Interesting patients

The hospital that I worked at had a lot of patients with mental health problems in addition to the actual physical problems that they were being hospitalized for.  This made it extrememly difficult to have the “average” number of patients (7).  I was just thinking about how this patient who I had was a “swallower” and had to be one on one with a sitter in addition to having a nurse.  Nothing that was of size that could be swallowed could be in the room.  This patient had come in  because he had swallowed a pencil.  They attempted to get it out with endoscopy and could not, so they were forced to cut him open and SURPRISE!!  They found a watch, batteries, and coins.  This was not the first time that he had been opened up to retrieve objects. 

I believe it was that same night that I had the patient that tried to hit me in the head with a quad cane.  Yeah.  And it hurt.  He was at least sane enough to be scared when the security guys came up.  He thought he was going to jail.  I was able to give him medication (per dr’s order) to calm him down.  Haldol, that is.  We called it Vitamin H.  The vitamin that the insane folks were lacking.