A PT eval was ordered for Mr. Hypoglycemic. a 70-something year old man status post abdominal surgery/colostomy. I walk into his room and greet him as I do every other new patient, "Hi, I'm Catalina. I'm from physical therapy and your doctor wanted me to come by and see how you do getting up and around."
Mr. Hypoglycemic, in his very symptomatic hypoglycemic grumpiness, responds, "Listen sweetie. I've run seventeen marathons in my life. I run and work out every day. What can you possibly teach me about physical therapy?" This, coming from a man post-op day 1 and who's in the ICU. I go through the usual eval (strength, ROM, mobility, etc) all trying to keep a smile on my face and not punch this guy for all the lip and attitude he's giving throughout this entire ordeal.
Finally I get him OOB, and he manages to take a few steps to sit in a chair next to his bed. As soon as he sits down he's got this really weird, contorted look on his face and he's not saying anything. I ask him if anything is wrong. He says, "Yeah, I'm sitting on my balls."
"Uh, is there anything I can do?" I say, afraid of the answer.
"Yeah, I'm gonna stand up a little bit and you can just grab them and pull them forward." Yep, that's what I was afraid he was going to say. If it was any other of my nicer patients I wouldn't have minded so much. But this guy was just all mean and nasty to me, which made the whole experience that much more unpleasant.
Needless to say, I help him out of his situation and he at least gives me a thank you. I leave hoping this is the last I'll ever have to deal with this guy. Later the nurse comes out and says his blood sugar was really low and she had to give him some just now and maybe that's why he was such a grump this morning. See, I didn't realize beforehand that his blood sugar was running so low. I just chalked his nastiness up to being an old man completely set in his ways.
The next day he's on my schedule again. I dread it. But then I go up, and he apologizes profusedly about being such cantankerous old man. Smiling, I tell him it's water under the bridge and we've got work to do.
Mr. Hypoglycemic turned out to be one of the coolest guys on my schedule for a while. Yeah he was particular about a lot of things but he was always willing to compromise with me for the sake of his health. The second day I saw him he said, "You and I are going to be great friends, Catalina." I didn't believe him, but lo and behold, we did just that.
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