Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Crazy Talk -- the sequel
Updates from the hospital psych unit:
As I left today, my professor said, "I don't think you like psych nursing all that much, Cathy. And that's ok. What's impressive is that you hide it so damned well."
- The crazy (oh, so very crazy) lady who hates me the very most (inexplicably, I swear.. she says, "I just don't like the look of that CINDY girl.." Yeah, I'm Cathy. She still hates me.). She usually sits in her chair at the front of the unit, wearing sunglasses and holding court. She wafts in and out (mostly out) of reality and frequently calls out the wackiest things at random (most notably, her unflappable dislike of me. I swear, I didn't do anything to her). Every morning the unit holds a "morning meeting" to assemble all of the clients and introduce the new faces from the overnight admits to the old faces (who-we-are-all-waiting-for-their-meds-to-be-regulated-so-they-can-leave) and to establish daily goals (mine is either, "To help make us all a team!" or "To learn all of your names!" -- because I think my prof would frown on "To make it through today with my own sanity." "To not play mean tricks on the lady in the front of the unit who hates me.") ANYHOO -- it was at such a meeting that we met the newest admit. He's an elderly Asian man who is stone deaf and was admitted for "increased aggression" (note the "increased". It means "more than before". ). I could tell you stories of this increased aggression, but I think that violates HIPPA. This string-bean of an old man could have a career in WWF, I swear it. Anyway, Asian-man sits next to Hates-Cindy/Cathy-Lady for the morning meeting. H-C/C-L takes a good long look at him. Then she takes his hand and says, "Will you take me shopping, Pol Pot?" He looks at her and says, "EH?" She pats his hand. "Pol Pot, will you take me shopping?" -- I swear. I was the only one in the room who PASSED 8th grade world history, I suppose, and was suddenly thrown into a worry that the Asian Hulk Hogan was going to pound her. He didn't and she continued to refer to him as the Cambodian dictator who murdered his own people in the name of communism for the rest of the meeting.
- I spent last week with a lot of clients who were detoxing from alcohol -- which, under certain conditions, can land you in a mental health facility. Namely if your addiction to alcohol makes you do things like: cut your wrists. ram your mini van into parked cars whilist your children are all buckled in the backseat. smack your/my bitch up. I can say with all honesty that the amount of alcohol it takes to get these people buzzed would be enough to kill me, drown me and float me away. And the withdrawals are not pretty. However, according to the group-therapy leader, even if you take one drink once a month or once a week, you're on a path towards alcoholism. I don't feel this leader is as therapeutic as they could be in a room full of people who could intoxicate you with their breath. Eh, I'm just a student. What do I know?
- A new lady was admitted -- and she's a screamer. And not in that way, except that she does scream. A lot. Mostly all the time, really. And the screams? Yeah, it's mostly profanity. Which I think is particuarly entertaining coming from the littlest, sweetest looking old lady. She's got a dirty, dirty, swarthy sailor inside her cursing to get out. She sadly has been unable to urinate -- which, as you might imagine -- can get really painful after a while. I came upon her in the loo -- primarily because she was screaming, "I can't pee, goddamnit. Won't someone help me pee??" She's also blind, so she's very paranoid about people coming up on her without notice. I introduced myself and went over to her. Don't think that nursing school is all drugs and catheters, we have a few tricks up our scrub-sleeves and I was aiming to use them to urge this lady to drain the damned weasel, man. I turned on the faucet. I poured water into the toilet bowl. Nothing worked. The poor woman had to go so badly that I could see her distended bladder bulging from her lower abdomen. And while I'm standing with her she's still cursing and screaming at me. It sounded something like, "Goddamnit, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? oh thank you so much, please, please help me pee. I CAN'T PEE, GODDAMNIT! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? oh, that's not working, please help me pee, please!" My last resort was to try something our textbooks mention a lot -- something that even the thought of makes me want to pee -- pouring warm water over the thighs and va-jay-jay. Right? Yeah, now you have to pee, right? Our conversation ended with a nurse (a real one) coming in to help (my class was leaving for the day) and the lady screaming from the toilet, "That feels really good, but I can't pee! WHY ARE YOU POURING WATER ALL OVER ME?? thank you so much, that feels so nice. MAKE HER STOP POURING WATER ON ME!" I imagine the scene looked a little odd to the nurse coming in. Old lady on the toilet -- nursing student pouring water onto her crotch and rubbing her back. Luckilly, the nurse has read my textbooks at one time and didn't think I was in the throws of an elderly molestation. They ended up having to catheterize the poor woman, but she's much more comfortable. Though the screaming hasn't stopped.
- And my favorite story of late was today. My patient assignment was a teenaged boy who attempted a very flimsy suicide yesterday. His mother would not hand over the car keys and when he threatened to take a handful of pills unless she did, she dared him to. And he did. And then he immediately called 911. (If only that were the least of his problems.) In any event, the pills that he took were sedatives. These particular sedatives can have a strange side effect when taken en masse. They cause a raging, eternal erection -- for over 4 hours. It's got a fancy medical named called "priapism". Not having a penis, I can only tell you that I'm told it's extremely painful and indeed, dangerous to the vascularity of the wee-nis. To top that off, the kid is detoxing from heroin. You'll never guess what the key feature of a heroin withdrawal is (other than copious vomit) -- priapism. The poor bastard was batting a thousand (with his penis). The kid spent most of the day sleeping everything off -- but the nurses continued to tease me that I should be checking on his "killer hard-on". Yeah, just for the record, I had nothing to DO with his hard-on all day. {Incidentally, so you don't think us cold, his erection was cured in the ER by a medication used to put the solider at ease. I think he and his pee-ner will be just fine. I'm assuming that because I got no where near it all day.} Everyone loves a good penis story, right?
As I left today, my professor said, "I don't think you like psych nursing all that much, Cathy. And that's ok. What's impressive is that you hide it so damned well."
# posted by Cathy @ 6:24:00 PM 
