ChristenLPN

I have tears of laughter about the late night TV show on large, unmanageable scrotums and the spanking clean, freshly powdered prolapsed uterus!!!!!!!!!. :roll It embarrasses me deeply to tell you battle-scarred veterans that two shifts ago on a rehab floor, I did vomit because of a pt. She had been admitted from another floor, and the nurse giving report must have just not noticed the dried blood smeared on her face, gown, and fingers. One finger was completely necrosed on the tip, so our first thought was that she had tried to pull that off, but it was intact. Then we looked in her mouth and saw where she had bitten a small chunk of tissue loose and it was still bleeding slightly. She swished and spat a few times but there still seemed to be another source of blood. Upon lifting her upper lip, we found a thick rope of clotted blood all along her upper gumline. This was not pretty, but when my priceless tech bravely put his hand in her mouth to try to remove her dentures, it got so much worse. The blood kept slipping down on the dentures and he couldn't get them out. So he reached further back in her mouth and with every try she would belch and gag and heave, which produced more blood clots that she had previously swallowed. I have a strict policy that no one vomits alone in my presence, but at least I made it down the hall and away from the pt. My hero tech finally got the things off with a pair of hemostats, and danged if that lady didn't ask to have them back in!!!. I truly cannot handle things from people's mouths, and we found out later that her dentures had not been removed since she was admitted on Jan. 1. YUCKYYYYYYYYY!!!!! I will finish my RN in 10 months, and I will not stop, pass GO, or collect $200 on my way to OB.

I do not have any children, body piercings, or tattoos, and so have read through this thread solely for amusement, but I do have one thing I'd like to just toss into the gumbo here... Why is it, that when I go to start an IV, or give an injection, to a patient with half a dozen assorted body rings and a kaleidoscope of tattoos, that patient, without fail, always says, "Man, I HATE needles!"? I just have never understood this. :imbar

JBudd, where in NM are you? I have seen several posts recently from NM nurses and it is interesting to know what is going on outside my little corner! Happy Nurses Week!

The funniest thing I ever read was about an annual exam on an elderly woman who had been accompanied by her daughter: "When I advised the patient that I would be finishing the examination with a rectal exam, I learned that the last fellow to attempt a rectal exam on this patient was hit with a purse and kicked in the groin. Patients daughter was of the opinion that a rectal exam would not be in my best interest and I am in basic agreement with her." What a cool one he must have been!

I just started withthis hospital group, so I have no idea what delightful surprises may be in store, but something I saw a couple of weeks ago did not bode well for Nurses Week. The Morale Committee, for no good reason at all, brought us a Frito Pie lunch! Only catch was it was served in an itty bitty Dixie bowl too small to supply my cat with water for a day, and they asked $2.50 for it. Of course, this included a drink, these deep-pocketed humanitarians! So what I am wondering is, if it is supposed to perk up my morale to pay 2 bucks and 2 quarters for a couple of corn chips with chili on them, dare I even remember Nurses Week?

When my parents decided not to name me Grace, they knew what they weren't thinking! Today after pulling back an Urgent Care pt, I stood up to go find a thermometer, backed up and fell over the stool, broke my fall with the garbage can, which knocked me off balance and forced me to grab onto the door jamb, which broke 2 fingernails. Tried to act cool, but pt was pretty sharp... Another thing not so good, recommended a GP to a former pt OB_GYN of mine when the OB docs got their contract canceled. She came in with a painful breast mass and I roomed her in an exam room that happened to face the Sandia Mountains to the east. The Dr came in and stated that instead of her showing him the mass, he would try to find it on exam. As he began to feel along her extremely flat chest, he looked out the window and remarked, "These mountains are just gorgeous!" The pt looked astounded, her husband looked pissed, and I had to look hard at the floor to keep from losing it. Dr just palpated on, having no idea what he had said! Never did tell him how that sounded- I was too new and just couldn't.

Nilepoc, where are you? I also am in ABQ and would like to know where all these $$ are! Have been told favorable things RE LTC pay; unfortunately this is the only favorable thing! Best of luck in CRNA school. P.S. I have heard much grumbling RE the huge bonuses/terms. Is this by any chance Pres you are referring to?

OMG, what absolutely horrible stories! I love being a nurse! OK, things that smell are usually what get me... no one vomits alone in my presence. The sound, the smell, the sight....EEEWWWW. And I cannot stand poop, in any form, diseased or not. Things that just look nasty but don't stink are usually OK with me. I don't particularly enjoy sputum, and it's an effort to keep a straight face w/o sympathy heaves during collection, but it's not that bad. Amniotic fluid, endometrium, fibroids, prolapsed anything (though the dangling cervix gave me a jolt!), vag d/c, foreign objects, C-sections, episiotomies, old tampons, blood, pus, lacerations, severed things, you name it, I'm OK. But when I was still at the OB office we had a lady come in for just an annual, and when we walked in the room to find her gowned and barefoot, the stench of her feet was just nauseating. Worse, there were green and white flaky layers of (?) hanging off and swaying gently in the breeze. Everything else was clean enough but that smell was just awful. The one sight that will always get me is anything involving bugs. Spiders are a big thing for me, so of course when I had a man come into Urgent Care with a c/o of "something in my ear" I got him. His first problem was about 50 years of accumulated wax that was just nasty and in every state you can imagine. Weepy, sticky, black, fuzzy, you name it. The worst thing was when I was looking for the "something moving" in his ear, I found not only a LIVE spider roaming around, but the shells of its recent dinner choices as well, all living cozily in thick, multi-colored wax. I dropped the otoscope and told him, "Well, I think I found it, but I need to have the Dr look at it before I start lavaging" and split so I could dry heave out of his range of hearing. I STILL have nightmares about live spiders crawling around in my ears.

Thisnurse, if I had a hat it would permanately remain on the floor at your feet. That you could endure even one day like this and then go back is beyond saintly. That you can endure a day like this and then sit down and put it into words so concisely and with such humor is deserving of Pulitzer Prizes. You can cry on my shoulder anytime!!

There have been so many good and valid points made here that forming a solid opinion behind which one can stand consistently is a challenge. At heart I have always been a "live and let live" kind of girl, and so it's hard for me to feel that it's truly OK for your employer to monitor what you do on your own time. But I also have never smoked pot, and even though I do find a lot of laws stupid, I have always lived with the notion that it is in my best interest to respect them. If I accept a job with a company that says, "Drugs are illegal and we expect you to refrain", then I don't have much defense for myself if I willfully violate that. The point about people validating and rationalizing what they want to do was also well taken- my husband and I are great fans of all kinds of wine. But it must matter that ETOH is in fact legal. Never having used pot, I cannot accurately compare the after-effects of the two, but it was always my feeling that ETOH is legal partly because it can be enjoyed safely and sensibly. I have some wine nearly every evening but can't remember the last time I got even a buzz, so I know that ETOH can be used with very little, if any, imparment resulting. This of course changes considerably with every drop consumed, and so I fully agree with the concern of being able to detect any hint of it in a co-worker. So much of this argument, I think, lies in the necessity of believing what you're told by the user in question; if someone tells you, "Oh, I just used some mouthwash", it is hard to totally trust that because if you totally trusted this individual you wouldn't have asked in first place. We also are asked to trust in that person's assessment of his or her own abilities (I've only had one drink, one joint, one Benadryl, I got 4 hours of sleep & that's plenty for me, etc). Someone who has never had Benadryl would have a very hard time putting total faith in what he/she was told by someone who had taken it recently and looked or acted a little differently than usual. This kind of trust is hard for most people anyway, but especially for people like us who have the opportunity to hear so much BS and denial from the patients we see. Cynicism sort of grows on its own whether you want it to or not. And even though nurses should not be held to any higher standard of sainthood than anyone else, there are a few factors that set us apart. If my father, who is a banker, goes to work sleep-deprived or post-Benadryl, that's far from ideal, but he is very unlikely to seriously endanger anyone. My job involves a lot more reponsibility for the physical wellbeing of others, which I knew when I took the job, and it's something I take very seriously. I would call in sick if I felt unable to safely care for my patients for any reason because it is part of the responsibillty toward others that I accepted when I chose this profession. I also have a detailed description of how I am to perform my job, and instead of being a company policy, this is a law. My license is of great value to me, and since I'm not the one who made up the rules of how to keep it, I don't have a lot of choice except to abide by them. If I don't like them, then I can get another job with fewer specifics of desired behavior. Just sort of thinking out loud here, but it is very obvious that this is a real hot button here. We should not judge lest we be judged- other people have lived in circumstances we know nothing about, and everyone is entitled to an opinion. We do need to stand up for and beside each other, and all of our patients deserve the best we can give them.

Aussie, you are truly hilarious and creative, and thisnurse, what a delicious memory that must be! I had my own instructor from hell, and a memory like that would definitely go down forever in my mental photo album! I'm thinking that maybe this whole nurse/Media connection stems from 2 things. One, nurses were originally prostitutes, not out of a desire to more appropriately serve the public (their original clients having zero complaints about their line of work) but because nursing always has involved handling and caring for private parts, and since no nice family wanted their virgin daughter sullied by such work, why not utilize the ladies who had already seen it all? Likewise, no self-respecting husband would permit his demure wife to touch another man's anatomy. About the time of the War Between the States, this feeling had relaxed somewhat, and wives of soldiers were permitted to be nurses to the wounded, but no unmarried woman was. Widows or matrons were preferred. Also, in its infancy (and even as recently as 30 or so years ago), nurses were seen as-and expected to be- very subservient. We had no protocols that permitted using our own judgement, intelligence, or training- we followed the Dr around waiting for orders (Yes, Doctor, No, Doctor, Thank you Doctor, Sir)and when he wanted to sit we gave him our chair. (This was also an era in which ladies did not leave the house without makeup and hair done, and of course those dresses, hose and heels were mandatory.) A lot of male fantasies revolve around this kind of subservience, and the role of nurses just gave it a clear, real-life view, no imagination required! It just goes to show that Media really needs to try to keep up with the changing times, because all of us here know that what nurses are today are overworked, loaded with varicose veins, always running, dressed in anything but sexy dresses at work, we have so little one-on-one patient time anymore, and we're much less impressed with the almighty (male) physician authority figure than we used to be. JMHO.

It took me awhile, but I finally figured out a way around this. In the urgent care, we do every kind of procedure you can imagine, and finding time to go before a Dr grabs you is quite challenging. I just tell the pt before I start, "Pressure on my bladder is horribly distracting for me. Would you mind waiting a few minutes before I start this?" I have never had a pt with so little time or such a great need that she refused!

Despite being a very attractive man, my husband has recieved the ultimate compliment from only me- he has the most gorgeous garden hose veins you'd ever hope to feel! He will also ask me when we go out to keep my opinions on the veins of others to myself. Does this say addict to any of you?

A lady came into my OB-GYN office last month for a pre-op exam. I asked her what she was having done, and she said, "Well, it's really bladder surgery, but while they're there, they'll remove my overalls"

My mother's last 2 OB-GYNs were Dr. Loving and Dr. Swindle. My best friend saw an OB named Dr. Barron