[jackflashdrive]

From swingdocs story:

[ QUOTE ]
Being the good student, I ask about special powers or missions. Apparently he has been contracted to meet with Saddam Hussein and pay him $1 million and if he does not, then a nuclear sub will sail to kansas and nuke KC. Honestly I'm a little baffled by this and having some small trouble not smiling.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a story that might make me seem cold or unempathetic, but I'd ask you to remember where the expression 'gallows humor' comes from, and also my earlier point about it being human nature to distance yourself from the patients.

So there was a woman "Jane" who really didn't belong on a psych unit, as she seemed to be simply retarded (er, I mean that literally). She was about 55yo and had the state of mind of a 10yo. I think she said something to the effect of 'I am going to kill myself' but I really don't think she was even remotely suicidal.

So one night she wakes up screaming because she has had a nightmare and she is waking up the whole unit. This is bad because it is hard enough getting some people to sleep -- sometimes the only reason they go to sleep to begin with is that they got drugs right before bed and when they are up they are up. So we are asking her to quiet down and after about 5 minutes we aren't getting anywhere -- she just won't shut up and now in addition we are having to deal with other people freaking out. So the nurse says let's put her in seclusion.

This woman was very overweight -- probably weighed 250 or so and she was relatively short. So we tell her she is going to the back and she starts screaming even louder. Typically the way you walk someone to seclusion is that one person takes each arm and with one hand you pull the arm back at the wrist and with the other you press your hand forward on the patient's shoulder. So we try to do this and she resists by simply laying on the floor and not moving. If we had more people we could try to carry her, but this is night shift so it is just me and the other tech and a nurse who weighs like 100 pounds.

So the nurse says she has an idea. We put a bed sheet on the floor and roll her onto it and wrap her in it so she can't get out, and the idea is that we are going to drag Jane back to seclusion in this sheet. So we start doing this and Jane is really screaming her head off and then all of a sudden Jane starts farting violently. The other tech and I try to ignore this at first but we are looking at each other smirking and then all of a sudden one of us starts cracking up and pretty soon we are both laughing hysterically. I mean we are laughing so hard that we can barely walk, let alone keep pulling her. The nurse is yelling at us to stop laughing but even she can barely keep it together. Eventually we get her in the seclusion room and we are wiping tears of laughter from our eyes for an hour as Jane sobs in the background.