i shouldnt have laughed

Nurses Humor

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i was in a patients room helping an assitant (not mine) put a patient on a cart. i got my assistant to help and as we were pulling her she shit all over the place.

she was the kind of patient who makes up for her lack of orientation in the volume of her sound. she would scream nonsense out into the halls. one thing she like to yell was WATER...GET ME SOME WATER...

you could have stood there forever giving her water. In between the gulps she was screaming she needed water.

The other patients and family members thought we were keeping her prisoner and abusing her.

So my assistant and I are waiting for the other to come back with some linnens and the woman of course, asks for water. my assistant looks at her and says NO. im just standing there wondering what??? And this old woman is also astonished. She stops puckering to scream W A T E R again but realizes the resoponse is different so she looks right at my assistant and asks WHY?

this is the FIRST bit of sense she made since her admission three days ago. i am amazed by the scene thats playing before my eyes.

BECAUSE YOU SHIT ON MY FRIEND THATS WHY

i couldnt believe my assitant said that.

i didnt know what to do for a minute. then i just turned around and walked out of the room. i thought i would pizz myself.

94yr old confused lady with UTI. I gave her some wash clothes to fold in the ER to keep her from pulling at her IV.

When we transferred her to the floor and were getting ready to move her over to the bed she yelled out "NO! NO! I HAVE TO FOLD THESE BEFORE SHE GETS BACK!!!!" That poor poor old lady. Our hearts went out to her. But you gotta admit that was funny.

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Specializes in Pediatric Rehabilitation.

ya'll just reminded me why I chose peds...

it all started one day in nursing school clinicals..

I had this elderly patient, on contact isolation. We were about to get her OOB for some reason I can't remember. Me, 5'3 and another student not much bigger. This little ole lady was probably 5'6/180lbs. Sooooooo, we're talking to her and she keeps telling us she can get OOB w/o assistance. I'm not really buying this, but after much discussion, me and my classmate decide she's very oriented, so she probably knows what she's saying. Why we didn't ask someone who knew her, I don't know. Sooooooooo, we set her on the side of the bed and dangle..everything's going great. We slide her to the edge with her feet touching the floor...wonderful. We count to three...remember, we're in those hot nursing uniforms with those damn hats some of you love AND mask and isolation gown to boot...okay, back to counting to three...we pull...her legs are like noodles...

we all end up on the backside of the bed..somehow in a little space between the bed and the wall..I'm literally laying in the floor with this little ole lady on top of me. My classmate is laughing so hard she's no help. My greatest fear is getting this lady out of the floor before the instructor came in..thank God for male student nurses. We found one, he saved all three of us.

We made it..had her back in bed without anyone seeing our disaster. Everyone did wonder about the sweat pouring from our clothes.

My greatest lesson was learned that day..'never trust a patient who is bigger than you'..so I chose peds

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Had a really anxious a/o x3 COPD'er once, who had very limited arm mobility and was W/C -bound. Had to have the call light right in her hand; she couldn't reach it.

She was a sweetie and had a great sense of humor underneath all that anxiety.

One night, I go in to see how she 's doing and discover that she's been trying to put the call light on (for "hours") but the call bell wasn't getting contact, thus was not turning on.

So I fixed it.

We tested it a couple of times and I got her comfy.

I left the room.

Call light goes on.

I go in and reassure her, and leave the room.

Call light goes on.

I go in and reassure her, and leave the room.

Call light goes on.

I go in. I stand in the doorway, hands on hips.

"Ok," I say, grinning, "what are we testing now? The call light or my patience?

--because the call light is working. Not too sure about the patience thing though." ;)

She giggled and stopped playing with it. :chuckle :chuckle

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Had this one guy, a/confused, W/C bound, could stand with some help and take just a slow step or two with an assist.

Problem is, he thinks he can walk just fine, and always asks us if he can get "back to muh truck now." (Yes, he was a truck driver.)

Eventually we had to put him in a low bed because he'd get outta bed to go to "muh truck."

Well, the low bed didn't raise up, and lowering this large guy onto it was always a really delicate yet strength-testing procedure, since if you didn't do it right, you'd wind up in the bed too.

One night, I finally get him onto the bed, back killing me, and stand up, triumphant, thinking, thank god i got him in there and didn't kill us both in the process. And I wonder if I can sue the mfg co that made this gd bed....

He gets this "come hither" look in his eye and waggles his finger at me.

"Ya know, " he begins, "yer one o' the better waitresses in this yere truck stop....

and you know, there's room enough for two on this yere cot." ;)

:)

:roll :roll :roll :roll :roll

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Mr. Buck...a favorite at the nursing home where I work....70's w/c bound....disoriented 99% of the time, always reponds to ...Buck,"How are you doin"?.............with one word.......(WITHOUT)...........got his the other night....Mz Vera. another confused resident, on a walker...decides she's gonna fix Buck's problem... wants Buck as a room-mate for the night.....says to him...."Come go to bed....put me to bed"....Buck turned that chair around and hauling ass outta there, says...I gotta get up at 3am and go to work.....he slept through the night...or at least didn't make another sound.....

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One of my biggest laugh at work was when one of my co-worker tried to push some pectin (yes, we do that to supposedly reduced diarrhea :confused: ) into a duodenal feeding tube. Pectin being, well, thick... and duo-fed tube being tiny tiny... guess what happened.

The pectin rushed out of the syringe at the speed of light and went straight to the ceiling with a big "splash" sound, and all over the hair and face of my dear co-worker. We laughed so hard, others came to see if everything was OK... and laughed too!

Thank God the patient was unconscious!!!;)

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I had a patient many years ago. Had Alzheimers and had had a colectomy. We were having the darnedest time getting him out of his room to ambulate in the halls till one of his family members arrived and said they knew what would work.....

They walked to the closet in the room and got the patient's cowboy hat off of the shelf. Plopped it on the patient's head and we were off and walking....

The family member said that the patient never went outside without his hat and had been a sheep rancher all of his life. Of course, now we had him out and walking in the halls.... yup, you guessed it... to get him back in his room, we just had to take his hat off and he went back "inside".

With this same patient, it was Halloween and in the very small hospital, we only had 28 beds on the unit, we were encouraged to dress up fun for the holiday. We picked Wizard of Oz. I was dressed as Dorothy and my co-worker was the tin man... She had taken an old egg crate mattress and made the costume out of that... everything was spray painted silver or covered in silver paint and she actually had silver hair and a funnel on top of her head.

We were walking him around the unit and he patted my co-worker on the hiney and said, "Getting a little soft back there, aren't you, deary?" LOLOLOL :roll :roll :roll

He paid no attention to the fact that she was all silver and actually in a costume..... we had the hardest time not laughing all the rest of the around the unit.

Kat

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I had a 90-something male pt with dementia the other day. He also had bilat aka's, that he has had for several years. Anyway, he kept wanting to get up and walk-and I would tell him that we just couldn't walk right now. He finally looks at me very seriously and says "I know my legs are pretty short and I can't walk too fast but if you'll help me a little, we can do it." I didn't know wether to laugh or cry!!!

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I can't remember if I've posted this story before - happened to a co-worker, and I still laugh when I think about it...

She was working in LTC, and looking after a delightful dementia patient who babbled all the time and didn't often sound coherent. One day after a wash, the patient looked my friend right in the eye and said "You know what the worst thing about having s*x in the butcher's fridge is? Your bottom sticks to the wall!"

Hmm... :chuckle

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Specializes in OB.

Years ago when I worked in a state psych facility, we had an elderly lady who looked the picture of refinement. She would sit quietly in her chair with her hands folded until any male got too close. Silently, and quick as a wink, she would reach out and "check their package" Of course no one ever warned new men on the unit. I still hold her as my role model for old age!

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Specializes in cardiac, diabetes, OB/GYN.

Promised myself I wouldn't admit to this one, but it is true...One Christmas eve on a telemetry floor....I had a Santa hat on and a sign that said nurse elf...Lady coded....ER resident who responded was dressed like Santa as he was playing Santa in the pedi department at the time of the code...

Lady wakes up as we start CPR, sees that she is being revived by Santa and his elf, screams and faints....Was a lovely holiday...

Yes, she survived...Resident and I went out for drinks afterward...:)

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Specializes in obstetrics(high risk antepartum, L/D,etc.

I was working in a LTC and had a 90 something old fellow who was all but deaf. One day, I was sitting on his bed next to him, shouting into his ear, when he threw his far leg over my lap and said "I love you! Will you marry me?" From that day on, he told people I was his bride. He was such a nice guy, I found this a really big compliment.:) :kiss ;)

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