OMGz.

A big apology to the 4-5 people that read this- I suck at updating lately. This week has kicked my ass. But! I'm learning lots! Lots and lots.
Highlights of the last few weeks:

A patient who came in for a shoulder he had pulled out of socket who I can almost guarantee was remarkably ghetto, even for where I work. He had all these awful tattoos of guns everywhere that no joke, looked like they were drawn by a 10 year old. They sent him straight back without triaging him, so I had to collect his medical history. Wowzer. Our conversation, as follows:
Me: Do you smoke?
Hilariously ghetto patient:Yuh.
Me: Okay! How many packs a day?
Patient: Uh, I don't smoke cigarettes.
Me (clueless retard): Wait, you don't smoke?
Patient: Naw, I smoke weed. A lot.
Me (worst poker face ever): Oh, Okay. That's cool.
I HOPE someone audits that chart, because it will totally make their day. Under Past medical history, the word "smoker" is circled, and written next to it is "Marjuana- "a lot"."
While realizing the hilarity of this, it was also a giant pain in my ass, because I later found out this guy had apparently burned one on the way to the hospital, which sucks, because I had to put him under sedation to get his shoulder back in place, and the rule is that you can stop taking vital signs when the patient returns to their original level of conciousness. Well, I really had no clue what the hell that was, so needless to say, I was in his room for-e-ver. I finally decided it was probably cool to stop taking vitals when he woke up and started trying to talk me into letting him out of the hospital 25 minutes after his shoulder reduction (in his words, his boo was waiting outside), regardless of how many times I told him only the doctor could do that. The best part of this whole situation was that before he left with his super pissed off girlfriend, he managed to kick an full urinal over onto the floor. Awesome.

Hrm. Other winners- jail patient who "tried to kill himself" by hitting his forehead really hard against a bedrail. Needless to say, it pretty much only resulted in a nasty lac to the forehead. FAIL. Although, I think he may have just been bored and looking for a free day, in which case, the joke was on us.

Patient who, when I asked her to pee in a cup for me, peed in the cup, dumped the pee out, rinsed the cup out, and handed me the cup. I'm pretty sure she wasn't all there, but it was still damn funny, especially since I didn't end up needing it.

Patient with abdominal pain in with her three year old who continously asked her- "Mama, you better yet? You need to poop mama? Go poop!" Cutest. kid. ever. Mom was super sweet, too, and her pain turned out to be gallstones- i.e., totally treatable. My favorite types of patients.

The most notable, this week anyway, was a lady who came in with altered mental status and progressively got more crazy and paranoid as the visit progressed. At some point she decided we were hiding her family somewhere in the hospital, and so she went out looking for them in other patients rooms. When the police tried to bring her back to her room, she kicked one of the cops in his junk and had to be cuffed to a wheelchair. I would feel bad about laughing, but the lady ended up being fine and coming to, and the cop who got kicked seemed more amused than anyone. He hung out at the nurses station and told us about it, saying "That old lady kicked me right in the groin! I ain't never been beat up by a senior citizen like that before, damn!" Indeed, sir, indeed.