Four Star ICU Visitors

KimberRN1 · Jun 19, 2005

We had one with mommy obviously dead in the bed....big family conflict with ending care and extubation....anyhooo....visiting hours comes and the daughter is in the room with a video camera in mom's face saying..."Now mommy...didn't you promise me the living room suit"....she went on with various items she would receive upon mommy's death.....Now isn't that nice...not keeping her alive to help her...just to take inventory on what they'll get when she goes....We get some real winners....

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jun 19, 2005

and then there was the man lying in the icu, dying. his family got together and made him a dnr -- i'm not arguing with that decision. but as soon as the papers were signed, his wife took off for the beauty shop to get her hair dyed and permed. she wanted to look nice for the funeral. :angryfire the patient was my uncle, and my mother, not my aunt, was the one sitting at his bedside holding his hand when he died!

LilRedRN1973 · Jun 24, 2005

Well, we had one woman who we surmise had been severely depressed. How do we know this? Apparently, she decided to try and commit suicide. She should have won the award for most creative. She used duct tape to secure a 9 inch chef's knife to the steering wheel of her minivan, floored it, then slammed on the breaks (making sure she didn't have her seatbelt on). She came into the ER with the knife buried in her chest up to the hilt. :eek:

Her family called the unit constantly. What were they worried about? They wanted to ensure their loved one would be getting her regularly scheduled antidepressant. Uh, she was on multiple drips/pressors and was barely hanging on....I think depression was the least of her worries at the time.

We had another patient who decided he was going to try and end his life as well. He was a big boy, around 500lbs. I guess he woke up his family, including his 2 children, ages 8 and 10, and then told everyone he would see them in hell as he was putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Well, he didn't succeed and ended up in our unit, first on paralytics for the longest time, then he ended up roasting at around 106/107 for day, seizing constantly, etc. He was a resident in our ICU for about 2 1/2 months and his wife came in to visit on a daily basis. She would tell us story after story of how he beat and abused her, physically, emotionally, psychologically, etc. But then she would quickly say, "he's such a good man". Hmmmph. I wonder about people sometimes. :confused:

I remember finding a patient with his lips around the foley tubing, chugging his own urine :uhoh21: He had been bitching all night about being thirsty but was NPO. Guess he finally had enough and decided to take matters into his own hands! He was a joy to have around...thank God he transferred out the next day.

I've had a deaf patient who was beat in the head by his deaf baseball teammate grope me, try to hit on me in sign language, make revolting gestures with his tongue.....then, when his wife would visit, he would be Prince Charming. He hung around for about a month and thankfully, improved and was transferred out of our unit. None of the nurses wanted to deal with Mr. Hands (as we affectionately called him) and he got worse and worse about grabbing and touching. We were so relieved when his wife would show up because he would behave himself.

Melanie

kjlewisrn · Jul 14, 2005

A patients father needed 4 units of PRBCs. The son would not consent unless we agreed to put the blood down his NGT instead of IV. The son was certain the risks of blood transfusion would be lower with the po route. I just had to walk away and let the resident handle it.

hollyster · Jul 14, 2005

We had a very well known minister in our unit. When his parishioners were around he was a saint. Around the staff and family he was vulgar. Cursed at everyone,threw things. I was trying to explain to the covering intensivist that the man did not belong in the unit. He was stable as a rock. The MD had a great relationship with the staff and had a great since of humor. He promised to come right up and see what was up. The MD and i walked into the pts' pod and the first thing the pt did was point at me and said that one has big boobs and they are real not them plastic things. The MD tried to divert the conversation(while giggling) and leaned over to listen to the pt's breath sounds. The preacher grabbed the MD's private parts hard and said I guess what they say about you spics is true, you are hung like a horse. I nearly peed my pants trying not to laugh. Needless to say the pt was DC'd home that day.

And I whinned everytime the MD came in the unit.

I thought the stuff I saw pre-hsp was crazy but it doesn't come close. At least back then it was hi-flow O2 and transport.

dgudmestad · Aug 1, 2005

We had a family want to take the entire body home with them. The nursing supervisor called up the chain of command and basically, in our state, a body can be buried anywhere and the family has the right to take the deceased. Soooo, they were escorted to the morgue, went into the cooler and were allowed to remove the body. They walked out the door with a stiff corpse in body bag over their shoulder! Takes all kinds..................

You know, all your stories beat mine.
Although we did have one patient's daughter ask us for a "memento" of her mom who had just passed away but had already been bagged and tagged and sent to the morgue. We agreed...until she told us what she wanted. Could we please go down to the morgue and cut off her hand so she could keep that? Ummmm.....no. OK, how about just a finger. Ummmm....again, no. We finally talked her into a lock of hair. She just couldn't see the problem with amputating a body part from her dead mother and taking it home with her....

erinhen · Aug 1, 2005

what's the most outrageous thing a visitor to your icu ever did?
i was taking care of a multi-system failure patient -- vent, balloon pump, dialysis and about nine drips. he was an inmate with a life sentence, and when we explored the option of withdrawal of care although his family was all for it, the state said no. that would be shortening his life sentence.
despite all we could do, it was obvious that the guy was dying, and the state prison system decided it would be humane to let his son visit the guy one last time. only one problem. the son is also an inmate with a life sentence. nevertheless, our sw prevailed and managed to arrange a visit from the son. there were two prison guards for our intubated, comatose patient and four for the son who was handcuffed and had leg shackles as well.
the visit was going well. the son was quite pleasant and appropriate, asking reasonable questions, very cooperative. i started to relax around him and more or less forget the circumstances of his visit. suddenly, a shout erupted and i was tackled from behind. there was a lot of yelling and carrying on, and i couldn't see a thing because i was on my stomach, underneath an obese prison guard. when the dust cleared, sonny was on the floor with the other five guards on top of him and there was a 3 foot long, homemade machete on the floor. seems sonny was determined to shorten dad's life sentence!
ruby

that's amazing. i just joined the site a couple of days ago because i am considering going back to school for nursing. i guess you have to deal with all kinds of situations!

mattsmom81 · Aug 2, 2005

"Could we please go down to the morgue and cut off her hand so she could keep that? Ummmm.....no. OK, how about just a finger. Ummmm....again, no. We finally talked her into a lock of hair. She just couldn't see the problem with amputating a body part from her dead mother and taking it home with her...."

Hmmm...wonder if we would have eventually found this woman's finger in some Wendy's Chili ?? LOL!!

some people are really bizarre...great stories all here! :)

Zoomer · Aug 9, 2005

and then there was the man lying in the icu, dying. his family got together and made him a dnr -- i'm not arguing with that decision. but as soon as the papers were signed, his wife took off for the beauty shop to get her hair dyed and permed. she wanted to look nice for the funeral. :angryfire the patient was my uncle, and my mother, not my aunt, was the one sitting at his bedside holding his hand when he died!

i can relate. i had a wife get all mad at me one night complaining that we told her her husband only had a few hours and here he was still alive 2 days later and she would have to get her hair set again.

also had a family member from out of town ask me if there was something i could do to help speed the dying process as his return ticket was non refundable and he wouldn't be able to go to the funeral if his father didn't die that day.

i had a patient once who attempted suicide (eventually succeeded) by drinking a glass of drano. unfortunately a very slow painful death. anyway, it turned out he had a mistress and an illegitimate daughter that the legitimate family knew nothing about so they were given permission to visit after visiting hours so we could keep the 2 "families" seperate.

RoadRunner · Aug 11, 2005

I had a patient once who attempted suicide (eventually succeeded) by drinking a glass of Drano. Unfortunately a very slow painful death. anyway, it turned out he had a mistress and an illegitimate daughter that the legitimate family knew nothing about so they were given permission to visit after visiting hours so we could keep the 2 "families" seperate.

Had that one too. This guy had an MI while doing it with his mistress. Oh the creativeness of the medical staff who had to explain what had happened to his wife! But she found out because it looked suspicious... The patient was intubated and unconcious for a while. He almost had another MI when he finally woke up and realised his life was now an open book!!!

On the sex theme again, I've had a patient whose wife was so jealous of his husband being taken care of by nurses (dah!) that she forbid us to get close to him. Easy to do when the patient is just out of open heart surgery! Later, she was there, lying in bed with him, caressing and kissing him despite his intubation and the fact that everyone could see her... Poor guy! He must have thought he was going to be off while in the hospital... wrong!

:rolleyes:

TamaraRN · Aug 14, 2005

So this 20 year old kid goes over to another trailer in the park, barges into the kitchen where a kid is chopping up chicken, gets in his face, & says "So, I hear you're gonna kick my ass." One stab with a dirty chicken knife can be very effective when it's through the iliac artery! His mother had more tattoos than he did, & we had to set separate visiting times for his 2 pregnant girlfriends. The boy was a jewel when we extubated him, first time I've ever used a Haldol gtt.

Another odd one... I took care of a lady after her 18 hour surgery to reattach her scalp (I advise against waist length hair around industrial fans). Her family wanted to take pictures to show her later because they thought the leaches were so interesting.

BabyRN2Be · Aug 15, 2005

All I can say is WOW. I've read many stories about crazy visitors on units during my tenure here on allnurses.com. But I have to say that these really take the cake ... And I thought that stuff that happened in OB could get interesting. Wow, ICU is a life of it's own!!