This is pretty calm for an ICU, but it's still full of beeps and bells and bubbly sounds (draining fluids) and something that sounds like a whistling tea kettle. I think maybe that is a whistling tea kettle, but who knows? There is just one alarm that's really piercing that makes me need to get up and move if it persists.
The other thing that happens is things go wrong sometimes. When I was trying to get Ronnie her meds this morning and couldn't get anyone, it was because one of the other patients was having a stroke and they needed all the nurses. That person is no longer here (in the ICU I mean), but it highlights the high risk environment.
Yesterday, one of the patients, who's here for something, I don't know, had been standing around the nurses station talking to them and then suddenly started screaming at the top of her lungs "HELP! HELP! HELP!" And calling for someone. JEFFREY! JEFFREY! It went on for, no exaggerating, 5 or 6 minutes, while the nurses surrounded her and tried to get her to sit down in her wheelchair. She screamed any time one of them touched her. The nurses kept asking what kind of help she needed, but she'd hit full-scale paranoia at that point. Eventually they got her to sit, but only when they moved the oxygen tank somewhere she could see it (they're usually in a bracket in back or on the side).
She's been in her room with her door closed (the only closed door on a patient room), but as I'm writing this I can hear her going off again. I presume she doesn't do this when she's not in the hospital, but how would I know? Maybe this is good behavior.
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