Overheard at the ER

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

At 1:30 this morning, no more than 5 minutes after I laid my head down on my pillow, TheKid came into my room complaining of stomach pains. 7 on a 1 to 10. Off we go to the ER. We were in the ER until 630am, when they wheeled her up to remove her appendix.

Now, granted, I was loopy as all get out from stress, fear, and lack of sleep (I now have 3 hours of sleep under my belt since 7am yesterday), but I was cracking up at what I overheard in the ER:

“I should have known I was too old to wear high heels and drink”

“Tell that motherfucking brother of mine I want my damn pistol back!”

(From TheKid) “Wow, morphine is a trip. Lavender. Yeahhh, lavender. It’s cool. giggle” Note: Nothing in the room was lavender.

(From an elderly gentleman, in response to ‘Are you sexually active?’) “Am I WHAT? Cain’t you see I’m OLD?”

Nurse: “Elmer, if you don’t settle down I’m going to have to restrain you”
Elmer: “huh huh huh huh…wheeee…huh huh huh huh”

Me, to TheKid: “Baby, I can’t find your iPooed, iPooled, iThingy music thing!”

At 3:30am I was outside having a cigarette - a woman came out, called a friend, and had a very normal(ish) conversation. At 3:30. That was kinda surreal. I know people have different schedules, but in my addled brain it just struck me as weird. She did state that “Maurice best have those kids back by 5, else he’ll be here at the hospital!”

Around 2am the drunk rush started rolling in. The place went from quiet to loud very fast. A drunk guy was put in the room next to TheKid. He kept singing a variety of Guns n’ Roses songs. TheKid, hopped up, started singing too. Almost as loud as the guy.

Her surgery was just dandy, it was caught very early (less than 12 hours into it being blocked), and she’ll be home in the morning.

2

Yikes. Glad she’s ok!

3

I’m happy that she’s okay. And I’m also glad that you got some entertainment out of your ordeal, to boot.

So, have you slept yet?

ETA: I see you haven’t. Pour yourself something soothing and hit the hay, woman! :slight_smile:

4

Glad to hear TheKid is okay!

When I was temping, I had a long assignment working in my local hospital’s ER. The first part of the assingment was dayshift, but the second half was nighttime and WHOA NELLY some of the stuff I overheard. One of the doctors I worked with said he was going to write a book someday with all of the things we heard in a shift.

5

Glad to hear TheKid is okay…now YOU get yourself to bed!!

[still giggling over the “sexually active” comment]

6

On the subject of sexually active elderly people:

Medic: “Are you sexually active?”
Patient: “Does wishing count?”

7

Glad to hear she’s doing fine :slight_smile:

8

Funny!!! (the overheard stuff, not the appendix bit).

A friend of mine relates a story of her elderly aunt (great aunt perhaps) being admitted to the hospital. The doctor doing the intake paperwork was clearly just going through the checklist without mentally processing too many of the questions and one question was “when was your last menstrual period?”.

She looked coolly at him and said “I don’t remember, but I think it was during World War II”.

9

One I’d heard while waiting for someone from Radiology to materialize was "With someone else?

10

Go on… :stuck_out_tongue:

11

She’s now home. Every nurse told her she was a wonderful patient, and she stated she did her best not to complain.

She has her vicodin, her pillow, her phone, and every Harry Potter movie all at hand.

Not so funny conversation with her ex-boyfriend:
Ex: “So, if you have any extra vicodin, I can sell it for you”
TheKid: “Uh, no? Not going to happen. You’re going to use it. I know you.”
Ex: “That’s not cool”

So I’m going to be keeping track of the vicodin. Not that he’s welcome in our house or anything, but still.

12

First, I am glad the kid is alright.

Second, thanks for some good laughs.

13

I was about to ask, is her boyfriend House? Then I remembered, House kicked Vicodin. Glad to hear she’s OK and everything worked out fine.

14

I had surgery in college. Knowing the proclivities of some of the people around me, I switched the tablets in one bottle for the tablets in the other.

Bottle 1: Vicodin
Bottle 2: Prescription strength laxative in case the surgery caused any issues.

I told this story at our 15 year reunion. The look on a few faces was priceless. Well, it actually cost me a round.

15

One of the weirder things I heard in the ER was “Make me abominable!”

It was when I had my skiing accident. The ER was pretty much full of skiers and, perhaps this is no surprise, mostly teenage and twenty-something men and boys. Strangely, there was the smell of a distillery coming from behind the curtain next to me, along with a squeaky voice that wanted to be “made like abominable”.

It was a clearly underage drunk teen, who was waiting for an ER dentist. Apparently he’d stowed a wine skin full of rye whiskey under his jacket before hitting the slopes for the day. He’d gone down a mogul run and managed to knee himself in his own mouth breaking a bunch of teeth. I don’t know whether he crashed because he was drunk or was drunk because he crashed and was trying to drink himself numb. When I caught a glimpse of him, he looked all of 14, totally shitfaced drunk with a jack-o’-lantern’s mouth.

In any case, he wanted to be “abominable”. Eventually a nurse figured out he was asking them to pull out all his teeth like the Bumble (aka “abominable snowman”) from Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer presumably because it hurt so bad.

16

I spent a lovely afternoon in the ER yesterday parked on a stretcher at the nurses’ station b/c all the rooms were taken.

The elderly woman parked next to me had Alzheimer’s disease (I talked to her grand-daughter) and had fallen and hit her head. A tech came to take her for a CAT scan, then brought her back. The docs waited an hour for results, then figured out that the tech hadn’t taken the patient for a CAT scan, but a different test that had nothing to do with bonking her head. Ooh, the comments I got to hear about that! And the poor dear didn’t remember where the tech had taken her or what happened where she did end up being tested.

I really would have enjoyed all the backstage ragging and mini-drama if I wasn’t so sick. It occurred to me that ER medicine is much like working at an especially gossipy and high-stress office, but with coughing, puking humans instead of laser printers and MSWord.

17

Part of the appeal to me when I was an EMT was the sheer unfiltered beauty of some of the most raw forms of comedy you could ever imagine. Alot of it is people making jokes so they don’t burst into tears, but 2-3 times a week something damn funny would happen that would have us all howling back at the station for days.

Frustrated patient family member: She forgot to take her peanut butter balls
Medic: Her What?
Frustrated patient family member: You know…Peanut…Butter…Balls
Medic: Why would she take peanut butter balls?
Frustrated patient family member: I think we need to get another ambulance here with someone who knows that peanut butter balls are for eucalyptus seizures.
Medic: Did you mean phenobarbitol (Dilantin & Phenobarbitol is or was a common med for epileptic seizure prevention)
Frustrated patient family member: I will go get the bottle!
…
Frustrated patient family member enters with pill bottle.

Frustrated patient family member: tracing name with finger… SEE PEANUT BUTTER BALLS!
Medic: Phenobarbitol
Frustrated patient family member: YES! Peanut…Butter…Balls! I am not stupid, I know what I said.

We got a pharmacy tech to make us up a big pill bottle with a proper label of PEANUT BUTTER BALLS, take as needed for eucalyptus seizures and gave it to that medic for his birthday a few weeks later filled with reeses peices.

18

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley: I guess a few of them finally knew what had gone wrong back in the day. I’ve been told, too, that Vicodin can cause some major constipation, even if it’s taken as directed.

19

The one that comes to mind right off was a woman who came in the ER, very much in labor. I don’t know if it was the pain or what, but she looked up at one of the paramedics and yelled “I TOLD YOU I WAS PREGNANT!”

20

Algher, you’re my hero for today! I GOTTA remember this one, should the need arise!