LRICH94

"Rifampin and fusidic acid? Sounds like someone got their medical degree from Google University. " It's amazing how many family members get their medical degree from WebMD...if only it were that easy!!!

To the ever present family member... No, I'm not God, so I can't tell you exactly when your mother/father will pass. I'm sorry but my x-ray vision is on the fritz today...check with me tomorrow. Unfortunatly, my crystal ball is not small enough to fit into the pocket of my lab coat. Standing at the desk and staring at me is not going to make my current telephone conversation go any faster, just so you can ask me what momma ate for supper last night, knowing full well I wasn't here for that particular meal. It's the same answer I give you every morning when you ask, right after you ask me what her blood sugar was for the 10th time. If I'm calling for help from other staff d/t an emergency situation (that you can plainly see since you've been hovering around my desk) don't ask me to stop and locate moms missing afgan. That one really happened and I had to reign myself in to keep from slapping the crap out of that particular family member. If there are more than 15 children in the family, please designate 1 person to communicate w/ the nursing staff. I can't remember all of your name let alone each ones cell phone number. There should be a test given to all potential family members so as to weed out all the nuts.

Not just patients, my own family members as well (in-laws), people never cease to amaze me: 1. Being a nurse does not qualify me to be the family doctor. If you are sick, call your doctor. I've just worked 12-16 hours on my feet, so no! I don't want to drive across town to look at your swollen ankles when I know dang well that you havent been compliant with your diet or diuretics because you wanted to go play bingo today and skipped your lasix. 2. Yes, I can understand why your joints hurt, they are carrying around an extra 200lbs. Yes, it does make sense that your knee wants to buckle after a while of standing. 3. Yes, you are going to keep chronic bronchitis when you continue to smoke 3 packs of the cheapest brand of cigarettes available; and no I can't fix it for you. 4. To the 19 year old patient with 3 babies at home: I don't care if you are mad that I won't go "swipe" you a bag of diapers to take home to your kids. Is it not enough that I have to come up here and put up with you, so they can take taxes out of my check to pay for the medical expense for you to keep spitting out babies, and to get treatment and pain relief for those "spider bites" that you only seem to get along the viens of your forearms, that you seem to get at least once a month? 5. No sir, my job duties do not include helping you out with that erection, or satisfying your need for a woman's touch. 6. No mam, I do not speak spanish. Would you go to a nudist colony and ask them to put their clothes on? 7. No mam, I can not tell you how much of your mother's B/P meds you should take. 8. No, I can not give you just a little extra pain meds and yes they will miss it. 9. No I really don't want to come wipe your butt just because you are too big to reach it. 10. No mam, we can not keep your momma an extra day or two because you want to go visit your cousin out of state. 11. Yes mam, your mother is very sick and we are doing everything we can to help her; though it seems she is sick because no one has checked on her in some time and she had to resort to eating cat food because no one saw to it that she had food.(this really happened) 12. No, we will not insert a foley because you don't want to get up to use the bedside commode RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR BED!! (actually had a pt. ask for this once) 13. I'm sorry, we are fresh out of the cure for stupid. 14. What?? Your ticked because you've brought the whole family to visit daddy in the nursing home and he's all dressed up in a hospital gown and someone else's socks?? Then bring him some clothes!!! 15. No I will not call the doctor out of surgery to come talk to your daughter since she had a hair appointment this morning and missed him. 16. No, I will not let you (patient) bum a cigarette. 17. No, we can not just call you in a prescription for oxycontin, as you are not a patient here, or no we can not refill your pain meds early because you accidentally flushed THE WHOLE BOTTLE down the toilet again. We actually had to evict a patient out of the nursing home because his wife was getting his check every month but refused to pay his bill. I later learned that ours was the third facilty he had been evicted from for the same reason. But my all time favorites are the ones who show up to the ER screaming chest pain, only to find out they've had a sore throat and didn't want to have to wait in line behind all those other people. To the young, new, frat-boy doctors: NO, I will not just "fix it" and send you the order to sign. I would however like to find out where you went to med school, so I can sign up. **With this particular doc, we've actually had to send the police to his home to get him when he wont answer pages, calls or faxes when he is on call for ALL the docs in town** Just my rant's but then.... I'm burned out. Dear God...If I didn't know better I would have thought I typed that one myself!:lol2: Even better is when someone in my family rattles off a common symptom for just about anything(muscle cramps for example) and then asks "But what causes that?" or "You're a nurse don't you know what I should take for (fill in your common ailment here)?

I have been an LPN for 13 years. I have worked mostly in LTC. I love my job most days. I did take a job at a local hospital for about a year, working on a med-surg floor, because I feared I would be losing some of my "skills". WOW! Big difference. In LTC I could do everything an RN could do except push IV meds. At the hospital I did routine meds (no narcotics or prn meds), tx's and fingersticks. I was bored silly! The senior RN's on the floor (2 of which had been employeed there well over 30 yrs) could not believe the knowledge I had of wound care, and medications and possible drug interactions, or of taking care of Alzheimer's pts who had come in for some type of surgery, usually an ORIF of the hip. One of those "senior nurses" literally cringed when she found out what my pt load was in LTC - usually 30 pts to 1 nurse. One of the nurses started coming to me instead of looking up a med she didn't know in the drug book. Said it was much faster as I was a "walking medical dictionary" Of coorifice, as long as I have been a nurse there has always been talk of "doing away with us" or changing our duties to "direct patient care" aka nurse aide duties. The only problem I think I have ever had in my current job is that the paramedics/EMT's that transfer patients to our facility from some of the larger area hospitals make a point of wanting the "RN" accepting the patient. I even had one jerk insist that I go get the "RN" because he was not going to report off to an "LPN". Without LPN's I don't know who would take care of the patients at my facility. There are 3x's as many LPN's to RN's. LTC is changing rapidly. It is not a place to grow old gracefully anymore. Our patients are younger and younger each year. We are now taking more acute patients with multiple medical problems. Our medicare wing is practically an ICU step-down unit. We have seen an influx of short-term care also. Some patients are in and out like a revolving door, staying 20 days or less. Usually post-op patients. We do IV therapy on at least 1/2 of those patients. I worry everyday that we will "be done away with altogether" and would love to go back to school to get my RN, but there are no bridge programs near where I live and with 2 small children and a terminaly ill father-in-law to take care of there are not enough hours in the day. Plus there is the issue of financing. If anyone can suggest a bridge program in the Il/Mo area I'd be grateful. Also , here's a thought, if LPN's are "done away with" shouldn't we have the opportunity to at least try to get our RN degree before they cut us out completely? Good topic, by the way.

I could really use some help. I have been in the LTC business for 12 years, but have NO Huntington's experience. My father-in-law has Huntington's and moved in with us today. He is what I would call middle stage. His coordination is bad, he's lost so much weight he's skeletal. I can't understand him most of the time. He and my mother-in-law no longer live together. Because of the mild dementia he has been displaying it led to "near blows" by each party. My father-in-law then moved to his daughter's nearly 2 hours away. He had been driving to our house once a month to spend the weekend with my husband (who is his step-son), myself and our 2 young children who he adores. The last 2 months after a stay at our house, he returned to borrow money from my mother-in-law, claiming he was broke. We have no idea where his money was going. My mother-in-law, can be a bit overbearing. She has no patience and believes she is right at all times. She also feels the need to tell everyone around her what to do in an unsubtle way. She of coorifice called my father-in-laws daughter and accused her of stealing his money. He now wants nothing to do w/ his wife in any type of financial situation. Fastforward to today. At my father-in-laws request, my husband will be opening a joint checking account w/ my father-in-law. Is there a nice way of helping him w/ his finances? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to be in control of his checkbook without making him feel like he's not in control? Right now independence is a HUGE issue with him. I understand that as I have worked long term care for so long. Any help I can get would be great.