Bathroom Heroics

"Rob, Mrs Johnson is having difficulty breathing,"  Jennifer the nurses aide said. She was breathless too because she had just run up the hallway to get me. When someone runs like that, you know it has to be urgent.  We ran down to Mrs Johnson’s room together. When I entered, the room was empty and I looked at Jennifer and she pointed to the bathroom, "In there," she gasped.

I went into the bathroom to find sixty two year old Mrs Johnson seated on the toilet, panties around her ankles and hospital johnny all askew. She was breathing fast and hard, or as we would say – she was tachypneic (fast breathing) and dyspneic (short of breath). Her pulse however was steady and still in the normal range, her skin warm and dry (not cool and clammy) and she still looked relatively ‘pink’, not the grayish-blue of severe respiratory distress. I assessed her as having over-exerted getting to the toilet, and then  ‘pushing’  too hard while short of breath had worsened the problem. Another reason she was short of breath was that Jennifer had forgotten to bring the portable oxygen tank into the bathroom with Mrs Johnson, so I told her to get it right away. I may have been a little  gruff asking for the O2 tank, but we needed it in a hurry.

As I gently reassured Mrs Johnson, I placed my hand on the sink and leaned down to adjust her nasal oxygen cannula. To my immense surprise  the sink tore off the wall with a metallic ripping sound!

We were all startled and Jennifer and Mrs Johnson looked first at the sink, gently bobbing at the end of the water pipe, then at me.  Mrs Johnson gasped, "Holy shit Jennifer, never piss off  Rob!"

I tried to maintain a serious face, but I could not control myself and started laughing. Then Jennifer joined in, and even poor Mrs Johnson, sitting on the toilet, panties still down at her ankles and now finally on her oxygen, was shaking with laughter.