Share your funniest patient stories...

i was working in icu with a coumadin toxic patient whose ativan dose was wearing off. we just ran several codes and just as we were ending the third code for the night, a phlebotomist walked by and asked if the patient in 462 was allowed out of bed. my adrenaline was already going from the last code...and my heart sank! i walked by the patient room to find him pulling off his condom catheter, ripping out his iv's...blood everywhere! he was confused and swinging at me. he proceeded down the hall naked, stating it was time to go home. i was trying to remain calm, but realized it was impossible for me to quell the confusion of a 6 feet 2 man! after flagging down a couple of staff members including a resp therapist whose arms were bloodied in the take down, we got the guy back in bed. i put him in four point restraints. that morning, my patient told me as i was reinserting his iv that i should be the head of the gestapo! yeah, he wasn't confused anymore!

Neo: We had a confused patient that somehow went from PA to OH and found his way to our ER in a small town because his big orange van ran out of gas. He was short and lanky with long stringy hair and had small beady eyes. He continually kept telling me that "pirates chased me forever!" "Well they didn't get my gas! I ran out before they got it!" And he would laugh. I asked him why he didn't stop at the gas station to fill up. He looked at me like I was the crazy one and said, "Don't you know, that's where they are stationed!"

Later on that night I was making my hourly rounds and saw a naked butt running down the hall with IV pole in tow. I caught up with him and asked what was going on. "The pirates! They took me treasure! I need to find me treasure! (yes he said ME treasure lol).

"Treasure? What kind of treasure are you looking for, I thought you ran out of gas?" I asked him.

He didn't reply to me me but then spoke up and said, "I can't find the bathroom, I need a bathroom" I told him he had a private bathroom in his room.

"I looked everywhere!, I couldn't find it (the bathroom), you're lying to me!" I looked him square in the eyes and told him that I would show him his private bathroom. He followed me back to his room all the while swearing up and down there isn't a bathroom in his room. I pulled the bathroom door open in his room and he peeked around the corner and said, "Oh I see YOU open the door and a bathroom MAGICALLY appears!" I replied to him, "Yup, I make miracles happen!"

Neo: LMAO, That reminds of the patient I cared for that would roll his feces into little balls and leave them set on his bedside stand. The doctor came in one day and asked the patient what they were and the patient said "My $*#@, do you need it for something?"

For those of you who have been in nursing a long time; you remember the "hoppers" where we flushed out bed pans and dumped other waste...for those of you who do not know what it looks like here's a link to a picture
http://www.opacity.us/image894_wash_station.htm it's the contraption on the left.

Anyway, on an 11-7 shift one night I heard a "flush" and couldn't quite know the source of the sound--as I was walking down the hall there was a very suspicious trail of "liquid substance" on the floor trailing out of a patient's room to the "hopper room". As I entered the hopper room there was an elderly gentleman stark naked holding himself over the hopper--and washing his behind. When I asked him what he was doing--he remarked "Cleaning myself! And by the way this is the darndest biggest toilet I've ever seen! Just about that time I heard one of my staff shout "Oh $*%! as she had just accidently stepped in the trail left down the hall and was beginning to slide/skate down the hall!

Thanks for the BIG laugh ! I remember the old Hoppers ! Too Funny !!


Praiser

We actually still HAVE hoppers!

Was the treasure "Little Brown Nuggets"?

Yep, I had a frequent flyer like that. Dementia. Also BKA. There was a nasty nurse I disliked who was not very understanding towards him. I did warn her not to touch the bed rails w/o gloves. That's where he stored his little treasures. However, I could not resist laughing when he would try to attack nurse nasty with his stumps. Sorry.

Us, too!

so do we, only they have large plexiglass covers that hang about a foot over them, probably to prevent pts from using them as toilets