Lesson of the day

Since it's been a few days since my last entry, I thought I'd take it easy tonight and share a funny story that happened this morning. It was a busy Monday at the Juvie - the Christmas holiday had brought a number of new detainees, one of whom had been in the "observation unit" since yesterday, apparently coming off of some drug concoction. About 9:00 AM, my nurse and I received a call that the kid was "acting very erratic," and should be evaluated. We packed up our blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, etc, and walked down to the observation unit, where a tall African-American male clad in a green t-shirt and ”tighty whiteys” sat holding himself, rocking back-and-forth, in one of the holding chambers. We asked him his name, if he knew where he was, and what was going on. He stated that his name was "John," and that "if I told you what happened at her house, they'd kill me." We assured him that we were not going to tell anyone what happened, we just wanted to know what drugs he had taken. He started crying more at this point, and said, "What's so wrong about sitting in a hot-tub and smoking a joint?" We tried asking more questions, but to no avail. He kept repeating himself, and then promptly passed out. Checking that his vitals were stable (and they were), we headed back to the clinic, and had a fairly normal rest of the morning. We later came to find out (by another detainee, none the less), that he had mixed some "crazy-ass shroom sticks with his weed while staying at his sister's house." "That's why you don't smoke with other people," the other detainee added. "You never know what's going on with their weed." That was my lesson of the day. Never mix shroom sticks with weed while chillin' in your sister's hot tub. Word.


And now for the dsability quote(s) of the day:

Patient's son's written response to the question, "Has your illness/injury caused any changes in behavior? If so, please list what."
"His problems with drugs and alcohol made him free-ball"
(I hope that's a spelling error or something, but who knows)

Me: "Are you allergic to anything?"
Patient: "My allergies."
Me: "I can imagine that would be terrible."

Until next time,

-DD