Locked-up Loonies Part 2

Ah, Maxwell. Such a smooth talker, who suffered from Schizophrenia.

The day I met Maxwell, he came up to me and without even introducing himself asked: "Are you married?" When you're a female working in male lock-up ward, you are always married. Otherwise, they'll steal you and take you back to their bedroom and stuff you under their mattress.

Maxwell told me many stories of his wives, his BMWs, his riches. None of them were true. What was true, however, was that Maxwell had an affinity for us female nurses. One day, Maxwell was elegantly lying across a table and when I walked past him, he called me a "beautiful, sexy angel". Whenever I walked past an open doorway and looked in, Maxwell was staring back at me. It started getting awkward when he would suddenly appear next to me when least expected (surprise!) or when he would attempt to hold my hand.

While working in our hours at this hospital, we had a room in which we could sit and type up our findings of our patients. The assignment load was huge, and we could use any spare moment to work on our projects. We had spent a big part of the morning working on these assignments, and then all went out to grab some lunch together. On returning to the room, we walked in, sprayed deodorant, had some girly talk and sat down at our computers. Suddenly, in my peripheral vision, I saw a dark silhouette in the corner of the room, glaring at us. Maxwell. Under my voice, I muttered: "Whatever you do, don't look at the corner of the room". My friends looked anyway. Caroline screamed. Some of us jumped a metre away from him. One friend ran out to call security. Maxwell simply asked "Why didn't you invite me for lunch?" Needless to say, security had to tackle him and pull him out of the room while his nails dug tracks in the carpet.

Later on that day, my super nifty bladder failed me and I needed a pee-break. I walked out the room and had the distinct feeling of being followed. I started walking faster and just before I got to the bathroom, I had a quick glance over my shoulder. Maxwell. He grabbed me and pinned me against the wall. I let out a meek: "Sister?... Doctor?" trying to find someone in charge who could possible take away the bright light at the end of the tunnel. Luckily the Sister-in-Charge found me, grabbed some Haloperidol and put Maxwell out of his misery. *side note: I wish I could have received the Haloperidol*

They started drugging Maxwell heavily. Apparently I was a bad influence on his psychosis. Maxwell took a bad reaction to the sedation one day and we needed to move him to a room closer to the nurse's station. Only problem is, we were 4 skinny nurses and one 90kg man. You do the math. This resulted in us putting a sheet under Maxwell and sliding him along the floor all the way through the ward to get him to the room, leaving a trail of drool behind us.

Maxwell slowly started getting better, but he still loved us nurses. One day, we were leaving work, and as we got to our cars, we looked behind us only to find Maxwell following us with a packed suitcase and a bottle of juice. He insisted that he would be coming home with us. Once again, security had to tackle him and take him down. You would think security could have just not opened the gate for him in the first place, no?

The last time I saw Maxwell, I was no longer working in the ward but at a Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. I saw him running on one of the fields, non-stop. He had lost a lot of weight, and was looking good. I asked a Doctor why he was running so much. The Doctor replied that Maxwell believed he had been entered to run the Comrades marathon.

Locked-up Loonies Part 1

One of the hardest moments in training to be a kick-ass nurse is the specialization in Psychiatry. Not only because you remove all the masks you are wearing to disguise who you really are, but because you work with people who want you to die.

We were all nervous, yet excited, to find out where we would be placed within a certain Psychiatric hospital. I was particularly nervous because I am very scared of the unknown. I went (with Ariel) to our beautiful, very understanding lecturer and asked her not to put me in a specific ward. What happened? I was put there anyway..

Male lock-up Ward.

That's right. Big, scary men. Big, scary, *crazy* men who are so out of control, they are under constant guard and are locked inside. Now, maybe this was my lecturer's way of showing me what I can accomplish. Or maybe this was her way of enjoying some of my suffering. Sadist.

We walked towards the ward holding hands. The glass windows were shattered. There were men standing at the windows watching our every move. The big white gate was unlocked by security for us. I walked through that ward with my back to the walls at all times, and when I came to a corridor I would dive across (stealth style) to the other side, holding my pepper spray like a gun. The Sisters decided we should all meet our patients. We walked into the lounge where they were sitting. One by one, they introduced themselves. A lot of them seemed totally normal.. Except for the occasional one that would just walk out the room or randomly start screaming. My favourite patient was a man named Sam, who suffered from Schizophrenia. At his turn to introduce himself, he promptly stood up and shouted: "Secret Prime Minister, Third Division", waved, and sat back down. He came and greeted us all individually, and excused himself. He walked out the room and back in through another door and introduced himself all over again. Later on, he came up to me and said "If I knew you were coming, I would have shaved." He walked off like a man on a mission to go shave, until I found him in the courtyard picking at blades of grass.

While watching over the patients during lunch (making sure the anorexics ate and that the depressives didn't slit their wrists with the plastic cutlery), Sam came up to me with a couple sachets of black pepper and informed me that it's brilliant for preventing heart attacks. Ah, where would I be without my Sam? After I got to know Sam a little better, he informed me that his mother gave him a blowjob. And that he enjoyed it. Sam was so very sweet, he would try feed me his food, or steal me an apple from the kitchen because he was always convinced that I must be hungry. Exercise time with Sam was the highlight of my stay at the hospital. Exercise releases endorphins (feel-good chemicals) but in Sam's case, they made him perform very.. erm, effeminate moves. Halfway through exercise time, he would stop and sit on the floor. However, when it was his turn to demonstrate an exercise move, he would jump up excitedly and perform weird dance moves ala Michael Jackson on tiptoes, hands on waist, shaking his hips.

Another man I met was Harry. An old guy with Alzheimers. Harry loved to exercise, despite barely being able to walk. I can still hear Harry chanting in his ex-smokers, Portugese-accented, voice: "Wunnn, Toooo, Sreee.." Harry was extremely hyper-sexual and grabbed my bum every time I walked past him. I didn't know this at first and went up to speak to him on our first day there. He looked at me slowly, told me I was beautiful and put his arm around me. In the next instant, he had a crazy moment and tried to strangle me. Harry used to sit on his own swearing in Portugese. God forbid you ever got close to him, he would either try slap you or try to have sex with you. Good thing my pimp hand was strong. I think Harry knew how to piss me off as well: by sitting down. Once Harry sits, there's no chance he's going to get back up easily. He would shout "Nurse! Nurse!" until I would come pick him up. I would stand with my weak little arms under his sweaty pits, inhaling his dry urine smell, while he tried to nibble my earlobe. *shudder*

Sam and Harry were a breeze in comparison to another patient we encountered: Maxwell. Stay tuned for Locked-up Loonies Part 2. ;)

Suction Scourge

Picture this scenario: You're a student. You're a nurse. You are allocated to work your first day EVER in an operating theatre. Exciting times. We all thought we were big shots. We took some photos in our scrubs and were loving that we could for once wear amazingly comfortable shoes to work. We slipped on our hats and booties and watched while some incompetent morons put the booties on their heads..

It was this first day that I met Sister Zee as well, just by the way.. She didn't seem quite so insane on first impression. However, when she handed out meatballs with maggots in them to her colleagues for lunch, I started to catch on.

Anywho.. My story takes place in an operating theatre working on an old beggar whose diet was so poor that his intestines were necrotic and dying. Parts of his intestines were black. *shudder* When the surgeons realised what they were dealing with, myself and Ariel had to spring into action and set up the suction unit so that they could start suctioning all the crap inside the guy. Now, bear in mind, this is our first day, we don't even know what a suction unit looks like, let alone how it works.

Good thing Sister Zee was there to help, screaming at us and telling us we are all morons. Nonetheless, being the geniuses we are, Ariel and I figured out what the unit looked like (we found one pre-assembled). We gave the unit to the surgeons who started doing their thing. Standing at the back of the room, making "I'm going to vom vom" faces complete with finger in throat, we heard a commotion at the bed. The suction unit was full and dangerously close to overflowing. Shit. Sister Zee was shouting. We panicked and stood dead still not quite knowing if we should find another suction bag or run for our lives.

Zee threw a bag at us and we ran forward and tried to replace the bag. Except we weren't quite smart enough to know to turn the suction off BEFORE changing the bag. We ripped the suction tube out and the guy's rotten intestine juices spilled out all over the suction unit and the floor. Like I said, we are geniuses. We get the new bag in, and all is calm again.. Except 2 minutes later, another bag is full - but we didn't realize. By the time we turn around, we find that it is overflowing onto the floor and starting to spray out. Intestine juices were everywhere, including on the surgeons shoes - which he didn't find to be particularly amusing. This only made us laugh harder, so while trying to suppress our giggles, we stood at the suction unit changing bags regularly every 2 minutes, before they got even close to full. Although, admittedly, there was a little part of me that wanted the same thing to happen every time. It's always fun for the person that doesn't have rotten intestine juices all over them.

Nancy

A few weeks back, I had the privilege of working at a Non-profit Organization Special Care Centre that specifically helps severe to profoundly intellectually and physically disabled children and adults. Each client had their own unique personality, and I grew to love them all.

One of these clients is a girl called Nancy who has Down's Syndrome. I think Nancy had a severe hatred for Ariel and myself. We may have been the instigators of this hatred, however. Nancy likes things certain ways. She likes to get her way too. She is a strong girl and loves to work out on the rowing-machine (I would know, I was manipulated by those muscles more than a number of times). The bruises are gone but the emotional pain is still present.

Nancy would never let myself, Ariel or Cameron change her bedding and I mean NEVER. Being the typical Florence Nightingale trained nurses we are, we know that hygiene is important, so Ariel and I decided to change Nancy's bedding while she wasn't looking. Big mistake. Just as we managed to pull the duvet up, Nancy walked into her room and freaked. She shoved me to the side (those muscles) and ripped the new bedding off, and went into the dirty laundry to find old sheets. Yeugh. I'm 95.6% sure she took someone else's urine-soaked sheet.

Nancy constantly wears a bandage on her arm - for no particular reason - and looks like a 'cutter'. She wore the bandage for so long that she got heat rash underneath it. The sister in charge removed it and all hell broke loose. Nancy ran up to me one day, grabbed my wrist (those muscles) and dragged me to the Sister's office screaming "COME!". She then demanded that I tell the Sister that she needs her bandage. I didn't do that and boy oh boy she started hurting me (those damn muscles, again!). Nancy is considered to be the Matron of the sanctuary - that's how in control of everything she is. She insisted on making the beds with us in the morning, and after we made beds, she would inspect our handiwork (and would usually pull everything off and do it herself because our three years of training apparently made us absolutely useless at making beds).

I remember very clearly a time when Nancy pulled a sleeping girl, Lisa, out of bed so she could remove the linen. Lisa nearly landed head first on the floor, but just walked straight to the bathroom without even batting an eyelid. Lisa is autistic, but for some reason, I kept calling her an atheist.. But that's a WHOLE 'nother story.

My favourite memory of Nancy is from 'Music Time'. Music therapy is used to help rehabilitate the clients and Nancy freaking loved it. On Monday at 15:00 you were guaranteed to find Nancy in the main hall headbanging while beating a huge round drum. God forbid you take the drum, or her drumsticks away, because she will beat you down - those damn muscles.

*Note: If you have money to spare and would like to donate to this incredible organization, let me know and I'll give you the details. They really do need all the help they can get, and I am witness to the fact that they change lives on a daily basis.

Let's Use Logic

MDR-TB is a multi-drug resistant form of Tuberculosis or TB. It's bad news, because it's very difficult to treat. Working in a Medical ward, I was checking over the various diagnoses of our patients and found one who was a Query MDR-TB. She wasn't, however, in any form of isolation and was sharing a cubicle with three other patients.

I confronted the Sister of the ward, and asked her why this was happening and if we could please move the patient into an (already available) isolation cubicle so that no one else catches this deadly disease. "No, you can't do that, because she is only a query MDR-TB. If she is confirmed, we will do something." I'm sorry, but my logic (which no one at this goddamn place seems to have) is that if she is eventually confirmed to have MDR-TB, it means that she had it all along and will most likely have spread it to everyone she was in contact with: patients, nurses and doctors. Two days later, her test results come back. Confirmed MDR-TB. In two days, the chances are very high that she gave it to every patient in that room as well as to the nurses treating her. Yet, we wonder why this disease is spreading so easily. I was a very good, selfish nurse and avoided that cubicle for the entire time that patient was there.

Look at me now, TB-FREE!

Casualty Catheter

In the Casualty Resuscitation Room, a Sister was teaching us how to insert a male catheter which is much more dangerous and risky. It requires more skill and care than a female catheter. She inserts it, talking the hind leg off a donkey (apparently I attract people that feel a need to speak to me non-stop), has to grab a catheter bag to attach to the pipe and let go of the pipe that was in the bladder by now. Pee rushed out and sprayed all over my uniform.

She is theoretically my boss, so it's not like I could just smash her head into a wall. All I could do was give a fake smile and say "Oh, hahaha, it's fine, don't worry about it. Hyuk." I spent the rest of the day avoiding urine and conniving over how I could take my revenge.

Chicken Soup for Andy's Soul

Max was a 27-year-old patient who had a stroke (yep, extremely young). He lost his ability to talk and he lost control of the right side of his body.

Good thing that whenever his restraints came loose on his left hand, he ripped out his drip, ripped off his nappy and tried to rip out his catheter. I actually found it extremely amusing to see a half-paralysed man showing three (big) nurses at a time who was boss. You know how you speak to animals, and babies? Not because you think they'll answer you or understand what you're saying, but just because it's what you tend to do? I did that with Max. I used to have fat conversations with him (or should I say, myself) about whatever was going on, whatever was annoying me, what was happening with my love life - it was my own personal therapy. That poor, poor man - I never know when to shut up.

One day, I was rubbing his back when he turned to me and very softly whispered, "Where's my wife?". My heart broke. After three months of not speaking, he chooses me to be the one to say his 'first' words to, and he misses his wife. I phoned her straight away and she came to see him immediately. I stood by and watched tears of happiness running down their cheeks.

Yep, the cynical nurse can be touched by simple things.

Sluice Room Sperm

Working in Orthopaedic Ward means lots of urine testing due to the high risk of patients developing kidney stones and urinary tract infections thanks to a 'wee' term called "urinary stasis" - sorry I couldn't help myself with the pun.

Myself and Cindy did urine testing together. I took a urinal from a patient and we met in the Sluice Room to do the test. I poured the urine out into a clear measuring jar and it looked a bit cloudy. We put the test stick in and noticed that the cloudiness was actually sperm which started clinging to our test strip.

We stood in the Sluice Room giggling and gagging for ages. I can't handle urine. urine with sperm is on a whole other level. Even thinking about it now - three years later - makes me want to vom all over my keyboard.

Manny the Mortician(s)

There are two morticians in the hospital, both with the same name - Manny. They smell vaguely of cabbage and death in a bone marrow stew. Either they never wash their hair, or they rub their heads on decomposing dead bodies, but their hair is literally dripping with oil, sweat (and occasionally faeces). You hardly ever hear them speak, but when you do, you can be certain that they will crack a really insensitive joke and burst out laughing - displaying their missing and rotten teeth. I remember being distraught after seeing and caring for my first dead patient, and through my tears, I saw brown teeth smiling at my 'special delivery'.

The scariest situation is when you get into an elevator with one of them. It's just you, a mortician, and a cold body covered in plastic and a green cloth. As you can imagine, not much conversation goes down. In fact, I have never said a word to either Manny for fear of them stealing my soul. Now, imagine actually getting stuck in the lift with one of them. Considering this is a government hospital, it is safe to say the lifts will stop working a couple times a week. I say I take the stairs to maintain my fitness. This is a lie.

If you go down to the morgue, you have to be careful because if the morticians see you walk into one of the big fridges, they hide under the trolleys and grab your leg unexpectedly (meaning you literally need a change of panties). These big fridges are the freakiest thing. They are so cold, and you just see bodies piled on top of each other. Occasionally, a stupid, dumbass nurse will get a body bag for a patient that is too small, and instead of wasting it and getting a bigger one, they will cut a slit through the top of the bag and the bottom so that all you see are feet and tops of heads sticking out. Ever heard of frostbite?

Word on the hospital corridor is that you can hear the sound of ghosts singing at the morgue at night. I walked there on my own one night in an attempt to see, or hear, a ghost. Truth be told, all I heard was my own screams as I ran back to my ward - Cindy had thought it funny to hide behind a wall and jump out at me. :(

Pee On Your Own Time!

Admission wards are known for being hectically busy. You are constantly moving patients out to other wards and spend all your time admitting new patients from Casualty. The only reason it's nice is because it actually gives you something to do, rather than sitting on your arse drinking tea all day (for which South African nurses are renowned).

One day, I was working a twelve-hour shift (which, I'm sure you've established, is my definition of hell) in an Admission ward. Typical of my luck, it was coming to the end of my shift and at 18:45 I received a new patient to admit. If you work hard enough, you can finish a PROPER admission in about 30 minutes. So, I wasn't too bothered, 15 minutes extra isn't all that bad. The patient was a man with suspected Tick Bite Fever. I, being the over-achiever I am, decided to help out the doctor by drawing bloods, getting a urine sample, etc. Getting the blood was simple (I find simple pleasure in sticking a needle into bulging veins), but getting the urine was a whole 'nother story.

The patient told me he needed to pee, which was awesome because that way I could kill two birds with one stone: he gets relieved, I get pee. I bring him a urinal and go back to file auditing. I could see he was having trouble, so I left the room to give him some 'privacy'. I got back to him five minutes later (most likely because I was trying to convince permanent staff not to leave me alone in charge of the ward) all cheerful *time to go home* "Mr. Peters, are you done?". He huffs and puffs, still holding the urinal to his groin and squeaks out "No." I learnt a little tip to turn on a tap to help someone pee, so I did this while sneakily looking at my watch. It had already hit 19:20. Behind the closed curtain, I could still hear Mr. Peters huffing and puffing. I stood for another five minutes, looking around the room, peering out the window, trying not to whistle, hoping for a miracle in the form of a Golden Shower of pee. Seriously, its 19:25 - he can pee on me if he wants, as long as he pees. No such luck. I go up to him, and ask what I can do to help.. WHYYYY OH WHY DID I DO THAT?! Mr. Peters says: "I'm just struggling to hold it, can you hold it for me?" I thought he was talking about the urinal which I immediately grabbed, but noooo he needed me to hold his penis. Yep, you read that right. So, I awkwardly grabbed a pair of gloves and gently gripped his manhood. We stood there for close to 10 minutes waiting for him to pee. My free hand was force-feeding him water and diuretics in an attempt for some gold beneath the rainbow.

A couple different positions and tactics and he still hadn't peed. It was past 8 by this stage and eventually I thought "Screw it". I work too damn hard just for a freaking drop of pee. I left him with his urinal and with the situation now the responsibility of night staff. Believe you me, by that stage I needed to pee like a hippopotamus and ran back to the nurse's residence clenching.

Night Duty Nightmare... Again

As has already been established, night duty is where the real shit goes down. Cindy and myself were in a Medical ward together and were honestly the only two staff members awake. The permanent staff who are IN CHARGE find their sleep more important. Of course, with this luck, lots of things went wrong but we loved every moment of it.

I had a semi-comatose patient falling in and out of consciousness because his blood sugar levels were extremely low - I couldn't even get a reading on the machine. This is never good because they go into coma and ultimately die without immediate interventions. So, you have to do everything you can to keep that person alive. I put up numerous 50% Dextrose in 50ml (sugar water) through his IV line every five minutes and his blood sugar levels would just not increase. Next best thing, is to get him to drink it.

That's right: get a semi-comatose man to drink sugar water. So there I sat with a 50ml syringe filled with this potent sugar water. I put down the sides of his bed, jump onto the bed and cradle his head under my arm and on my lap. Every time he'd gain consciousness (even if only for a second), I would quickly push some sugar water into his mouth. Oftentimes, he would quickly close his mouth - which makes me think he was totally faking it - and the sugar water would run down onto my nice new pants. Other times, he would take the sugar water into his mouth, start breathing through his mouth before swallowing, and spit the sugar water all over me.

I honestly think I ingested more sugar water than he did. Plus, after the amount of his saliva I must have swallowed, we may as well have been French kissing. Eventually, after much fighting the system, and trying to learn Zulu words to tell him what to do, he got better.

I left the patient, smiling in his bed, with my pants stuck to my leg, and an eye sealed closed - all thanks to the sugar water - while swearing in Zulu.