this week in clinicals i had a guy whose neighbor had noticed some odd behavior and turned out he had a brain tumor. they removed part of it and was recovering. the sutures on his scalp were like right out of a Chuckie film. the strangest/scariest thing happened though.. in the morning he was all nice and friendly. coherant. compalined of a headache near his eye (on the side of the tumor). We (the nurse and i but really the nurse..i gave meds later) gave him some pain med and a laxative because he said he hadn’t gone poo in days. came back like 30 45 min later to check on him (w/o the nurse) and he was like totally OUT of it. very very drowsy. not so easily aroused. and he was droppin the F bomb like crazy lol. he was upset that we had ‘left him by himself for hours’ (which wasn’t true so i tried to see if he was oriented to time/place/person/situation) and he just kept saying ‘im fucked up.. i feel fucked up.. where the fuck were u i’ve been by myself for hours where have you been’ i was like…come again? and then the nurse came in (mind you i was ABOUT to go get her) and when she noticed what i noticed she started moving so quickly i was like oh shoot should i have gotten her sooner?? should i have checked his vitals? is this normal? but she seemed like she was concerned but  not like freaking out. then the NP came. she seemed like it was ok. his BP was (relatively) normal and his sugar was fine. his strength had weakened a little but he could still obey simple commands and open both eyes with some effort.. he was back n forth with the f word idt the nurse noticed. the mood/behavior change freaked me out the most. also i tried to feed him and it just dribbled out. now i know that sounds stupid, but i didn’t like spoon him a spoonful of food it was a tiny piece of bread to see if maybe food would help (because i initially thought it was low blood sugar). he did try some of the OJ. im glad that he  was ok. it was determined that the pain med was what was causing the effect and it was fine. he was pretty much out for the rest of the day though.. like OUT cold. he told me to leave him alone but i didnt because i told him i’d check on him frequently since he said we had left him by himself (private room). the techs fed him, shaved him, made him stand up to pee in a urinal thing..he looked asleep the whole time!

also the nurse tried to trick me w/ a med calculation ‘error’ but i caught it lol

then a real med error almost occurred (thank God for having to check 3 times!) the pharmacy had placed the wrong med in the wrong bin. i hope no1 else overlooked that mistake..

my 2nd patient wasn’t even there she had radiation and so i just made up her bed for her. i was concerned at the fact that her food from the previous meal (as in the day before) was still sitting there and gnats were crawling in it yet the custodians had been in multiple times!

ew