Reason #793 you must have a sense of humor to be a nurse

So last night I cared for a very confused elderly gentleman who was not yet on a ventilator, but certainly heading that way and his CO2 level was rising faster than I could get a doc on the phone. Homeslice was receiving lots of fluids-unit after unit of blood, several drips, lots of NS, and to top it all off, IV LASIX! (Lasix is a very lovely diuretic that will make most folks pee alot in a hurry.) Since Mr. Man did not have a foley cath, was mildly confused but sitting fairly still, and elderly I thought it would be very kind of me to situate his urinal so that if he had the urge to pee right-this-second he could just let go and not wait for assistance from me or someone else and avoid an embarassing accident. Well hell if that didn't backfire.

My second patient (next door) was a fresh post op sent to the ICU for observation. (I love when docs send us patients to babysit because they don't trust our post surgical unit.) Not hard, but time consuming on arrival. After about 30 minutes of messing with Mr. Post Op I cruised back to see Mr. Confusion and found him messing with the urinal and pulling at his clothes. I ask him several times if he was finished urinating and he shook his head yes, but when I lifted the sheets and his gown a bit to remove his urinal all I found was alot of white mucus.

Now here's where you figure out that I'm a new nurse. I see this white mucus drainage that is all over Mr. Old Man, his gown, his sheets, everywhere! and I go get my preceptor to take a look at this funky white drainage that he peed. I am concerned. Very concerned. My preceptor took one look at this drainage and laughed a belly laugh. The "mucus drainage" was sperm. My lovely patient was masturbating at 80 yrs old. Bless his heart.