I have to tell you guys this story, cause I can’t even believe it myself. It's long as fuck. Cheers.
For you in the OB world: tonight my meth-addled patient involuntarily pushed out a frank breech baby under conscious sedation. If none of that makes sense to you, keep reading, dear Redditor: it will.
In my 16 years as an L&D nurse, this night takes the cake.
So, coming on at 7pm it’s a little busy, but we don’t exactly need roller-skates yet…. I get report from Nurse 6th-Shift that there’s a patient coming up from ED. She presented to the ED with abdominal pain two days ago. They took one look at her mental health history (schizophrenia) and apparently decided that everything that came out of her mouth would be lies. She told them she was 37 weeks pregnant. So they did a chest x-ray, and an ultrasound that showed she was 33 weeks pregnant and then discharges her schizophrenic ass to the street.
2 days later, she shows up back in the ED, and in the interim, she’s managed to find enough methamphetamine to blast her into florid mania. My report from 6th-Shift was “well, in the same 3 minutes she told me she is the Queen of Hawaii, an attorney, and that her parents owned the hospital.” Also, that her baby is alive, and that her mania turns into belligerent violence about every 5-7 minutes.
“I told the ED doc that I can’t tell whether she’s in preterm labor or not because she tried to punch me. I told them she should probably come up to L&D so we can figure it out.” After 2.5 hours of this patient raising holy hell in the ED, they joyfully but slowly bring her up to us. Excellent call, Nurse 6th-Shift.
Spoiler alert: the patient delivered 2 hours later.
To my endless delight, the one thing that the ED doc did correctly in this situation was to order 2 mg PO Ativan, and 5mg IM Haldol. Bless his heart, he couldn’t figure out to send her up to L&D for evaluation of her abdominal pain, but he sure as fuck could snow her for us.
Good man.
She arrives curled up and filthy on a stretcher. She is somnolent, but cooperative enough that we’re able to herd her onto the labor bed. Just after the exasperated ED nurse leaves, the patient suddenly becomes very animated. “I gotta PISS!!!!” Writhing in the bed, clutching her belly: she is the very picture of labor. I put a hand on her rock-hard abdomen and my stomach drops to my knees. At this point, all I know is: she had an ultrasound 2 days ago that put her at 33 weeks.
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We lost our 11 year old fur baby to cancer back in April. I grew up with cats, my kids grew up with cats, my grandkids are growing up with cats. To not have a cat owning us is unthinkable. So in early June we visited a local no kill shelter to find our new overlord. We instantly fell in love with a tiny tabby who was about 7 weeks at the time. He was already neutered, had his first set of vaccinations and was chipped. Him, his mom and siblings had been abandoned at the shelter door as newborns and he was the last of his litter left at the shelter, and had already been separated from his mom.
He was sweet and only semi nutso until about 2 weeks ago. The normal kitten chaos. Now I'm almost afraid of him. He'll be 6 months on Sunday. And he is so aggressive with us, especially me. When he's sweet he is so loving and affectionate. A huge purr machine who loves snuggling on laps. When he is in attack mode though, it's scary and painful. He can be snoozing on my lap, I'm not touching him at all and he'll suddenly wake up, eyes fully black and wrap full body around my arm and bite my wrist, working his jaws like he's trying to remove flesh while he's bunny kicking my arm. It happens multiple times a night/day. I yell ow, detach him from my arm/head/whatever he's locked onto and put him on the floor. He will continue to wrap and attack as we pick him up and place him on the floor. Most times he'll charge right back up for an even more aggressive attack. We've taken to placing his fave cat bed between us on the couch now, and when he starts to attack we will move him off our lap and put him in his bed, then not touch him. Occasionally he'll settle for a bit, sleep some then start rolling over, stretching out to try and bite an arm or elbow.
If we're sitting at the table he'll suddenly launch up our sides or back, claws out. Walk past him? Rolling wrap around attack. Walking around the house? Full on launch at the back of our legs, paws swiping at us. We can't sit at the table to eat without him constantly either launching up onto a side or back, or attacking with his paws through the back of the chair slats.
He is fed 3 times a day, at set times. Has a clean bill of health from our vet. Uses his box like a champ. Has multiple toys, cats trees and scratching boards/posts. We have feather sticks and Da Bird and run him breathless when we get home from work, plus a second 15-20 minute play session later in the evening. He has 2 electronic toys as well, a
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