This never gets old.

One of my favorite parts of my job is the phone. Not talking on the phone (which I actually loathe), but the phones in the hospital rooms.

Patients in an ICU, even the ones who are so-called "with it", don't often remember phone numbers well. It can be the pain meds, it can be just being tired from people waking you up for vital signs and neuro checks all the time (we do both hourly). But no one remembers phone numbers as good as they think when they're in the icu. This wouldn't be so funny if the patients weren't universally convinced they had it right every time.

Last night I heard the same woman have this same conversation with probably a dozen different people she called:

"Hey! It's Mary ... Listen, I'm getting out tomorrow, I need you to bring me my clothes ... What? No, I'm not in jail, I'm at the hospital ... Who? Wait, this isn't Ray? Damn it." (hangs up)

On the last call she said, "Wait, I do want to order a pizza, that sounds like a great idea..." they never did bring a pizza, though, poor lady.

Touché

Patient: what's your name?

Me: (tells her my name)

Patient (brightening): oh! You're the same white girl with the crazy hair that was here last week, too!

That's what I always think when I first wake up...

"man, when I woke up and my husband wasn't here in the room with me, I thought I was in a prostitution ring or something. That's why I was trying to get up out of the bed. I didn't want to get busted."

Oh honey, I can so relate...

While using my stethoscope to listen to the stomach of an 84 year old man...

"I'm not pregnant, am I? Please don't tell me I'm pregnant, it would really mess with my retirement planning and I don't know what I'd tell my wife."

You don't say??!!

So I admitted a lady and we were trying to get her paperwork figured out.

Doctor (to me): do we know why her husband isn't the medical power of attorney?

Me: the woman's adult children said they don't trust him and that he's got a history of having heart attacks when he gets stressed out. He was just in there talking about how it's not a big deal that she's in respiratory failure because she's just his second wife.

Doctor: oh, sounds like a gem. Does she have any other past medical history?

Me: just a history of depression...

Mommy Makeovers

Dear god, if I'm ever in the hospital I want to be like this lady.

Lady: why do I have to take a bath anyway?

Me: you want to look good for your family, right? And that big group of nice looking doctors are going to come see you in the morning.

Lady: (brightens) oh. Can you give me a boob job?

Me:  (trying not to explode in laughter) A boob job? Well, I don't know if we do that kind of thing here, even at night in the icu.

Lady: well, you surely see them here. What do you think? Do they look good?  I mean, I just want your opinion.

Me: yeah, I think they look great. But I don't know if I would get one.

Lady: You should really go to Utah. They call them mommy makeovers there. You can get a discount if you win some kind of competition. Because you need about twelve thousand dollars of work, honey.

Touche'...

Horrible interior design

Patient: "we're not in the hospital! The hell you say - we're in the basement".

Nurse: "does this look like your basement?"

Patient: "well, no, because you fuckin' redecorated it."