Saturday, January 23, 2010

I Forgot all about this, How dare I!

So here I am 3 years after I started this blog and only 3 posts in. The honest truth is I forgot all about it until one day i happened to log on to blogger and it logged me in automatically. I am going to attempt to catch up on all of the things that I have experienced in the last 3 years so I might as well get started. Check back for updates. I plan to blog at least once a week about a memorable patient or event during my time at the Psych Hospital.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Remembering a bad day

I was thinking about a bad day i recently had at work. We had a schizophrenic patient who was really of of his/her rocker. This one had only one leg and when he/she arrived the transporter handed me a spare prosthetic. When i asked the patient if he /she would need the extra one they looked at me like I was stupid and calmly said "that's not mine" They also had a doll with one of the legs removed. The first couple of days were not so bad he/she would just write constantly and give me the papers to "get to the president", one day I asked him/her who the president was and once again i got the Are you Fucking Crazy look and they told me that it was of course Missouri's own Harry S. Truman. The next day he/she told me that they could no longer tell me anything as he/she had received orders from Truman in the middle of the night. This was the beginning of a downhill slide he/she stopped all personal hygiene, Crapped in a cup and brought it to clinical group with him/her, and flushed all of his/her socks causing a blockage that flooded the recreation room on the first floor. The most disturbing thing was that he/she had a nasty habit of storing things inside of him/her. When I asked for a pencil back one day he/she reached in his pants and removed it from his/her anus. There was nothing that this pt would not stick in their ass. Controller cords, Remote Controlls, Markets, Pencils, Crayons, Paper, and his/her own hand. When you witness this you become very self conscious about what you touch.
This is just the beginning of many bad days i plan on recounting so check back in a day or two for more true stories.

Psych Hospital

I didnt work the last few days so I have had time to think about the career I find myself in. I work at an undisclosed Pschiatric Hospital. I have worked there for over 3 years and have made the rounds I worked with Pre-ads (3-12) for a short time but spent the bulk of the last 3 years on the adol unit (13-17). I recently transfered to the adult unit where believe it or not things are much more quiet then the other units. I recently cared for a patient that was in his/her mid thirties. The unique thing about theis patient is that he/she was in the Navy and had actually attented the US Naval Acadamy at Annapolis. He/She obviously had no pre existing conditions or he/she would not have been able to hold a commison or the security clearence that goes with it. To say that he/she just "had some problems" is not telling the whole truth, most nights he/she would not sleep and would just pace up and down the halls and ask the same line of questions repeatedly. He/She carried a bible not for the relious reasons you would think but the patient informed me that it was actually written by satan and "they" were trying to trick him/her. He/She would wonder out into the hallway naked and masterbate in their room with the door wide open on top of the covers. He/She would ask me from time to time if "the Admiral" was in charge of all the hospital. He/She would also get very agitated and demand to know if the Navy had put the unit together to see if he/she would talk about any classified information. This patient also believed that he was getting XM radio signall in his teeth and he could hear the music. The paranoia was very serious the he/she refused to sign anything, tore up all papers he was given and constantly asked if he/she was being recorded. Working with him/her awakened a fear in me that I am not really safe from mental illness if it had happened to him/her then why was I any different. My point is dont take anything for granted because you may wake up and be psychotic one day and you will never know the difference.

Star Trek Vs Star Wars

There has been a question that has plagued the thoughts of nerds all over the world since the seventies. The question is which is better Star Wars or Star Trek. My humble thoughts on this timeless dilema are as follows. While Star Wars is an excellent film series Star Trek is hands down the winner of this nerdy competition. First of all there is just a sever lack of watching ablilty when it comes to Star Wars, at best you can have 16 hours of movies to watch and that is including the two ewok movies. Star Trek on the other hand Has three seasons of the originall series Six movies with the original cast, four movies with TNG and countless season of TNG, Voyager, DS9, and the failed Enterprise. All of this totals in the thousands of hours. Now some people may say tha its not quantity its quality so my second point is directed at them. The original Star Trek series was ground breaking in the following ways, There was a leading character that was black woman (Uhura) this was the sixties remember, There was also a Chinese leading character (Sulu), and most surprisingly in the second season there was a Russian character (Checkov) in the midst of the cold war at a time when ones life could be ruined by just going to a few communist meetings. Star Wars did not try push any bounderies. In some ways Star Trek paved the way for George Lucas to even get financing for his films. While Star Trek did not do to terribly well during its 3 season run by the time Lucas was formulating the Star Wars universe Trek was building an impressive following due to reruns. The more then likely showed the studios that there was a market for SciFi. Just my humble opinion but you just cant beat the trio of Kirk Spock and McCoy. While Spock was doing all the work McCoy was insulting him and complaining and Kirk was trying to get busy with some local alien hotties which he did quite often. While the fx of Wars is on a whole different level then Treks original series you really cannot beat the diy feel that you get from the orininal you just have to use your imagination and just forget about reality and loose yourself in Star Trek once you do that you actually like the look and feel of the oringinal, I for one would not have them change anything about it other then i would have liked the series to last a few more years. Now dont get me wrong I love Star Wars I have seen them all countless times and acutally have the original vhs releases of parts 4 5 and 6. If i were forced to choose one to watch and one to forget about I would have to forget about Wars and watch Star Trek.