at our favourite place Tebenroyd, had dropped her dosette box on the floor and didn’t know which tablets she had taken. Could we go and sort her out? It sounded like another fool’s errand and, as we knew from our experiences with the “Old Besom” who was now thankfully off our books, a long drive out but it would keep us out of Gracie’s all-seeing Argus eyes for a good while. As we sped off in the direction of the Tebenroyd Triangle as the area was known ( because you were quite likely to disappear without trace in some of the wild, off-contact hills ) Janet rang our prospective patient to find out more details but soon gave up.
“She sounds completely doollally,” was the pessimistic prognosis.
“Well, it is a full moon, ” I said, quoting an old superstition we had held back in my psychiatric nursing days in the 1960’s. “ People go madder than ever when the moon is full ! Did you ever see that film ‘An American werewolf in London ’ ? ”
Janet cast me a withering look and told me to shut up scaring her with my spooky stories. Having a ghost at Welldoc was bad enough for her nerves as it was ! Some thirty minutes later we stood on the doorstep of Mrs Mangle’s house, at the far end of the street from Vera Casey’s twitching lace curtains , and knocked briskly on the door. After standing shivering in the cold for another five minutes, and several knocks later, there were sounds of jangling of keys at the other side and a great rattling of chains. It sounded as though Mrs Mangle was battling with the forces of evil or having a tussle with her toyboy as the jangling and rattling was accompanied by bangs and howls and the cry, “Down, boy, down!”
Eventually the door creaked open and a furry black object flew out past us and started racing a round my car like a bat out of hell .
“Here, Sultan, good boy !” called Mrs Mangle, our patient, an elderly lady in tattered trousers, a buttoned -up-wrong cardigan and a toothless grin. At once my dog Buster, who had, as was his wont, laid himself out on the back shelf of my car to keep an eye on anyone thinking of breaking in, began to bark furiously. Mrs Mangle’s mutt--a poodle admirably named “Sultan” returned fire, and for a few crazy minutes we forgot the tablet crisis as we sought to catch the dog and stop the commotion. It was after midnight and the neighbours were not likely to take kindly to the row, which might well reach the flapping ears of the Old Besom also who would relish giving us a bit of bad press!
“Here boy, good boy, ” called Mrs Mangle as she tottered into the cobbled street with a dog biscuit held ineffectively in her hand. She threw it towards her runaway pooch but Sultan ignored the titbit and spun giddily, like a whirling dervish , further into the distance , where he stood mocking us ! If we weren’t careful , Betty Mangle, in her loose slippers would slip on the frosty cobbles and fracture her femur causing us even more trouble ! Quickly Janet shooed her back inside the house while I chased after Sultan ,finally capturing him by the scruff of his woolly neck ! Then came the real fun. Piles of little white tablets were lined up like soldiers on the kitchen table. Mrs Mangle proceeded to pick each one up in turn and ask, thrusting it under our noses, what it was and had she already taken it? Eventually we found her list of medications which told us what she was taking and at what time of day. There were heart tablets, diabetic tablets , blood pressure pills and water tablets. Most of the dosette box was empty, but happily, by some miraculous intervention, Mondays and Tuesdays tablets had survived intact. By dint of hard concentration we were able, with the aid of our torch, to identify the markings on each of the scattered medications which were described on the drug list, and by a process of elimination and cross checking the undisturbed days, reconstruct the dosette box and its contents. We now were able to make a fairly safe guess as to what Mrs Mangle had already taken that day. Not that our patient or her dog were any help as we laboured through the array of white pills , Betty leaning over our shoulders and poking her finger at each tablet , repeatedly asking us what it was, and describing, yet again! exactly how she had come to drop the box earlier in the evening, and how she had had to search for them on the floor. She wasn’t certain that Sultan hadn’t eaten some of them , either, though if he had it had evidently done him no harm as he continued to leap around in a frenzy, upsetting our handiwork on more than one occasion.Finally Janet lost patience and ordered the pair of them out of the kitchen. The white tablets dancing before our eyes like a snowstorm we continued trying to decipher the drug company’s hieroglyphs until, at last , order was finally restored out of chaos . I put a call through to Welldoc to check with the on call GP as to what we should do at this unholy hour,

14) Ladies of the Night which was already into the next day anyway. Mrs Mangle’s heart tablet, which she should have taken in the morning and her diabetic tablets appeared to be the ones outstanding to the best of our powers of deduction. On checking with the Welldoc doctor, he advised that we check her blood sugar and give her the diabetic tablets if her reading wasn’t below limits, but not to bother with the heart one as it would be due again soon ! He didn’t sound too concerned, and was probably half asleep anyway, but I documented his instructions just in case ! “ Betty, ” I called, having soon got on to first name terms as was the norm these days, both for staff and patients. “Come over here. I want to check your blood sugar. ” I extracted my Acutrend machine from the bag, handing the safety needles to Janet. Betty reappeared with Sultan in tow. She had put him on a lead around which he capered and leapt like Nureyev doing a pad- a -deaux . Dog lover that I was, this was getting ridiculous. I was fatigued from the long drive, my head ached from sorting out a million white tablets which all looked alike, and I wanted out before I had a nervous breakdown--to which I was rapidly heading! “ Betty , either put Sultan back in the lounge or tie him up !” I ordered her, as Janet got out the needle with which to prick Betty’s finger . “At this date we’ll have all the ruddy tablets back on the floor , and I for one, am not sorting them out again! Go easy with that ,” I added in a mutter, noting the evil glint in my colleague’s eye as she approached Betty, needle at the ready. “Ouch !” yowled Betty, as Janet stuck the needle in her finger . She wrenched her hand out of Janet’s , narrowly missing causing my colleague to stab herself, while Sultan leapt forwards in defence of his mistress, teeth bared. His lead, which was a retractable one, was either faulty, or more likely, Betty hadn’t fixed it properly for it instantly unravelled at the speed of light. Like a whirlwind the little dog flew around the three of us, swiftly binding us together in a tight web of cord , catching the dosette box in its process which spun off the table like a scud missile ,until he finally came to the end of his tether, jerked violently on his collar and collapsed. By the time we had extricated ourselves from our tangle of limbs and lead, Betty, whom we had now come to regard as a mortal danger to mankind, was having hysterics over Sultan who lay in an inert heap on the kitchen floor. I knelt down and gave him a shake but he did not move. His eyes were half open and had a glassy, unseeing gaze while all his four limbs were completely floppy and without reaction. Quickly I released the strangulating collar with which the little dog had unwittingly garrotted himself and tried to feel for a heart beat though I had no idea where a dog’s heart was. “Is he dead ?” shrieked Betty, throwing herself upon the furry black bundle and pulling his little sheep like face to hers . “Sultan ! Sultan baby, don’t die ! Its mammy ! Wake up !” “Bloody dog’s arrested !” I said, turning to Janet in a panic. “Well, don’t look at me. I’m giving no dog the kiss of life, ” replied my colleague a trite unsympathetically I thought. “Well, get my bloody resuscitation mask off my key ring ,” I retorted heatedly , still prodding at what I hoped was Sultan’s heart. We all had masks which looked like rainmates, attached to a little bag on our keyrings for use in an emergency. In the event it was, thankfully not necessary for me to go to such heroic measures as somehow or other Betty had managed to kiss the little dog back to life herself. With a great shudder and whimper he staggered back to his feet and proceeded to gallop round the kitchen again while we proceeded to pick up the scattered tablets. Twenty minutes later two dazed and bewildered nurses left the “Land of Mangle” as I had christened it.( Little did we know that this was only the beginning of many more such jolly jaunts out to this little house on the prairie!) Our clients, mother and dog, were sleeping peacefully, tablets, for good or ill, finally administered. “I think I’ve lost the will to live, ” groaned Janet. “I need a stiff drink, ” I said., thinking longingly of a nice bottle of vodka at home. “I wonder if Gracie’s gone home,” we both said together as we drove back towards Greenshaw where our next booked patient Benjy, who had an artificial feed, lived.

15) Ladies of the Night--16 These stories are all true, just names have been changed!

[nurz2be]

Greensister,


The next time you go to Ms Betty Mangle's home, I would take a camera and take a picture of her pills, up close and leave her a picture, and yourselves, with the name of the drugs and time and days on the back.... If only the dog could read???? LOL


Love the story!!!!!!!!

[TDub]

Pad a deux--that's great! That's one of the best lines in the whole story!

Doolally; that's another word I'll be using.

I personally thinkyou should rename the place the Slough of Mangle, like in Pilgrim's Progress. Come to think of it, you could probably writ ea whole parody of that and call it "Nurse's Progress".

[greensister]

Thanks everyone--I feel I spelt something wrong though--pad-a dough?


greensister

[qaqueen]

As much as I like pad-a dough, I think you mean pas de deux.

Or do you?