True Adventure Tales of Nursing!

Free Stuff from Mobsters

One of the perks of caring for mobsters in the ICU--and you can bet there were a lot of mobsters in Las Vegas--was that they ran the town. They ran the casinos, they ran the nightclubs; they ran everything! And they were always grateful for the care we gave them. They were always gentlemen (not like the FBI agents, but that's another story that we'll never get to).

Any show you wanted to see, you just called up the joint and said you were a nurse who'd cared for Mr. X and you were given VIP treatment. I remember sometimes we'd be contemplating supper in the hospital cafeteria when covered carts would roll through the doors, carrying heavy loads of the most wonderful food from big-name restaurants. Our Christmas parties were always well-catered.

I remember taking care of an employee of Frank Sinatra's. A few days after he died, and not from lead poisoning (I think it was cancer or something else nasty but organic), the elevator doors opened and out poured a wealth of handsome, muscular, well-dressed young men.

In the middle of all this beefcake was a withered, slimy little hobbit. It wasn't until we noticed one of the hunks carrying a bushel of Sinatra LPs that we figured out the guy in the middle was Frankie himself. He thanked us for caring for his employee and withdrew back into a cloud of testosterone as one of the muscle boys handed out the albums to nurses much more interested in the bodyguards than the lawn gnome they were guarding.

Okay, now I have this Sinatra album. What should I do with this?

I took it home with me for lack of a better idea. When I showed it to my husband and told him the story (with much less emphasis on the bodyguards), his eyes brightened as he told me that his aunt loved Sinatra.

He was right. I stopped by to give her the album a couple of days later, and she actually swooned. She must have been in her late 60s then, and she was hyperventilating like a Beatlemaniac. I watched as she held the record at arm's length, gasping, "Frank touched this?" I assured her that he had and left her alone with her dreams. I hope that when I'm old and dotty some kind soul hands me a Dylan CD under the same circumstances. She was in heaven.


Fun with Parasites

Well, I was going to think of a story, but really, all I've seen have been fleas, lice, leeches, worms and maggots. We put the leeches there on purpose, though, so I'm not sure that counts. Did you know leeches can jump? They sort of fling themselves at you. If they latch on to you, you can't put them on someone else.

But you know what happens to those little leeches after they've worked so hard to improve someone's circulation? They get drowned in rubbing alcohol. I think that says something about life.


Stories We Don't Believe

"I fell in the shower and that's how the bottle got stuck up my butt."

We hear this one over and over again. You'd think there would be a market for butt-safe shampoo containers; "New--With Anal Baffles!" I would like to see a videotape of someone actually falling on a bottle so that it was lodged in his rectum. Everybody must have a bigger bathtub than I do.


Things People Will Drink

I've worked in Intensive Care my entire career and taken care of many a patient who was supposed to be NPO. That's "absolutely nothing to eat or drink," for you non-medical professionals. Frequently these people have tubes jammed down their noses, into their stomachs, hooked up to suction to make damn sure that they stay empty.

Surprisingly enough, this can get uncomfortable. People get thirsty. Critically ill folks in ICU tend to get confused. This isn't "where are my keys?" everyday confusion, this is "there's a monkey jumping out of my television set and it's looking through your purse, lady!" confusion.

Okay, so you have a confused, thirsty patient. Hmm, I wonder what he'll drink. Well, it depends on what's in the room. The urine drainage bag at the foot of the bed. The bottle of hydrogen peroxide on the bedside stand. Perhaps he can talk a family member into filling that container on the shelf over the sink with water. Little does either of them know that we use it to measure his urine output and liquid stool.

Alcoholics are even more fun. They tend to be exceptionally thirsty patients and exhibit a lot of poor judgment and originality in what they will drink. That may not be such a symptom as a cause of alcoholism.

They'll drink right out of the toilet, they'll drink hand lotion, they'll suck alcohol swabs in an attempt to feed their jones.

Hey, speaking of alcoholics and poor judgment, don't mix your antifreeze with alcohol if you really want to off yourself. Orange juice would be better. Maybe some seltzer, but alcohol is actually part of the treatment for an antifreeze overdose. It binds to the same receptors and prevents the antifreeze breaking into the toxic little components that will kill off your kidneys and liver, and ultimately you.

Getting back to that tube in your tummy, it's not a good idea to sneak food. The nurse can see those chocolate morsels being sucked right back out, and she is going to be pissed that you wasted good chocolate she could have eaten.

Nurses like chocolate.