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There Are Patients I'd Like to Put Out of All of Our Misery

Posted Nov 03 2009 10:00pm

Had a couple of men in their 40' s with pneumonia admitted into the same room Sunday night I was about to hurt.  They were both such babies that every time I went in to do a treatment on one the other one whined until he got one too. Then they both wanted to know what meds the other one got and which med was “better”. Then they whined because they both thought I was giving too much attention to the other one.  (I’m not kidding.) 

Amazingly though, that distress only seemed to creep up when someone entered the room. I stood out in the hall, which is my test for a lot of questionable respiratory distress, and listened to them passing Halloween candy back and forth, eating anything they could get the PCA to bring them from the pantry, and carry on non-stop conversation. All seemed fine until I walked into the room at which point one sat up to huff and puff and the other one lolled back in his bed in misery.

Geez, what whiners. I overheard them talking about their ex-wives and how misunderstood they' d been during their marriages.  According to them, women are heartless self-centered witches.  Hmmmm...I was thinking that they were a match made in heaven and should hook up.  Think of all the attention they could give each other.

I finally put both of them on the same meds on the same schedule so we could do both of them at the same time each time we went into the room.  At the 3am tx, the man whose treatment I didn' t give first whined that he was in such distress he didn' t see why he had to wait to be the second tx.  I just looked at him. I was so angry I was afraid to open my mouth.  No telling what would have come out.  

What I was thinking was that I' d love to grab both of them by the ears and drag them down to Peds to show them what a sick five year old with a chest tube-- and more emotional fortitude and physical courage than either of them had-- looked like.

After I finished both treatments that last round,  I told them I was going to be their mom tonight so I turned off their TV and all their lights, told them their bodies needed rest, that they had better go to sleep, and that if I heard they were calling the nursing staff even once more for food or sodas or anything else they’d have to answer to me.  They both laughed but I could tell  they weren' t sure if I was serious or not. They did lay off the call button and go to sleep the nurse said later when she thanked me. They were driving her nuts too. 

I should have thought of it earlier.

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