Phone Flavored Gum
In the hospital, many of our patients are confused. This leads to behavior that is both sad and funny. The last day that I worked prior to my vacation, a patient stuffed her mouth full of telephone cord. She insisted that it was chewing gum. The phone was taken away from her, but she kept managing to reach it. Several times during the shift, I heard her nurse go in the room and say, "Stop chewing on the phone cord."
Another patient spent much of the evening arguing with a blowing fan. He thought that it was his wife. Having met his wife, I can understand the confusion.
Today I have to go back there. It's been a week, so those patients are probably gone. But there will just be new ones to take their place.
Another patient spent much of the evening arguing with a blowing fan. He thought that it was his wife. Having met his wife, I can understand the confusion.
Today I have to go back there. It's been a week, so those patients are probably gone. But there will just be new ones to take their place.
Written by Melissa on 10:05 AM
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Melissa blogging from sunny Santa Clarita, Southern California, United States.
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5 Comments:
Phone flavored gum. Oh my, that's good.
In my training as a hospice worker we learned about general confusion and dementia. It IS so very sad but I've also learned that it's ok to see the 'funny' about it too (when and where appropriate) because it helps everyone deal with the dying process.
My first patient was suffering from bone cancer and I could tell he loved his wife very much but he also became very confused about who she was and lots of things around him. She would fix his meals and I saw him talking to the plate once as if it were her, telling the plate he needed a new blanket and the flowers had to be pruned and that sort of thing, waiting for it to respond even though she wasn't in the same room. She laughed in the kitchen when she overheard him, telling me "See, all these years he's been telling me do this and do that and now that he has no appetite he thinks I'm a plate of food and even tells THAT what to do. Figures!"
There are moments of sanity and moments of laughter and moments of heartbreak. In the end, all that matters is that the person has someone to have the moments with.
Well said, Mary. If we didn't laugh at life's misadventures, life would be unbearable.
Sometimes you have to laugh a little. When I was a teen, volunteering in a nursing home, sometimes I had to duck too (staplers can put a real dent in the head).
Your stories reminded me of some of the ones my mother would tell. She too was a nurse in an old peoples hospice,and would often tell stories,many funny and a few sad. I always said you must need a lot of patience to be able to work in a place like that.
The sadest thing she used to say, was that many had families, but the families would never visit.
Running2ks, you're right, the patients can be violent. Most of them are quite weak, so I can easily over-power them, but I have been scratched, bitten, hit, kicked and spat upon. I haven't had any staplers thrown at me, though, just poop.
Michelle, it is sad when children abandon their parents. It is kind of rare, though, in our acute care setting. The patients are not here long and they're quite ill, so families seem more willing to visit.
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