Doctor My Eyes.....

[VivaLasViejas]

For better or worse, I have decided that a nursing career is essentially an unending series of full-moon weekend nights.

All of you who've been doing this for any length of time at all know exactly what I'm talking about: that free-floating weirdness we really can't describe, or identify, but which we spend a lot of time dodging because we don't want to get any on us. It tends to peak during the full moon, especially during hot summer evenings when the booze flows freely and the crazy and the stupid get amped up; but it can happen at any time, and anywhere. And after a while, it all becomes....normal.

I had this discussion just the other morning with my son, who works nights as a medication aide at my assisted living facility. For all his youth, he takes his responsibilities seriously and does his best to appear unflappable, but he was obviously rattled by the experience of doing the last routine check of the night on our resident Munchausen's patient......only to find the 55-year-old sitting on the floor without a stitch of clothing on, practically folded in half and performing an act of, shall we say, autoerotic stimulation (and NOT in the usual fashion, if you catch my drift).

Oh! the humanity! I think Ben's still assessing the damage to his psyche (not to mention his visual acuity after his corneas melted). But the incident got me to thinking about all the traumatic, ugly, obscene, funny, and downright absurd things we health professionals see during the course of a career, and I've got to say there's probably a hundred and one that have burned themselves into my own memory. Unfortunately, they have this annoying tendency to pop into my mind's eye at THE most inconvenient times, like now....when I'd really rather go to sleep for the night.

I can't forget:

.....The patient whose toes resembled Raisinets. I was working my very first nursing job in a SNF, and when I went to unwrap the bandage, two of them dropped off the foot and right into my gloved hands, prompting a rather unprofessional (and almost overwhelming) urge to blow my groceries. Only the presence of the CNAs saved me, and only because I didn't want them to know how green I really was!

.....The 80-something telemetry patient whose 40-something girlfriend snuck in after visiting hours. The tele nurse called the floor to ask me to go check on him since his rhythm was doing some crazy stuff on the monitor. I went in to see if he was OK, and.....well, not to put too fine a point on things, they were going at it hard and heavy. 'Nuff said.

.....The LOL who ripped a catheter out of a confused patient who'd been yelling all night, apparently disturbing her beauty sleep, and strolled down to our nurses' station with the drainage bag and tubing still in her hand. "NOW he's got something to cry about!" she said with a gleam of triumph in her faded blue eyes.

.....The grimly determined expression on the face of a grandfather who'd just been diagnosed with stage III esophageal cancer and decided he didn't want to be a burden to his family. He informed me very calmly that he intended to kill himself. I begged him not to. He promised me he would think about it. Three days later, I read in the newspaper that he had shot himself in the head the day after being discharged from the hospital.

.....The litter of kittens, complete with the mother cat, that an asthmatic patient's family had brought in to "visit" her. (I wound up taking one of them home, a little sleek black kitty who's still with us over a dozen years later.)

.....The new parents who couldn't read or understand the instructions that came with their infant's car seat. The grandparents were just as useless; Grandpa even came in to see the baby with a beer tucked in his back pocket. I had to install the seat myself in their borrowed vehicle, put the baby in it, buckle her in properly.....and then send her home with this illiterate, dysfunctional family.

.....The elderly diabetic with Stage IV decubs on her coccyx, right heel, and both greater trochanters, whose son and daughter-in-law had neglected her so badly while she lived with them that the hospitalist made them stay in the room and watch as a surgeon performed sharp debridement at the bedside.

.....The nineteen-year-old primigravida, with multiple piercings and tattoos, who jerked her hand away when I tried to start her IV because she "hated needles".

.....The hilarity that ensued when said nineteen-year-old primigravida was also found to have dyed her hair "down there" to match the bright blue streaks in the dishwater blonde locks that grew on the top floor.

These are but a few of the scenes that have amazed, disgusted, angered, and otherwise entertained me over the years. What are some of yours?

[hecallsmeDuchess]

Back when I was a CNA in a LTC, I had this elderly lady with the sweetest toothless smile. She was as confused as can be but she would always be in her wheelchair rolling merrily down the hall muttering to herself. I worked 2-10 so I would always leave my showers till after dinner, so one of the days I gave my lady a shower, washed her hair and laid her in bed so she could rest. On my way past her room later on, I was surprised to hear her muttering and making the 'yum' sound so I stepped in her room turned on the light and was horrified by what I beheld.

Somehow, she had undone her diaper and was taking gobs of poop from her diaper and putting in her mouth and licking her fingers too! My state of mind was beyond shocked so all I could say was "Oh my God, oh my God" as I started cleaning her up. I cleaned her the best I could while she was in the bed but it was just too much (poop on her face, hair, bed sheets/rails, finger nails) so I whisked her off to give the second thorough shower of the day. It's been years now but I haven't forgotten it, don't know that I ever will...

[Guest372004]

When my dad was in the hospital recovering from surgery, he peed in the pink drinking container thinking it was a urinal.

[7.5ofPEEP]

Little old man with dementia was admitted with heart failure. He had been placed on a fluid restriction and we were diuresing him. I walked into his room only to find him drinking from his urinal.

20 yr old M admitted after high speed crash. Had been ejected from the car, posturing at the scene. Was admitted to trauma-neuro ICU while neurosurg was readying an OR. I spent a good hr suctioning brain matter out of his nose with a Yankaur.

Working on the code team overnight and we get paged to one of the medical floors only to find that the pt was "seizing", (which they really should have paged the rapid response team and not the whole code team, but that's a whole different subject). We quickly realize that she's faking it and find out she is a frequent flier who actually likes to come in to the hospital to be waited on hand and foot and enjoy some social time. Why the heck she would want to do that is beyond me. So, she hears that we're on to her and violently starts "seizing" again. This time we laugh and the code team starts heading back to the unit and the other nurses back to work. This time she starts having a full out fit screaming, kicking, crying. Literally like a 2 yr old that throws themselves on the floor and has a tantrum. The attending gets so furious that he goes over to her and tells her to "get a grip, act like a grown up and stop wasting everyones time". She didn't know what to say but it was hilarious. She didn't make a peep after that.

Ohh yeah, this ones great. 20 something M, drug addict. Parents are sick of it and are taking him to rehab (again). He becomes unresponsive in the back seat. They are only minutes from the hospital so they bring him to the ED. Go figure, he overdosed. Wanted one last hurrah before going to rehab. ED intubates him and sends him ICU where he later extubates himself an hr before shift change. I come on for the day only to be stuck dealing with this twerp. He is such an obnoxious jackhole that we finally d/c later that day to the train station with a train pass. So as he's getting ready to leave he asks me if he can have his drugs back! What?!? He said they were in "his man purse" (rectum), and he wanted them back. He was taking them to rehab so he could sell them. Needless to say I told him the police had confiscated them when he was admitted. On that note I sent him out the door before I strangled him. What a piece of work.

[Tonya75]

My favorite memory from my tie as a cna-elderly man with demetia who insisted on trying to wear his sweatshirt as pants-legs through the armholes, and genitals hanging out of the neckhole-and usually with several baseball caps on his head, brims facing in all different directions!

We also had a 40 something woman who could only have the clothes she was wearing in her room, because she would actually eat her clothing-she finally died from a bowel obstruction.

And last but not least-all of those wonderful COPD patients who take their oxygen off so they can smoke.

I'm a second year ADN student now, so I'm sure there's lots more to come!

[DizzyLizzyNurse]

Little old man with dementia was admitted with heart failure. He had been placed on a fluid restriction and we were diuresing him. I walked into his room only to find him drinking from his urinal.

We had a lady on fluid restrictions who stole cups from her roommate and was caught.....drinking out of the toilet! :eek:

That's when her daughters decided to just let her drink what she wanted and let nature take its course.

[txredheadnurse, BSN, RN]

Yep that doctor was truly a character. He literally had a phobia about blood. I saw him faint a few more times at the sight of blood...even just blood being drawn for testing. He was foreign born and educated but did manage to get his license to practice in America. I always wondered just how in the heck he made it through medical school with his phobia.

[CrazierThanYou]

These are great!

[3xmom]

".....The LOL who ripped a catheter out of a confused patient who'd been yelling all night, apparently disturbing her beauty sleep, and strolled down to our nurses' station with the drainage bag and tubing still in her hand. "NOW he's got something to cry about!" she said with a gleam of triumph in her faded blue eyes."

This entire thread is just what I needed on a boring Sunday evening, it made me laugh so hard, numerous times but the above one had me going so hard I thought I would fall out of my chair! The funny thing is that I can so easily picture this being my Grandma before she passed away.

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

I've seen some pretty astonishing things too over the years.

When I was still a very new grad I worked for an agency providing peds home care and staff relief to several hospitals. I was called on Mother's Day to see if I could do a night shift at a downtown LTC; I was desperate for the income so I said yes. I got there to discover that I would be the nursing supervisor for the night... Middle of the night I was sitting at the nurses' station on the floor where the sicker residents were doing some charting when I heard this odd noise. "Schwit-schwit-schwit-schwit..." I looked over and one of the LOLs was marching down the hallway clad in a sweatshirt, a diaper and socks, face completely devoid of expression and coorifice white hair standing on end. I didn't have a clue who this lady was or where she belonged but I did know that I had to redirect her before she opened the alarmed door to the stairwell. When I spoke to her she seemed not to hear me, in fact she seemed oblivious to my presence at all. I carefully steered her back down the hall, checking each room with a door ajar looking for an empty bed and another female in the other. I urged her into the bed, put up the side rails, said goodnight and closed the door behind me. I was back in the nurses' station less than a minute when "schwit-schwit-schwit-schwit", there she was again. This time she didn't head for the stairs, she went into another room and tried to climb into bed with the (startled and dismayed) gentleman already occupying it. Back we went down the hall, back she went to bed and I left to resume my charting. This time I was still in the hallway when I heard it again, "schwit-schwit-schwit-schwit" and there she was right behind me. She never said a word to me during any of our little trips down the hall. I finally convinced her to sit in the day room and watch TV. An hour or so later she simply got up, walked back to her room, climbed into bed and never moved again for the rest of the night.