Wierdest thing you've found in a bedside table?

Well, a little background. The patient, who was having a home birth with a lay midwife, came in with an arrest in labor (she'd been 8 cm for several hours). She delivered with a minimum of intervention. When she was ready to go home, she couldn't find her dress ( the only garment she had on when she came in) and no one brought her anything else. After she left, wearing 2 patient gowns (the second one to cover her backside) I found the dress in the bedside table, tucked way back in a corner. I've never decided whether that was a deliberate oversight.

well goodness knows i've had many patients who are hoarders.

WARNING: the following is disgusting

i had one patient that used to disempact herself and wrape her feces in a tissue and store them in her bedside drawer.

and we've even caught her eating it. :stone

the doctor gave us a dx for that but no cure.

and she preferred 'it' over icecream or other goodies.

earle58, OK, now I've had to put away my afternoon snack. Disclaimers like the one you made about that being disgusting just makes me more anxious to read:)

The other night I found a tooth in a cup in a drawer. But come to think of it, I have several teeth in my jewelry box from all of my kids and my dog :uhoh3:

My personal favorite...(and actually this happened to me twice, believe it or not)... I'm always the type that obsessively picks up extra "stuff" from the bedside tables...(now if only I could treat my own house the same way). Anyways.....I walked into this sweet lil' old ladies room...and started picking up the junk on the bedside table. I asked her if she was done with her sandwich and she said "yes"...then I asked her if she was done with her glass of apple juice...and to this she replies..."oh no dear, that isn't apple juice, it's urine"....."I didn't think I could make it so I used this". Very, very gross..although I am pretty impressed with her aim, it was a pretty small glass!

Luv,

Snoop

Okay...took care of a lady as an aide way back when. She was a BIG woman, and on strict I&O. I worked nights, and I kept checking her hat in the toilet, but she never had any output. At around 0600, I saw her wake up, and I asked if she had urinated during the night. She said of course; I asked if she had emptied her hat and was going to remind her that we were keeping track of that, when she pointed at a Tupperware pitcher on her table and giggled, "Oh, there's my little piss pot." Mind you, she WAS fully ambulatory, just too fat to get on and off the toilet.

It was one of those Tupperware, oval shaped containers that my mom used to make Kool Aid in when I was a kid. UGH.

A "toy" and a stolen tube of hospital lube. The mental picture from that actaully grossed me out more then a GI bleed. In the same drawer as this person's washtub, soap, etc.

poop, in a cup. how can they be so demented, yet have such good aim?.....................

The only time I have looked in a pts bedside table without the pts permission, because I consider that theirs and private, is when we had a lol hording food and we had roaches.

All these stories just remind me of an experience I had last week. This sweet woman in her 60's came in with difficulty breathing. She was more comfortable in her wheelchair than the cot and hard to get up, so we let her sit in the wheelchair. When she asked for help to go to the bathroom I kindly asked her what was easiest for her to do. She was about 300 pounds and unable to stand. She scooted up to the edge of the wheelchair (I was praying she wouldn't just plop down on the ground!) and asked me to get a cup that was smashed up behind her. She placed it right underneath herself and went! I was amazed that she had such good aime, despite how grossed out I was. But whatever works!

um, the cup of poop wasn't in the bedside table, it was on top, and i wasn't snooping, it's kinda hard to miss a steaming cup full of poop..........

I started as a new grad in the NICU, so I never did adult nursing... I learn more and more every day on this site about how truly dirty adult pts can be! New nurses must just about fall over when they see something like poop wrapped in a tissue in a bedside table!