Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Sister Zee

Theatre was interesting for a number of reasons. I had to work 50 hours in theatre, which I completed recently. On our first day there, after orientation about where everything was (which I couldn't care less about considering I didn't want to fetch anything - I just wanted to see blood and gore), a sister came up to us and introduced herself. "Hi guys, I'm Sister Zee." She seemed pretty cool. It was only later I realized that she suffers from raging Bipolar Disorder. She can be heard screaming from the opposite side of the theatre at some unwitting student nurse, she can be heard making orgasm noises when the electricity goes off (which happens unsurprisingly often in this hospital), she can be seen throwing things like Pencil Drains at nurses..

On a boring Sunday, with ZERO cases for theatre, my fellow colleagues and I sat in the recovery room. I played Sudoku for a while and then had wheelchair races with Ariel, while the others watched a movie on a laptop. Luckily for us, Sister Zee was on a warpath and found us. "THERE ARE SEVEN OF YOU SITTING HERE! There were five of us. THERE'S LOTS TO DO! There was nothing to do. EMPTY THE SHARPS BUCKETS! Done already. STOCK THE TROLLEYS! Finished. NEXT TIME, YOU WILL BE THE PATIENT! THAT IS MY SINCERE PRAYER - THAT NEXT TIME, YOU ARE THE PATIENT!". Is that a threat? We later saw her sitting in a chair rocking backward and forward, whispering, "Next time, you'll be the patient" over and over again. Maybe it isn't Bipolar as much as it is insanity?

Just one look at her eye make-up and oily skin and you would swear yourself to celibacy (whether male or female). Although, from the orgasm noises, I would say she must be pretty damn good in bed.

A week or two later, Sister Zee was looking for some fellow nursing students who I know for a fact piss off back to their rooms and sleep for most of the day when they should be working. They magically arrive back at work when it's time to get signed to knock off for the day. Sister Zee informs me that they are useless and in their rooms "wanking" when they should be working. "NEXT TIME, THEY'LL BE THE PATIENT!" I get the effing point, woman.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Maggots for Breakfast?

I once had to change an old man's nappy, before transferring him to a different ward. So, I take off the dirty nappy and open his legs to wipe him and I see holes in his 'gooch' area opening up - they must have been about 4cm deep and I could see into him. That's generally not a good thing, what with all the TB, sputum, vomit and crap found in a Medical ward.

I opened his legs wider to further inspect whatever damage was present and maggots started running out of the holes and started going everywhere. I gagged. I went to call the Sister-in-charge and she tells me, "Just close him up with a new nappy and take him to the other ward." I do as told by my senior.

In the other ward, I informed the staff about the maggots. Their jaws dropped and I swifty got the hell out of there before they could change their minds about accepting the patient.

I now wish you all a very pleasant breakfast, lunch or supper. x

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

No Crazy for Me Today!

Myself, Cindy and Ariel often sit outside the main entrance of the hospital on concrete steps. Firstly, because the cafeteria smells like shit and secondly, because the Canteen only sells Food Poisoning. The psychiatric patients on the second floor often look down at us sitting in the freedom and tend to take a liking to me and wave at me constantly.

I kept seeing the same patient for a couple of weeks. He would wave at me every time he saw me and he would gesture over and over that I must come up and visit him. No thanks, not ready to be murdered today! I haven't seen him in a while. Maybe he was discharged. Or paralysed by a tazer or all the anti-crazy pills. Or sitting outside my bedroom window right now, watching me.

The Psychiatric Ward is very interesting and very scary. Rebecca and I would often sit outside the Psych Ward during a tea break. We would sit watching the patients walking around expressionless, take photos, prod at them with a pole.. That sort of thing.

These patients often try to escape through a locked gate (get the logic in that?) but this doesn't turn out well because security guards beat them down with batons. If the patients aren't running at the gate like a battering ram, they are running up and down the corridors with security guards chasing after them. Those bitches are fast.

Once, I had to enter the ward ON MY FREAKING OWN. I walk in and a big, sweaty man runs straight up to me, introduces himself and gives me the biggest hug. He smells like baby vomit. He then grabs my hand and gives me a tour of the place. "This is where we eat, this is where we get tazered, this is where we can smoke, this is where the elephants eat the pineapples.." I'm pretty sure I had a couple tears running down my face at this stage. All I could think was "I don't want to dieeeee!". I eventually got away from baby vomit guy and walked towards the nurses station. The really crazy patients are locked in their rooms behind bars and all you hear is simultaneous screaming and laughter.

I think I need to be admitted there after that experience.

Monday, October 12, 2009

A Man in Woman's Clothing

One of my duties in a Surgical Ward is to prepare patients for surgery. There was a woman dressed in a green, flowery dress that I was instructed to go help.

I grabbed a theatre gown, went into the cubicle and closed the curtains. "Amanda, I'm just going to help prepare you for theatre, let's get you dressed into your theatre gown first." So, la da dee dee da, I'm busy daydreaming about what job has the best pay, when I notice her covering herself awkawrdly. Suddenly, everything started adding up.. The deep voice. The lilting gait. The 5 o' clock shadow. The inability to walk in heels. And then I saw it. Major penis. (She, umm, I mean he, would have had a rough time at an all-girl boarding school with that penis.)

A-man-duh!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Inter-costal Calamity

Inter-costal drain insertion in the UK, US and other developed countries is a surgical procedure performed in the Operating Room (OR). What you are about to read would NEVER happen on Grey's..

In South Africa, there is such a large amount of Gun Shot Wounds and stab wounds that it is a routine procedure performed in casualty rooms (and even the ward) while the patient is fully conscious. Thus, these beautiful wounds are the warm, moist breeding grounds for infection.

I watched a doctor insert one in casualty with a small amount of local anaesthetic in the area of insertion. The woman had been raped and stabbed in the chest and was understandably not feeling very affectionate towards the male species in general. Good thing the doctor inserting the drain was male.

The procedure involves cutting through all layers of skin and piercing through the muscles between your ribs, straight into the lung. Extremely painful. Although we were trying to hold the patient down while she screamed "What the fuck do you think you are doing!?", she managed to get in a couple punches, focusing on the doctors' very large nose. Bruised and battered (more so than the patient), the doctor eventually got it in, resulting in a big WHOOSH of air - blowing his hair back in a way reminiscent of a model on a gusty autumn day photoshoot.

A Buttocks Bomb

Giving an enema is high on the list of things that no nurse ever wants to have to do. Now that I'm higher up in the nursing ranks, I have made a promise to myself that I will always delegate the job to a junior.

You lift the buttocks with your non-dominant hand and insert the enema with your dominant hand. You then have approximately three seconds to get the hell out of there to avoid being, um, sprayed/splashed/painted/decorated.. Whichever way you view poo.

When inserting the enema, you sort of feel like a member of the Bomb Squad. You never know when she might blow.

Agnes

My first night EVER in Labour Ward would just have to be dramatic. I seem to bring drama with me wherever I go.. Throughout most of the night, we heard a woman screaming and swearing next door - but I wasn't too bothered - it's not like she was my resonsibility.

At around 02:00AM, they transferred her to Labour Ward. "Agnes" was kicking up a fuss, screaming and going on and on, but I was busy watching deliveries and wasn't really involved. I started getting worried when I didn't hear her screaming anymore, so I went to go look for her. I find Agnes in a bathtub, full to the brim with water, lying spread-eagled - one leg hanging out of each side of the bath. She just stared at me with blank eyes. Knowing that she was a bit of a psycho, I felt geniunely concerned for her, so I pulled up a chair next to her and delved deeper into New Moon.

After about an hour I realized that with my luck I would be performing a waterbirth, so I thought it best to check exactly how dilated she was, etc etc. Agnes gives me permission (which is a miracle, because no one has been allowed to touch her up until this time). So, there I am.. Bending over a spread-eagled woman, with surgical gloves that only go up your wrist so far, performing a vaginal exam. Disgusting water was running into my glove, but her position at least helped me get a good idea of the fact that she most probably wasn't in labour - however, I was still new to everything at this stage and wasn't sure.. It was at that stage that I realized the water was ice cold, and I convinced Agnes that she should go lie in her bed. She agreed.

I walk naked Agnes to her bed, cover her with warm blankies, and start giving her a back massage. She demands that she wants cream for her massage, which I didn't have, so I ended up using Obstetric Cream which is what we use for vaginal exams. Lord. A sweet doctor came to thank me for keeping Agnes calm, and told me I'm helping everyone out so much. I turned my back on Agnes to get more "cookie juice" as we call the cream, and suddenly hear the slap of barefeet on hospital linoleum. Agnes, heavily pregnant, was running out of the room. I ran after her, and grabbed her, but I wouldn't describe myself as 'strong' exactly.. So Agnes wrestled me to the floor, and kept running - out of labour ward, into the main corridor of the hospital, past security guards, past waiting families. Behind her were about 10 nursing staff, and 5 security guards, screaming.

It took all 15 of us to take her down.. Maybe she is a steroid freak? We got her back into the ward. Progress. The registrar (one of the main doctors of the hospital) came to see what the commotion was, and was promptly attacked by a coke bottle-wielding Agnes. Agnes then grabbed a paper punch and threw that at a nurse. Someone accidentally fell against the light switch and plunged the ward into darkness with a psychopath on the rampage. When the light came back on, there was Agnes making a run for it again, trying to crawl through an open space in the doors.

Eventually, we got her back into her cubicle and held the door shut. I looked through a crack in the door and saw her pick up a huge metal chair which she threw at the door.


This was the weapon of choice. When Agnes hadn't tried to kill anyone for a couple minutes, I entered the room to find her dancing a traditional Zulu dance around the room. She screams at me "I WANT PETHIDINE!" (a painkiller). At this stage, she was all maxed out on Pethidine and we couldn't give any more, but she went insane, screaming for it. So, I did like in the movies and gave her a sterile water injection to really test the Placebo Effect. Well, let me tell you, it worked like a dream. She slept for an hour and all was good in the world again.

I was working in another cubicle when in runs naked Agnes, grabs a delivery pack saying it's her baby, and runs off. I was starting to get pissed off, walk out to go find her and when she sees me, she puts the delivery pack down, takes my hand and says "Come". I didn't want to die, so I obeyed her command. She climbed onto bed, and made me massage her. I then decided to have a 'talk' with Agnes. She apologized and gave me chills down my spine as she said, "Don't worry, I'll never hurt you, you're my favourite. I had a dream about my baby, and she looked like you. I love you." Greeeeeeeeeat. Psycho now thinks I'm her baby.

Needless to say, Agnes went nuts a couple more times that night, which resulted in me giving her two doses of Haloperidol (an anti-psychotic) which did not work; we restrained her by tying her down to the bed with the help of every security guard in the hospital and I watched while she spat in a security guards' face.

After approximately 5 hours of drama, it was confirmed that Agnes was in fact, not in labour, and was in Labour Ward for no good reason. Where's my noose?

Colostomy Sex

A colostomy is basically an opening through your stomach straight into your intestines, rather than you using your bum to go to the toilet. It happens after bowel surgery, cancers, etc.

There was a patient with a persistent infection of his colostomy which is quite unusual. I had never before seen an infected colostomy. Doctors couldn't understand what was going on - the nurses couldn't understand, even if they tried. The doctors started running tests, such as pus swabs, to see what bacterium was causing the infection..

What did they find, you ask? Semen. That's right. Semen.

The man was offering his freaking colostomy for sex, in exchange for money.

Sex with intestines. WHO DOES THAT!?

RESUS!

In the hospital, when someone shouts "RESUS!", it means get your ass into gear and start CPR. The important thing to know is that you cannot perform CPR on someone who is alive. They HAVE to be dead - which apparently, some fully trained nurses don't even know.

So there I am, working in a Medical ward. I heard "RESUS!" and start running to the room like a child hopped up on cocaine, only to find one of the highest ranked nurses performing CPR on a patient who was very much alive. The sight of a nurse, sweating and puffing while performing sub-standard CPR on a live patient who is trying to fight her off is an image that makes me sleep well at night.

Trust me, someone putting their full weight (and she wasn't a small girl) behind their hands, performing chest compressions on your sternum at a rate of around 100 pumps per minute, is fucking painful.

Afterward, the nurses all celebrated (in the form of an extended tea break), the fact that the patient survived. I didn't have the heart to inform them that the patient had been alive all along.

Night Duty Nightmare

It was around 2:00AM one morning on Night Duty, and I was in charge of all the Diabetic and Asthmatic patients. That means checking their blood sugar, or giving them Nebulizars and Oxygen, respectively, every four hours (and reporting to someone of higher authority if there's a problem).

I come along to an old homeless man and check his blood sugar. 20mmol/l. O_o A normal blood sugar reading is 3-7mmol/l. This is not good. If it increases much more, he'll end up in a coma. I run to find the sister and can't find her in any of the cubicles. I eventually run to the kitchen and there she is with the rest of the staff members, fast asleep. One nurse is sleeping curled up on the warming cupboard (which is for food, not asses), another is sleeping on the floor. These are South Africa's nurses. ANYWHO, i wake the sister up and tell her about the emergency. Her reply to me? "Don't wake me up. Call the Doctor." Stupid cranky bitch. So I phone the doctor who tells me, "Just give 20 units of Insulin." (This decreases blood sugar levels). Now, 20 units is a crapload, considering the usual amount of Insulin given is 2-8 units, depending on the condition of the patient.

However, as a nurse, we do as we are told by the high-and-mighty Doctors, and I administer the Insulin. I re-check the sugar levels five minutes later and it isn't better. I phone the Doctor again. I am instructed to leave it, the reading will come down in a few minutes - and get hung up on. I supposed she would rather catch up on her beauty sleep, which is understandable because she sounded a bit doggish.

Five minutes later, I go to check on my patient. Dead. Nice. Plus, my damn asthmatic patients were half an hour late getting their oxygen and I like to run a tight ship.

A Reason to Quit

In our first year, we were all very green and new to the whole nursing thing. A fellow nurse, Daisy, was working in a surgical ward. One day, she noticed a patient covered by all his blankets, shaking vigorously and breathing heavily.

She decided she needed to check why he was shaking - was it an epileptic fit? Did he have a high fever? So, she quickly lifts the covers of the bed right at the moment of... climax.

She got, er, sprayed. Yep, he was fapping. Needless to say, Daisy quit nursing soon after that.

P.S. I see Daisy every now and then, and she permanently has a single tear running down her cheek.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Billy the Psycho

A certain ward that is not an official Psychiatric Ward has the reputation of keeping all the crazy patients in it. I had to work there for a month. On my first day, I was warned by a night duty nurse to 'avoid the last cubicle'. Being the dumb blonde (and sucker for punishment) that I am, I decided to go straight to the last cubicle. In I walk and I find a patient standing on his bed (let's call him Billy), ripping his neighbour's file apart. The neighbour just sits there with a very slight but very noticeable pout.

So, I shout at Billy to sit down. He sits, looks at me and with a sly wink says, "Would you like to go out with me sometime?" I reversed out of that room so quick, you would think I was the one who invented the moon walk and taught it to Michael Jackson.

I then saw that I was delegated to do Medicine Round. Great, I would have to confront Billy and force pills down his throat. Hesitantly, I walk into the last cubicle and find him pissing on the walls, on his bed, on the drip stands - basically anything he could find. I stood with my jaw dropped open in absolute shock, but then I realized I had better shut my mouth before he saw it as a target. Luckily, because Billy has this 'attraction' to me, he obeys all my commands: stops peeing, gets into bed, swallows all his tablets.

Thereafter, the day moved along quite smoothly until I was standing at the Nursing Station (making a list of why I shouldn't stay in nursing) when something caught my eye down at the end of the corridor..

It was Billy. Taking a shit.

ICU, now with added Polystyrene!

ICU is a great place to work. It's interesting and fun, and when you're a student and an outsider, you get to see some of the insane characters that work there. One doctor, "Manny" went on a rampage one day. The night duty nurses left a patient with a temperature of 40 degrees Celcius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) all night, and didn't do much to get it down - effectively making his brain cook itself.

Hannibal Lecter eating brain on the aeroplane, anyone? It's chilling. I could practically smell the Soy Sauce.

Manny then saw a nurse putting up a 5% Dextrose in 0.45% Saline drip. He picks the drip up and looks at me.. "Nurse, what I want you to do, is go to the top floor of this hospital and throw every one of these drips out the window. You know why? Because they are pure shit." I tried my best to avoid giggling but my friends Ariel and Cindy were becoming increasingly red-faced and that didn't help all that much.

Another crazy ol' coot is one of the Sisters in ICU who eats polystyrene cups and bowls. She sits there chewing away with polystyrene remnants all over her face and clothes, content as a pig in crap. Either she is hungry and can't afford food - or just plain insane.

Religious Songs by an Atheist

In one of the wards, the rule is "You come on duty, then you pray". So, in I go to the Tea Room to get my prayer on, but considering the fact that I'm an atheist, I wasn't all that comfortable doing so. I stood there respectfully with my head bowed. I couldn't sing along either way considering they were singing in Zulu.

The Sister-in-Charge then asks me why I'm not singing. "I don't know the words", I reply. Then, she asked me to sing a song from my church. "I don't attend church." I could swear I heard a couple of shocked and horrified gasps.. There was silence for about five minutes until the Sister said, "We're waiting." I had to sing. I don't know any church songs. The only songs I could think of that are remotely religious were Christmas Carols.

I broke out into Silent Night.