Changing beds

Nothing beats the amount of times you need to change a bed in one shift for the same patients like diarrhea does. My sweet patient was an elderly lady that came in for renal failure and while in the hospital started having some diarrhea. I started the day doing her assessment and she had just started the diarrhea early that morning. The nurses kept saying it smelled like C-dif... I didn't know the difference. She has a catheter in place and felt weak so getting to the bed side commode was difficult for her. Shortly after the morning assessment she went potty the first time on her bed, so I got her out of bed, cleaned her up and changed her bed. She felt so bad, but I didnt mind. I tried to get a sample for it to be tested, but my nurse had given me tongue depressors to collect it with. I needed something more similar to a ladle to be able to get anything. But I tried,I got very little and sent it off to lab. During the morning she went four more times in bed. No matter how hard she tried she could never make it to the potty in time. I became her stalker after that. I was outside her door anytime I wasn't in another patient's room. AS soon as her call light would go off I would run in there trying to avoid changing her bed for the 5oth time. I was successful three times but by the end of the day I had changed her bed eight times in a ten hour period. The thing was that even though it was hard and really... a pain to change her bed so many times, in the end it became rather funny. She was very sweet, and enjoyed having me as her student nurse. I felt bad for her and didn't mind cleaning her, just for the simple fact that she didn't treat me like it was my job to do it. She was grateful. It was fine, just that simple fact. I would have changed her bed and cleaned her up 8 more times if I had to. It's patients like her that make me so happy I entered this field. No matter how much poop I encounter!