Monday, August 3, 2009

Drunks, and some more drunks.

Ooh man. This weekend was a weekend for partying, apparently. I ended up with the rooms close to the nurses station again this weekend- I've actually starting to prefer them since it's less stressful for me to deal with a combative crazy ass than a nursing home patient desperately trying to die on me, which is always what I seem to end up with when I take any of the other rooms on this particular side of the ER. Plus, it's kind of funny. The room closest to the nurses' station is actually what we refer to as the alcohol room, and it certainly lived up to its name. The night before last, I got a guy in there who had ended up severely outmatched in some drunken brawl- he walked in to the waiting room with the crap kicked out of him. He had a massive laceration to the forehead and was bleeding all over the place as well as a blood alcohol of 325. He spent most of the evening fighting the c-collar we put him in and yelling to anyone who would listen about how he was going to kill the punk bitches who beat him up and how he didn't know who they were, but that he was going to kill their mamas and grandmamas, too. He also wanted to make sure we knew that he was a "for real pimp". Sweet. We sent him to get his neck CT'd, and sure enough, he had a break on his C7. We kept trying to tell him that his neck was broken, which half the time he responded to by telling us that, no, it was actually fine, and proceeding to try and show us that it was fine by moving it. Luckily it was a stable fracture, but we had to get him to sit still so he didn't displace it while trying to staple up the laceration on his forehead. Unfortunately, we couldn't give him any meds since he was too drunk, so we ended up pretty much having to tie him down to a backboard until careflite got there while the doctor stapled his scalp. The whole time, he had his hands in his pants manipulating himself, which he swore was the only thing that would keep the pain from being unbearable. It seemed to at least sink in a little bit when we told him that part wouldn't work anymore if he displaced his fracture, and we were able to transfer him out safely.
Last night was less legit- I pretty much just ended up babysitting a girl whose only complaint was being drunk and vomiting. Sweet. Definitely something that should be managed in the ER and not at home in front of the toilet. Apparently she was drinking with her family at 8 Pm on a Sunday, cause why not ( by the way, she was only 20 and had an 8 month old) when she had too much Crown Royal and started puking everywhere- they responded by dumping cold water all over her, for some reason, and then calling an ambulance because she was "foaming at the mouth". Uh. Yeah. That's called vomiting, and it happens when you drink a bottle of Crown by yourself when you weigh 110 pounds. She was actually pretty cooperative with the IV- less so when I had to catheterize her, but considering she was a drunk puking mess, all was okay. That was, until she remembered that she had a baby and decided she wanted to see him, immediatly, at 1130. When I informed her that she was far too drunk and that I had no idea where her spawn was anyway, she responded by yelling that I was a bitch ass hoe, and that she wasn't drunk. Oh. Okay. We literally had her sleeping in the booze room from 9 to 3 am; during all that time, none of her family showed up or called. Finally, we woke her up and told her we needed to call someone to get her drunk ass. She spent the next half hour after that on the phone telling her cousin how we stuck her, like, everywhere (we stuck her twice, and the first was by an EMS student who would have gotten the line had she not jumped halfway off the bed) and how we thought she was gonna die (nope). She then berated them about how she couldn't find her baby or her weave. When they got there to pick her up, the only thing she was embarrased about was that she'd been seen by the staff without her hair (or hurra). On her way out, she told us she was going to go get pregnant. Awesome, you should definitely have another kid if you leave the one you've got wherever you leave your weave.

5 comments:

  1. I remember in college being told that everyone is important and everyone matters. Situations like these prove it's not true! Some people are just useless and take up air and space!

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  3. I try to imagine a world where adults actually acted like adults...but am quickly reminded that most of us nurses would be out of jobs if that were to become a reality. Long live the annoying druggies & alcoholics!

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  4. It's true. If all our patients were able to be compliant, make intelligent choices, and establish what is actually an emergency, our traffic would be cut in half at least.

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  5. Even when given medically based information/reasoning and a choice....they either don't listen or don't make a good choice anyway. But we can always keep trying..... :S
    Sometimes i tell my clients: You called me, I didn't call you...........

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