In The Line Of Duty

Oh man. The past couple of days at work have been intense. Between the weather and people calling in sick, being short-staffed and having a heavy patient load, work has been quite hectic. Not to mention the other day I had a patient who was nuts. Literally.

I felt bad. He had a history of psychiatric disorders, had been off his meds for weeks and refused to take them while in the hospital, and he was so hot and cold it was unbelievable. One moment he'd be calm, having a normal interaction with the staff members, and the next he'd be flipping out, throwing furniture at people. And to top it all off, he wasn't able to speak because he'd been trached recently, so when he was screaming and flailing his arms, no sounds would come out. Can you imagine that? On the border of sanity anyway and with no way to verbally express himself-- it must have been so frustrating.

But that still doesn't excuse the fact that he hit me. I don't really know how it happened-- he was in the hallway, going nuts. I tried to talk to him and calm him down, but clearly that didn't work since before I knew it, he'd smacked me ninja-style on the arm. Ouch! It ended up being such a hard slap that he left his hand print on my wrist for 20 minutes. Within fifteen minutes of his freakout I called for a behavioral emergency and waited for all the big guys from psych to show up. When they got there they restrained him, tied him down, and I gave him some injections of some very strong sedatives. Thankfully it worked-- within an hour he was fast asleep.

I didn't end up taking the patient again, and his health was improving so much that he was soon going to be able to be discharged to a psychiatric facility that could handle him better. He'd been having tons of tantrums and had to be restrained a bunch of times, sedated even more times, and for some reason, continuously accused me of lying to him about his status as a patient and the location of this clothing even though I wasn't even his nurse anymore. I was so glad to see him leave our unit-- he'd been so disruptive to our giving more attention to some of the sicker patients. Not to mention the fact that I was pleased about not being called a cocksucker anymore (no joke!).

Hopefully this guy will get some help in his new facility-- he sure needs it.