Contact Precautions

So I worked a bit this afternoon. Don't ya just love posts that start off like that? It just screams "CRAZY MAN STORY ON THE WAY!!" So yeah, crazy man story on the way...

I arrived at work, lucky not to have died of hypothermia on my trip down the hill (gee, I can't wait for it to be negative degrees tomorrow :-\), and was ordered off to 12E for my shift. Oh boy, a "Tower" room, I thought, some idiot who OD-ed or a confused old person. -crosses fingers for the druggie- So then I get to my patient's room to find him peacefully asleep; however, the sitter I'm about to relieve is all gowned up. F-ing grand. Blue plastic contact precautions biohazard gown and gloves. So I step back outta the room and begin my HazMat process.

Eventually, I managed to get myself all sterilized and such, which sucks since the gowns only come in one size: GINORMOUS, and the only gloves in the room were larges. I'm sure I looked just lovely. Anyways, the other sitter comes out to give me a nice little rundown of our sleeping friend. Besides being HIV+ (hurrah, IV drug use), he's got MRSE, hence the uber contact precautions. MRSE, in case you're not aware, is a fancy acronym for "People freak out anytime they sniffle and run to the doctor for antibiotics when sucking it up and chugging some Day/Nyquil would work just fine. Consequently, we have created several super strains of bacteria that are nearly impossible to kill and are only killed once the patient is subjected to elephant doses of antibiotics. Oh yes, lest I forget, they're becoming resistant to those now too." So basically, touching this man without massive protection is a BAD, BAD idea. Luckily, however, he just got all kinds of Ativan, my favoritest drug ever! and was expected to sleep for my 4 hours of fun with him.

Oh, to be so lucky. Nope, not me. Funny thing about crazy people. They all tend to be druggies of some sort. And funny thing about druggies or some sort. ATIVAN DOES NOT WORK SO WELL! So while you or I would have been comatose for the next 6wks, this dude is barely drifting off, waking up every twenty minutes or so to yell some confusing stuff, falling back to sleep before he finished his thought. But, of course, in case it happened to be something I needed to hear...Like "I gotta pee!" or something of that sort... I had to keep getting up and walking over to hear what he was saying. Mostly it was something along the lines of "I want the good stuff..." And by good stuff, he meant more Ativan so he could sleep. Now, being crazy and all, these people do not often have the best logic, however, I would like to note that if you FALL ASLEEP in the middle of your sentence requesting something to help you FALL ASLEEP, you do not require said substance. Gah! Another tipoff... the inability to stay awake long enough to chew each bite of your dinner. No lie, this dude would take a bite of something, chew once or twice and then fall asleep. But he can't sleep and really needs something, don't ya know?

He finally managed to conk out for good... well, as far as I'm concered, don't know what he did from 7-11, but hey, that's not my problem... around 5:30, only waking to demand more blankets and the heat be turned up b/c he was very, VERY cold. Alright, dude, you're allowed to be cold but AHHH, the heat was already on 80. The heat does not need to be on 80. The heat especially does not need to be on 80 when I'm being forced to wear a giant plastic baggy. That thing is a SWEAT MACHINE!

Ugh, its time for a shower.