DROP IT! NOW!

Walking by a patient's room, I noticed that he was cutting through his IV line with a dinner knife. Calmly, I asked him to stop. He looked at me and started sawing faster. One of his lines was a central line, meaning that the line snaked through his veins to his heart. Cutting that line would not be a good thing to do.

When reasoning failed, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "Drop it ! Now! I approached him and he pointed the knife at me and threatened to stab me. I left the room to gather some supplies and asked a coworker to come help me.

We came back into the room and stood on opposite sides of the bed. Suddenly, I lunged at him. I had his knife hand in both of mine. My coworker grabbed his free hand. After some struggling, I was able to squeeze the knife out of his hand. As soon as I had the knife, I violently threw it across the room. I'm not sure why I did that, but it felt good.

We began tying him up. It wasn't easy. He was a fighter and broke the first set of restraints. Someone ran to another unit to borrow another set while we held him down. Of course, in the end we won. We always do.

He was calling us and especially me, every nasty name he could think of. Even though he was not in his right mind, it still bothers me when I'm called those kind of names. I don't know how psyche nurses can stand that on a daily basis.

Then he started yelling as loud as he could, for someone to call the police. He was also shrieking things like, "there is a blonde bitch in her with murder in her eyes and she's going to kill me." He was probably right about the look in my eyes, but wrong that I was going to kill him. I only wanted to kill him. Everyone on the floor had to listen to him screaming for help for about 15 minutes until the "cocktail"I slipped into his IV line took effect. After that, he was no trouble at all.