And whatever you do.... DON'T.. FALL... ASLEEP

[NurseCard, ADN]

The evening shift usually stayed rather busy, and often went by quickly. Then would come the night shift. Night shifts were often slow, unless a patient.. Or two... Decided to wake up and act out because we didn't have any apples, or we couldn't let him or her go outside to smoke at three in the morning.

Due to the utter snail's pace of night shift, it was often murder to try to stay awake, especially after working that eight hour evening shift. Every once in a while however, you would have that bipolar manic who could not go to sleep no matter how hard they tried, no matter how many psychotropics they had taken that evening.

For a couple of months or so, we on unit h were fortunate to have in our midst, a lovely lady whom I will call "ellie". I really did practically fall in love with ellie; she really was quite the interesting patient and I enjoyed taking care of her. She was in her late fifties, and actually rather attractive. When she first arrived on our unit, she was quite delusional, her speech was quite disorganized. She had buzzed her blonde hair and had strangely marked all over herself with blue permanent marker. She often wore these sleeveless, patterned blouses and polyester pants.

Ellie had an odd demand, and she was quite persistent about this. She kept asking the staff to give her dental floss. Dental floss was, of course, forbidden for certain patients, and miss ellie was no exception. She was too ill. Ellie persisted for at least two weeks about the dental floss, until someone finally figured out why it was that she wanted it so badly. Or maybe someone flat out asked her, or maybe she volunteered the information, I'm not sure. Apparently, some women in psychiatric institutions have figured out a way to..... Pleasure themselves, using dental floss. Details? Well, ahem... Though you are all nursing professionals, students, what have you, and many of you are not faint of heart... I will spare you the details as to how a woman may pleasure herself using dental floss, at this time.

Sooooo... I will now skip ahead in the story, to one particular night shift. I had worked that evening shift and as usual, was rather tired and having difficulty staying awake throughout my shift. My coworkers were rather quiet that night, so no stimulating conversation from them. Our dear patient ellie, was still residing on the unit, but she had improved somewhat and was sleeping more. Therefore, no stimulating conversation from dear ellie.

The clock hit three o clock.... Then three thirty... Then four... Then four thirty.... And just about that time, my eyes started to get heavy... And heavier..... And heavier.... Must.... Stay.... Awake..... Must....not....

........fall........ Asleeee...p....

And next thing I knew!!!!... It was five thirty, and there, standing over me, staring at me like a vulture waiting to attack its lifeless prey... Was ellie. Staring right at me. She could have reached over that counter and smacked the red right out of my hair if she had wanted to. But, instead she simply handed me a piece of paper, a "grievance form" actually, and then walked away.

Patients used the "grievance forms" for many purposes, but curiously most of them seemed to prefer writing on them in red crayon. I looked at ellie's grievance form. It said, in bright red crayon:

I need dental

floss and a

comb,

when

you

come

out of

your

daze

I laughed of course.... And then I put the note on the front of her chart with all of the other "grievances" that we had received from her.

I then got myself awake and got my "second wind", and finished my morning duties, taped report, did the head count with the oncoming rn, and then at 7am, I walked out of the nurses station and headed down the hall to the door. As I was walking out of the nurses station, I came across ellie, who was mumbling to herself frantically, and sounded as if everything that she was saying was of utmost importance. As she walked by, I heard her saying the following...

"Cathy.... Cathy the RN .... She was asleep... Sound asleep.... She was definately, definately asleep...". Kinda like rain man.... And all I could think as I was walking out of the building was.... Man am I going to be in trouble!! Ellie is going to get me into huge trouble! Not that I didn't deserve it... I shouldn't have been asleep!!!

Well, I never heard a word about it from my manager or anyone else, thank goodness.

Ellie is one of those utterly fantastic patients whom I was fortunate to work with during my stint as a psychiatric nurse. I have to admit to myself, I really do love psychiatric nursing, and I feel right at home when I'm on a mental health unit. Heh! Kinda like I belong there.