Behaviors

When I first got into the nursing career, I worked at a cancer institution, and I hadn't really expected that, but since cancer is not its own clinical course in the university nursing curriculum, really I didn't have much expectation at all. I have loved the decade I spent working with cancer patients, and I had thought I would keep working with cancer patients...but that's not how life turned out. 

Instead, flashback to my undergrad pharmacology and psychiatry clinical courses, when I had thought, Oh, this is not for me. I was terrible at keeping all the street drugs [and their side effects, and slang terms, and reversal agents] straight, and I definitely remember not liking my psychiatry nursing professor at all--yeah so back to present times, and that's roughly what my job is now. Go figure.

My actual job, I admit, is not bonified psychiatry. I'm the medical nurse practitioner in charge of the general medical care of all of the patients in the inpatient psych ward [aka Behavioral Health Unit, because really you can think as crazy as you like, but it's only a problem when you start acting crazy, too]. And "medical care" is pretty broad--anything from managing HIV or diabetes or high blood pressure to figuring-out-how-to-get-that-ring-off-a-patient's-finger-before-it-cuts-off-circulation. Also, I should admit, I still have to Google drug slang words to understand what drug it is the patient has told me they're using. 

It's hard to give an accurate picture of what my job is like, but I'll do what I can with words. Keep in mind these patients are all adults, that I am trying to point out humor in a situation rather than trying to mock someone, and I'm purposefully keeping some things vague.

Patient reported they did not speak English, and that they only spoke Latin. They didn't respond to Spanish, and would insist that they didn't speak English if you spoke to them in normal English. However, I discovered that if you framed your questions in yoda-speak as, for example, in "Surgeries, have you had?", they would answer the question.

Patient complained of ear pain--saw what looked like really-hardened ear wax in ear, ordered ear-wax-softener drops, then consulted ENT [Ear Nose Throat]--it was a mechanical pencil eraser.

Patient nicely dressed [sweater, accessories, good shoes] but a vociferous swearer. When asked if anyone had ever told them they had vitamin D deficiency, they became very upset and said they didn't need to take Viagra to have sex [that's the sans-swear-words version]. When I tried to explain that Vitamin D is an actual vitamin, like vitamin A, and that it's added to milk--Vitamin A & D milk--they said not the milk they're drinking, and they don't take Viagra.

Patient told me they were not a human, because they was older than humanity, and thus human medicines and treatment don't work on them. Yet when I asked if they had been vaccinated for COVID, they were able to state the exact date as well as the manufacturer of their vaccine.

I asked a patient if anyone in their family had diabetes or hypertension or a stroke or heart attack, and they responded, "Just poor weather." Despite multiple follow-up questions, I couldn't figure out what they meant. [I think they was just saying stuff in response to my questions. As if in their mind, I had said something, so it was now their time to say something; very rarely did the two parts of the "conversation" actually match up.]

Patient said they was God, and if I shook their hand they would forgive me and bless me.

Patient reported they were the governor of Virginia; the next week, they told me they wanted to give me $100,000 for listening to them, and then said they were governor of all the states.

I should note that I've met "The President of the United States" several times. That, and God, and "secret government agent" tend to pop up frequently in this patient population. Sometimes, their "reality" sounds better than the real one. At least, better for them.