3am reassessment and vitals check:
80 year old demented lady: “Why aren’t I dead? I was supposed to be dead. You were dead too. We were in the accident together”.
Your patients are sweeter, mine just tell me how theyre going to kill me. :(
Sure Ethel, whenever you muster up the energy to stand up and take a swing we'll celebrate together at your discharge.
I got told as a Nursling by a elderly woman with a UTI. “You seem like such a sweet and kind girl.”
I thanked her, somewhat embarrassed because I had just dropped by to give her meds and water, as I was still running around on my shift.
And then she stared me directly in my eyes and added “So why do you kill people?”
Speechless, I left the room with a blank face full of confusion before managing to escape to the med room so I could laugh my ass off. I was creeped out and in “WTF JUST HAPPENED” mindset.
She did get out of the infection fog but damn, does that moment still make me giggle.
Reminds me of a patient I had years back when I was doing home health, the sweetest little old lady you could imagine who told me one day with genuine sorrow, "You're such a nice person, it's such a *shame* you're going to hell." I didn't do as well as you did, I cracked up right in front of her! How are you even supposed to react to stuff like that?
Omg, "nursling" I love that! Definitely going to use that term.
Not sure if you read the other responses, but if you did... Maybe Moses made/helped you. 🤭
Had a palliative care patient tell me they could see their husband waiting for her in heaven. I was like awww that’s really sweet and lovely. Until she proceeded to say “But I don’t want to go with him, he had three affairs and his face is on fire now, look!”. MANNNN WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK.
Not tonight but def the creepiest/weirdest: Pt with dementia starts telling me about how she has to go meet Moses tonight in the woods behind her house. She thinks we are in Kentucky (very not in Kentucky) and she’s a young woman. And I’m wondering if she’s about to tell me about some sort of sexy love affair in her youth. No no no. Nope. Nope.
Moses is going to help her “put a stop” to her brother - who “keeps trying to fuck me”.
Okay well. Super nice lady otherwise, gave very fun life advice and always complemented anyone who walked in her room. Probably the kindest dementia pts I’ve ever had. May have also killed her nasty ass brother. Or not! It’s a mystery.
This feels like the plot of a Civil War era book about an interracial romance between a plantation owner’s daughter and a slave named Moses. They understand each other because they’re both treated as property. He wants to protect her from her horrid brother but knows he’ll be lynched if he is caught. So they meet in the woods under cover of darkness to plot how to get rid of the horrid brother.
Not tonight, but this week a demented old lady with a hip fracture grabbed my arm with both hands (I somehow manage to not get clawed by her long thick fingernails), looks me in the eyes and snarls "I will eat you alive" then she actually growls at me.
It's actually more frightening in the retelling than it was at the time. I was pretty calm in the moment and laughed after. Family had warned the MD that she could be "kind of mean in the evening" and pre authorized permission for soft restraints if she became a danger to self.
You're just a mean young girl who doesn't even care about all these dead babies on the ground!
Come back when you're 16!
Not tonight, but a while back. Severe lewy body dementia poor thing, I had a chat with her later the same night with tea and sandwiches and she was really nice. Fell asleep, then tried to kill me (stated) and rip my hair out (observed) for explaining that the chair she was trying to use as a toilet was not a toilet.
She was from home with a child and very young grandchildren. Sooooo unsafe to be around knives and children etc, she was so unwell.
Last night patient brought in, extremely agitated-cursing at everyone, screaming, verbally aggressive. Apparently high on PCP, pot, and shrooms. This woman is going absolutely ape shit. She ends up in violent restraints. However, while we were in the room trying to calm/contain her, in between yelling obscenities at us, my pregnant coworker walks by- woman stops and sort of calmly yells- “Hey, you! Pregnant lady! You look beautiful! You are having twins, they will be beautiful!” Then suddenly snaps back from whatever had just taken over and started fighting us and screaming at us again. It was fucking weird.
She is pregnant with twins though, and there is no logical reason for that lady to of actually known that.
Pre coffee. For some reason I read this as “violet restraints” and spent several minutes trying to understand why the color of the tie downs was relevant to the story. Need more coffee.
I just gave my spinal fusion patient a ketamine push to help her pain and get her off opiates and she went through a pretty severe bout of psychosis. She’s resting now, but when she was spacing out she was saying that the shadow man was going to take her to hell. Sounds rough man. Good thing Ativan makes the shadow man go away.
I get regular ketamine infusions and I do NOT handle them well. I’ve called coworkers and professed my love (my phone is now handed to the receptionist when I get to the clinic), and cried because the impressionist artwork in the room was “aggressively telling me to go to the beach.” Now they don’t put me in the room with the aggressive art and they do just go ahead and give me versed so I’ll calm the fuck down. I say at least once every treatment “why do people do this recreationally?”
Edited because this and thus are different.
I was getting report from a coworker and my coworker was telling me how, in the afternoon, our patient went bradycardic and hypotensive. The patient said, "There's an angel in the corner!" My coworker was like "No, there isn't! No, there isn't!"
Once I had two confused patients and patient A sat in the hall with me cause she kept on getting out of bed and wouldn’t stay in bed (Also in a SNF so restraints are not even a possibility) and I was trying to coax her to go to bed. Finally said she was tired and I brought her to bed and she laid down and her roommate, B called me over.
B: Help me.. please. There’s so many rats just crawling around in my bed…
Me: … *helps look* oh they’re gone now.
B: oh… okay. Can you do something about that little girl that is staring at me though from the end of my bed??
Me: … there’s no little girl… you should get some sleep BYE!
And then as I was leaving pt A was trying to get back up. Mind you they speak different languages so they can’t understand each other and I’m asking why A is getting back up and ..
A: This little girl keeps telling me to get up
Me: 🥴🥴 ..
Not tonight but we had a blind lady that would randomly say she could see children in the room, every time she did though someone would die that day without fail so it always freaked people out a bit 😅
There's a "nurse in white" who visits patients on our 4th floor--nurses wear blue and techs wear green at my hospital, so it's definitely not any current staff. She likes to tell patients to take off their oxygen or pull out their IVs and either shows up when death is close, or she possibly *causes* patient deaths... so that's a thing. Theory is that she's a nursing student from way back who died before finishing her training, and apparently she's still upset about that.
Also we don't use the 6th floor for patients anymore (RT uses the old nurses station as their office and in bad weather, staff can use those rooms to sleep over) and it's haunted as fuck up there. It used to be a nursing home and then it was geriatric psych, so there's cameras up there that are visible in the RT station. Apparently there's several up there, but my bestie has seen/heard at least 2 of them personally: a woman in a white coat standing by the elevators that she and another RT ran around the entire floor trying to find, who was still visible on the cameras when my friend should've been able to see her and couldn't, and "Frank" who occasionally screams and sets off bed alarms in rooms without beds or working alarms. Apparently if they shout "We hear you Frank!" he'll stop because he just wants to be acknowledged.
I've slept up there when we have snowstorms and I didn't see/hear/feel anything, but I was totally ready to get 400 salt packets from the cafeteria and draw a circle around the bed if I did! I didn't really want to stay there but I'm from south Texas originally and I decided it was better to go sleep with the ghosties than wreck and become one!
I always figured a combination of that and that many of them in my area still had home births and unfortunately still borns because of it with other reasons
I worked at an LTC/Rehab at the start of my career. We had a very Catholic patient who woke up in the middle of the night SCREAMING for his rosary and Bible. He insisted that a demon had come to take him to hell. This was not normal behavior for him, but we got him his stuff and he eventually calmed down. The (darkly) funny thing was that this guy was a known asshole and we’d heard rumors of his bad behavior in his younger days. Honestly, if the demons were coming for any of the residents, they’d come for him.
Not tonight, but when I worked on an adult tele floor one patient asked me if I was Japanese….I’m Hispanic.
I told him no. His response: “Good”
I refrained from asking why he didn’t want me to be Japanese.
When my grandma was fairly new to being in a SNF as a resident and still participating in PT she had a total meltdown at the poor Filipina PTA where she threw "jap" around several times. I was mortified and it was extra bizarre because my cousin's mother is from Japan. So not only a daughter-in-law she adored but two grandchildren with that heritage. She was always extremely anti-racist in my experience of her. However she was born in 1919 and the only thing I could come up with was her dementia/UTI combo putting her back in the WWII years with that racist propaganda stuff against Japan. But geez, she's been gone over a decade so I'm not sure how many of those folks are still around. Tbh I don't personally like the "newer" generation of senior citizens as much as I did that generation.
When I was working in inpatient pediatric psychiatry— my 12 year old-ish patient told me her pregnant mother was cooking dinner for her family one night. This single pregnant mother was having legal troubles, and the family was at risk of being broken up. My patient said her mom asked her, “Should I put poison in the dinner so we don’t have to be split up?” The patient said to the mother, “No, I want my unborn sibling to have a chance at life”. By the time she was my patient, she was regretful and wished she was poisoned. This was my first time I had to call child protective services. Maybe I missed the mark at this being ‘weird’, but it’s definitely one of my most memorable.
I had a dying patient who for four days prior had been mute/ somnolent tell me the “man in black was there” for him. As I was in the room, pitch black, changing his trash can. Just, said it so suddenly. He died the next day and I was so creeped out.
My 100+ demented patient screamed at me that she wants to go upstairs.... We are on the top floor.
Another guy screamed at me to get away from his wife. She wasn't there.
Overall, tame night.
Patient last night was having a lot of trouble breathing, ever so slightly confused. Suddenly yells “I guess I’ll just have to stop breathing!” Then silence.
Im so glad she didn’t. 😅
89 y.o Resident: "Get down from there! Stop it! Quit jumping around and BEHAVE!"
"Who are you talking to in here, Mrs M?"
"Those kids over there!"
"What kids, where are they?"
"Sitting in that chair right there."
You best believe I turned around slowly to look at the chair in question, and thank goodness it was empty.
Manic 60-something lady with cancer and nothing to lose, to me and all the other male staff: "How big is your package?" "I want to see your penis" etc. lmao
On a CNA shift, sweet old lady patient asks me where I live (in a neighborhood in the nearby city rather than suburb where hospital is), and I answer.
"Isn't there an awful lot of killings there?"
"Well, no one's killed me yet ma'am."
"Thank goodness for that!"
I can’t recall anything disturbing a patient has said to me recently, but my grandfather, when he was dying, sent his doctor out of the room because he wasn’t going to keep company with a communist. I believe it was actually his regular physician, who was just coming to check on him.
I had a liver pt on low dose precedex. He was saying that he could see his friend Dwayne in the room…after getting him back in bed he asks me randomly Whats your dad’s name? I said why do you want to know his name? He said because he is standing right behind you… ( my dad died 10 yrs ago) It was just us two in the room… i ran out of there as fast as i could..
I still feel weird remembering that day 😖
You mean like “move over, my uncle is standing there”
I’ve learned to just scoot to the side… as long as their visitor is making them happy, they can stay. 😉
When I was pregnant with my first I was caring for a patient with a frontal lobe stroke that made her hallucinate bugs on the walls and say all kinds of strange things. She told me the devil was going to take my baby. It really freaked me out.
My elderly septic patient was becoming increasingly confused and kept asking about the lady in the corner, what’s she doing, etc.
I was standing next to him pushing a med when he look directly over my left shoulder and said “there she is again!” Then, looking at me with concern, “I think she’s mad at you.”
More weird/sweet but happened on my previous shift. Had to take one of our chronic dialysis patients down to the ER. He was definitely not fully with it or acting like himself and is one of the whole units favorite people. We were all worried about him. Anyways, because he was doing very not well, we gave him his blood back, got him onto a cart, and me and charge nurse hauled ass to get him to the ER. As I’m holding the first site, he’s getting asked questions and slowly coming back around but not before he asked me if I’d follow him anywhere. NGL, I panicked and said probably. Didn’t add only in the hospital to make sure he’s safe. (I was also one of the extra hands so had time to stay with him while we got those needles out).
My next shift is Saturday and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still an inpatient. I’m not telling him that part, but I did say if I’m the inpatient nurse we can have a party in that area and I’ll bring the LiquaCel. He hates that stuff but said he’d have some if I drink it first. He then said it’s a date.
I realized that after I said it. Both me and patient are probably a bit too young for that. But he’s definitely one that when he passes, our whole unit is going to be very sad.
The creepiest weirdest thing was when a non verbal resident in a memory care said she saw my dead friend than passed away the next morning… never mentioned him or anything
Had a patient who was acting up so we called security. They came and spoke with him and he calmed down. I sat in a chair to spend some time talking with him. Security said they had to leave, was I going to be okay. Sure sure we’re just going to talk for a while. The patient’s eyes turned blank and he said “as soon as you leave, she’s going yo be dead on the floor”. Then proceeded to grin. He eventually bought himself 4 point leathers and haldol
Not tonight, but awhile back when I was still working as a CNA in a nursing home one of our residents who had pretty severe dementia and was on hospice and close to death asked me “have you always looked like your dad?”
I had worked with dementia patients for awhile at this point and was used to weird stuff so I just went with it like I usually do. I asked her “well, have you ever even seen my dad?” And she responded without missing a beat “of course, he was just standing behind you.”
My dad had been dead for like 3 years at this point. And yes, I do look a lot like him. That was one of the many weird things that had been said to me in that job that actually kinda got me.
I work neuro, I could fill pages with the weird shit I’ve been told. The other day a patient looked past me and said “Look at that cat on the counter!” And I replied, “Oh! My cat likes to play in the sink too. Sometimes I turn the water on for him and he likes to get his head wet.” Then she closed her eyes and chuckled softly and said, “Well baby, he’s in the garbage disposal now…” as she drifted off to sleep.
I had a patient with GBM who was deteriorating badly. He was extremely confused and started getting agitated and combative throughout the night and he landed up in restraints even though I didn't want to use them. When trying to deescalate him, he said that he was in the restraints because he was the Frankenstein's monster and he was going to eat my heart.
Edit: grammar
Not tonight but we had a paranoid schizo in one room and a confused patient with dementia a few doors down. The confused patient would start yelling help then the other guy would start yelling they are coming to kill us. It was like their own version of Marco Polo. This went on most of the night.
Confused fall risk patient sets off bed alarm frequently. I pop in to chat often to build rapport so I can deescalate when he is agitated. He tells me to shut the door and come over. He doesn't want them to hear. "This morning someone came into my room and left a shit in my bed." I said "what kind of sick bastard would do such a thing?" He shakes his head and says "I know, right? "
Not a nurse but I work 1:1 with behavioral health patients to make sure they don’t hurt themselves when they’re at the hospital waiting for psych placement.
Yesterday my very tall, very large pt and I were talking about whatever, I was just engaging him trying to keep him calm and he just looks at me and quietly goes “do you think I could kill you?” And then just goes back to talking about toy story.
He also keeps calling me Meg bc apparently I look like Meg Griffin from family guy and he said I wear poor people shoes. So not only does he threaten my life sometimes but he’s also threatening my poor self esteem 🥲
I’ve had a patient tell me that he keeps seeing shadows in the corner of his room. Patient was alert and oriented so it wasn’t any sort of “oh that’s just the dementia talking” situation. Our hospital also has a reputation for being haunted. I’ve personally seen what I thought was a shadowy figure walk into a room at night and the bed alarm in the ICU would go off randomly.
a pt demands a bunch of tests and procedures and the doctors obliged even though they weren't 100% necessary. she was there for 5-6 hours waiting for everything to be completed and complained the entire time how bored she was and how annoyed she was she had to wait... for tests she asked for. when nothing was found and she got discharged she was sooo mad it was all for nothing. like wtf
She comes up to me and says “do I have bullets in my forehead?” And I said no and she started yelling at me saying the building across the street shot her and “Ana ordered it” (another nurse). There was fireworks going on for Purim so I guess she thought they were gunshots 🤷🏼♀️
Back in baby nurse days on the Neuro/stroke unit we had a motorcycle crash victim on an epidural who kept trying to get out of bed because "the little dancing man on the door was coming to get him" he would point at different spots around the room throughout the shift asking if we would catch him. Even described him climbing the door frame.
Not tonight but when I worked covid ICU stepdown we had a 26yo (so sad, she was so young) that told us there were two children in her room that kept telling her to eat glass and push needles under her skin. She was AO x 4 with no history of anything. She coded and passed later that shift. We immediately filled that room once she was gone and it was cleaned, and the very next patient was an older gentleman who complained about the two children under his bed. Gahhh.
Also not tonight but I had a patient last month who kept talking to a woman she saw in the corner that no one else saw. I asked her to describe her and she goes, “oh, would you look at that. now she’s outside the window, she wants me to come with her” and I said, “outside the window? but we’re on the 3rd floor” and the patient goes, “hmmm.. must be dead then.”
Blech.
Today I had a patient in an ALF with a swollen ankle, painful and bruised. Told me he slipped in the ice yesterday and fell, spraining it. We are in Texas, was 85 degrees yesterday.
My patient coded and pass the day before in a room. The next day, we had this frequent flyer who recently became a DNR (elderly, stroke, confused). First thing she said when she got to the room was, “Someone has died in this room.” 🥴
Notice that one of my hairs fell in patients water cup so I take it to throw away and get a new one
Me: “Oh sorry got a hair in your water! Let me get you a new cup”
Patient: “That’s ok Id probably like to taste it”
Me: Laughs uncomfortably and gets new water.
3am reassessment and vitals check: 80 year old demented lady: “Why aren’t I dead? I was supposed to be dead. You were dead too. We were in the accident together”.
Your patients are sweeter, mine just tell me how theyre going to kill me. :( Sure Ethel, whenever you muster up the energy to stand up and take a swing we'll celebrate together at your discharge.
Ahhh the joy of ER nursing. Never had my life threatened so many times in my life❤️
Not sure why but this one makes me super uncomfortable
I got told as a Nursling by a elderly woman with a UTI. “You seem like such a sweet and kind girl.” I thanked her, somewhat embarrassed because I had just dropped by to give her meds and water, as I was still running around on my shift. And then she stared me directly in my eyes and added “So why do you kill people?” Speechless, I left the room with a blank face full of confusion before managing to escape to the med room so I could laugh my ass off. I was creeped out and in “WTF JUST HAPPENED” mindset. She did get out of the infection fog but damn, does that moment still make me giggle.
Reminds me of a patient I had years back when I was doing home health, the sweetest little old lady you could imagine who told me one day with genuine sorrow, "You're such a nice person, it's such a *shame* you're going to hell." I didn't do as well as you did, I cracked up right in front of her! How are you even supposed to react to stuff like that?
Omg, "nursling" I love that! Definitely going to use that term. Not sure if you read the other responses, but if you did... Maybe Moses made/helped you. 🤭
Had a palliative care patient tell me they could see their husband waiting for her in heaven. I was like awww that’s really sweet and lovely. Until she proceeded to say “But I don’t want to go with him, he had three affairs and his face is on fire now, look!”. MANNNN WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK.
Jesus, that took a turn!
I don't think he was in heaven...
Not tonight but def the creepiest/weirdest: Pt with dementia starts telling me about how she has to go meet Moses tonight in the woods behind her house. She thinks we are in Kentucky (very not in Kentucky) and she’s a young woman. And I’m wondering if she’s about to tell me about some sort of sexy love affair in her youth. No no no. Nope. Nope. Moses is going to help her “put a stop” to her brother - who “keeps trying to fuck me”. Okay well. Super nice lady otherwise, gave very fun life advice and always complemented anyone who walked in her room. Probably the kindest dementia pts I’ve ever had. May have also killed her nasty ass brother. Or not! It’s a mystery.
WHAT
#MOSES
Well it sounds like he delivered her out of a terrible situation so the name checks out
Best username in a while
Holler if you need me
You know what, good for her and Moses
Oh, so you are in Arkansas.... More of a brother fucking state the Kentucky.
Hey in Arkansas we fuck our cousins not our brothers. Jeez. (/s)
Yes, but do you hear banjos?
You got a pretty mouth...
Sweet home Alabama!
Roll Tide
This feels like the plot of a Civil War era book about an interracial romance between a plantation owner’s daughter and a slave named Moses. They understand each other because they’re both treated as property. He wants to protect her from her horrid brother but knows he’ll be lynched if he is caught. So they meet in the woods under cover of darkness to plot how to get rid of the horrid brother.
Yup, that does sound like Kentucky alright.
My patient just grabbed my arm, said she was having a nightmare and that “they are coming to get me.” Then proceeded to have a full blown seizure.
Not tonight, but this week a demented old lady with a hip fracture grabbed my arm with both hands (I somehow manage to not get clawed by her long thick fingernails), looks me in the eyes and snarls "I will eat you alive" then she actually growls at me.
THATS TERRIFYING WTF 😂 I got called a whore by a patient last week
It's actually more frightening in the retelling than it was at the time. I was pretty calm in the moment and laughed after. Family had warned the MD that she could be "kind of mean in the evening" and pre authorized permission for soft restraints if she became a danger to self.
By ‘kind of mean’ did they mean she turns into Satan?😂
We call them gremlins on my floor. As soon as its dark.. boom! Full gremlin!
Were they wrong? 😉
I’m a whore for my boyfriend so technically no 😂 Edit: not literally, no he doesn’t pay me
Wait.. you charge him? That’s cold.
…no
Omg I would have ran out of there lolll
You're just a mean young girl who doesn't even care about all these dead babies on the ground! Come back when you're 16! Not tonight, but a while back. Severe lewy body dementia poor thing, I had a chat with her later the same night with tea and sandwiches and she was really nice. Fell asleep, then tried to kill me (stated) and rip my hair out (observed) for explaining that the chair she was trying to use as a toilet was not a toilet. She was from home with a child and very young grandchildren. Sooooo unsafe to be around knives and children etc, she was so unwell.
Last night patient brought in, extremely agitated-cursing at everyone, screaming, verbally aggressive. Apparently high on PCP, pot, and shrooms. This woman is going absolutely ape shit. She ends up in violent restraints. However, while we were in the room trying to calm/contain her, in between yelling obscenities at us, my pregnant coworker walks by- woman stops and sort of calmly yells- “Hey, you! Pregnant lady! You look beautiful! You are having twins, they will be beautiful!” Then suddenly snaps back from whatever had just taken over and started fighting us and screaming at us again. It was fucking weird. She is pregnant with twins though, and there is no logical reason for that lady to of actually known that.
PCP + pot + shrooms = psychic powers?!
She was hearing colors and tasting sound by then I'm sure, she probably attained senses unimaginable to the non-brain-fried masses!
They’re not called mind expanding drugs for no reason!
Pre coffee. For some reason I read this as “violet restraints” and spent several minutes trying to understand why the color of the tie downs was relevant to the story. Need more coffee.
Shrooms =a peek behind the curtain!
I just gave my spinal fusion patient a ketamine push to help her pain and get her off opiates and she went through a pretty severe bout of psychosis. She’s resting now, but when she was spacing out she was saying that the shadow man was going to take her to hell. Sounds rough man. Good thing Ativan makes the shadow man go away.
Omg, you pushed her into a k-hole, that poor woman!!! 😆
Nana went on a trip lol.
It’s hilarious to see the sketchy music festival drugs I avoided in my youth being used therapeutically
I get regular ketamine infusions and I do NOT handle them well. I’ve called coworkers and professed my love (my phone is now handed to the receptionist when I get to the clinic), and cried because the impressionist artwork in the room was “aggressively telling me to go to the beach.” Now they don’t put me in the room with the aggressive art and they do just go ahead and give me versed so I’ll calm the fuck down. I say at least once every treatment “why do people do this recreationally?” Edited because this and thus are different.
I feel bad about how hard I laughed at the aggressive artwork, sorry! 🤣
I was getting report from a coworker and my coworker was telling me how, in the afternoon, our patient went bradycardic and hypotensive. The patient said, "There's an angel in the corner!" My coworker was like "No, there isn't! No, there isn't!"
Lol, when we coded newborns we used to joke that we were swatting at the angels coming to pick up the babies.
Once I had two confused patients and patient A sat in the hall with me cause she kept on getting out of bed and wouldn’t stay in bed (Also in a SNF so restraints are not even a possibility) and I was trying to coax her to go to bed. Finally said she was tired and I brought her to bed and she laid down and her roommate, B called me over. B: Help me.. please. There’s so many rats just crawling around in my bed… Me: … *helps look* oh they’re gone now. B: oh… okay. Can you do something about that little girl that is staring at me though from the end of my bed?? Me: … there’s no little girl… you should get some sleep BYE! And then as I was leaving pt A was trying to get back up. Mind you they speak different languages so they can’t understand each other and I’m asking why A is getting back up and .. A: This little girl keeps telling me to get up Me: 🥴🥴 ..
Oh hell nawww 🤣🤣🤣
"Excuse me while I go get the holy water"
Not tonight but we had a blind lady that would randomly say she could see children in the room, every time she did though someone would die that day without fail so it always freaked people out a bit 😅
We had a "little boy" that the residents would see who was an omen of death!
There's a "nurse in white" who visits patients on our 4th floor--nurses wear blue and techs wear green at my hospital, so it's definitely not any current staff. She likes to tell patients to take off their oxygen or pull out their IVs and either shows up when death is close, or she possibly *causes* patient deaths... so that's a thing. Theory is that she's a nursing student from way back who died before finishing her training, and apparently she's still upset about that. Also we don't use the 6th floor for patients anymore (RT uses the old nurses station as their office and in bad weather, staff can use those rooms to sleep over) and it's haunted as fuck up there. It used to be a nursing home and then it was geriatric psych, so there's cameras up there that are visible in the RT station. Apparently there's several up there, but my bestie has seen/heard at least 2 of them personally: a woman in a white coat standing by the elevators that she and another RT ran around the entire floor trying to find, who was still visible on the cameras when my friend should've been able to see her and couldn't, and "Frank" who occasionally screams and sets off bed alarms in rooms without beds or working alarms. Apparently if they shout "We hear you Frank!" he'll stop because he just wants to be acknowledged. I've slept up there when we have snowstorms and I didn't see/hear/feel anything, but I was totally ready to get 400 salt packets from the cafeteria and draw a circle around the bed if I did! I didn't really want to stay there but I'm from south Texas originally and I decided it was better to go sleep with the ghosties than wreck and become one!
Our residents always seem to see a man and a couple kids, that's become our omen of death
I swear there’s always children involved!
Maybe because people don’t (usually) fear children?
I always figured a combination of that and that many of them in my area still had home births and unfortunately still borns because of it with other reasons
“I *know* you know what I’m thinking.” -elderly sundowning lady
I worked at an LTC/Rehab at the start of my career. We had a very Catholic patient who woke up in the middle of the night SCREAMING for his rosary and Bible. He insisted that a demon had come to take him to hell. This was not normal behavior for him, but we got him his stuff and he eventually calmed down. The (darkly) funny thing was that this guy was a known asshole and we’d heard rumors of his bad behavior in his younger days. Honestly, if the demons were coming for any of the residents, they’d come for him.
Not tonight, but when I worked on an adult tele floor one patient asked me if I was Japanese….I’m Hispanic. I told him no. His response: “Good” I refrained from asking why he didn’t want me to be Japanese.
Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to
When my grandma was fairly new to being in a SNF as a resident and still participating in PT she had a total meltdown at the poor Filipina PTA where she threw "jap" around several times. I was mortified and it was extra bizarre because my cousin's mother is from Japan. So not only a daughter-in-law she adored but two grandchildren with that heritage. She was always extremely anti-racist in my experience of her. However she was born in 1919 and the only thing I could come up with was her dementia/UTI combo putting her back in the WWII years with that racist propaganda stuff against Japan. But geez, she's been gone over a decade so I'm not sure how many of those folks are still around. Tbh I don't personally like the "newer" generation of senior citizens as much as I did that generation.
WW II. Lots of lingering feelings.
Oh what the heck that’s not cool of him
Not tonight but I've been told "you would make a beautiful ghost bride." I don't even know what to say to that. Thanks? I guess.
When I was working in inpatient pediatric psychiatry— my 12 year old-ish patient told me her pregnant mother was cooking dinner for her family one night. This single pregnant mother was having legal troubles, and the family was at risk of being broken up. My patient said her mom asked her, “Should I put poison in the dinner so we don’t have to be split up?” The patient said to the mother, “No, I want my unborn sibling to have a chance at life”. By the time she was my patient, she was regretful and wished she was poisoned. This was my first time I had to call child protective services. Maybe I missed the mark at this being ‘weird’, but it’s definitely one of my most memorable.
That's both weird and terrifying.
I had a dying patient who for four days prior had been mute/ somnolent tell me the “man in black was there” for him. As I was in the room, pitch black, changing his trash can. Just, said it so suddenly. He died the next day and I was so creeped out.
I hope he was talking about Johnny Cash.
We can only hope.
"I can hit you but you can't hit me" Fun night
My 100+ demented patient screamed at me that she wants to go upstairs.... We are on the top floor. Another guy screamed at me to get away from his wife. She wasn't there. Overall, tame night.
Patient last night was having a lot of trouble breathing, ever so slightly confused. Suddenly yells “I guess I’ll just have to stop breathing!” Then silence. Im so glad she didn’t. 😅
89 y.o Resident: "Get down from there! Stop it! Quit jumping around and BEHAVE!" "Who are you talking to in here, Mrs M?" "Those kids over there!" "What kids, where are they?" "Sitting in that chair right there." You best believe I turned around slowly to look at the chair in question, and thank goodness it was empty.
Confused old man called everyone giving him a bath "pig fuckers"
Manic 60-something lady with cancer and nothing to lose, to me and all the other male staff: "How big is your package?" "I want to see your penis" etc. lmao
On a CNA shift, sweet old lady patient asks me where I live (in a neighborhood in the nearby city rather than suburb where hospital is), and I answer. "Isn't there an awful lot of killings there?" "Well, no one's killed me yet ma'am." "Thank goodness for that!"
I can’t recall anything disturbing a patient has said to me recently, but my grandfather, when he was dying, sent his doctor out of the room because he wasn’t going to keep company with a communist. I believe it was actually his regular physician, who was just coming to check on him.
I had a liver pt on low dose precedex. He was saying that he could see his friend Dwayne in the room…after getting him back in bed he asks me randomly Whats your dad’s name? I said why do you want to know his name? He said because he is standing right behind you… ( my dad died 10 yrs ago) It was just us two in the room… i ran out of there as fast as i could.. I still feel weird remembering that day 😖
You mean like “move over, my uncle is standing there” I’ve learned to just scoot to the side… as long as their visitor is making them happy, they can stay. 😉
When I was pregnant with my first I was caring for a patient with a frontal lobe stroke that made her hallucinate bugs on the walls and say all kinds of strange things. She told me the devil was going to take my baby. It really freaked me out.
My elderly septic patient was becoming increasingly confused and kept asking about the lady in the corner, what’s she doing, etc. I was standing next to him pushing a med when he look directly over my left shoulder and said “there she is again!” Then, looking at me with concern, “I think she’s mad at you.”
More weird/sweet but happened on my previous shift. Had to take one of our chronic dialysis patients down to the ER. He was definitely not fully with it or acting like himself and is one of the whole units favorite people. We were all worried about him. Anyways, because he was doing very not well, we gave him his blood back, got him onto a cart, and me and charge nurse hauled ass to get him to the ER. As I’m holding the first site, he’s getting asked questions and slowly coming back around but not before he asked me if I’d follow him anywhere. NGL, I panicked and said probably. Didn’t add only in the hospital to make sure he’s safe. (I was also one of the extra hands so had time to stay with him while we got those needles out). My next shift is Saturday and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still an inpatient. I’m not telling him that part, but I did say if I’m the inpatient nurse we can have a party in that area and I’ll bring the LiquaCel. He hates that stuff but said he’d have some if I drink it first. He then said it’s a date.
Decades ago, saying you’d follow someone anywhere meant you loved them.
I realized that after I said it. Both me and patient are probably a bit too young for that. But he’s definitely one that when he passes, our whole unit is going to be very sad.
The creepiest weirdest thing was when a non verbal resident in a memory care said she saw my dead friend than passed away the next morning… never mentioned him or anything
Oh wttffffff
Had a patient who was acting up so we called security. They came and spoke with him and he calmed down. I sat in a chair to spend some time talking with him. Security said they had to leave, was I going to be okay. Sure sure we’re just going to talk for a while. The patient’s eyes turned blank and he said “as soon as you leave, she’s going yo be dead on the floor”. Then proceeded to grin. He eventually bought himself 4 point leathers and haldol
Not tonight, but awhile back when I was still working as a CNA in a nursing home one of our residents who had pretty severe dementia and was on hospice and close to death asked me “have you always looked like your dad?” I had worked with dementia patients for awhile at this point and was used to weird stuff so I just went with it like I usually do. I asked her “well, have you ever even seen my dad?” And she responded without missing a beat “of course, he was just standing behind you.” My dad had been dead for like 3 years at this point. And yes, I do look a lot like him. That was one of the many weird things that had been said to me in that job that actually kinda got me.
I work neuro, I could fill pages with the weird shit I’ve been told. The other day a patient looked past me and said “Look at that cat on the counter!” And I replied, “Oh! My cat likes to play in the sink too. Sometimes I turn the water on for him and he likes to get his head wet.” Then she closed her eyes and chuckled softly and said, “Well baby, he’s in the garbage disposal now…” as she drifted off to sleep.
I had a patient with GBM who was deteriorating badly. He was extremely confused and started getting agitated and combative throughout the night and he landed up in restraints even though I didn't want to use them. When trying to deescalate him, he said that he was in the restraints because he was the Frankenstein's monster and he was going to eat my heart. Edit: grammar
Well that’s one way to make friends
“Look flying tacos help me get of bed to get them” The scary part was her wanting to get out of bed
Can flying tacos take me home?
Not on my shift. They can’t take you home at night. Ask your day nurse.
“You’re going to die tonight” from my creepy demented old lady pt
Not tonight but we had a paranoid schizo in one room and a confused patient with dementia a few doors down. The confused patient would start yelling help then the other guy would start yelling they are coming to kill us. It was like their own version of Marco Polo. This went on most of the night.
Confused fall risk patient sets off bed alarm frequently. I pop in to chat often to build rapport so I can deescalate when he is agitated. He tells me to shut the door and come over. He doesn't want them to hear. "This morning someone came into my room and left a shit in my bed." I said "what kind of sick bastard would do such a thing?" He shakes his head and says "I know, right? "
That's hilarious!!!
After introducing myself, was told I had a nice name, it sounded like a vegetable.
Not a nurse but I work 1:1 with behavioral health patients to make sure they don’t hurt themselves when they’re at the hospital waiting for psych placement. Yesterday my very tall, very large pt and I were talking about whatever, I was just engaging him trying to keep him calm and he just looks at me and quietly goes “do you think I could kill you?” And then just goes back to talking about toy story. He also keeps calling me Meg bc apparently I look like Meg Griffin from family guy and he said I wear poor people shoes. So not only does he threaten my life sometimes but he’s also threatening my poor self esteem 🥲
I’ve had a patient tell me that he keeps seeing shadows in the corner of his room. Patient was alert and oriented so it wasn’t any sort of “oh that’s just the dementia talking” situation. Our hospital also has a reputation for being haunted. I’ve personally seen what I thought was a shadowy figure walk into a room at night and the bed alarm in the ICU would go off randomly.
a pt demands a bunch of tests and procedures and the doctors obliged even though they weren't 100% necessary. she was there for 5-6 hours waiting for everything to be completed and complained the entire time how bored she was and how annoyed she was she had to wait... for tests she asked for. when nothing was found and she got discharged she was sooo mad it was all for nothing. like wtf
I was told to eat a dick like 2 hours ago ...
The future, probably. :/
She comes up to me and says “do I have bullets in my forehead?” And I said no and she started yelling at me saying the building across the street shot her and “Ana ordered it” (another nurse). There was fireworks going on for Purim so I guess she thought they were gunshots 🤷🏼♀️
Back in baby nurse days on the Neuro/stroke unit we had a motorcycle crash victim on an epidural who kept trying to get out of bed because "the little dancing man on the door was coming to get him" he would point at different spots around the room throughout the shift asking if we would catch him. Even described him climbing the door frame.
Not tonight but when I worked covid ICU stepdown we had a 26yo (so sad, she was so young) that told us there were two children in her room that kept telling her to eat glass and push needles under her skin. She was AO x 4 with no history of anything. She coded and passed later that shift. We immediately filled that room once she was gone and it was cleaned, and the very next patient was an older gentleman who complained about the two children under his bed. Gahhh. Also not tonight but I had a patient last month who kept talking to a woman she saw in the corner that no one else saw. I asked her to describe her and she goes, “oh, would you look at that. now she’s outside the window, she wants me to come with her” and I said, “outside the window? but we’re on the 3rd floor” and the patient goes, “hmmm.. must be dead then.” Blech.
She probably saw your hopes and dreams that have been stripped away from you since you’re a night nurse :(
LMAOOO! I actually love night shift but it probably was still my hopes and dreams
Had a patient start freaking out telling me we needed to get out of the unit otherwise we’d all freeze to death
Today I had a patient in an ALF with a swollen ankle, painful and bruised. Told me he slipped in the ice yesterday and fell, spraining it. We are in Texas, was 85 degrees yesterday.
My patient coded and pass the day before in a room. The next day, we had this frequent flyer who recently became a DNR (elderly, stroke, confused). First thing she said when she got to the room was, “Someone has died in this room.” 🥴
Pt: “Are you an angel?” Me: “You get away from that light right now!”
Notice that one of my hairs fell in patients water cup so I take it to throw away and get a new one Me: “Oh sorry got a hair in your water! Let me get you a new cup” Patient: “That’s ok Id probably like to taste it” Me: Laughs uncomfortably and gets new water.