My patient ran away with cocaine in his colon

Did NO ONE freaking pay attention to the Just Say No campaign in the 80s except me??

Today, I am going to blog in the third person because I am getting bored with writing as myself . Meet one of my patients from over the weekend.


Damn.  I knew I was drunk last night but, fuck, how did I end up in the hospital?  *rolling to the side* oh mann a cop is in here! Son of a bitch how am I going to get out of here? My mom is going to kick my ass.. wow the judge told me to stay out of trouble, I'm going to go to jail now, no doubt.  I'm glad I swallowed those 4 bags of cocaine when I got pulled over, bought me some time to figure out how I'm going to get out of this mess. I hope one of the bags doesn't open.. if that happens I will OD and then I will really be fucked. *dozes back off to sleep*

What.. time is it..?  Oh man my stomach is killing me. ooh  it hurts... I hope one of those bags didn't bust open...wow.. if I happen to shit one of these bags out soon, I will be able to do a line of coke right here in the hospital.. *looks to the side* Oh wow!! The cop is gone! I should try to escape.. hm.. where would I go?  I better text one of my buddies and see when he can come get me.  I can't believe my luck that the cop left!!

Someone's in here.. oh, she's my nurse.  I'm.. not sure what to make of this.. she actually seems to care that my stomach hurts and she's not talking to me like I'm some stupid drunk douchebag.  She's giving me IV nausea meds too. And extra chicken broth.  This is nice but I gotta get out of here..

I'm in the bathroom right now and nobody is bothering me.. if I put my street clothes on and unscrew the hub of my IV from the tubing like..this..oh ... cool!!  Holy shit!  I could totally mainline this shit if I keep my IV in!! This is my chance to get out.  I will leave the detached IV running in the bathroom with my gown and telemetry box on the floor and just casually walk out..

Okay... back to first person..

State police: "Yes are you the RN who was caring for the pt. who escaped earlier this morning?'

Me: "yes"

State police: "Can you please tell me your full name and title?"

Me: "Sure, it's _____ _______, RN"

State police: "Date of birth?"

Me:  "I'm not telling you that!" *laughter*

State police: *silence*

Me: "You need that don't you.."

State police: "Yes."

Me: Fine, it's XX/XX/XXXX (I used my actual birth date)

State police: Ok.  Can you tell me what happened.."

I gave him a statement and I was a little annoyed once I told him everything that happened.  There was an officer in the room right up until 5 am.  Upon doing some googling I found out the patient was on parole and had a pretty long rap sheet.  Not to mention the fact that if that cocaine packaging  had split open, he would have ODed right on the spot and DIED (and I would have had to try to save him), or he could have passed the coke and snorted it all in the bathroom AND DIED (and again I would have had to try to save him). or he could have stashed it where a confused old patient could have gotten a hold of it (okay that's a stretch but still, WTF??) Not only that, but the cop who was watching him never told anyone he was leaving or why ...suddenly it wasn't important to watch the guy.(probably staffing related but still, tell us what's going on)  To top it all off, we called the cops IMMEDIATELY when the guy got away.  They didn't even bother coming to look for him and took 6 hours to call back after we notified them.

My hospital doesn't really have a security dept.. (they have 1 maintenance man who doubles as security) and I have to be honest when I say I don't feel very safe sometimes.

I will also say I'm kind of glad he got away because I really didn't want to be remotely involved in what will happen when he passes that cocaine.  Especially without any police or security to protect myself, my coworkers, or my patients.

So, Mr. Cocaine Colon, be gone with you. And next time I hope they take you someplace else that has an actual security dept.

My most dangerous and hilarious patient encounter EVER

Back when I was still a nurse's aide in 2009, I was assigned to do a one to one watch on a prisoner. In case you aren't familiar with how it works, hospitals use their nurse's aides to sit in rooms with people who are in danger of hurting themselves or others. If the patients are dangerous, they are put into 4 point locked restraints in addition to the one to one watch.

On this day in particular, I had a prisoner with a prison security guard with him.  Since the security guard was not hospital staff, they still needed me there.  The prison guard had the VERY IMPORTANT job of reading the paper and ignoring the prisoner while I sat arm's length away from the prisoner and getting cursed at and threatened.  The prisoner also had a penchant for spitting, hence the spit shield (an over the face hood made of black netting).  The prisoner was not only inappropriate and verbally abusive, he was also a bit out of it.  Because of this, he kept asking why my panties were over his face. :/

So, dinner arrives and I am informed by the nurse that I have to feed this guy because if we untie his hands he will try to escape.  I am not happy about this because that means I have to raise his spit shield and very likely be spat upon.  AWESOME. Before I decide to raise the shield, I figured I better be sure the guy was actually.. I don't know.. hungry.  So I look him in the eye and say, (very sweetly I might add), "Are you hungry?" He looks directly into my eyes and says in a gruff, muppetlike voice "Yeah, I'm hungry.. HUNGRY FOR YOUR PUSSY!"
:/

The prison guard heard it and I could tell was about to call him a piece of shit or something and I held up my hand to the guard as if to say "just hold on.. don't say anything".  At that point I removed the lid from his tray, slammed the lid down on his bedside table and said, "WELL YOU ARE GETTING SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS." Prisoner's demeanor immediately changed to defeat looked down at the tray and opened his mouth for me to feed him and proceeded to obediently eat his meal with no obscenities or spitting. Then he let me brush his teeth after. (his breath was TERRIBLE). The prison guard could not have looked more proud of me. ;)

P.S.  This is what a spit shield looks like. (and for the record, my panties NOWHERE NEAR that size)