I don't recall signing up for this
Yesterday, one of the nurses calls down and asks if we could come draw a patient in their exam room. Sure, no problem. When I get over there, the nurse, K, informs me that the patient in question is severely mentally retarded, hates having her blood drawn, and is kind of a hard draw. /deep breath Let's do this. --Here I interject that I had no idea what this would actually be like.-- We had the patient (in her late 30s) lay on the exam table, and the lady's caretaker had to literally pin her down and lay on top of her while K held her arm in two places and put all her weight down on it in order to keep the lady still. She was strong; I thought I would leave that room with a busted nose. I find a vein --very small and delicate, but I think I'll be okay with the butterflies I brought with me-- poke, get a flash... then nothing. Shit. Find another, same thing happens. We'll have to use the other arm. Big to-do while they shift positions and pin the lady down again, and the nurse feels for a vein while I prep the back-up needles (larger, but I'm out of the 23s). Thank god she had a really nice basilic on this arm, and we got what we needed pretty quickly, but DAMN.
She screamed bloody murder at the top of her lungs the entire time.
By the time I got home, I was exhausted and had to take a nap, which I never do, in order to just feed everyone and watch Grey's (and holy crap, Grey's!).
I went back and talked with the nurse later that same afternoon, telling her I'd never been in a position like that before and did she have any suggestions to make things go more smoothly should I find myself in similar circumstances. She said no, that it had gone fine, and that's how the lady was every time and it wasn't like we could really communicate with her in order to do things differently. I think that's what bothered me the most, really -- the dismissiveness of the nurse in regard to this particular patient. I was shaken because it was incredibly intense physically, but, also, emotionally. How frightening a violation it must be for someone like that to have to be held down and stabbed, repeatedly, with needles; to not be able to really understand what's going on; for your nurse to just shrug it off; to have no autonomy...
However: I also drew an older gentleman, a vet, who smelled of cigars and sunshine. It made me smile, but I restrained myself from telling him that he smelled like my grandfather LOL.
She screamed bloody murder at the top of her lungs the entire time.
By the time I got home, I was exhausted and had to take a nap, which I never do, in order to just feed everyone and watch Grey's (and holy crap, Grey's!).
I went back and talked with the nurse later that same afternoon, telling her I'd never been in a position like that before and did she have any suggestions to make things go more smoothly should I find myself in similar circumstances. She said no, that it had gone fine, and that's how the lady was every time and it wasn't like we could really communicate with her in order to do things differently. I think that's what bothered me the most, really -- the dismissiveness of the nurse in regard to this particular patient. I was shaken because it was incredibly intense physically, but, also, emotionally. How frightening a violation it must be for someone like that to have to be held down and stabbed, repeatedly, with needles; to not be able to really understand what's going on; for your nurse to just shrug it off; to have no autonomy...
However: I also drew an older gentleman, a vet, who smelled of cigars and sunshine. It made me smile, but I restrained myself from telling him that he smelled like my grandfather LOL.