Man-Fluenza Season

It’s only 8am and I’ve already been urinated on and proposed to; by the same man. Flu season in the Emergency Department is the ninth circle of Hell and every provider is another discontented Judas Iscariot, frozen in a vast and limitless landscape suffering penance for our betrayals, which evidently include a degree in the healthcare field. My 12-hour day begins with a curmudgeonly 70-year old ex-Navy Captain who was also a professional clown for 35 years. He is aggressively non-compliant with all medical recommendations and has come to the Emergency Department in SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) a potentially life-threatening heart arrhythmia. Upon further testing, we discover his urine drug analysis is positive for cocaine. He is currently watching Duck Dynasty and yelling about his ex-wife being a “common prostitute”. He explains (unprompted) that she was “tooth-less, tit-less, and leg-less” from the “sugar attacks” aka: diabetes. Evidently non-compliance was the foundation of their short-lived matrimony, which was filled with celebratory cocaine benders chased with PBR and candy bars. I move on to my next patient, a woman in her late 40’s with what can only be described as “crazy eyes”. She was brought in by EMS after she was found dancing on the sidewalk and scaring small children. Her blood sugar upon arrival was north of 650, (normal is around 100). I call the facility in which she lives to try and gather more information and I’m informed that they apparently have no idea she has even left. The woman on the phone begins yelling “you need to get her a 1:1 safety sitter immediately or she will literally eat everything”. I turn to look at the patient, who is holding what used to be a jar of about 75 paper clips, but which is now looking suspiciously low. I promptly call the Charge Nurse and ask her for a safety sitter, confessing that I accidentally let my patient eat somewhere between 15 and 30 paper clips while I was on the phone with her facility. I roll my eyes and make a mental note to let the doctor know that an x-ray is probably in her future. I move on to meet my next patient, a skinny 22-year old kid with green, spiky hair and a two-way nose ring. He had been treated for an STD and is ready to leave. I hand him his discharge paperwork and his prescription for antibiotics, and he flamboyantly skips down the hallway to freedom. No less than 20 minutes later, I receive a phone call from the triage nurse. She explains that my patient has been brought back in by the police. Evidently in the last 20 or so minutes he walked out to the waiting room, found a young woman who was also discharged, traded her his pills (which were an antibiotic) for her bus pass under the guise that she was scoring prescription Xanax, walked across the street to the YMCA where he was refused a bed that night, left disgruntled and walked out of their door, pulled down his pants and pooped on their front steps. The triage nurse is calling to let me know that she’s putting him back in the same room again and I begin to develop a headache from rolling my eyes so many times today. I pop back in to check on my paperclip consumer, only to find her break-dancing down the hallway. Upon further questioning, she explains to me that this is the best way to lower her blood sugar; science clearly has not caught up to her yet. I make a mental note to reprimand the safety sitter if she ever comes back from her lunch break. On to my next patient, a sweet 100-year old lady with an adorable Southern accent, who is laying on a stretcher in the hallway. I walk up to introduce myself and she promptly coughs out HER TEETH into MY HAND. I back slowly away as any hopes I had for having one normal patient interaction are immediately dashed. I walk into room 4 to meet my final patient, a 45-year old guy who has “end-stage man-flu”. He is lying in bed, moaning and acting as though he may never shotgun a Bud Light again. His tragic diagnosis is an aggravated case of the sniffles. Three young kids crowd around his bedside as he imparts death-bed level wisdom such as, “never end your night with a Four Loko” and “please bury me in my favorite sleeveless lacrosse jersey”. I roll my eyes for the zillionth time and walk away, just as he’s explaining to a 6-year old “never trust a woman who says she’s on the pill”. I stop back in for one last check on my hungry hippo and find her sitting quietly in her room, drinking watermelon juice. I have no idea where she found watermelon juice, there is literally no watermelon juice in this hospital. With my spirit already broken, I shrug and walk back into my 100-year old patient’s room. The doctor is requesting a urine sample to check for a UTI and she needs to be catheterized but there are no rooms, thanks to our current seasonal influenza epidemic. Shirking my last single thread of guilt, I reluctantly recruit another nurse to help me wheel her into the viewing room, which is an area reserved for patients who have died where their family members can quietly view their bodies before they are brought to the morgue. We wheel her stretcher into the room and she exclaims “it smells funny in here”. We catheterize her and get the hell out of there. As I walk past my man-fluenza patient, I hear his last piece of wisdom “take care of your mother Tommy, you’re the man of the house now” and roll my eyes for the final time before clocking out and coming to terms with the fact that I catheterized a 100-year old woman in a viewing room. Fucking flu season.