super-size weekend

What the heck? Why did all of my patients (all two of them, but all sounds better) suffer from morbid obesity this weekend? The first had a panus made of steel... it took a strong couple of arms to lift it so I could get in there, elbow deep, and scrub it up. But damn, nursing has been doing a good job with her, all of her nooks and crannies were intact and yeast-free. Unfortunately, when she sat up for PT, the panus weighed down her thighs, so she could not lift them to march in place. Good god. It's terrible.

The second patient I had weighed over 500 pounds! He was also extremely tall, perhaps verging on giantism. Still, his BMI was about 55. He was too long for our beds, even the bariatric beds. And he was right at the weight limit for our ceiling lifts. He had lymphedema of one of his legs, and this leg alone probably weighed about 100 of those pounds. It took five of us to bathe him.

I don't know what's going on anymore... obviously morbid obesity puts you at greatest risk for landing yourself an ICU bed, but daaaamn. I'm going to kill myself lifting and turning these people!

And just for fun, I will share with you what a terrible condition lymphadema is... the below photo is not my actual patient, but is quite similar to what he was suffering in one of his legs:



Thanks to TAFA Healcare corporation for the photo.