More Blood, More Scrubs, More Aggrivation

Today I got blood ALL OVER my shirt and labcoat. YUCKY!!!!!!

I was working with a patient on the burn unit, and she was like MAX assist x 1,000,000 to get up, though we did it with 2. So in getting her to sit at the edge of the bed, and stand her and pivot her to the chair, I got blood all over me. Not to mention my back hurts, I think I pulled a muscle. Did I mention that this patient was morbidly obese and was fighting and arguing with us the entire time? Unfortunately she had been in bed for 2 days, and with a burn that's BAD. So we don't give the burn patients a choice, they HAVE to work with therapy. I was called mean and crazy today. I'm not nice apparantly. I'll agree to all of that when I need to get a patient up and they're fighting me. and I'll tell them so. Ok, I'm not nice, I know it. But if it gets you OOB then that's ok with me , I tell them. I'll do it as gently as possible, and to their tolerance, but there was NO WAY I was letting her stay in bed a minute longer. The Dr. would have my head.

She told me her husband wouldn't like that I was doing this. I asked, "Your husband wouldn't want you to get OOB? " "He won't like that you're torturing me!" was the response I got. I swear, I get the weirdest comments from patients. It's amazing how people just think that laying in bed is good for them and that PT is BS. Or that they won't get PT after a knee or hip replacement. "No one told me I needed therapy afterwards!" Yeah... right.

As I digress.

So we FINALLY got her to get OOBTC, and I walked out of the room and the nurse was like Carie, you have Blood ALL over you. I looked down and it was ALL OVER my shirt and labcoat. My pants were spared. From where on the patients body the blood came from, I have no clue, but there it was. They told me to go down to the OR to borrow a pair of scrubs. So I run downstairs feeling completely gross, and I ask the nurses at the OR reception desk for a pair of scrubs, I have blood all over me.

"Who told you to come down, here?!?! We don't do that anymore! You can't come here! They have personalized scrubs here, we can't give them away!" They were SO RUDE!!! And they weren't going to tell me where to go. So I said, What do you want me to do, LOOK at my shirt! So they finally gave them to me, but I had to sign them out and swear on my firstborn child that I would bring them back tomorrow. SHEESH!!! what did they want me to do, walk around the rest of the day with blood all over me?!?!

So that was my afternoon. Blood, scrubs, aggrivation. And a little bit of back pain. And some how, I still LOVE my job. Go figure.