What Not To Say In the ICU

Sometimes the most helpful advice is what not to do in a situation. For example, I’ve been reading through blogs about writing conferences, and apparently agents don’t like it when writers slide manuscripts to them beneath bathroom stalls. Who knew? Other tips I’ve read include what not to say during a pitch session, “God gave me this story” being at the top of the list.

With all these don’ts rolling around in my head, I thought it might be fun to dish out a few don’ts of my own in regards to patients and visitors in the hospital setting. (Because who doesn’t think fun when they hear the word hospital?) So without further ado…

3 Things You Shouldn’t Say In The ICU (Unless You Want To Get Strangled With A Stethoscope):

1. “My dad wants to go back to bed.” 

On the surface this may seem like a harmless statement. And most of the time, it probably is. BUT if you’ve been hounding the nurse since the moment she started her shift to get your dad out of bed AND your dad has three chest tubes, a foley catheter, a nasogastric tube, a central line, an arterial line, and meets The Princess Bride criteria for “mostly dead” AND your nurse had to recruit every able-bodied nurse within a five mile radius to assist in getting your dad out of bed without dislodging any of the aforementioned tubes as well as her own vertebrae AND your dad has been sitting in the chair for less time than it took to get him up to the chair…then no. You do not want to walk out to the nurses’ station and make this statement. Not if you value your life.  

2. “What about the scrotum?”

Now obviously any sane nurse would prefer to go the rest of their life without hearing this question. But any sane nurse also knows there may be situations, unfortunately, where this question is warranted inside a health care setting. And that is perfectly fine. What is not fine, however, is when you stand on one end of the nurses’ station and shout to a nurse who is standing on the complete opposite end of the station, “Whadda-bout-the SCROTUM?!” in an aggressive sing-song voice while you toss your hands in the air like a lunatic. That is not okay. Don’t do that. Ever.

3. “I’ll do it for you, Doc.”

This might be the one statement that will make any nurse’s blood pressure rise beyond stroke levels—especially when that nurse knows every freckle on your rear end because she and that rear end became much too well acquainted during the previous weeks when you were busy trying to die. If you are now on the road to recovery and that nurse asks you to get your freckled rear end out of bed and into a chair, don’t you dare refuse, then turn around and say, “I’ll do it for you, Doc.” (I have a theory this scenario happened to Nurse Ratched early on in her career.)

If you’ve been granted a new lease on life, do whatever it takes to get better. Not for the nurse. Not for the doctor. Get better for yourself. Life is too precious a gift to waste lying in bed. Get up.

And don’t even think about asking to go back to bed twenty minutes later.