Lost in Translation

Specialties School

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I am at a boarding high school with lots of international students... sometimes you either scratch your head or just laugh.

Boy today said he had a couple episodes of diarrhea and was concerned that he might have "a stomach cold"

Another boy had a concussion. Said his mom had given him medication to take if he was sick so he was taking it. He didn't think it was helping and didn't know the name of it. Asked him to bring it to the health center. Was penicillin.. Yup, nope.

Well that was sure one heck of a doozy "cold" now wasn't it?

My last TB patient was also a psych patient. I went in to give him his TB meds (and a little haldol)...he didn't refer to them as ‘cold' meds though...noooo, according to him they were his ‘monkey nuts!!!'. Yes, he was ‘a witch'and he ‘ate monkey nuts'. He also offered to share. Um, no thanks? I'll never forget that guy. He also decided his name was God or Jesus Christ depending on the day....

I really miss working adult psych sometimes. My personal favorite was a manic man who referred to Lithium as "Pink Peruvian Cyanide." Never a dull moment.

I really miss working adult psych sometimes. My personal favorite was a manic man who referred to Lithium as "Pink Peruvian Cyanide." Never a dull moment.

No, never dull at all. I worked at a hospital that had an involuntary psych wing so we got a lot of patient's on our medical floors before they were cleared to go to psych. My TB guy was enjoying his tour before going to the inpatient unit a few months later (yeah, we kept people in our hospital for LONG admissions back then). He was originally our John Doe (because we were pretty sure his name wasn't God or Jesus Christ) brought in by the police as a BA 52 who got a detour to the medical floor when we found out in the ER that our homeless, emaciated, middle aged male found to be a threat of harm to himself or others was also coughing up bloody mucus and had a suspicious CXR.

It was in that psych unit that I learned to get rid of my yellow scrubs (before we were forced to go all cyanotic blue uniform). I had one patient flat out tell be that I should know better than to wear that color because "us crazy people are drawn to yellow". That wasn't what convinced me though. It was the patient that whistled at me from his room and said "OOOH! Pretty birdy! Hey momma, can I keep it?!"...We finally got to discharge him to police custody when he broke an employee's arm.

Specializes in School Nursing.

Our district nurses drafted a letter regarding influenza to send to all families. Because we can't be trusted to just send a darn letter the administration had to "approve" it first. They decided to jazz it up with some ECG tracing clip art and sent it out. We now refer to it as the letter about Cardiac Flu.

Our district nurses drafted a letter regarding influenza to send to all families. Because we can't be trusted to just send a darn letter the administration had to "approve" it first. They decided to jazz it up with some ECG tracing clip art and sent it out. We now refer to it as the letter about Cardiac Flu.

Now you KNOW some super concerned, hypochondriac parent is bound to think there's something wrong with their child's heart and "it's all your darn school's fault!".

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