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.....
My beloved grandmother got confused in her later days and believed that there was a radio station broadcasting from the ceiling behind her bed in the nursing home. While listening to this station, she managed to reconnect with her old high school boyfriend who she was convinced was going to pick her up in his airplane and take her out of the nursing home. One day, in my grandmother's world, her boyfriend told her that he'd had an affair with her housekeeper.
The housekeeper, who was a saint, came to visit gramma one day and my grandmother ripped her up one side and down the other for stealing her boyfriend. The poor housekeeper of course had no idea what was going on.
It seemed to blow over quickly though, because shortly after that, my grandmother began her affiar with Frank Sinatra and forgot all about the housekeeper's indiscretion~ :)
we were loading an elderly woman into the helicopter during an interfacility transfer when she grabbed my collar and asked if either me or my partner would "please ride with me". I told her that we both would probably get in if that'd make her feel better!
I felt so bad because it never dawned on us that she thought we'd just shove her in there and then leave her alone!
another time a woman had wrecked her car into a tree. when we arrived the police and firefighters had formed a cordon around the victim, who was on the side of the road, ambulatory and completely naked. She kept pointing at the tree and yelling "I want that man arrested!" (minor damage, subsequently was found to have no closed head injury) When we were immobilizing her, I asked if she had any ID and she put her fingers into her lady parts, producing 23 cents in change. I said "thank you" and put it in a specimen bag. We tried to get the security guards at the hospital to log it but they would have NOTHING to do with it!!
We use decadron a lot and it can cause psychosis...i had this super cute lol....she called me into her room as she was hiding under the blanket...she tells me, I want to ask you something but i'm afraid you will think im crazy.
She says...do you see it?
Me-ok, i give..what?
her-i see it over there on the sink..the little blue adobe and its lights are on and it is staring at me.
Me-right. thats definetly not an A&Ox4.
My roommate was on my unit about a year ago...i got a call at 0300...he is frantic (on decadron too)..."they" were hanging him up by his toes taking naked pictures of him (yeah that was CT)...the fat woman next to him stole his ipod and threw up in his food (he had a private room). Then there was the day he was in tears bc he thought i didnt believe him when he told me about the birds on the ceiling that were coming out of the curtains.
Classic. My pt one night...the resident came in to do his assessment and asks=where are we right now? She says-well she (pointing at me) keeps telling me its 2007 and this is the hospital but she's crazy, its really 1956 and im at home in my bed (rolling her eyes).
Pt wasn't really confused, just drugged... Doing a lady partsl hysterectomy, pt chose spinal anesthesia with some sedation. She kept asking the surgeon about hormone replacement therapy. She was quiet for a minute, then we hear her ask "Dr. R, when you give it to your women do you prefer lady partslly or orally?"
Thought we were gonna need a mop we all laughed so hard!
Another time a pt was having her bunion removed, under spinal. Half-way thru, she siad "My husband and I were practicing with my foot in the air last night... how long before I can have sex?" Dr asked her to at least wait until she got out of the OR....
a co-worker told me about a woman having a colonoscopy, after she was sedated the doctor begen to insert the scope and she moaned "It's too big Earl...take it out!!!" After looking on her chart, Earl turned out to be her husband's brother. makes ya go hmmmm...?
I loved working in LTC and the Alzheimers unit. It was so entertaining. We had one elderly gentleman that was a farmer all his life. He would sleep all day and be up all night. He would be found going up and down the hall calling the pigs and cows. The best one was when the CNA's finally got him into bed he got back up (he was in a low bed) took his depend off and was on his hands and knee's with a flower off the window sill. He had dumped the dirt on the floor and was pushing the dirt around with his hands. When we asked him what he was doing he just smiled and told us he was plowing the fields. He was such a entertaining old fella.
a co-worker told me about a woman having a colonoscopy, after she was sedated the doctor begen to insert the scope and she moaned "It's too big Earl...take it out!!!" After looking on her chart, Earl turned out to be her husband's brother. makes ya go hmmmm...?
Had a sweet-looking LOL who would yell and curse at her husband because he wasn't answering her. When I reminded her that "Alvin was in heaven," she replied "Welll! He won't be there long!"
My grandfather was an avid golfer who won many tournaments at his country club. He played, albeit slowly, up until the cancer made him too weak. The second to last thing he said before he died was...
"That's enough golf."
He hadn't played in months, and when he said this he'd been drifting in and out of consciousness for a day. I always thought that was his way of accepting he was going.
While working in the Medical Intensive Care Unit in New Orleans one day and caring for a patient going through DT's, the doctor asked me to assess the patient's orientation. The patient (an 18 wheeler truck driver) babbled nonsensically to the typical questions, but once I asked him to "give me his 10-20" he said he was driving on I-10 about 20 miles outside of Houston??? Go figure. At least we found out where he was.
Specializes in Critical care, neuroscience, telemetry,.
I had a young man as a patient who had a closed head injury and a fractured pelvis. He wore a pelvic fixator, but was ambulatory. I caught him wandering down the hall away from his room and went to bring him back.
"C'mon', I said. "Let's go back to your room."
He turned and looked at me. "What'd you have in mind?"
Nothing, given the state of his pelvis!
Tha same patient was in his room when the call light and code blue light above his door began going off. A few of us hustled into the room, thinking there might be a problem. He was standing there with his ATM card out, punching all the buttons.
He later made a full recovery.
Then there was the patient in neuro ICU who couldn't remember his name. One of my leather lunged colleagues was bellowing "What's your name?", over and over at him, till we finally shut the glass door to his room so we wouldn't have to listen to it. One of our other nurses was inspired to use the intercom system to help "reorient" this individual, who had been found down on the streets of Nashville with a dirty needle in his sock and a bad case of the clap.
"My name is John Doe", she intoned over the speaker.
He sat up and repeated, "My name is John Doe!"
"I am in the neuro unit from Hell", she droned.
"I am in the neuro unit from Hell!", he repeated.....for the next several days, whenever the resident assessed his orientation.
My favorites are the ones who want you to "let them go to bed" when they're already lying in one.....or keep insisting they have to pee when they have a foley catheter. Makes for a long night........
I had one little old lady ask me if myself and the male nursing assistant were married and if we were going to bed in the room next door. This was after she asked another nurse (female) if I was her life partner. The little old lady in the bed next to her was just as confused and funny. It made for an amusing night.
We had another little old lady that was with us for 4 months. The thing she liked most was her sleep. She did not like to be woken up. She told one nurse that woke her that if she did that again, she was going "to put her f*****g head through the f*****g wall." She was about 4'11" and weighed 68 lbs.
MIA-RN
245 Posts
My beloved grandmother got confused in her later days and believed that there was a radio station broadcasting from the ceiling behind her bed in the nursing home. While listening to this station, she managed to reconnect with her old high school boyfriend who she was convinced was going to pick her up in his airplane and take her out of the nursing home. One day, in my grandmother's world, her boyfriend told her that he'd had an affair with her housekeeper.
The housekeeper, who was a saint, came to visit gramma one day and my grandmother ripped her up one side and down the other for stealing her boyfriend. The poor housekeeper of course had no idea what was going on.
It seemed to blow over quickly though, because shortly after that, my grandmother began her affiar with Frank Sinatra and forgot all about the housekeeper's indiscretion~ :)