Four Feet or Under

By cd | Published: March 24, 2005

At the time of this story my nieces’ boy was only about 3 years old. Also I might add and quite witty.

My younger daughter had taken him out for lunch to the local Hardee’s. Of course a meal isn’t complete unless you allow him to play on all the play fun equipment. It wasn’t within a few minutes and he discovered the ball pit.

You’ve seen them I’m sure, hundreds of little plastic red and blue balls inside a caged area. He dove in headfirst and was having the time of his life.

“Come on in Jenny”, he hollered out to my daughter.

“I can’t come in Caleb, the sign says you have to be under four feet.”

With a strange confused look on his face he replied back, “But I don’t have four feet!”

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Streaking

By cd | Published: March 22, 2005

One night me and some girls I knew from the nursing home I volunteered at got together and had a little party cause we were bored.

We decided to make a few prank phone calls to a few guys we knew. We told them we were having a streaking party and they should come over and join us.

About half an hour later this car full of guys we knew came over and they were all naked. They thought we meant nude streaking. we got out the cameras and had a few good stories to tell the folks. They enjoyed that alot.

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Crash Cart 2, Nurses 0

By cd | Published: December 30, 2004

I’m a nurse on the night shift on the medsurg floor. The night shift nurses from Intensive Care (ICU) have a tendency to leave their crash cart (defibrillator) unplugged at night. The result? Their defib battery goes dead all the time and they simply run down the hall to borrow ours when a patient goes critical (crashes).

One night a patient started to crash on ICU and a nurse came running down the hall, grabbed our cart and took off at full speed. The problem? He forgot to unplug the cart. Around the first corner, the cord went taut and the nurse was jerked right into the wall! We clearly heard the ‘whack’ as he hit and you could see he had broken his nose.

I pulled the cart back a little to unplug it so I could run it to ICU while another nurse checked the poor fellow. Before I could unplug the cart another nurse came speeding out of ICU, grabbed the cart out of my hands while giving me a very nasty look and took off running. You guessed it. She didn’t hit quite as hard as the first guy, but it still knocked the wind out of her. I calmly, in full view of the two knuckleheads, unplugged the cart and trotted down the hall with it.

The best part, aside from the keystone nurses routine, was that the second nurse had glared at me because she thought I had decked the first nurse for trying to take our cart. I heard later that an ICU nurse had gotten into a screaming match with another floor over an oxygen tank a few nights before. Maybe they should learn to plug in their carts and keep their tanks full :)

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Why Not To Abbreviate Names

By cd | Published: December 28, 2004

Working in telecommunications you become very good at pronouncing challenging names of customers, however there are some you just can?t get out of your mouth.

One day a colleague of mine motioned me to help her pronounce the customers first amd last name. Unfortunately, the customers name was very long and we could not pronounce it. She advised the customer very politely she was unable to pronounce his name in full, and requested if he had a nickname or abbreviated name.

You could tell the customer was telling her an alternative name, but she also had to raise her voice because of a poor connection on his cell phone. It?s always good to be courteous and use the customers name as requested. For some reason our normally loud and busy office was unusually quite this day when all of the sudden I hear the rep at the top of her voice state, ?Mr. Bater, Mr. Bater, Mr. Bater? as she was loosing her connection.

Everyone in the office started snickering. I later had to explain to the naive rep why everyone was laughing.

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What’s In The Jar

By cd | Published: December 28, 2004

Working in a Vet office, you run into all sorts of strange things. Each morning I was responsible for the opening of our clinic, which meant tending to each of the animals needs and then processing any samples dropped off at our doorstep.

One morning I found a couple of containers at the door step awaiting me. Once I tended to the animals, I lined up all the specimens on the counter to determine how to process each. The first two were fecal samples stored in yogurt containers, and a third specimen was urine in a sour cream container. I found a rather large cottage cheese container quite heavy and waited to take care of it till last fearing it would be large animal fecal.

Just as the secretary came into to chat with me about my morning, I opened the container and much to my surprise something large and black attached itself to my face with great force. I fell to the ground instantly and began screaming not knowing what was on me. The secretary screamed with as much horror as I did. When I got enough courage I carefully removed the object from my face, still teary eyed with fear.

When I examined the specimen I began a fit of joy and laughter. The secretary came back to find me holding a fruit bat, which is totally harmless. Someone must have found the fruit bat in their yard and brought it to the Vet thinking we would know what to do with it.

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Good Thing I Checked

By cd | Published: December 28, 2004

I worked as a Vet Tech for several years, but when the money became short I had to look for work elsewhere. I found a job at a local hospital sterilizing instruments. Part of my job was to deliver necessary instruments to the Operating Room.

Working as a Vet Tech I was fairly comfortable in the Operating environment, while others shunned opportunities to deliver instruments during a surgery I jumped at it. One day I had to deliver instruments for an emergency knee surgery. Walking into the Operating room I observed a scrub tech and nurse prepping the patient who was already out with anesthesia. The two had already shaved the man?s leg up to his thigh and were now scrubbing it with iodine. I was placing the instruments on the table when I spotted the x-ray. I must have caught both the tech?s eyes staring at the x-ray.

The nurse came up to me and exclaimed ?Bad Luck, huh?? I looked at the x-ray and back to the patient and exclaimed ?Being as you prepped the wrong leg, I think so.? The nurse shot a look of panic at the scrub tech and they both started prepping the other leg.

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You Home Wrecker.

By cd | Published: December 27, 2004

I worked for a phone company at the time. Occasionally, we receive letters from customers requesting assistance with their phone bill. Normally we are able to decipher the letter, take care of the issue, and call the customer to confirm issue resolved.

One day I received a letter that was illegible. I could not tell who wrote the letter or what they were requesting; all I could decipher was their phone number and signed by a man. I looked the phone number up in our database found the customer account, but reading the account notes still could not depict a problem. So I called the phone number and a woman answered.

I introduced myself and the company I worked for, and advised her I received a letter from her husband and I was calling to help with their phone bill. There was a moment of silence, before she started ranting & raving at the top of her lungs. She started accusing me of disguising my voice, pretending I worked for the phone company, and how she knew I was the home wrecker that was trying to break up her marriage. She called me a couple of choice words before she slammed down her phone.

I turned to my colleague, whom overheard the whole situation, and she laughed and stated ?You home wrecker!?

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Rumors Of My Death…

By cd | Published: December 27, 2004

I’m a night shift nurse in med/surg. One night around 3AM a patient of mine with severe kidney failure died. He was a huge white fellow with a very common name like John Smith. We cleaned him up and sent his body to the morgue.

I tried for the next 4 hours to contact his family but no one was answering at the number we had for them. Meanwhile, I got a call from the ER saying they had another patient for that room. I had the nurse repeat the name twice. Yep, another John Smith. This fellow was a tall older black gentleman who couldn’t have been more opposite from the dead fellow if he tried. I really didn’t want to put this poor man in the same room that someone with the same name had died in, but the only other room was a female double room so we had no choice.

In the morning I told the oncoming nurse several times that the patient who died’s family did not know yet and handed her the number to reach them. You can see what’s coming can’t you?

Well, at least she didn’t call the wrong family. However, the living and mostly healthy John Smith’s family called and asked how he was doing and before she stopped to ask which John Smith they were asking about, the nurse told them very sadly that he had died during the night and we had been unable to reach them.

The family sobbed hysterically and then came in to see him ‘one last time.’ The secretary at the front desk looked up the patient’s name, saw that he was still in a room and not the morgue and sent them in thinking we had waited to send the body down until the family could see him. They gathered around the man’s bed and began wailing in grief. At this, Mr. Smith woke up from a deep sleep, sat straight up in bed and demanded to know why they were disturbing his rest.

I would have loved to actually be there for this. The nurse who was on duty that day said you could hear the screams all up and down the hallway. The man’s wife developed chest pain and had to be taken to the ER for treatment. The son had collapsed into a chair with a look of pure terror on his face and the two daughters were clinging to each other. One was crying and the other was still screaming her head off when the nurse ran in. It took over an hour to settle everyone down and clear up the mess. I think the nurse said “I am so sorry” over a hundred times that day.

I finally reached the other man’s family on the phone later that night. I told them about what had happened and despite their loss, they had one heck of a good laugh over it.

I swear this is a true story.

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Dead Man’s Paperwork

By cd | Published: December 27, 2004

I’m a night nurse on a med/surg floor in a small community hospital in California. One of the things that keeps our little place hopping is that we’re right next to a freeway that leads to Las Vegas, Nevada.

I’ve seen some strange things in my time, but I will never forget one of the most surreal experiences of my career thus far.

I got a call from the emergency room saying that I would be getting a seriously tanked John Doe who was found passed out on the bus to Vegas with no ID and way too out of it to tell anyone his name. I had just come in and hadn’t even had time to take my coat off. I asked one of the day shift nurses to take report so I could get report on my other patients. As the other day shift nurse was giving report I heard a gurney being rolled up the hallway with Mr. Doe on board. Then I heard the day shift nurse say two sentences that chilled my blood.

1) “He doesn’t look so good.”

2) “Is he breathing?”

The nurse giving me report and I jumped out of our chairs and ran to help the ER nurse who was starting CPR. The code team came fast with the crash cart and we did everything we could but the poor man was gone. The ER nurse and doctor both looked at us with absolute disbelief. The man had had good vital signs when he left ER which was literally right down the hall from our floor! We had never had a patient die in transit from ER to Med/Surg and nobody knew what to do. We didn’t want to leave him in the hallway, so we put a sheet over him and pushed the gurney into his assigned room.

Now for the fun part. I called my supervisor and advised her of what happened and that we had a body for the morgue. Her first question was, “Did you admit him?” I said “no, he died before he ever got to his room.” She insisted that since he had made it out of the ER, we had to do his admit paperwork since he would obviously be a coroner’s case. I tried to treason with her, but in the end she won out.

While I was on the phone, the day shift and the ER nurse had quietly left and the other nurse I was working with had gone to check her patients. So I went into the dead man’s room alone and did my admission assessment. Due to my very warped sense of humor, the paperwork looked like this:

Name: unknown

Place of birth: Doesn’t matter he’s been returned to sender.

Pulse: 0, Blood Pressure: 0, Breathing: 0

Chief complaint: Bad case of dead.

What medications does the patient take? Embalming fluid.

Does the patient have any pain? Not anymore.

Does the patient need a chaplain? Already taken up with a higher power.

Narrative: PT arrived deceased, sent to morgue in same condition.

Actually, he turned out to be one of the easiest admissions I ever had.

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God Answered

By cd | Published: December 27, 2004

I work as a night nurse in a small community hospital. For two nights of a three night run, I had a sweet, but very confused old lady with a fresh hip replacement. She spent all night every night wailing, “Oh God, please help me.”

We would check on her, remind her she’s in the hospital, offer pain medicine, sleepers, etc and comfort her. As soon as we left the room she started wailing the same thing over and over, “Oh, God please help me.”

On my 3rd night, she had started up again while I was checking on another patient. When I got to her room, I found her eerily silent. I was afraid something was wrong. I asked her if she was okay and she said, “Oh, everything is fine dear. I’m going to get some sleep.”

I got her a warm blanket and headed back to the nurse’s desk where one of our respiratory therapists was doing his charting. This fellow happens to be about 6′ 5″ and has the deepest voice you have ever heard. I commented on the little old lady’s sudden change of behavior and he looked me straight in the eye and said, “I know, I got on the intercom, keyed in her room and said ‘Mabel, I know you’re scared but I’m very busy right now. I’ve heard you and I’ll take care of you in my own time. Be at peace.’”

I don’t know how long I sat there with my mouth open not sure if I should laugh or be seriously insulted. (I happen to be Catholic and come from a deeply religious family). The other nurse working with us that night made the decision for me by laughing so hard she literally fell off her chair. I couldn’t help it, I laughed until I had tears in my eyes.

By the way, the sweet old gal spent the next week with us and we never heard a peep out of her. She was still confused, but now blissfully (or should I say blessedly) so.

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