Yes, I will officially take my title now. Unfortunately, my friend who charged the extra shift I picked up last night also shares the same honor, so we were screwed from the start. My patient load when I walk in- little old granny with blood glucose of 700 and a thousand family members with the collective IQ of a brick who want everything just so, lady with mentation from crazy town withdrawing from benzos trying to climb out of bed, sweating profusely and making Frankenstein noises, and teenage "suicide attempt" with 5 Aspirin who absolutely refused to drink her activated charcoal. Well, of course we had to have about 7 staff members climb on top of her while her stupid ass tried to bite us and we crammed and NG tube and a bunch of charcoal down her nose hole. And of course we had no rooms so these people were admitted and I was stuck with them all night, and naturally granny had to be turned and have boo boo cleaned and have an apple juice and have blood sugars checked every 20 minutes but you can't do it on that finger, or that finger, and if she wasn't perfectly symmetrical lying in the bed I knew about it.
I had her long enough that I had to try and start her admission assessment, and with every new question found out about a new medical problem that we didn't know about before, but no one knew when or how it was treated and what it was called, and the daughter was trying to give me her very limited knowledge of her mothers medical information while at the same time screaming at some poor police officer on the phone about how her car was stolen. My relatively simple constipation via EMS most definitely turned out to not only have a massive bowel obstruction requiring surgery, but she also was in renal failure. FML.
So this morning over beers, we had this conversation.
Me: Yeah, you need to find some safe place to put me where the train wreck crazy patients won't find me.
Charge nurse buddy: Yeah, like your house.
Well, yeah, it's probably the only way. Could you go ahead and pay me though?
OMG I laughed so hard I was crying! I know the kid sitting across from me at the library thought I was crazy!!
ReplyDeleteSounds a fun night, but why charcoal for 5 aspirin? Do you really need any treatment for 5 aspirin OD or were you punishing her?
ReplyDeleteI kind of wondered the same thing- apparently there was a remote possibility that it could have been more, since her blood levels were slightly trending up from the first and second draw, and that was what poison control recommended. So nom nom nom, activated charcoal. Good times. At least it wasn't gastric lavage, I guess.
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