True Adventure Tales of Nursing!

Nude Celebrities!

Back when I was a young nurse, just out of school, I worked in Vegas. Showbiz! There was always the chance of taking care of someone famous, and I'm not just talking about mobsters. That's another story. One night, however, we got the call in ICU. They were admitting someone famous, someone big, Mr. Las Vegas himself...

Liberace!

I know. I was hoping Elvis too, but that's beside the point. Liberace was having chest pains and we were to take care of him.

Not in the ICU, mind. In a private room on the medical floor, with portable monitors and one-to-one nursing care from ICU nurses round-the-clock. You know how they say there's a bullet with your name on it? Well, there's also celebrity and my number was up. Being young and resourceful, I decided to make the most of it.

The hospital had in its employ an elderly orderly (say that ten times (fast), soon to retire and as queer as a clockwork orange, named Maurice. His mother must have known. On my way down to the medical floor, I grabbed Maurice.

"Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you help the new admit into his gown while I get my equipment together?"

I nearly had two men with chest pain in that room. I honestly had to take Maurice out of the room to breathe into a paper bag. It made my night, and, come to think of it, the nights of everyone else involved.

Liberace was out the next day, much improved.


Seizures for Drugs and Attention

It was a quiet day in ICU when we got the call from ER. They had a patient seizing nearly nonstop. She was allergic to the two most usual drugs given to stop seizure, and she was going to be my patient.

They rolled her into ICU, where she was talking coherently with me.
Pretty damn unusual for someone who's just been seizing. Not just the seizing, but the massive doses of other drugs they'd given her should have made her at least spacey, if not unconscious. We pulled her over to the ICU bed, and as the ER nurse described her seizure activity to me, the patient decided to give me a demonstration.

I don't know. Call me a skeptic, but something wasn't right. While the ER nurse ran off to get medication, I just stared at her. Twitch, twitch, twitch. Arch that back! Hmmm. I took the medication from the ER nurse but didn't give it to the patient. I just stood and watched. She stopped "seizing," looked up at me and said, "Are you an angel?" in her most innocent voice. What a giveaway.

"No, I'm a nurse, and you're in the hospital." She read my name off my nametag, and told me she had a good friend with the same name. Dear reader, look up postictal in your dictionary. If she's just finished seizing, she shouldn't be able to speak, let alone focus enough to read my nametag.

While waiting for the neurologist to look her over, I'm afraid I didn't treat any more of her seizure activity. And, you know, they didn't last very long. The neurologist came in to see her and got to do all the fun tests. As soon as he introduced himself, she started seizing.

Turning one's head to the side, arching one's back rigidly and twitching is pretty much the classic fake seizure. When she went limp afterwards, he picked up her arm and dropped it so her hand would hit her face. It didn't. Every time it managed to veer away.

Even a neurologist could figure this one out, but he wanted to be absolutely certain. So, it was the ice water test. This would be one of my favorites, if I didn't have to clean up the bed afterwards. You fling a glassful of ice water in the face of someone having a pseudo-seizure (be damn sure you know it's fake). Then you stand back and watch the fun! Try to be sure there's nothing between you and the door.

90% of the time they sign themselves out as soon as possible. It's a miracle cure.

Dog Spit Woman

I was admitting a debilitated elderly woman with chronic lung disease and a severe pneumonia. She had a non-rebreather mask on, feeding her 100% O2.

Medically speaking, she looked like shit. In spite of the 100% oxygen, her saturation was subnormal. I couldn't ask her the medical history questions I needed, so I was forced to converse with her loony relatives.

Now, perhaps I should explain what makes someone a "loony relative."

You're a loony relative if your oxygen-using mother rooms with a smoker who smokes leaning against the tank, and you think everything is peachy keen. You're a loony relative if you know your oxygen-using mother's dog chews on her oxygen tubing, and you don't even come over with some duct tape and Dog-B-Gone spray. You're a loony relative if your mother gets so short of breath and incoherent on the phone that you can't hold a conversation with her, yet you wait a couple of days to check on her.

So basically, I'm taking care of a dehydrated old lady with dog spit in her lungs. Eurgh. Doesn't seem to bother her family though! They want everything done to make Mom well.

She hasn't been well for years. She wants them all to hover around her sickbed, and she wants to talk to them, meanwhile her breathing gets worse and her saturation drops.

Did I mention the whole family reeks of alcohol and tobacco themselves? Did I mention that when I put a catheter in her bladder to drain her urine it came oozing out like caramel sauce? (I played "Guess Where These Secretions Came From" with her physician. He was suitably grossed out.)

She survived to go home to her smoking roommate and the chewingest dog west of the Mississippi. Your tax dollars at work. Keep your eye out for a fireball on the west side of town.