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.....
I'm not a nurse yet, but I have BEEN a confused pt.
When my 2nd DD was born I woke in the middle of the night and asked my DH what time it was. He said 12. If he'd have said midnight none of this would have happened.
I called the poor nurses demanding to know where my lunch was! sheesh!
Same hospital stay, different day, different nurses. I called down because there was no sanitary napkin belt in my night stand drawer. :sstrs: I wasn't very old at the time (21) and am not even really sure how I knew what that even was, I've never seen one and certainly never used one.
Pain meds and sleep deprivation will make ya do weird crap! LOL
I think everyone on that floor was ready to see me go home, or worried for me to go home
This one guy told me "I am a tiger, with a mad gleam in my eye." Um....okay.
I had one sweet elderly man who ate a NASTY hospital food tray of PUREED food. He looked up at me and said "This is just delicious. Just like my mother used to make. Your husband sure is one lucky man!"
Another time, with a dozen hospital personnel/students, during rounds in a teaching hospital my patient, when asked how he was doing by the attending said "Well, I've been giving this here nurse a rough time. I haven't been on my best behavior."
To which the attending replied, "Oh, I'm sure that's not true."
"Oh, it is" he said, "She told me....she said 'straiten up, dumbass!'" Everyone in the room cracked up laughing. And no, I didn't say that to him! :)
I had a pt. tell me the other night that Hitler was talking to him through the heating ducts...the pt was going through ETOH and Cocaine withdraw...and to top it off the pt. made sure the the heat was on full blast...I had to keep comming in the room to turn the heat off. I already knew the pt was on w/d precautions..i wouldn't call that funny but disturbing.
I had one saying the air conditioner was chanting revelations.
I was sitting with the cutest old women who used to be a schoolteacher and had these black rimmed wing glasses and she was very thin and proper. She was reading a book about Mary Todd Lincoln (abe lincoln's wife) and look at me and said
" did you know that this Mary Todd Lincoln was a SLUT?"
One lady came walking into the dayroom in a sheer nightgown covered with BM and asked if she was in the right church.
Found woman in bathroom on toilet who had unrolled a complete large roll of TP and wrapped herself up in it like a mummy. It was funny until we had to spend too much time unwrapping her.
A woman was standing at the door of her bathroom completely naked covered with BM and said she couldn't come to the door right now.
a little old man told me that his wife would be very angry if she knew i'd been spending the night with him in his bedroom. (icu patient, and yes, i spent the night in his room, trying to keep him in bed, his monitor leads on, his lines in, etc.)
another little old man wearing a condom cath was convinced a snake had him by the member and was trying to pull it off. (sir, if you'd stop pulling on that condom cath, i'm sure that "snake" would leave it alone!)
and then there was the man who, in his confusion, removed his oxygen saturation probe from his finger and stuck it on his member. i left it there, because he was sound asleep and not trying to climb out of bed or remove any other equipment. when he woke up, he panicked. "help," he screamed! "i got my dick caught in a vice, and you'll have to cut it off!"
im laughing so hard, im crying! tooooooo funny!!!!!!!!!
When asked what three things she would bring to a deserted island, a resident at a LTC facility stated, "Christmas, New Years and Hells Bells!!!":yeah:
Im in pre-nursing now, but when my grandmother was in the hospital for surgery and on pain meds, she told her male nurse "Let's get out of here, take me out of here on your motorcycle!!!" haha She is usually very serious and conservative so I thought that was so funny.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
probably the worst patient i ever had to deal with was my own father when he was in icu. when i arrived at the hospital to see him, fresh off the redeye from the west coast, i could hear "some confused patient" yelling from the time i got off the elevator. "help! police! help!" and "get away from me, you bit**, or i'm gonna kill you." you guessed it. that was dear old dad. i later learned that he'd sent two nurses to the emergency room . . . .
anyway, i went in to his room to see him, and he said "thank god you got here! you gotta get me a lawyer and get me outta this place."
"where do you think you are, dad?"
"i'm in jail, you dumba$$! i finally killed my son-in-law and they hauled me in here."
(no, he hadn't killed my brother-in-law, but the temptation must have been unbearable!)
i have a cousin who became a minister because he'd always be the center of attention in his church. archibald is not a real religious person, but he really gets off on attention! he always dresses in head to toe black with an enormous silver cross. so archibald came to see dad. we could hear him at the nurse's station, asking for an update on the patient's condition. as instructed, the nurses were telling him, "i'm sorry, but the family has requested that everyone get their information from the daughter who is a nurse."
"no," my cousin insisted. "i'm his pastor!"
to which my father yelled out, "he's not my pastor! he's satan's minion! keep him away from meeeeeeee!" my cousin was nonplussed, but i had to cross my legs, i was laughing so hard, to keep from peeing my pants!
sadly, my mother didn't think any of this was funny and couldn't understand why i was trying so hard not to laugh. we used to take turns sitting with dad because he was calmer with us at his bedside. i tried to stay out of the nurses' way, but my mother never quite understood that. she thought she was the most important person. and now, looking back, i think she was probably already starting to develop her own case of alzheimer's. one night she was sitting at the bedside with dad, and became convinced that there was a ufo outside his window. rather than do anything sensible like put on her glasses and take another look, or ask the nurses what they saw, she called my cellphone to rouse me from the first sleep i'd had in several days and "come right now!"
i got there, and to no one's great surprise (except mom's, of course), there was no ufo. so i'm sitting with mom, trying to get her calmed down and suggesting that maybe one of us should get some sleep when she jumps up, screeches "there it is!" and points out the window -- to where the medic one helicopter was just leaving the landing pad in the parking lot.
we still tease dad about stirring his jello into his coffee and insisting "i always drink it this way."
My own father is rather hard-headed and can be such a trip now, I am kinda dreading what is going to happen in the years to come. I am pretty certain he's going to be quite the handful.
gentlemother
16 Posts
I'm not a nurse yet, but I have BEEN a confused pt.
When my 2nd DD was born I woke in the middle of the night and asked my DH what time it was. He said 12. If he'd have said midnight none of this would have happened.
I called the poor nurses demanding to know where my lunch was! sheesh!
Same hospital stay, different day, different nurses. I called down because there was no sanitary napkin belt in my night stand drawer. :sstrs: I wasn't very old at the time (21) and am not even really sure how I knew what that even was, I've never seen one and certainly never used one.
Pain meds and sleep deprivation will make ya do weird crap! LOL
I think everyone on that floor was ready to see me go home, or worried for me to go home