I work in neuro. the land of confusion. I spent my entire evening last night in an abortion clinic (according to my patient)...
Its a unique thing when a pt. that looks so intact says something so off such as: did ya know if you name your kid something less than 5 letters its free but if more than 5-you pay more taxes. Or the lady who when asked her PMH on the admission forms says: i died twice, the drs brought me back to life with toothpaste and extracted the devil from my rectum....right.....
One middle-aged man was deep sea fishing off the coast of Florida all night long. Got downright ticked off when I gently suggested he was actually in the hospital. So I simply sold him his bait and went on about my rounds.
Another was fighting the Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua, working his way back home. As the night wore on, he traveled through Central America, into Mexico and crossed the border shortly before his doc came in. By the time I got off shift, he was in town (*thank heavens*) and hitchhiking back to the hospital.
Too funny! When I was in highschool I had a friend whose grandfather had advanced stages of Alzheimers Disease. He would sit in the front yard in his lawn chair and a fishing pole fishing all day long. He would cast it out and reel it in over and over. It was the only way her Mother could keep his mind busy. :redpinkhe The sweetest thing.
My late grandmother broke her hip about 10 years ago. She was usually sharp as a tack, but the painkillers they were giving her post-op were making her loopy. Her roommate(another lil' ol' lady) had terrible gas when we were visiting one night. The roommate lets one go and my grandmother says "Listen, the geese are flying!" LOL...later we told her what she said and she thought it was funny too.
I had an elderly lady once who needed her meds crushed in applesauce. I put the crushed meds on top of the applesauce & served her. There were some chunkier pieces in the mix. She took a few bites and was chewing the meds up. She smiled at me & said, " I never knew nuts could be so good in applesauce." I just smiled back & told her I was glad she liked it.
I had a gentleman put on his call light one morning and I could hear him yelling in the room. I get to the room and he's obviously upset. He says, "there's a gang of chinese boys on bicycles outside my window. The window in question has a large bush in front of it and you can't see out. I couldn't resist the urge to ask, "Are you sure they were chinese?"
I had another man who liked to get naked & come out into the hall. One evening, he pulled his foley out and was standing in the hall naked and peeing bloody urine on the floor. I walked up to him and asked him what he thought he was doing. He replied that he was peeing in the trashcan. I asked him where he was, and he said, "at the food court in the mall"
One night I had a patient up in her chair and posied in (when we where allowed to posy patient in chairs) and the TV was on and old movie. I left the room and a few minutes later she was screaming for a life jacket. I went back in the room and on the TV was the 1930's version of the Titanic. We spent the whole night looking for dead bodies.
I was making my night rounds one night and kept finding this one patient out of bed. Kept tracking him down and tucking him back in. Halfway through the night we couldn't find him. He had crawled into bed with another patient who had a trach and was unable to the calllight because the first patient was laying on his arm. the trach patient obviously couldn't shout for help.
And my all time favorite. I was walking into the hospital one night with a supervisor and a naked patient was standing in the window on the psych unit with a sign. Since he was on the fourth floor we couldn't read his sign, but the Super went up to the unit and the sign said " Help me! I'm being held prisoner here."
Many years ago I had been taking care of a gentleman with severe alcohol induced dementia. During the night, the call light went on from another patient's room and their family member told us that "...there is a man in my son's room!" When I went down to see what was going on, I found my confused patient sitting on the floor, naked as the day he was born, holding the other patient's foley in his hands. He looked up at me and asked, "So how do you get a dial tone on this thing?!" :omy:
We had a hard of hearing pt on our unit so we left a sign over the bed with HOH. He looked up at it and said, "Honey...I dont think its polite to be calling me a hoe, and on top of that you spelled it wrong". I coundnt stop laughing that night.
A different time I had a confused 42 year old Spanish woman that told me and I qoute, "The French are trying to steal my memory. You see that bottle of perrier water? Thats how I got here. The French poisoned it. If Id of married a Jew everything would have been all right." - see just creeped me out.
Had a elderly gentleman just tonight post op CABG by about 6 hours who was able to follow all commands however his speech was just alittle garbled and he couldnt quite remember where he was. I wasnt totally sure it was anything to worry about and figured it was just related to the meds/anesthesia and surgery. When the MD came to see him I told the MD the man was alittle confused and his speech wasnt real clear but I felt it was meds/surgery related and both the MD and I went into the room to see the patient and the gentleman said as clear as could be to the MD "The woman you are with is beautiful". MD looks at me and smiles and says to me "See that...he thinks you're beautiful and you go and call him confused".
Maybe this was just funny at the time but the funniest thing I ever heard a patient say was a 96 year old lady we were teaching to use an Incentive spirometer-- she sucked on the Incentive spirometer and then said loudly "it's just like sucking on a member". I know we all almost died laughing.
Specializes in LTC, Home Health, Skilled/rehab, Alzheim.
Working in LTC, I get all sorts of funny statements from patients. A couple that stand out are: An alzheimer patient was taking off her pants at the nurses station and I was trying to explain that she couldn't do that and she told me "you act like you've never seen a bare butt before" I told her, you have no idea how many bare butts I've seen.
Another guy told me "It's ok if you gain a little bit of weight" and I said why and he said "'cuz there is a whole lot more of you to love" This came when I was going through a divorce and, yes, gaining weight due to the stress.
katie258
69 Posts
Had someone tell me I was the devils girlfriend once, went home and told the MOTH, he asked " So how do I know him exactly?"