Misadventure in the Psychiatric Disease Department

Warning: Contains events not suitable for those with a brainstem vomition center that’s easily excitable (whatever).

Misadventure in the Psychiatric Disease Department. Being the neophyte, I really have to expect having to be the one who’d do the most odd of jobs. First day training in the psych ward, I found myself in the institution’s lab in charge of receiving the specimens and recording them in a logbook. Yup…I got to be the lucky one to have the opportunity to appreciate first (sic) someone else’s produce.



Thoughts kept swirling in my mind: why did I pick psych next?… why did the med tech staff have to be on skeleton duty that day?…and WHY was there a lot of stool specimens coming on my shift? I would’ve wanted to put an advisory requesting that all please hold the urge to respond to the call of nature until the next shift… but that would be cruel. Or maybe make the requests for fecalysis stop… (not gonna happen). With every glance and accidental whiff, it was beginning to really feel like the psych ward to me…I was getting loco.

That was not my idea of an adventure.

Then in came this patient from the outpatient department with beady sweat trickling down on his forehead. He had a plastic bag with a jar in it. It felt warm.

“Here you go.”, he said with a sigh of relief. “That’s everything, I guess.”, he added.
Yep, you guessed it…it was a monster dump.

A lot of effort must’ve been put to come up with this. “Sir, we only need just a very small amount of this.” I said. “But, thanks anyway for the effort. We’ll have enough to last us a year.” I jokingly added.

“You can count on me.”, he happily added.

I quickly followed with a nervous laugh, “The last part was just a joke.”

Whew...

That was a case of bad health teaching. He should’ve been instructed properly. Good thing he didn’t mix the midstream catch in there in the hope of easing its storage on our part. How considerate…yeah, right.

The next day, it wasn’t necessary for me to stay in the lab because the med tech staff was then in full force. Alleluia. So I up and went for my first patient.

For my first assignment, I was told to get my patient’s history and do physical examination. It was time for their scheduled activity and socialization so I found my patient in the middle of the quadrangle. He was a big guy. I noticed that he was sort of agitated and kept on pointing to imaginary people while cursing.

I realized that I didn’t check his file first to learn what his tendencies were and what he was capable of doing in the psychological state that he was in. So I decided not to bring my things instead, especially my pen because he might get it and use it to harm anybody including himself, and of course, poor helpless me.

I approached him and it didn’t take long for him to notice me. He turned to me and started charging like a bull. I was frozen in fear and almost wet my pants, when he suddenly stopped, looked me in the eye and said, “Are you brave enough to take me on, huh?”

With a nervous voice, I answered, “M-m-maybe…?”

“Good, very good.”, he said. “Now there are two of us who have the guts. Let’s go together and look for others.”


Morale: always be prepared for anything. Check the patient’s chart first, especially with psych patients. As for my patient, we became budz. But I still observe a certain degree of caution, can’t be too careful.

A little more time spent in that department and I can say I’ve found the place where I can be myself.

- Finding humor in everything that happens in my life makes the hardships easier for me to deal with.-