What kind of patient would you make????!!!

southern_rn_brat · Feb 10, 2005

I had a car wreck once. One minute I was driving to work eating an ice cream sandwich, the next thing I know, I am on a stretcher in the middle of the highway with a female paramedic trying to start an IV. I remember her missing the vein and saying "sorry" and me telling her "oh hell, i do that ALL the time" :chuckle

the next thing I remember, I am in the ER, the doc is assessing me and I have this huge neck brace thingy on. They couldnt figure out what had made me wreck. I had passed out I suppose. So he wanted blood and a urine sample. I remember him saying specifically a urine sample. So the nurse, God bless her heart for thinking of me, puts in a foley in case they send me for surgery..that way I wouldnt get poked twice. "but he didnt order a foley!" I kept telling her. "take it out!". She says "wendy, be patient, you may need surgery". So I say ok..but the minute she is out of my room, I am all up in the cabinets, find a syringe and take that sucker out myself! The next time she sees me, I am walking back from the bathroom. :rolleyes: They came and fussed at me and locked the cabinet:chuckle Then I helped the doc study the xrays of my head:chuckle

ohhhhhhhh and I wanted a cigarette :rolleyes:

I don't remember much of this, but they still give me hell about it in that ER. When my husband got there, they made him take me home:o .

I still don't know why I passed out driving but I slept for 2 solid days when I got home and then couldnt remember anything for weeks!

I drove them so crazy that they just made sure I wasnt broken or bleeding and sent my orifice to the house! :rotfl:

wishingmary · Feb 10, 2005

I think I'd be a good patient; try to assemble my requests at one time so as not to be on the call light much. If I had to go to the bathroom, I'm afraid I'd be bad because I do have a weak bladder - kids late in life. Would probably ask for a bedside cammode for safety issues. If I am in pain, I've decided I don't care what others think. Pain slows healing. I am a patient advocate when it comes to pain; especially those with chronic pain before their surgery since they are the ones in most need of advocasy. I just deleted a whole paragraph about pain control and nursing - off topic. I would want to know what meds I was taking and why. The rest of my questions would go to the doctor if he sees me; otherwise the nurses. If I am out of my head; well, I'm out of my head.

chicago bsn 2005 · Feb 10, 2005

i think my nurses thought i was a bad patient. i got defensive and asked if she thought i'd be bugging them to help me go to the bathroom if i didn't actually have to? i felt it was a sad state of things. the person who had answered the call light, perhaps intentionally, left it on and i heard her say, "it's room twelve again." and someone asked irritatedly, "what does she want this time?" it pretty much sucked. the first nurse i had post-op had me out of the bed and walking to the bathroom just a few hours after surgery. my night nurse was very pregnant...she had me using the bed pan. i don't know. i felt it was a difficult situation. even now, i'm going to be a nurse and i'm going to be pregnant one day (hopefully). what will i do when they'd rather use the actual toliet instead of the bedpan? then, i had been taking vicodin's prior to surgery, trying to heal and not have the (lower back) surgery. i eventually surrendered, so post-op, on a morphine pca, i was a mess. i felt like it was making me crazy, but i was afraid what would happen if i stopped taking it. through all of this. i never talked to anyone about it. i just suffered alone in my room. no one asked. but they're not psychic. anyways, i never slept because i hit the pump all night. i was afraid to wake up in pain if it ran out or something. i was all confused. maybe it was too much medication. i don't know. at one point i told the nurse that maybe i should stop drinking water, even though my mouth was so dry, so that she didn't have to help me urinate so often. she agreed and turned down my maintentence fluids. this outraged me. shouldn't someone just off anesthetics be flushing out as much as possible? but i didn't say anything. i felt no empathy. afterwards, i was disppointed to learn that there were no other categories of powerful pain meds besides opioids. i was so dissappointed. i couldn't take those anymore, so i went home on no pain meds. turns out i was in so much less pain the day after surgury, compared to before surgery, i did just fine with nothing. who knew? i felt like the whole situation changed my life. so am i an awful patient or what?

Sis123 · Feb 10, 2005

I remember the 1st time I had to have a major surgery, it was an emergency too, and I had never seen the gyne. who operated on me before. She came to see me the day after surgery to explain what was going on, what she did in surgery and what she recommended I do. She recommended I start a course of Danazol immediately. Since I was still pretty out-of-it, I asked her to write the name of the drug down on a piece of paper and I'd check it out since I had never heard of it.

Two days after the surgery when I felt up to walking, the first place I walked to was the nurses' station, bringing my little slip of paper with me. I asked a nurse at the desk if I could use the PDR to look up a drug. She replied, (in a very condescending tone) "Now why would you want to do that, Honey?"

I replied that I had made about a hundred drug cards already in school, but didn't make one on this drug, and to please just let me use the PDR!

I got the distinct impression that this nurse thought that all information should come from the doctor to the patient! After I had written down all the pertinent info., I promptly started asking any and all nurses if they had taken Danazol, or knew anyone who did. What I heard was a real eye-opener, and that was *on top of the wild stuff* that I had already read in the PDR.

I decided to skip the Danazol, BTW.

leslie :-D · Feb 10, 2005

probably world's worst patient.

not in terms of using call lights or being demanding, but totally noncompliant.

put it this way; ea time i've left the hospital i know the doctors were thinking 'don't let the door kick you on the way out'.

leslie

boulergirl, CNA · Feb 10, 2005

I haven't been a patient in the hospital since I was 2. I had fallen out of a two-story apartment window. Because there was a pile of sand below the window, I lucked out and only had bruises and scratches. The ER staff at the hospital looked suspiciously at my 17-year-old mother though, when she told them what happened (they were probably thinking, "yeah, right--you beat up your kid and don't want to admit it").

lil' girl, LPN · Feb 10, 2005

oh i'd be horrible, questioning everything that they wanted to do/or not do.

boulergirl, CNA · Feb 10, 2005

If I were a Patient NOW, I don't how I would act. But I come from a family that doesn't like going to doctors, and are chronic worriers. My late great-grandmother broke her hip when I was little and I remember her initially refusing to go to the hospital--she was afraid they would find cancer or something. Unfortunately, they did. Her son is the same way. He has not ever seen a dentist, from what Mom tells me. :eek:

Ruby Vee, BSN · Feb 10, 2005

i was a horrible patient -- woke up after surgery in the recovery room and thought i was at work. (it was at my hospital). the patient in the next bed was screaming and yelling for help, and no one came to help him -- and here i am lying there thinking i must have fallen asleep at work, and it was so hard to wake up . . . . i forced myself awake and climbed over my siderails to help the old man next to me -- not realizing that i was intubated and lined. pulled out everything -- et tube, foley and iv. must have pulled off the monitor leads, too, because finally a nurse came. she wasn't too happy at me having extubated and de-lined myself!:chuckle

dh (also a nurse) was a horrible patient, too. he was telling the nurses how to listen to breath sounds and lecturing them about everything from the correct way to give meds to how to make a bed. then he made his own bed to show them. i was pretty embarressed -- at least i was out to lunch when i delined myself; dh was with the program. then he went on high dose steroids and started jogging around the unit with his iv pole at the ready position, the pump alarming the whole time. whenever someone tried to slow him down, he'd start the motor mouth thing: talking really fast and really loud and never shutting up yet never actually saying anything. he backed his doctor up down the hall, lecturing his doctor about some study the whole way. in self-defense, the doctor ordered ativan to slow him down a bit. that just made him manic in slow motion . . . rather funny viewed from a distance of about 7 years. the first night he was home, he climbed out of bed and urinated in the corner. then he urinated in the laudry basket -- woke up just as he was shaking off, horrified at what he had done. he stayed up the rest of the night cleaning the carpet and washing the clothes . . . and i got no sleep either. he was home on medical leave, i had to go to work the next day. believe me, work was a vacation from dh!!!

and more recently, i ended up in the er to rule out an mi. but first i had to take my stepdaughter to her ballet class so she wouldn't miss it, then drive 8 miles in heavy dc area traffic to go to the er of the one hospital in the area that i knew. people kept offering to call 911 for me, but i didn't want to "bother anyone." i parked at the far end of the parking lot and walked to the er entrance in 105 degree heat . . . . hr was about 220 at the time. they took one look at me and took me straight back . . . i must've looked really bad! fortunately, i ruled out. and next time someone thinks i look bad enough to call 911, i hope i listen!