Funny things patients say ! - page 27

I feel so guilty for laughing, but I took care of a patient that told me his hemorrhoids "really popped out" when he strained, so he had to just let the stool "flow out of him". So I go to give him a suppository about an hour later and realized that he had a prolapsed rectal mucosa. Poor guy mistook that for hemorrhoids. So all those times that his hemorrhoids were "really popping out", it was his rectum trying to escape his body. When I explain to him what was happening, his eyes light up and he says, "Cool! I can poop out part of my body!"

As a student nurse, I was assigned two absolutely adorable, sweet, demented to the point of
being completely off-the-wall, little old ladies. Neither would ever see 95 again. They happily spent their days planning meals for the entire
congregation of the church the one lady's husband had been minister of.

One of the ladies had had ankle surgery and my assignment was to change the dressing. Neither woman
was willing to stop meal planning any of the several times I tried. Finally, my CI said I could do it
in the pt.'s room, while they continued to "work."

It did not start off as one of my better dressing changes! Finally, the one lol couldn't stand it anymore!
She stood up, came over, brushed my CI aside, washed her hands, snapped on gloves as though she'd done
it 1000 times before, and wrapped the ankle. The CI and I just stood there with our mouths hanging wide
open!

Her son came and told his mom had been a surgeon way back when almost NO women were MDs.

(Imagine Marion Lorne, who played Aunt Clara on Bewitched and Gracie Allen and you've just imagined
the ladies...)

i remember one patient. The nurse was asking him what is number was (meaning pain number from 0-10). he responded by rattling off some long number about 8 digits long. Meanwhile we all just looked at him confused. Needless to say he thought we said pin number not pain number and he recited his number from his days in the army...about 60 years before.