The Flying Zlorbian

After being shanghaied by pirate ninjas (or was it ninja pirates?) for two weeks (one of which the villains stood over me and MADE ME GET ALL MY WORK DONE, made me wrap and ship 30-some-odd Ebay packages, and clean my house because my Mom was coming to stay with Gavin...and even pirate/ninjas respect the fact that the house MUST be clean for Mom. Especially since I have yet to live down the incident years ago of the moldy bread that somehow got pushed to the back of the cabinet...which Mom found, of course...I don't think penicillin factories have any more mold. At least it was still in the wrapper. Green fuzzy bread, anyone?). I left for California on Sunday after working 11-7 Saturday, arrived home on Friday and worked ANOTHER 11-7. I'm "too pooped to pop" as Dad always said. I still don't know what that means, but I love to say it.

I have a lot to say about my time in California (Hi Dave & Dorian, Alex, and Robyn!!!) but right now I want to talk about last night.

I worked Adult Psych, which is a whole different world than child psych. And adult psych at night can be even stranger...and a night with a full moon...well...

Now, I know that there have been studies (or so I have been told; I haven't read 'em) that purport to debunk the full moon weirdness factor. However, in this instance, Nurse Lore trumps PhD studies (especially as it is backed up by Police Lore, EMT Lore, ER Lore, and Night Convenience Store Clerk Lore), and besides, we all know that PhD really means "Pizza Hut Delivery". (Remember, this is NOT a slam at PhDs. I expect my brother to be one any time now, and I have to keep up, don't I?)

Anyway, Nurse Lore states that people and situations get stranger during the full moon, and it's not just psych.

Evening shift report indicated that everyone had had a good day, which is a tremendously wonderful thing on a psych unit, so the Charge Nurse (I've never had this term explained to me; while I assume it means "In Charge" maybe it really involves credit cards and Nordstrom's sales after one gets off work...wow, did she have nice clothes) and I hoped for the best and started our paperwork.

We had a steady procession all night of agreeable, pleasant, and polite, but extraordinarily psychotic patients who "just couldn't sleep" -- more than half of them were awake at one time or another. Of course, this had nothing to do with the loud buzzing noise the air conditioner made every time it went on, and nothing to do with the extremely loud and deep voice of our Mental Health Tech who has a BA in psychology and wanted to "do therapy" with the patients and kept cornering them; Charge and I kept redirecting him AND the patients in an effort to get everyone (well, everyone except us) some sleep. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing sometimes.

When I got back in this morning, Gavin asked me about my night. He's been fascinated by psychoses ever since I had a patient who'd found out my number and would call me EVERY NIGHT at 10 pm and tell me (or whoever answered, sometimes one of the kids) what the "angels" had said to her that day (almost always something bright and happy). I told him one patient told me he was possessed by aliens (I have to be careful about what I say because I cannot give out any identifying information...and trust me, this is a very, very small part of this patient's delusionary system).

Gavin immediately assumed this meant "alien ghosts" since possession must be a supernatural phenomenon...and aliens probably would be natural, not supernatural...except that Gavin was not allowing for the lack of reasoning ability in someone who is acutely psychotic. Since it wasn't alien ghosts, he decided that the patient must be possessed by some alien thing which skirts the realm of the natural and the supernatural...like the Flying Dutchman...Yes! It must be the Flying Zlorbian, forced to wander the universe and possess the minds of unwitting humans...

Oh dear. I don't know whether to worry about him or tell him to write a book.