night shift

Saturday night I picked up a night shift for someone who wanted to go to a fundraiser put on by another co-worker. She asked so nice and with a hint of desperation, so how could I say no. I also went in an hour early for someone who again, asked nicely with a hint of desperation. At first it looked like the night was going to be a bit of a disaster and I decided it was time to stop doing favors. I was happy that the night was mostly uneventful, with the exception of one of the nurses having to talk down the wife of an overdose patient who called in threatening suicide. We turned that over to the police. The other event was my patient, who was a very pleasant fellow, except when he wanted to use the bathroom. I caught him trying to climb out of bed (he was on strict bedrest for major chest pain and the tendency to bleed - I did not need this guy to have a major heart attack or start bleeding because he wanted to use the toilet) and tried to explain to him that he would have to use a bedpan. I'm glad they make bedpans out of plastic instead of metal now because at some point in my career I'm pretty sure someone is going to hit me with one of those and plastic doesn't seem like it would hurt as much. He came close the other night, but thankfully calmed down. He cited privacy as the reason he didn't want to use a bedpan. I tried to explain the situation to him and he seemed to understand and "would think about it" which to me meant, he was going to climb out of bed as soon as my back was turned. Things went ok for a couple more hours and then our telemetry tech was walking past the room, paused, and said "uh, your patient is up." I run in there and he's two feet from the toilet, gown around his knees, all iv's and wires as tight as they go and he's half a step from winding up flat on his face. I mention that his shyness has apparently passed, which buys us some time untangling him as he tries to get his gown back up. The thing that sets him apart from any other patient who decides to climb out of bed, was he took the bedpan with him. He was just fine with using it, he just didn't want any help and he didn't want to use it in the bed - which is kind of the point. I was just glad his chest pain didn't come back and he didn't start bleeding again. I was, however, extremely mad at him and didn't thinking about warming the wipes, and he ended up with a very cold bedbath. After that, the night went fairly smooth.