Four-point limb restraints and a posey vest seems like a lot of restraints to me. I think they loaded him up with Ativan, Geodon, and maybe a little Haldol along the way, too. Plus intravenous Lopressor for blood pressures in the 200/110 range.
When I went in to say hello I asked him, as we nurses do, if he knew where he was and he replied something like "uuuuuga-ugga-ugga-ugga-ugga" fired off very rapidly.
That answer was incorrect.
I asked him to open his eyes and look at me, which he eventually did. "You're at The Great Muffin Factory, I said, and he mumbled "No I'm not."
Again incorrect.
If I helped him, he would take oral fluids and medicines, and most of the time he dozed peacefully so we unleashed his ankles and was was okay except for a few times he harmlessly put his legs over the siderails. I wasn't sure which way he would go.
At the time I wondered if in a worst-case scenario he might not end up gorked for life in a nursing home.
Next day more of the same. A little progress. Wrist restraints off. He was more wakeful but thought he was in the *Baltimore* Muffin Factory. Turns out he's from that area. There's usually a kernel of truth to the most bizarre and confused statements.
Perceptive Republican-watchers can sometimes discern actual truths emanating from even the mouths of the likes of Bush and Cheney occasionally. Like when Cheney said it was okay if his daughter was a lesbian but this condition was not to be suffered in the general population. The truth being that not *everybody* can be Cheney's daughter.
See? A tiny seed of truth right there.
A couple days later his blood pressures normalized and his head cleared up a little, probably for the first time in decades. He was pretty much detoxified. He read the newspaper, talked with relatives, and walked about cooperatively.
Since his labwork was never really that bad it seems his liver is considered intact, and his mentation was good enough to basically qualify as "normal."
He was lucky. There's a lot of presumably hard work ahead of him, but he's clean now and he has the proverbial "second chance" at life. I hope he gets the help he needs.
He reminds me that you shouldn't waste your life. There are already plenty of strange people out there who are all too able and willing to waste your life for you, and they do not need your assistance.
Like the people who sold this guy the stuff that was destroying his life. They had nothing better to do?
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The people who sold them that stuff. You mean these people, or these, or maybe these?
Thanks for stopping by, platypus. I think I'd add meth-cookers, coke mules, and poppy farmers to the list.
We all know "responsible drinkers" who never progress to alcoholism, but I've never seen a "responsible" crystal/cocaine/opiate addict.
There's too much money and too many livelihoods wrapped up in this stuff.
Would I shut down the neighborhood liquor bodega? They've got mouths to feed. Would have poor Afghanis grow what? Sugar cane? And starve doing it? Probably not.
It's the big fish.
Thanks for your work in helping to "fix" this guy. The work isn't easy, and it's often thankless.
Here's something for ya along those lines...if the link actually copies correctly...it is amazing.
Hold your mouse on each picture and it shows you what they look like on
Meth...it also states at the bottom of the pic how long it was after the
first pic.
http://www.mappsd.org/Faces%20of%20Meth.htm
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