“The Great Poop-nado of 2016”

Synopsis of a recent evening shift: spending 8 hours finding new and creative ways to occupy the attention of a confused, elderly, head-injured African-American man named Warren who enjoys a nice cup of chocolate pudding with his Zyprexa and whom, despite his fractured hip, was on this particular evening insistent upon getting out of bed to escape his explosive incontinence. Consequently it was this very inability to control his bowels which led to the incident which will henceforth be known as “The Great Poop-nado of 2016” and involved irate nurses and techs who found ourselves begrudgingly scraping feces off of both bed side rails, an IV pole, and most disturbingly the closet door. I was unfortunate enough to partake in the aftermath of this devastating natural disaster and I was unsurprisingly tasked with cleaning Warren’s backside. Armed with enough toilet paper to stock a bathroom at a restaurant that exclusively serves Indian food, I steeled my reserve and attempted to render my gag reflex non-existent. It was with great apprehension that I embarked upon this vomit-inducing journey and began to put Warren through what I can only compare to some sort of human car wash. Roughly 4 seconds into wiping his ass, he began to call me a “common prostitute”, and warned me to “get your hands off me, you cotton ho”. I’m still not sure exactly what that means but it sounds both racist, as well as soft and absorbent. Midway through the bedside bathing, Warren decided to go rogue and began throwing punches. In a veritable “poop-splosion” the likes of which had never before been seen, Warren stopped suddenly and I was able to grab hold of his shoulders and steady him just in time for him to begin urinating all over my shoes. In my moment of shock, I almost missed his follow-up statement, “it’s time for a dookie”, followed subsequently by an impressive and quite possibly intentional absence of rectal-sphincter integrity culminating in a literal shit-heap on the floor. In what I can only assume was an attempt to completely outdo the level of disgustingness of any other patient to ever darken the doorway of our unit, Warren took a moment of silence before he began hocking massive loogies on the floor. At this point my tech and I did the only thing we could do, which was to laugh and sit Warren (still bare-ass naked and throwing punches) down in a chair while he continued to make threatening remarks, ever toeing the line of full-blown racism. Three packs of wipes and many washcloths later, the tech and I exited the room, still laughing about Warren’s creative and unabashedly racist comments and trying to figure out where we could get clean scrubs. With one remaining task on my mind, I got on the phone and called the doc so we could get Warren pended to a medical floor… so this is my apology to the nurses on Medical Overflow who have a nurse to patient ratio of 1:3, all private rooms, and adequate staffing. Sorry I’m not sorry for sending you the Crapped Crusader, enjoy the inappropriate comments and be sure to pack an extra pair of scrubs when you come to work tomorrow 🙂