July 17, 2011. Medicine: BEDPANS

I finally get to admit my own patient with a full H&P. Problem is that shes postictal (after a seizure) and this barely arousable. Luckily, her boyfriend shows up and explains to me exactly what happened. This is a story in itself. Turns out that most people are simply poor story tellers (seriously, think of the last dinner party you were at where person X droned on and on, jumping back and forth between past and present, etc. Now imagine trying to summarize that story CORRECTLY to someone when you got home. It aint happenin unless you ask LOTS of questions to redirect them to some sort of timeline (e.g. "now wait a minute, a few minutes ago you said she has seizures every night, now you say once a month - which is it now?...REPLY: yeah, what i meant was 5 years ago they were every night, then for a year or so every month, now every night..." And on and on.

At any rate, the best part of the story was this:
Lethargic, postictal woman BEFORE boyfriend arrived, "Doctor, I really need to pee."

Now, she is obviously in no shape to even sit up, much less walk to the bathroom.

"Ok, let me get a bedpan" I tell her.

I walk to the Nurses station, "umm, I'm sorry, where do I get a bedpan."

Nurse laughs, then shows me.

I return to her "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I've never actually used one of these with a patient, how the heck do i do this?"

Nurse laughs again and says "no problem, I'll come show you."

As we walk into the room I already feel a bit silly about all this, but I keep thinking that I am just looking out for the patient, so its ok. PLUS, the nurse has been VERY nice to me about it, so I was happy to learn.

Learn I did. As we uncovered the patient and rolled her over what do we see?

A foley catheter draining her bladder.

Nurse laughs at me. I laugh at me.

"Let's just keep this between us, eh?" I say to her.

"Happens all the time," she says "don't worry about it."

I put the bedpan down in the corner, not wanting to walk back out with it.