When The Sun Goes Down....

Oh  man... I love night shifts. They are always interesting. I am not sure what about the sun going down makes patients go a lil' loopy but it does. We always have some fun things going on.


Like two nights ago;


    We had the sweetest lil' old lady with dementia on our floor. I secretly think that she has access to the fountain of youth because for being 84 yrs old she looks and can move like a 60-yr-old. Well, she had just had surgery that day and she was all settled in her bed, sweet as a peach and just slightly confused, sleeping away.
    Two hours later, a male patient from our 4-man ward came out and asked when did they get a 5th patient in their room. I politely corrected him, stating there was only 4 patients in his room. The patient seemed quite persistent about his new roomie, and I started to suspect he was slightly 'confused', when he came out point blank and said "There's a woman in our bathroom". Sure enough, when I went down to their bathroom I found our eternally young 84-yr-old female patient, with her gown flipped around so it was more like a jacket, fully exposed in the front, and washing the walls. Poor guy must of had quite the start when he opened his bathroom door. The thing about physically fit but mentally off patients is that they make the best escape artists. She was found in everybody's room, every bathroom, but luckily she eventually tired out and settled down for some sleep.


Then last night;


    One of our elderly patients with MS had been quite mute lately, during assessments, repositioning, vitals etc. we couldn't get a peep out of her. She wasn't my patient so I didn't know if she was able to talk anymore but didn't think much of it. Later in the night, another nurse and I were discussing life insurance and disability insurance (Shawn and I are in the midst of trying to figure out what types of insurance we want) so we when we went to reposition our MS patient, we continued our discussion. There we were talking about term vs permanent when all of a sudden our patient pipes up, "Make sure you read EVERYTHING". The two of us just stared in stunned silence at our suddently verbal patient as she continued, "Make sure you know what you want and it's gonna give it to you..." and so on with her spiel about insurance. I guess she must  have a passion about that subject because for the rest of the night we couldn't get another word out of her just her sporatic insight on insurance shopping...


Tonight:
  
   Tonight hasn't been that crazy. We do have two elderly gentleman who kept attempting to crawl out of bed so we put them both in geri-chairs and settled them in the t.v. room where they have since been pleasantly keeping each other company, chit-chatting, eating cookies and watching CMT... They are quite cute actually...


But I can't say I am too disappointed to be off after tonight. I actually have THREE WHOLE DAYS OFF!!!. It's been months since I have had so many days off in a row... I am quite excited and only partially suspicious that I will end up working on one of those days off...


xoxo