seriously?

Just another example of how RIDICULOUS patients (and their families) can be:

Dr. P: Did you hear about what happened when [Ms. W] tried to leave AMA?
Me: Oh yeah! She locked herself in the bathroom and then tried to walk out naked?
Dr. P: Yeah, J. sat down and talked to her to try to find out more information and discovered she has an extensive psych history. And apparently the whole family banded together and lied so she could [pass the psych eval and] get this transplant.

WHAT.. THE.. F..!!! SERIOUSLY?! There is a reason we work-up patients for transplants and they have to be cleared by psych. I cant even begin to tell you how much it angers me to see patients get organs (organs that HUNDREDS of people are waiting for) and then they just let it go to waste. If this patient is not capable of taking care of herself and her new organ, she has no business getting one. AND! What makes it even worse is that after the family LIED to get her this surgery, they dont even want to take care of her!! Are you F-ing kidding?! If you're going to cheat the system so your family member can get a transplant, the LEAST you can do is make sure she keeps the damn organ! UGH.


And another story, just for fun:

We have a patient (23yo female) who just had a small bowel transplant. She's kind of a pain in the ass-- super needy, obnoxious, you know the drill. And the mother is about 20 times worse-- demanding, in-your-face, head up her own ass, etc. (To paint a picture: they threatened to leave Against Medical Advice while the patient was getting pre-op'ed because they didnt have a private room. In other words, the doctors were in the process of HARVESTING THE ORGAN so she could get the transplant and they threatened to leave because she had a roommate. Are you kidding?! You're going to be in that room for 3 hours and then you're going to go to surgery, you ungrateful little brat.) So basically the mother thought her daughter was not getting adequate care and thought she herself knew better. She has no medical background whatsoever, mind you. So she decided to mess with her daughter's IV pump and turned it off. Then a day or two later the patient starts screaming in pain and the doctors decide she needs emergent surgery and when they're in the OR they discover that she clotted off part of her NEW bowel (she had a blood clot that inevitably blocked blood flow to her bowel thus causing part of it to die). Needless to say, she had to have a portion of her NEW bowel removed and almost lost it completely. Hmmm, well Mom, maybe if you hadnt turned off her HEPARIN DRIP, your daughter woundnt have clotted and would still have a fully functioning, complete bowel. Because of you, a perfectly good bowel nearly went to waste. Next time you should probably leave the medical/nursing care to those who are properly trained. IDIOT.

I swear some days it really takes all that I have in me to not yell and slap some sense into people.