Geriatric patients do the darndest things!
It seems all nurses have a slew of stories from caring for older patients, and we asked our Funny Nurse Facebook fans to share some of their most memorable stories. We got tales from the hilarious to the extremely touching, and these are five of the best.
We know you’ve got some great stories, too – let us know in the comments below or on Facebook!
“I had a male patient who kept kicking his foot off the wheelchair and would yell ‘Nurse!’ and have me pick his leg and place it back. He did this about three times and I said, ‘Now, I think you are doing this on purpose.’ He smiled and said, ‘Hell yes I am; I get to see your boobs every time you bend over.'”
— Courtney Toti
“The 93-year-old who insisted she was pregnant with our 80-year-old surgeon’s baby. Quite a scandal.”
— Karen Grillo
“We had a new crop of doctors fresh out of med school who decided that we nurses just wanted to drug out our patients at night because we were too lazy to answer call bells. They were also refusing to allow us ‘specials.’ They declared that we could no longer write ‘patient confused’ or ‘patient appears to be confused’ in charts; we had to write down a description of what led us to believe the patient was confused. One of my charts read as follows:
‘Patient has been complaining loudly about the large number of fish floating through the air on ward. Has been throwing his IDC bag at same in an attempt to catch them, so far without result. Patient stated ‘This net has got a bloody hole in it or something.’ Patient has also been attempting to coerce his drip stand into an intimate relationship. He has been attempting to drag it into bed with him, addressing it as ‘Mabel’ and asking it, ‘Why are you so frigid, honey?’ This has had an adverse affect on drip rate as his fondling of the machine has at times changed the rate. Request special to help prevent this, and also the patient’s attempts to dive ‘off the boat’ by standing on bed rails.”
— Elaine Blackwell
“We had a man who was around 100 years old. Well over 6-foot tall. Slightly confused. I was putting him to bed and he pulled me on top of him. He squeezed me really tight. When he let go he said, ‘Was it good for you?'”
– Chris Plummer Huber
“On a more tender note: The Alzheimer’s patient who I had just told for the 10th time in about two hours that her daughter was coming in a while to take her shopping started to walk away but came back and gave me a hug and said, ‘I just want to thank you. You’re the only one who takes the time to tell me things.’ Those are the moments that make your day.”
– Lori Cruz
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