Hot vag...

Nurse:  "I just checked again and you don't have a fever."
Patient: "But I feel like I do!  Can you check under my arm?"


Nurse takes patient's temperature under her arm.


Nurse:  "You're still not febrile."
Patient:  <Big sigh> "All right then, can you put that thermometer in my vagina then?  Because I bet I have a temperature there."

Public service announcement # 75426

I was going to say "this one is for the guys", but really it could apply to anyone.

If, hypothetically, you get some kind of brain issue in the future that requires hospitalization and a 24/7 police escort... Even if you think you're a hot commodity... No, the nurses, techs, and doctors DO NOT want some of that. I promise. Even if you're related to some celebrity I've never heard of and have a good singing voice. Even if you once had a wife that looks just like me. Nope, I still don't want some of that. And I can guarantee you they won't. Save yourself the hassle.

Well, this is kind of awkward.

Two different times tonight, people came and got me to ask me to help them make sure their patient's condom catheters are on right and/or help them put a new one on. One of them, a new grad (bless her heart) said that someone told her I was really good with the condom catheters.

I guess if I'm going to become known for something around here...

Hot.

Cleaning up a patient with another nurse...

Me: You got poop under your fingernails! How did you do that?

Patient: I don't know.

Other nurse: What are you gonna do when all the pretty ladies come to see you, and you go to wave at them and you've got poop underneath your nails and on your hand?

Patient: Well, that's never stopped me before. And I could always use my other hand. See? I'm doing it right now.

running gross interference

So, something (a mass of dried blood and tissue, NOT gross by my standards, but whatever) fell off my friend's patient's foot (follow?).

What does she do?

Yep, she comes and gets me. "can you please, please, please put this in a bag to show the docs later in case they want to see it?". Sigh.
So, I put it in the bag and went back to eating my lunch.

Slow night here. I wish I had more hilarity to Blog...

You know it's bad when you're too gross for work.

I forgot to blog about this one!

So last week, I was drinking ice water out of a plastic container. These things are used for everything in my unit, from holding supplies on tables/organization to carrying around urine. So... as noted before, it was new grad week. One of them paused in mid sentence and looked at me with huge eyes and asked, "Are you drinking out of a PEE thing?". I laughed - a pee thing? And I said yeah, although it's obviously not a used one.

The following conversation ensued:

New grad: You should go get an actual specimen cup and fill it with apple juice or something, now that would REALLY freak someone out.

Me, laughing: Yeah, like during report in the morning?

New grad: Totally!

Some of the other nurses thought this was funny, too and they were all laughing.

Me: I could also add some sugar so it looks all sedimented and cloudy.

Everyone else: silent, then EWWWW!

Me: Wow. I just grossed out a pack of ICU nurses. I don't know whether to be ashamed or really proud.

EYE HERPES!!!

So, this was quite the ordeal for me. I have joked a couple of times that karma's a bitch. Through Nursing school I have always joked around about some of the nastier illnesses. Eye herpes in particular fascinated me because first of all, it looked awful. Second of all, HOW on earth do you contract it? Lookin for love in all the wrong places? Lookin for love in the RIGHT places?

So, fast forward to me working in an ICU. Doing what ICU nurses do at night. Was helping my friend bathe her patient who was comatose. He had a lot of secretions so I suctioned his trach and his mouth. You see where this is going, don't you? I was disconnecting the suction thing from the tubing and a bunch of drops of his bloody saliva somehow jump right behind my glasses and INTO MY EYE.

I froze for a second and then turned the faucet on and stuck my head under it. I heard my friend, in the background, say "Oh my God, he has herpes lesions in his mouth!". I tried to figure this out in a distant and academic way inside my head before I said anything. I mean, he wasn't in the hospital for infectious disease or anything. Ugh, I gagged as all those horrible images came flooding back into my head from nursing school. Crusted over bloody eyes. Zombie looking shit, yo.

So I went to my charge nurse and explained that I got oral secretions in my eye. She asked if I wanted to be seen by employee health (which means since it was after hours I'd be going to the ER). I blinked and told her the guy had herpes lesions in his mouth. She said "yeah, you should go".

I went down, stopping to text my husband, "Im going to the ER, I'm afraid I may have gotten herpes from my patient". He was confused by this and then for the rest of the time I was waiting my phone wasn't in range. Oops. That is probably the one text I've ever sent that provoked the most questions from the fewest words.

So, in short, they do NOTHING. They wanted to draw my blood to make sure I didn't have HIV and Hepatitis. Which, I don't get, but oh well... And they drew his blood to see if he had HIV and Hepatitis. Then they said to follow up with the real employee health in the morning. (I went and they had me fill out more paperwork, no info on what I should do to PREVENT MY EYE FROM CRUSTING OVER AND FALLING OUT).

I had to work the next night and was freaking out at not getting any answers. I called my primary care doctor. She said she had no idea how to care for eye herpes, and asked if I had an opthalmologist. I said no. She said to go back to work in the evening like normal and talk to the Opthalmologist on call and ask for a script - if they weren't comfortable writing me one, I could call back and she would write whatever that person said to write. UGH. By this point I'd also been googling furiously and looking stuff up in my old nursing texts.

Finally went back to work and talked to the Opthalmology resident. She listened to my story and was the first person I talked to who didn't seem confused about what I wanted or why I was concerned. Yay!! She then said, "well, that's really gross. We don't usually do prophylaxis for this, but if it were MY eye, here's what I would do...." and even called in a script for me! Yesss!

So - end result - happily ever after. Never progressed into eye herpes. My coworkers were appropriately fucking awesome and joked with me for the next few weeks about "Hey, there's something in your eye....", and I got plenty of "lookin' for love in all the wrong places" jokes. I could not have asked for anything better. Except, WTF employee health? Yes, you should make sure the guy didn't have HIV and Hepatitis. But I'm disturbed by how much I was blown off, overall.

I like the rectum

After inserting a suppository, I had a preceptor say to me, "You know that suppository isn't going to work. I just let you go ahead and do it because I know you like the rectum".

Umm. I guess you figured me out. My answer was to giggle nervously and look around like maybe she was talking to someone else, but I really wish I had said any of a thousand less stupid things, other than NOTHING. Because I could have made that into some funny ICU shit, for reals.

I wonder if this guy ever got change for his five

Alternate title: I didn't know they kept money there!!

So this guy insisted he had a five dollar bill and accused us (a preceptor and I) of stealing it. To humor him, we shook out all the bed linens and looked under the bed, etc to make sure his money wasn't hiding there. We even stood him up to see if he had been sitting on it.

When we sat him back down in the bed, his gown rode up and there was his five dollar bill, wedged in between his scrotum and penis. I pointed at it, and said, "Hey, there's your five!". He looked down, grabbed it, and brightened. He held it out and, without missing a beat, asked, "Do you have change for a five?".

Um, no. Not at all. And every time anyone went in there for the rest of the day he asked them for change for his five.