Pick your fluid, I saw it

For the record, our days in DC are limited. This is the first time I've ever loved spring so much, DC really blossoms and the weather has been fantastic the last week or so. Unfortunately David is allergic to it, forcing him to hide indoors at times where I desperately want to go out for walks. We'll see how long it lasts. But we won't survive long in a city where David can't go outdoors on the most beautiful days of the year. Apparently it is a tree of some sort. Hope it drops its flowers soon whatever it is.

This weekend at work: a big, tall, burly guy walks out of his room and yells at me "It is cold in my room! I'm calling the police!". A little later a white lady doctor tries to talk to him and he shouts at her "Get out of my room white woman!". She came out and jokingly asked me if I thought this would be a good time to talk to him about stopping his drug use. Heh. Happily I only had to deal with him for one shift. He was definitely a guy nurse patient though, all the girls were scared of him. He snuck through his shared bathroom and totally freaked out the woman in the next room. He retreated, but then started asking what her name was. We moved him across the hall pretty quickly.

I also took care of another gentleman who has been on our floor for week, very confused following a stroke. He talks a lot, but very little of what he says makes any sense. We'd had a pretty good weekend, but then he got it in his head he wanted to leave. The more agitated he got, the more we had to stop him from leaving, and the more we held him back the more combative he got until he started hitting, kicking, and spitting. He's been on so much Valium and Benadryl and Seroquel that the drugs hardly touch him, and even after some Haldol he was screaming and fighting us, so we had to put him in four point restraints. It was very clear we were doing it for his own safety, but still it has been haunting me, I hate having to tie someone down. In his head, all his talking must make sense, and it must be terribly frustrating for him. I had him again last night, and he was a bit calmer (he wasn't violent) but still very agitated and wanting to leave. Fortunately his IV is the only thing left that he could pull out (the feeding tube and foley are gone), so I was at least able to release one of his hands, which calmed him down. As soon as I released his other hand though he started trying to get out of bed to head for the door, so we had to keep that one. Poor guy.

Otherwise it was the weekend of bodily fluids. One guy throwing up. A lot. One guy with pins in his leg that were bleeding all over the place. Two guys with tracheostomies coughing up lots of boogers. The confused guy was pooping. Another with a PEG tube into his stomach that came open and leaked the chocolate shake I'd given him a few hours earlier all over his bed. None of it is fun, but somehow it is always the boogers that gross me out the most.

The weird thing, is that other than the restraints, which really bothered me, I am really liking my job. It is tiring, and can be stressful, and sometimes I don't eat for 12 hours and sometimes my legs hurt from never sitting down, and there is always another piece of paperwork to fill out. But I have to say it feels pretty good when people say thank you after a long day.