your most memorable patients

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Specializes in LTC.

Have you guys ever had some .....truly amazing memorable patients? Sometimes we tend to get caught up in so many other things and forget to just enjoy whats in front of us. I have a few.....that will always be remembered. For starters...when i was in cna class...I met a real holocaust survivor...talk about a powerful encounter. Later on down the road I had another patient who was by far the most brilliant person I think Ive ever had the pleasure of meeting. He was over 100 yrs old and had taught college somewhere and in his old age he was still sharp as a tack....he used to tell me "you remind me of a caucasian school teacher that I had when I was a boy"...and when he found out that i was going to nursing school....he took the time to cut out articles from different newspapers on scholarships and grants and had me a huge pile waiting on me when he saw me at work. .....what would we do without people like this? What kind of interesting people have you met in your nursing career?

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I had one gentleman who use to play basketball for NY. He was well over 6 feet tall and barely fit in the bed. I have one that also was a very prominent college professor in his day. And

I have 2 WWII vets that proudly display their medals and can tell you some very scary stories.

One even has a purple heart. But my favorite is the gentleman who told me I looked like I was

only 20 years old. I am in my 40's.

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On my unit we tend to remember the PITA or truly weird more than the nice.

Off the top of my head I remember

a 600lb 20yo who was in for bariatric surgery. Would be handsome about 400lb lighter, yet his family seemed to be proud of enabling him to reach that weight.

a patient that insisted on having gallbladder surgery despite being turned down by every surgeon due to age and heart condition. He got the surgery he fought for and died 19 days later and now forever more will his family remember Christmas Eve as when gramps died.

We had an old Eastern European want to show us his tattoo. We assumed it was going to be a number from the Camps. Nope, it was his blood group and regimental number from the SS.

Our favourite patient was a bowel cancer. He's alive and comes by a couple of times a year to thank you.

The good ones are few and far between. They remember us, but unless they are really PITAs on my unit we may remember your face but haven't got a clue why you were there.

A woman was admitted from the community to die on our unit. Her only relative was her 47yo Downs Syndrome son. He didn't understand what was going on. That was one of the hardest deaths we've ever had. Somehow this woman an her son had stayed under the Social Services network his entire life and had never set up a safety net for him.

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

The ornery, rude patients tend to stand out in my mind more than the pleasant ones.

My favorite resident was a very religious 95 year-old little lady who had 4 elderly children, all in their seventies. She married early, started her family at age 17, was a homemaker for many years, and always had the sweetest demeanor and never complained. I vividly remember when she told me, "I love you for all that you do for me." This resident died in the summer of 2007. I had been her nurse for 18 months, formed an attachment with her, and cried when I read her obituary. I still miss her.

Another favorite resident was an 88-year-old, very demented lady who came to the nursing home after having been evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. Our facility was in Texas, and we had absorbed many elderly people from the neighboring state of Louisiana after the storm carved its destructive path. She was oriented to self only, had a wacky sense of humor, and sometimes spoke in a curious word salad. Her New Orleans accent was unmistakable. She died in the spring of 2007.

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Specializes in LTC, Urgent Care.

There was a fiery Italian lady that I had the pleasure of taking care of as a CNA. I evidently reminded her of someone that she knew. Every time she'd see me, she'd ask what I did with my babies or where they were that day. She would joke about the nurses (most of them on that floor were grossly overweight) and say that being fat was a prerequisite for being a nurse. Sometimes I'd climb into bed with her, at her insistence, and we'd giggle and talk. When they created a dementia unit and decided to move her to that floor, my charge nurse thought it'd be best if I didn't have her that day. Needless to say, I cried when she left.

Another resident was 80 some years old and she still knit and crocheted things for herself as well as her family members. She also loved to paint, especially eggs. She'd poke holes in the ends of eggs and blow the insides out to paint the shells. They were some of the most beautiful pieces of her artwork. She and her husband had been married for 70 years at that point and she still tried to take care of him, oftentimes she'd injure herself in the process.

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Specializes in LTC.

I had a mother/daughter duo in a room together. The mother was in her 90's and aphasic, the daughter was in her 50's and greatly debilitated. That mom still did her level best to care for her daughter. Though mom couldn't talk, you'd know when you didn't do something right for her daughter! I loved them both dearly. It was the sweetest thing in the world to see that old mom taking care of her daughter like she had done for most of her life. When the daughter died suddenly, it was almost more than any of us could bear.

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Specializes in LTC.

I love it! i think these are the types of people who make us want to go to work sometimes. I remembered some others I had...my absolute favorite was when i was pregnant..I had a demented lady who had stopped talking. She was following me downthe hall one day in her w/c so I figured she had to go to the br..so I took her...when i was pulling her pants up she looked dead in my eyes and said "your'e a good nurse...but that baby is gonna fall out any time now"..her family came to my shower at work to give me a baby blanket that this lady had made years ago when she was able...I still use it every night on my son. She died last year.

also when i was pregnant...I was in a room giving meds to a lady in A bed when I got STUCK between her bed and her bedside table...the bed was locked at the wheels so I couldnt even move. the lady in B bed picked her phone up and said "honey...do I need to call for help?"...she was gonna call 911! I finally got unstuck. This same lady in b bed also had to pleasure of hearing me puke my guts out one night too when we had a raging stomach virus in our building...i was fine til i got to the end of my hall and all of a sudden it just came over me and I had to run into a residents bathroom b/c I couldnt make it to the regular one and it was like someone doing the heimlich on me...she was in the hall at my cart saying " whats going on in there? are you alright??? I told you you looked pale!".....how embarrassing!

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