Really?

Last night was a revolving door of drug seekers and ICU patients. I had to resite one lady's IV 3 times in about 5 hours. She told me the first time I had to do it that she was going to cuss me out if I didn't get her on the first stick. Seriously? What do I get to do to you for continually removing them now? I wish I could say that was the last time someone threatened violence against me that shift, but I'd be lying.

I thought I'd been granted serious relief once she got upstairs, until about 35 seconds later, when the charge nurse sent an ambulance containing what might be the single craziest Hood Hospital frequent flyer to the still dirty room. Naturally, she got admitted and was a hold all night, so I had the privilege of listening to her spew all kinds of crazy racial slurs about the asian admitting doctor who cut off her Dilaudid.

The guy in my other room decided to follow suit by cutting up and removing his own IV and slamming doors like an angry teen because I wasn't getting him medicine fast enough for his chronic back pain. I must have resited, like, 8 damn IVs last night. Somehow my shrugging and handing him an AMA form made him decide he actually did want to stay, but at least he scaled back the attitude for the two hours remaining in the shift.

Before you decide I'm mean for my indifference, let me just say that during the time in question that he needed his life saving narcotics, I had just gotten a lady with no IV and a heart rate of 25. Uh, sorry dude, I'll get your Morphine right after this lady's Atropine and transcutaneous pacing junk. I'm here to listen to you and take your pain seriously.

Symptomatic bradycardic lady got worse before she got better, so I traded her for the unresponsive drunk guy that was in the room before. He finally woke up and left with his ride right before shift change, at which point the charge nurse notified me that he had taken a shit in the middle of the floor before leaving as a way of saying thank you. Yeah. Awesome.