People are nuts

On the whole,  people are just nuts.   I have worked with the public for many years and this is true more often than not.  I have a dying patient, comatose now, and the family is grieving.   Now I know everyone gets to grieve in their own way but sometimes their way is crazy.   This was crazy on a whole different level.  The mom is repeatedly kissing the woman's lips despite the breathing tube and NG tube and the stench of old mucus,  the brother sneaks in alcohol and gets so drink off his ass he had to be escorted out by security,  the step mom is praising Jesus with increasing volume over and over and over, and the husband is repeatedly kissing his wife's TOES- yes her Toes!  while loudly proclaiming he will not apologize for it.

Only the Dad sits in the corner quietly, tears in his eyes, looking miserable and broken.  I think his sorrow is for the daugher he is losing, but then again, it might also be for the life he has lived with these nutsos.

Maybe I should be a pooper scooper.

Why in the hell do we let patients dictate their own care? Why is a patient allowed to tell me what they want or don't want?  When they want the lifesaving Bipap taken off or when they should be allowed to stay on the vent and not breath on their own because they need to rest?  Yes this is real.  I have trach patients who do not want to come off the vent during the day because it is so much easier to let the vent breath for them and not have to exert an ounce of energy in their own behalf.  We put them on a vent at night to theoretically rest them.  And who needs to rest from breathing anyway?

I have patients that order water or coke , knowing full well they aspirate everything into their lungs.  I have patients that refuse their breathing treatment because they need to take this phone call.  Or patients that won't do th therapy ordered to combat the illness which brought them into the hospital in the first place.

I absolutely detest when patients start ordering their care as if they were at Burger King.  I want to ask them, "Could you take care of this at home? Oh you couldn't? that's why you're here? Then lay back, shut up, do what we ask, and let us do what we do very well. If you can take care of this feel free to go home. Wouldn't hurt our feelings at all. "

On another note.,,, we have this room we should call the PITA room. Nearly every single patient we put in there becomes the biggest pain in the ass. And it doesn't matter the diagnosis.  Every patient assigned this room start a running chant of "I need pain meds, I need a drink, I can't breath, I need pain meds, I need a drink, Where is my pain meds, I can't breath.",  and it goes on and on and on and on, all day and all night, until some nurse gets fed up and narcs their ass.

And of course every single patient that goes into this room has some gnarly infection for which we have to glove, gown, mask, and sometimes put booties on. And each and every one refuses to tell you what they want until you get all protected up and go into the room. Then and they launch into the chant ... "I need pain meds, I need drink, I can't breath, I need pain meds.......... and of course it'snot time for pain meds, they are on a vent or a bipap so they CAN breath and no they can't have a drink. Thus, you have wasted all that time and energy to come in the damn room and repeat what the nurse had told them not five minutes before!

Maybe I should go scoop dog poop for a living. You still have to deal with shit but it's at least quiet and just lays there.