A Little Salt and Peppa

One thing about emergency room nursing is the ungodly timing of patients and their problems. At the end of an unruly, incredibly busy day however, there seems to consistently be that one patient that makes all the hassle worth it. This is the story of Sam, the queen of spice:

It's barely seven p.m. and the new shift is sauntering through the department, in no great hurry to be awarded their room assignments for the night. Tara glances up at the clock over the top of her new glasses, crinkles her nose, and swears the second hand has been holding out on her, refusing to tick past the number seven. She scrambles to get the piles of paperwork together for the night shift when the charges nurse comes screeching around the corner, red faced and a crooked smile. "Tara, I really need you to see this guy in room 17. He is doubled over and in so much pain!" That's one thing about charge nurses. They must have taken a class in charge nurse school that disallowed them from recognizing "shift change".

Tara looked at her peer with fired up darts and stated very matter of factly, "Fine." What harm could there possibly be? It's not like she was going to have to do anything to the guy anyway. Her day was almost over, and frankly she couldn't have cared less if the guy was having a baby, she wanted to get out of that forsaken dungeon of an emergency department. However, room 17 was the cursed room of the day. If the patient only knew what he was getting himself into! Three people tried to die there today, none successful. Regardless, she took the triage papers from the charge nurse, and decided to at least do an assessment.

Peering around the corner to the cursed room, Tara almost felt compassion. An old man, in tattered clothes and scruffy hair was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over, with tears in his eyes. He looked up at the worn out nurse and the words started pouring like an unattended faucet. He raged on and on about how he was drugged four days ago...and he didn't have a place to sleep that night...and it was cold outside...and something was planted in his belly that was killing him.

"Great" Tara pondered, "another homeless guy that's cold and wants to snuggle."

Sometimes - no, most of the time - ER nursing uses the sixth sense. That's why we're great to have around in arguments. We have been trained to weed through all the crap to get to the ten-words-or-less-complaint. Sometimes the actual complaint is not stated with absolute clarity. Sometimes we have to pick up on phrases like "somethings been planted in my belly and it hurts" to start the decoding process of the actual problem. This is one of those times.

A typical assessment starts with just looking at the person in question. As Tara was flinging the hospital gown at the man who was demanding her full attention, and explaining how he needed to give up all of his clothes to wear only this one flimsy little garment, she noticed that every time he moved, a small wimper escaped his throat, followed by a deep breath. "What exactly hurts, sir?"

"My belly. It hurts all around here." He was holding each butt cheek with a hand and bending over the bed.

"That isn't your belly, Sam. It's your butt."

" I know, I know. But it hurts way up in my belly. I'm telling you somehting was planted in my belly! This is the only way I can move, if I'm holding my cheeks."

Now this is a point where the nurse who is soon hoping to go home makes the decision whether or not it's worth it to stay and enjoy the show. That night Tara decided to stay. What's wrong with getting paid overtime for a little action?

The xray of two christmas shaped salt and pepper shakers strategically placed in Sam's rectum told a much different story than said "abduction". Sam went to surgery and who knows where he landed after that.

Tara drug her tired body home, three hours later, and chuckled as she fell into a deep, tired sleep.