anal about bowel movements

[thsnursluvsgeriatric]

:nurse:bowel movements: every third every fourth day? I was always making sure people had their's.

We had a lady that was slight, tough, and mean spirited. One day she'd love you the next she be pointing out your facial or bodily faults. Well she did not escape my patrol.

I would sit with her for a while, this usual didn't work on the third day.

I (at that time) would use the sit to stand and fasten the belts so that she could not hurt herself nor walk away. I'd check on her. she would then usually have a thin 5 ft snake sized bm and we'd be done until the next time.

Well this one Sunday I was going through my usual bowel regimen.

I went to check on her and there was bm everywhere but in the toilet.

Their was a bathtub with a shower head in the same room. I walked her over to the tub adjusted the water. Noticed that she had a sweater on, but her hands and forearms were loaded. I dropped the shower head to take off the sweater. Well the shower head landed on it's back. You can guess what happened next. It was as though it started to rain. Beautiful warm water, like standing outside in a summer shower after a hot hot day.

Well, the resident looked at me, 'oh my ' she said. I thought the shower head would right itself into a side lying position. IT DIDN'T. IT KEPT RAINING. It was like a torrential downpour. It was the oddest thing. I held onto the risident as the floor had become very wet. Our hair was dripping wet, I had very long hair. We were a sight to each other. I called for help as I reached for the shower head finally subdueing it. The ceiling dripping large drops of warm water when the door swung open and my friend Madalyn look at us a second, laughed, laughed some more, laughed.

I felt pathetic, I said to her, DON'T LEAVE US, PLEASE.

She stayed.

Our other partner (wendy)for the day opened the door, looked at us and said 'OH, MY GOD' and walked away never returning.

Well we got the bm cleaned off, hair dryed and clothing changed, no worse for the wear.

We all laughed about it eventually and when Wendy would repeat the story she would leave out the part about walking away. She had somehow been in the room with us. I would gently remind her that she had walked away, and we all laugh about it again.

The lesson learned: In the end I realized that this resident was a five dayer. Sennokot on the 4th evening without bm resulted in the desired affect the next morning. I'm alittle less anal about bm's now but I still like to keep up with MOM if neccessary.

[Megsd, BSN, RN]

That reminds me of when I worked in LTC as a CNA and had to clean a whirlpool tub for the first time by myself. The process is pretty complicated (for a new aide), but involves filling the tub part-way with water, turning the water off, turning the soap nozzle, then turning on the jets (to distribute the soap). Since the water is off, the soap just dribbles out of the jets and cleans the tub.

Well, if you forget to turn the water off, the soapy water FLIES out of the jets all over the left side of the CNA trying to clean the whirlpool tub. My right side was completely dry, my left side, from hair to shoes, was completely soaking wet.

I got several odd looks from my coworkers when I emerged from the whirlpool room, but luckily I dried a few hours later. And the tub, and myself, were really clean.