tic tac toe and brain bleeds

    Sometimes you can’t do much besides shake your head or go into the hall and laugh with the nurses.

   This certain lady had been in the hospital for about a month already, when her daughters started throwing a fit that the hospital had lost the patient’s dentures. The patient is mostly out of it with lots of things hooked up to her. She is size large and needs at least 2 if not 3 of us to turn and change her. Ok let me back up. For a short anatomy lesson, let me explain to you that we have a bone that, in very simple terms, is right close to your throat and most the time you can see it kinda jutting out when you look at a human. It’s called a collarbone, okay? Anyways. So this patient’s daughters apparently have never had any type of lesson about the human body. They saw that “bump” under her skin and it immediately clicked! THAT is where their mom’s dentures were! It finally made sense. When the doctors did the procedure, they shoved the dentures down her throat and somehow apparently it escaped the esophagus aaaaand I guess the doctors never noticed they did this?? They just left it in?? How do DENTURES fit down a throat?? And if they do, how do they get jutted out and off to the side of your throat??And nobody noticed for a month? It didn’t bother the patient? I don’t know. 

    *****

   I pulled on my big girl boots and walked my little self straight to the ER managers office and asked if they had an available positions. (After she had told me no on the phone a couple days earlier. You must be buggy here) She said no we don’t. But hey! If you want to just pick up some shifts we can train you and you can do that! Hopefully I kept my confusion from showing because how do you not have positions but yet you can train me and I can pick up shifts?? Idk there’s a reason I’m not manager somewhere. Quite a few reasons actually. Anyway I said yeah yeah that’s fine that’s all I want anyway! so Yay for me I got trained in the ER and hopefully get to see some interesting things once in awhile.

  First day of training in ER.  I trained with a guy named Harold. Harold is short. Harold is 57. Harold had 7 chickens but one mysteriously shows up dead, maybe from a heart attack?, but his wife told him he could get 4 more so now he’ll have 10. Harold will proudly tell you about his 3 lb some oz grandson up on L&D. Harold also does not change gloves between patient’s rooms, which goes against me in every single way, and has a pair of gloves on at all times, even when typing on the computer, which also goes against me in most ways. Harold is a retired cop and is soon gonna go be lead detective at the base. Harold also has an accent and doesn’t say all of his r’s. Harold is nice and everybody likes him. So, 11 yr old, suicidal. To be honest I’m not completely sure what their original reason for coming to the ER was? Maybe get her admitted to a pediatric psych ward? She told some nurses she wanted to hurt herself and told others she didn’t. To be honest I think she could go pro in telling lies. But that’s just my opinion. Anyway, long story short, the girl wasn’t comfortable being in the room with her mom and aunt, who turned out to be her legal guardian. So a couple of the nurses and Harold and I stood outside the room with her. She asked for her mom. The nurses got her. I’m gonna call the girl Fern. Fern and her mom stood there facing each other. Fern starts crying and yelling at her mom. “Why can’t I live with you? I want to talk to you but my auntie says you’re a psycho and can’t take care of me. She beats on me and y’all don’t believe me! My question is, do you want me???” Her mom just stared at her… never answered. I legit wanted to cry right there. She finally told the nurses “I’m not gonna talk her because I’m so upset with her right now.” And that was how the whole afternoon was. Neither the mom or the aunt wanted much to do with Fern and made it very clear that they didn’t waste any more of their precious time at the hospital, they didn’t really care what happened to her as long as she was off their hands. I think they were sick and tired of dealing with her, apparently she’d been in how many mental homes in the last several years. But I felt really bad for her because it was obvious nobody wanted her. And to see her mom basically outright say she didn’t even want her, my heart broke. Harold and I were pulled to sit with her. Try keeping an 11 year old with ADHD busy in a boring ER. We played tic tac toe in which she thought for every 5 points she got, I owed her a bag of chips. Which she had already eaten at least 3 and had another 1 or 2 waiting to be eaten. We played hangman, in which she made me guess names of famous youtubers and games that I quite honestly have hardly, if ever, heard of. She told me I looked like one of those people that work in an orphanage. I don’t know if she was thinking of a nun or what?? Gotta love being told you look like a nun lol. She tried to teach me to draw an elf but she said mine looked like a devil. I drew a better one after that. We sat there for 5 hours, and please don’t make me be in charge of a wild 11 year old in the ER again. At least not for awhile. 

   Next patient of interest was a 2 yr old boy. He had a fall and had gotten quite a goose egg on his forehead but otherwise seemed fine..didn’t have any of the brain injury symptoms but his mom was still worried so the nurse practitioner ordered a CT just in case.. After a little while I saw him wheeled out on a stretcher .. turns out he had a brain bleed. I guess it pays to worry? 

   2nd day of training. I heard someone singing and turned to look at what EMS brought in. or who EMS brought in. I’ve never seen anyone move their hands or fingers so fast. She was strumming up and down the rail of that stretcher so quickly it gave me a hernia just to watch. She promptly got put in Obs 6, the psych room. There’s a camera in there so the nurses can watch from the nurses station. One time I saw her doing some kind of something that looked like a creepy ritual of some sort. Lol I doubt it was but she was just moving her arms and hands all over the place. Harold and I went to get her discharge vitals before she got transferred to Behavioral Health and she pulled some lettuce out of her pocket. Devil’s Lettuce, that is. 

  

   Next patient for Obs 6, courtesy of EMS again. Chris actually brought him in, to be exact. (my cousin) This one had jumped over the counter at Sprint Mart and Loves but the po po said it was a medical problem, not a go-to-jail problem? Apparently he was hungry but beings as there’s not much food behind gas station counters, who knows what he was after. So he landed in the ER but wasn’t there long before he walked out. He reminded me of a naughty little kid and I would have liked to have told him that. (He was 30ish) When we first walked in his room he had his jacket kinda slung over his face and when we said hi, he kinda looks around (with his face still covered) and says “Jesus?!” *eye roll*  then Harold told him to look up so he could get his temp or something so he promptly looks down and then says Oh! and then looks up. *eye roll again* I think he thought he was funny but we didn’t. 

   

     So, yeah. Watch out for weird bumps beside your throat, hopefully you don’t swallow any foreign objects that jump out of your esophagus somehow and lodge there. 

   Joint effort of drawing her idea of an elf.