Month: December 2020

Categories
intensivecare

Real things a patient’s said, part 527

“You can’t tell me what to do; the is MY room. I paid for it”

—anonymous patient

My response? “This is a hospital, NOT A HOTEL.”

(Note: it was probably her steroids talking but oh. my. god. She gave her surgeon a slow clap while saying bravo bravo the morning after surgery.

Categories
intensivecare

You have not lived until you have

  1. Pondered your own mortality while rubbing the arm of a man who speaks a different language than you, who is tied to the bed with 2 different kind of restraints and is still trying to hit you, who has survived a brutal car accident that deformed his skull and has now lost more of his brain to cancer, who is on a medicine to make him sleepy and comfortable but still flops restlessly in bed, who somehow manages to fart right in your face as tears come to your eyes, thinking about how you’ll probably die alone.
  2. Received the most vitriolic dressing down from an entitled white woman who no longer wants to be in the ICU but has unfortunately just had her 2nd brain surgery to remove a metastatic tumor. You try to set boundaries by saying “this is not a hotel; it is a hospital” to no avail.
  3. Bonded with your colleagues about all the shitty stuff that’s happened in your night—assignments changed, 2 admits, charge nurse yelled at you, expecting to get yelled at by cardiac surgeon because you didn’t extubate your patient, massive transfusion, and so on. It’s true that working in an an ICU is like going to war. The trauma bonds you.