Here are some more funny stories and quotable quotes from the bedside, if you want them.
1) One of the more unusual practices in the last nursing home I worked in was the "hazing" of new CNAs. It was basically harmless and took various forms, and no one ever knew exactly what was going to happen. But while nobody was ever hurt or even more than mildly embarrassed in the process, the pranks produced some hilarious results.
As it happened, I was on duty the night my son, a brand-new graduate of the facility's nursing-assistant program, was sent into room 212 to get vital signs on a late admission. He looked somewhat ill at ease, but crisply professional in his brand-new scrubs and stethoscope as he approached the darkened room and knocked on the open door. "Mrs. Smith?" he inquired politely, just as he'd been taught, and gave his name and purpose for being there. No answer. He then attempted to turn on the light, which didn't work. Still no response from the patient in the window bed.
My son tiptoed in, trying to see in the dim light from the streetlamp outside, and pulled the cord on the overbed light. The room remained dark. "What the......?" he muttered, obviously flustered but still trying to maintain his composure. "Mrs. Smith, I need to take your vital signs." He reached for her wrist to take her pulse..........and let out a yell that could've been heard in the next county. "OHMYGAWD!! I think she's dead!!" he hollered as he raced out of the room, tripping over a chair and a trash can in his panicked flight. He saw me. "MOM!! You've gotta go look at her, she's cold.....oh CRAP!!" It was all I could do to keep a straight face as I informed him that he needed to get the charge nurse for that unit, as I had my own work to finish before report.
At this point, the two CNAs who were working with him broke up, and one went into 212 and brought the "patient" to the nurses' station.....a life-sized practice dummy used in the skills lab, which was dressed in a gown and wearing a wig borrowed from a resident who lived two doors down.
I don't believe he's ever forgiven me for being in on that joke. It was totally worth it, though.
2) You know you've been in the medical field too long when you're changing the bed of a patient who's getting the GoLytely treatment, and it reminds you to pick up a box of chocolate cake mix on the way home from work. Or when you refer to various bodily fluids in terms of food: "Tea-colored urine", "lung butter", "cauliflower ear", and the ever-popular "toe-jam".
3) Our family pediatrician from years ago was notorious for being a great doctor with an acerbic wit. When the boy in the above story was four months old, he was admitted to the hospital for RSV; since he'd weighed well over ten pounds at birth, he was a beefy little guy in whom it was next to impossible to get an IV. Every nurse on the peds floor had tried and failed, and finally Dr. Carol came in to attempt it. I watched in amazement as she deftly restrained my son's flailing arm, cannulated a hand vein, slid the needle out and attached the tubing, all in a fluid, one-handed movement.......then promptly got bollixed up in the tape. I mean, she had pieces of the stuff everywhere---all over the IV, wrapped around her own fingers, stuck to the sheets, even dangling from her hair.
She looked at me, unsmiling, and deadpanned:"Tape is our friend."
4) I've told many stories of my own less-than-graceful moments at work; now I'll share one about a good friend I'll call Donna, who graduated with me and is, for my money, one of the greatest nurses working today. I'd want her to take care of me if I were ill or injured. Heck, I'd want her to take care of my husband, kids, or grandkids. But I'd hate to see the Press-Gainey scores from one of her recent 12-hour shifts because, as she tells it, she out-klutzed even me.
She started out by tripping over one patient's catheter tubing (ouch). She dropped another patient's dinner tray....twice. She ripped a nurse-server door off its hinges. She raised a bed to do a dressing change and broke the overbed light when the attached IV pole hit it. She fumbled a sterile tray while assisting with a bedside chest tube insertion. She even committed the new-nurse error of removing the spike from a hanging IV bag and dumping half a liter of D5W all over the patient. At that point, I'd have seriously considered turning my keys over to the house supervisor and asking another nurse to take over......but Donna, ever the professional, didn't miss a step. In fact, she told me she logged over 12,000 of them on her pedometer in that single shift, mainly from running back and forth to the janitor closet and the supply carts.
5) Have you ever noticed that no matter where we are on the spectrum of life, "gross-ology" never really goes out of style? When I was in college, a group of us older nursing students basically took over the small cafeteria in the main lobby and studied, ate, and socialized there on class days. We'd also hash over the skills we'd done in clinicals---like suctioning trachs and doing wound care---often to the dismay of other patrons who lacked our cast-iron stomachs.
One late afternoon toward the end of the program, about ten of us were gathered in the middle section of the little eatery, snarfing hamburgers and chatting about the endlessly fascinating topic of flesh-eating bacteria. I'd had the dubious distinction of being assigned to the lone patient in a three-county area who had it; the disease had started in her lower leg after she'd accidently cut herself on a garden tool, and now it involved the entire extremity plus her hip. Naturally, the other students were intensely curious, and without divulging names or personal info, I gave a colorful and descriptive rundown of what I'd seen.
A woman seated at a nearby table glared at me with an expression of disgust and harrumphed, "I'm eating".
One of my classmates held up her burger and grinned broadly. "Yeah?" she chuckled. "So are we. What's your point?"
