I so wish I could share...

I so wish I could share a lot of my work day. Its totally bizarre and unbeliebable unless you are there. Would blow current reality t.v. out of the water if they let a camera into my ward. Due to confidentiality I can't tell too many stories, but I can tell some that the girls and boys who've worked there have told me about past happenings... such as the time when an elderly gentleman came wandering out into the nurses station trying to speak. Usually he had difficulty talking anyway, but this time he had not only his top dentures in, but someone elses as well!!! What a mouthful. Anywone who works with me knows my psychotic fear of dentures. I'm just glad I wasn't around for that one. There was the time we found another set of dentures (I'm glad I wasn't there that day) in the tree out back. Wasn't that fun trying to figure out who's they were, as half the patients wear them, but take them out and at times put other peoples in their mouth...uhhg.

Another time one of our lovely lady patients (in the middle of the night) managed to scale the back fence and went knocking (wearing only a see through nighty) on the door of the ward next door (the psychiatric ward funnily enough) looking for a room for the night!!! Fortunately we had just such a room for her (never mind the fact she had been living in this ward for months!). I was again happy to have not been at work that night, as losing a patient can be hard to explain. I've only ever 'lost' one (except by natural causes). I had a lady go AWOL on me on a morning shift. I do headcounts at least every 10 minutes. I had one missing... quick search the bedrooms, the toilets, the cleaning rooms... the backyard... yikes.. the office door is unlocked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeehaaa.. there she is all of 95 years old and tottering down the road at the back of the hospital. Phew. Didn't really loose her, just took her on an excursion.. right?

One of my favourite things is when handymen come to fix things. Especially if they haven't been to a ward quite like ours before. We do explain things to them, but somehow things just never go according to plan. I wonder if they think we are pulling their legs. I remember a day when a painter was here, and he left his painting bucket with the lid on in the backyard. We had asked him to not leave ANYTHING unattended. However he did leave it, only for a few moments.. imagine his umm, surprise when he came back to find an older gentleman naked from the waist down sitting on it and 'leaving a deposit'. Or the time two workmen brought a ladder into the backyard and BOTH climbed it. You guessed it... one of our patients was a builder before he became ill and carted that darn ladder off, leaving the workmen stranded on the roof until they made enough noise that someone noticed (did I mention at times you have to make a LOT of noise to be heard in our ward?).

Well, some stuff happened at work tonight, but as its so fresh, I can't really discuss it, but suffice to say, it was interesting!!!!

I better get to bed, its aftermidnight and I need to get back to work at 6am, and meanwhile I didn't sleep much last night after being up for almost 36 hours, so its beginning to tell. Shoey reckons one day I'll go to work and they'll swap my uniform for a set of pajamas, with a room to go with it!!!!!