Just for fun, I am wondering if you would like to share some thoughts you have had during patient care that you did not speak out loud for whatever reason. My hubby does not enjoy my work stories, and I feel the need to share!
I'll start...
While assisting with peri care for a grey haired gentleman, I thought, "Oh - so your hair used to be red!" I am proud to say that I had the self-control not to say this out loud.
This happened to me many years ago when I was a nursing student. I had an older male patient who was rather scruffy, and also incontinent of bowel. To top that, he had some form of cancer that really produced a foul odor. Even so, one gets used to an odor after being surrounded by it for a few hours, and so by lunch time I really didn't smell the bad stuff any more.
Just when the lunch trays were being brought to the rooms, I was getting really hungry, especially since I hadn't had breakfast, nor any breaks yet that morning. Right when the dietary aides were bringing in a scrumptious smelling hamburger and fries (back when some hospital food wasn't actually bad), the family was coming into the room to visit, their noses wrinkled in barely-disguised disgust at the feces/cancer odor, and I in my hunger delirium say, "Boy, doesn't that smell good?!?"
Of course the family thought I was crazy, and it took me a few minutes to realize why they reacted that way.
This is the kind of thing I'm afraid I might say. Lol. Thanks for the laugh. I know I will be laughing at random times when I think about.
Even though we have made it perfectly clear that we are only thinking these things and not saying them, I am still waiting for someone to come on here and tells us we are all bad for thinking these things.
Even though we have made it perfectly clear that we are only thinking these things and not saying them, I am still waiting for someone to come on here and tells us we are all bad for thinking these things.
Come on, guys.
You KNOW it always happens!
... and if it does happen, are we still playing the drinking game?
It's Friday and I don't work tomorrow and I've got wine!
"The constant sight of your angry, discolored, misshapen member has permanently killed my sex drive."
To the resident who spends about 78 percent of the time roaming the facility naked and becoming combative when you try to dress him: "Dooo your balls hang low, do they wobble to and fro, can you tie 'em in a knot, can you tie 'em in a bow..."
To the hateful residents who complain that their families don't call/visit: Well, can you really blame them?
To the resident who habitually defecates on the floor despite being continent and has the gall to complain that his room smells: Well, no sh!t, why do you think that could be?
To the family members who ask why their vegetative relative never responds to them: He is blind, deaf, and comatose...but you just missed the nice irish jig and limerick he treated us to before lunch....
(I should clarify that in this case, it was NOT a new condition, resident had been in this state for about 12 years, family has repeatedly been educated on his condition, family STILL doesn't get it. And still insists that he be classified as a full code...)
I'm in CNA class now and I think my instructor doesn't know how to not say these sorts of things. There is a girl in my class who is easily 300 lbs. We are in the process of learning to take vitals and the instructor always talks about how this girl is going to be difficult because she is so "chunky". The girl doesn't find any humor in it at all, and the instructor doesn't act like she's trying to be funny about it.
Yes, I know you're having a lot of pain with movement, but I really think we'd better get you up to the bedside commode to go potty, because if I put you on one of our plastic bedpans, that thing's just gonna flatten like a penny on a railroad track. And then we'll be doing a full bed change and partial bed bath. Which is going to involve you rolling around a ton. So let's skip all that and haul you up out of that bed, ok?
To the patients who complain or are totally uncooperative when being woken up for vitals in the middle of the night. Im sorry, but apparently you got lost on the way to the Holiday inn and somehow wound up in a HOSPITAL.
These are often the same patients who will lay on the call light all evening before they finally fall asleep and decide they dont want to be bothered for ANY reason(unless they hit their call light, in which case they expect you there in seconds).
"Do you honestly think I could POSSIBLY be stupid enough to believe the stupid explanation you just gave me for how that thing got there?"
...and along the same 'the nurse must be stupid' think:
"Do you honestly think I could POSSIBLY be stupid enough to believe that your doctor told you the best way to take your Vicodin ES was to crush them into a powder and snort it up your nose?" (this, btw, from a patient who refused to take the pills I had brought because I should grind them up for him first---um, NO, and he could either SWALLOW them in front of me or I was leaving WITH them...idiot).
Omg. He may as well have tattooed the words; "Drug Seeking Behavior; Example 101" on forehead before enter the premises. Lol!
Ahem, as to the thread subject:
One sweet little lady; 90+ diabetic, on oxygen, partial assist with dressing, walking, incontinent, living in the AFH I work at currently said to me the other night; "I really want to rent myself a nice little apartment and open up a daycare center and take care of babies!" I thought to myself; "Yeah, you can bond over being in diapers at the same time!" (among other, some nicer and some not, thoughts went through my mind at the time!) Bless her heart, though, even at 90 years old a person's gotta have dreams!
"Sit the #### down!" when an alarm is going off for the 80th time.
"Get your flippin' hands out of your crotch!"
"OMG, it's food. Stop playing with it, stop talking to it, stop just sitting there staring at it like it's going to jump into your mouth by itself. JUST EAT IT."
"Haha, that's what you get!" when someone tries to hit me and ends up whacking their hand on the side rail or something.
damrcngrl95
207 Posts
This is the kind of thing I'm afraid I might say. Lol. Thanks for the laugh. I know I will be laughing at random times when I think about.