Friday, March 31, 2006

All in a Day's Work

I've been an RN for over 15 years now, and today, for the first time, someone who I know, was a patient in the Recovery Room. Now, let me be clear: this is not a friend of mine, but someone who Greg works with. We really do not socialize with this guy.
I had to start that way, because honestly, I WAS MORTIFIED that I claimed to know such a jackass!
Very innocently, I had told the anaethetist that his next patient was a friend of mine. He looked at me, a little surprised and said "Really? He's causing quite a scene in the Pre-op area insisting on a General Anaesthetic. He really just needs a local block. He's having finger surgery!" I quickly recanted and said "Uh...well...uh...he's not really a friend. He works with my husband."
Turns out that Fern was quite anxious so they gave him antianxiety drugs. Quite a bit. QUITE a bit. Enough to knock-over-a-horse, quite a bit. And that just loosened him up all right. He started telling sexist and racist jokes to the doctors and nurses and was just an all around pain in the ass. His surgeon's name was B**hammer: Fern asks him "Yo B**hammer! Are ya hammered?!" Very original. And this, right before he's going to be operated on! They ended up basically giving him enough drugs to shut him up.
So...when he woke up in the Recovery Room...you can only imagine.
He was sitting up, falling over the siderail, calling out my name, then calling out "Stelllllllllllllllllllllahhhhhhhhh!" just because he thought it was funny. Or, because he wanted attention. Whatever the nurses asked him to do, he would do the complete opposite. He was sexually inappropriate and kept asking where the 'Drug Lord' doctor was.
I tried to be polite, but I was pissed off too. And so embarrassed. (And mad at myself that I had admitted to knowing him!) There was a lot of eye rolling going on in that unit this afternoon, and the nurses were asking me, all puzzled, "he's your friend????" The nurse who had him finally just closed the curtains around him hoping that he would settle down. One of the other nurses said quite loudly (and, quite inappropriately,) that he was probably just making up for his small penis size, the guy was such an a$$hole. Unfortunately, we all heard the comment, and so did Fern.
Man, was he pissed! And then he got all high and mighty with his macho Yo-yo attitude. (GAG!)
Sigh. No doubt I'm going to hear all about it and the bitches I work with.