rjtucker

Well, maybe just one more good one. I was working in an ER in early 90s with a doc who was, well shall we say, free-minded....new-agish. Anyway, we had a full arrest come in and of course we all did our "thing" and were wroking away when we got him hooked up to find V-fib. This doc charges up the paddles, yells "all clear", zaps the guy, screams like a woman, flies back against the wall with a crash, and slides to the floor with his mouth open in the form of the letter "O". I guess this doc was so free thinking that he didn't wear underwear under his scrubs. "It" had inadvertently fallen against the side of the guerney and took 300 jeules right through....well, you know. It took us all several seconds to realize that we were still running a code and get the paddles away from the doc on the floor....my goodness. I can't believe we all kept from laughing ourselves right to the floor with him! I still laugh to myself to this day!

Having been in ER nursing since 1969, I've got some really funny ones, but I'll try to keep it short here. I floated to CCU one evening where a 54 year old male had been admitted with chest pain and EKG changes. He was beginning to throw a few PVCs a little too close to the Twave, however, he REALLY had to go to the bathroom. We tried to talk him into a bed pan and even tried it, but it upset him sooo much that I got an actual order to get him up on a commode. Well, of course you guessed it, he coded on the commode. Not only that, but his hips were a bit wide, so we couldn't lift him out of the commode to start the code. So, we had to do the next best thing. We tipped the commode back with him in it and you can picture what THAT looked like. Fortunately it wasn't filled with anything yet. The funniest part was watching the ER doc arrive and seeing his face as he realized that we were going to have to run a code with the on the floor with his legs up in a sitting position over the commode frame. What a site! The good news is, he lived to tell the story!

Very unfortunately, I have both referred and experienced post 24 week abortions with live birth. One such incident was a set of twins who were 32 weeks. Both were suffocated by the physician upon birth. Saline was allowed at that time and it was felt that suffocation at birth would be "more humane" at that gestational period. This was called "partial-birth" abortion. It was legal all the way up to 40 weeks. It had nothing to do with the mother's or the baby's health. This particular mother couldn't/wouldn't choose adoption for reasons I don't understand to this day. She also chose to be "put out" during the delivery. She labored normally and delivered the twins who were both cephalic presentation.....perfectly normal in every way. It sickens me to think of that. We are a generation of infacticide, whether any of us wants to admit it or not, and whether we are on either side of the abortion issue. Facts are simply facts. Since then, I have always asked about a hospital's policies regarding nurse-preferences to participate in such things or if they were given the right to refuse. Believe it or not, most hospitals that do abortions have adopted policies that allow nurses to refuse, no questions asked. With this new administration, however, it is doubtful that abortion will remain the formost choice for birth control. We'll have to all wait and see what happens to the "free choices" of pregnant women.