Fledgling Nurse, Part 9: The Hospital is Weird

Y'all.  There are all kinds of strange things that happen in the hospital.  There are SO MANY things that I cannot say because they involve patient specific circumstances, but, oh, there are many other stories that can be shared without any specific identifiers, from both my time in clinicals and on the floor.

• Patient was complaining that there were snakes in their room.  We reassured them a great many times that we checked under the bed, the bathroom, the blankets and all else that there were no snakes.  Patient was still concerned.  One brilliant member of our team made some "snake repellant" and sprayed it around the room.  It was some quality stuff, apparently.
• A patient was unfortunately not going to be discharged that day as planned.  They were understandably disappointed.  I stayed with them for a few minutes, as they processed that grief, including asking what they were most looking forward to when they got home.  They proceeded to tell me about the special relationship they had with their four-year-old granddaughter, how she seemed to simply know what they were feeling and was a beautiful, comforting presence.  I replied, "Sounds like she has a lot of empathy--maybe she'll grow up to be a therapist."  The patient sighed heavily and said, "No, she's going to be a pole dancer."  I couldn't help but burst out laughing--evidently, as they explained this four-year-old was in a stage where she simply did not want to wear clothes.  
• Walked by a room and noticed a patient standing at the front of it by the trashcan.  And then it clicked that this was not their room, that it was a room of a patient that had discharged about an hour and a half earlier.  I approached them, asking them if they needed help getting back to their room...and noticed that they were adjusting their waistband.  Sure enough, they had just peed in the trashcan.  From there, it was time to continue to convince them to go back to their room.  Just staying calm and not reacting and trying to not argue while attempting several persuasion tactics.  
• A couple of folks ending the call-light conversation with "I love you."
• We have a machine called the Pyxis that has various drawers with cubies inside them that lock and unlock for your selected meds.  One day, I was with my preceptor when they received a call from another nurse:  "I'm stuck.  Come to the Pyxis."  She hung up with some confusion but walked swiftly to the Pyxis; I followed.  We rounded the corner and saw the other nurse shut her jacket in a Pyxis drawer, and she could not yank it out nor manage to take her jacket off.  Of course, at that point we were not much help, laughing with her about the absurdity of being stuck in the Pyxis.  Once we had collectively regained enough sense to actually solve the problem, we pulled the same med for the same patient (and then canceled it) to get the same drawer open again.  She was freed, but, naturally, we had to tease her about it for the rest of the day.
• I had a day lately where I was feeling a little off, the kind of day that includes dropping things more than usual and running into doorknobs.  Right at the end of shift, I had a patient that hadn't peed all day and the doctor had ordered a straight cath in order to drain their bladder directly.  I had not used this particular tool we had for this process very much, so I asked another nurse for another set of hands and eyes.  This process involves wearing sterile gloves and then not touching anything that is unsterile, i.e. pretty much anything.  Once your gloved hand touches the patient, that cannot touch the part that is going inside them again.  This means, too, that putting them on without touching them everywhere is a skillset, because touching the outside of the sterile glove with an unsterile hand contaminates the glove.  So.  The goal is to get one glove on enough to help the other hand put it on fully--sterile to sterile is fine.  Putting on a tight glove one-handed is difficult, let alone on a low dexterity day.  So, I had the thumb on the wrong side in one glove, two fingers in one hole on the other, fingers in the wrong hole, and basically I turned to the patient like a giant squid, spending about as much time fixing my rubbery appendages as I did on the actual procedure point.  And then the straight cath bag flowed backwards and soaked the patient's bed a fair bit.  Sad squid hands.
• Had a patient call me into their room.  I asked what they needed.  "My name," they said.  I clarified, "your name?"  "Yes," they agreed, "I dropped my name."  I told them that I was pretty sure they still had that, pointed out that it was on the whiteboard.  "Oh.  Can you bring it to me?"  "I sure can't--the whiteboard is attached to the wall."  "Oh.  Can you bring it to me?"  I then pointed out that they also had it on their wrist, on their hospital band.  They asked that I bring it to them, too, and after three or four attempts, eventually we connected together that they did, in fact, already have possession of both their name and arm.  

It's a sampling, to be sure.  I daresay I will continue to collect more.  We have to treasure those moments to laugh, partially to protect against those other moments and also because it's too absurd not to.