“He stuck a bottle up his butt.”

Yeah, you heard me right.  This was my first patient I had as a student in the Intensive Care clinicals.  You would have to understand how timid and shy I was back then to fully appreciate how upsetting getting this patient was. 

So, I came in that morning and got my patient.  Frequently, in the ICU patients get transferred off of the unit to another place as is what happened with the patient that I had the day before.  So, I got a new one.  We’ll call him Mr. Jones.  The nurse always gives the student nurse a full report which includes how the patient’s injury was sustained or a synopsis of their illness.  She began, “Mr. Jones was at home last night and had taken a soda bottle and put in pretty far up into his rectum.  When he could not get the bottle back out, he had to go and ask his elderly mother to take him to the emergency room.  Upon further inspection and tests, Mr. Jones had perforated (torn) his intestine and was seriously septic (infection throughout his body).  He is in critical condition and we are unsure if he is going to make it.” 

 Okay, I turned red, then white, and did not know how I was going to face this person.  A soda bottle up his butt?? I mean, I think, I’m pretty sure I knew what he was doing, but geez……HOW EMBARRASSING!  And now he may die from this?  How would you like to have people ask “What happened?  How did he die?”  I mean, the obvious out was “from an infection”.  But can you believe that he actually had to tell his mother about what he did so she could take him to the emergency room??? 

One other gross story was how a nurse friend of mine ended up in the ICU with a similar story, except he had gotten a gerbil caught up in his butt and hurt himself trying to get it back out. 

What is wrong with people??!!!!!

I never knew osteoporosis could be this bad…….

So, some memorable moments in the nursing home was when my instructor came in to help us give a bath to a rather rowdy resident.  This older lady could be downright MEAN.  She was confused, and got frustrated easily.  When this happened, she could get quite physical.  Yeah.  So, there we were trying to bathe her when my instructor walked in to lend a hand.  The older lady apparently didn’t like my teacher from the time she saw her, so she pinched her on her butt, and my instructor firmly told her that she could not do that.  The older lady did not take well to that, so she reached up and slapped my instructor.  Really hard.  I really didn’t know what to do.  I mean, I’d never seen anything like this in my life.  I think this was the first slapping I’d witnessed.  My instructor was embarrassed, and probably in some stinging pain too.  She had a pretty good red handprint on her face for the rest of the day.

Another resident that I had was an older British lady who had osteoporosis.  She was so frail and had kyphosis (hump back) really bad.  It looked like she was frozen in a position as if she were bent trying to touch her toes.  It was just horrible.  She cried and cried with pain from the osteoporosis.  When we tried to clean her up, we had to get her beautiful Laura Ashley gown off of her.  She screamed when we tried to take it off because it hurt her to move so much.  She cried out for us to just “cut it off” rather than slip it over her head.  I remember somehow getting it off without having to cut it.  But this left such an impression on me.  I had no idea what a severe case of osteoporosis could be like; such pain and suffering.  I WILL remember to drink milk or take calcium supplements!!