My patients (and their families) love me!

Current mood:placid

Category: Blogging

There comes a time in everybody's career when you can become almost "too good" at what you do. Before my glorious nights as a sleep therapist, there was a time when I was a formidable respiratory therapist. I had pretty recently changed jobs, moving from my extremely small hometown hospital to the "big city" hospital 30 miles north. As the newest hire, I often got tapped to do the dirtiest jobs. As such, I got be well known (as well known as you can be in a 400 bed hospital, anyway) for a couple of my skills: Drawing arterial blood, and suctioning (Shut up! Not THAT kind of suctioning.....I'm talking about the insertion of a catheter to remove the sputum from the lungs of a patient who's cough has been compromised). The hospital had recently upgraded to a level II trauma facility (the hometown hospital was a level IV, if that helps put things in persepctive), so we started to recieve more and more critical patients.

As happens, one day we recieved a patient from around 60 miles away. He had been involved in a pretty bad car accident (MVA, for all you ER-types) and was admitted to our (I)ntensive ©are (U)nit. We will call this patient "Mr. Brown". I was not working in the ICU when Mr. Brown came to stay with us, but I received a call from the therapist that was:

Therapist: Hey man, what are you doing?

Me: Not much. I'm almost done. Is it lunchtime yet?

Therapist: Almost. I need you to get an ABG for me (that means draw blood)

Me: who's it on?

Therapist: Mr. Brown, in 5

Me: What's the catch?

Therapist: *whistling*

So off I go to draw some blood. When I enter Mr. Brown's room, I see a younger male reclining in bed, covered by a sheet. The bed is angled at 45 degrees to allow Mr. Brown to "sit up" without exerting undue effort. The ICU therapist is waiting for me in the room. "Hello Mr. Brown", I say. "Mmmmurphg", replied Mr. Brown. "He's been heavily sedated due to multiple long bone breaks", explains the therapist. Oooooookay......let's get some blood (I don't want to get super technical here, but the preferred site for drawing the type of blood that I wanted is the wrist). I move to the left side of Mr. Brown's bed and pull down the sheet. His entire arm is covered in a cast, from wrist to well past the elbow. Ok, no big deal. I move to the right side of the bed and pull the sheet back. The right arm is even worse, covered from wrist to shoulder in plaster, with pins sticking out everywhere. Crap! That means I have to draw the blood from the femoral artery ( You can find the femoral artery by pressing in the junction where your leg attatches to your torso. Needless to say, it's location is very close to the.....well, let's call it the "daddyparts" region). I turn the sheet down quite far, only to discover a cast extending from high up on the thigh, down to below the knee. Not good. "How about that side?", I ask the therapist. She pulls the sheet down to reveal.....No cast! All right! I move over to the left side to palpate the L. femoral artery when I notice a problem. His penis. It has kinda flopped over in the area where I have to stick the needle. My next conversation went like this:

Me: Um, you're gonna have to move that YooHoo so I can stick

Therapist: I'm not touching his naughtybits

Me: Well I'm damn sure not touching the twig-n-berries

Therapist: Sorry, I can't touch the wedding tackle.

Intercom: Do you have that blood yet?

Me: No, not yet....we're working on it

Intercom: Hurry up, the doc needs it, and his family is waiting to see him

Me: Ok, I'm working on it!

Up until now, the only penis that I've held in my hand has been mine own. And I don't wanna break that streak now. Just when all seemed lost, I spotted a solution: His Yaunker! (a Yaunker is a bedside suction devise used to remove saliva from somebody's mouth. You may have seen a similar device when you go to the dentist.) I pick up the Yaunker and use it to flop the penis out of the way.....and hope they don't stick it back in his mouth. Ok, time to draw the blood! The femoral artery is big like a garden hose. Because it is so big, it takes a lot of pressure to move the blood through. Basically, when I withdraw the needle, I have to hold some counter-pressure to the puncture site so he won't lose a lot of blood. I hand the blood sample to the therapist so she can run it through the analyzing machine. "Tell the doc we just got the blood and it'll only be a few minutes until we get the results", I tell the therapist, on her way out. So now it hits me........I'm going to be stuck pressing a big gauze sponge against this guy's crotch for the next 10 minutes. Great. How can it possibly get any better than this?

I turn to face the door and see about 15 people. Mr Brown's family standing in the doorway. They are all wearing looks of shock and disgust at the sight of me with my hand dangerously close to Mr. Brown's bells (and his weenie is fully exposed where I had flicked over earlier with the Yaunker). "Uh....I, uh.....had to draw some blood.....", I said lamely. They were having none of it. With my other hand I depressed the call button. "Barbara, I'm not quite ready for family just yet", I told the clerk. A nurse came over and hustled them out. After I had held pressure and bandaged the site, I washed up (thoroughly, I can assure you) and walked out. "How come the family just looked at me like that? I told them I had to draw some blood" I asked the nurse. "How were they looking at you?", she asked, obviously amused. "Like I was holding pressure with my mouth", I said. "They don't speak any English", the nurse replied. As I walked back to the respiratory department, they were all looking at me with that same look of horror.

Needless to say, I had to pass on lunch. It was hotdogs.