Armchair Anonymous: Nurses II

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us their craziest nurse stories. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by the Duchess.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:07Dax Shepard?

  The Sharky Sharky Duchess. We need to do these more. We need to do these as regularly as poop your pants because nurses deliver.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Every time.

• 0:18Dax Shepard?

  Holy smokes, they deliver.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  It's so harrowing, their job.

• 0:23Dax Shepard?

  It is, boy, they go through it all.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Heroes.

• 0:27Dax Shepard?

  Day in and day out. I love nurses so much.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  I know, me too.

• 0:31Dax Shepard?

  They're just a party and their stories.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  They have great personalities. They have to.

• 0:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  You have to be so mentally tough.

• 0:38Dax Shepard?

  Yep, and positive.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  And positive.

• 0:41Dax Shepard?

  And funny.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:42Dax Shepard?

  To get through.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I know. It's really special.

• 0:45Dax Shepard?

  We learned a new term as well. I've already forgotten it, but we learned a term about an object in your butt and it has a very specific terminology. It might even become a prompt object.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Fuck, what is it? Should we look it up?

• 0:58Dax Shepard?

  Rectum.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:59Dax Shepard?

  Foreign body.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  For rectal, foreign body.

• 1:01Dax Shepard?

  Foreign body.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02Dax Shepard?

  Foreign body. We learned that all nurses have a foreign body and rectum story, which is exciting as all hell. Please enjoy Nurses Part Two. We get support from Quince.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts and Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself. Because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.

• 1:34Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. Full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  It's the dream. The cashmere sweater, starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 2:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm gonna tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California and I'm so excited and I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here. And it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five-star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 2:36Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then at some point, they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from "I'm working on something" to "here's what I made."

• 3:20Dax Shepard?

  Rob went through the exact same thing building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone, built-in SEO so people can find you, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools. And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less traumatic. Head to squarespace.com/dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  How are you guys?

• 4:25Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna go out on a limb right now. You're the first of four nurses we're gonna talk to. And the second I saw your face, I literally was like, oh, right. Nurses are the most fun people on the planet.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Thank you. That's the biggest compliment. I like to think I'm a fun person.

• 4:38Dax Shepard?

  Anyone that can see the shit you guys see hourly and be laughing and smiling. I mean, that's my kind of people.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Well, if you don't laugh, you'll cry. It's a good attitude.

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  So goes the adage. Where are you at, Peyton?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  I'm in Charlottesville, Virginia.

• 4:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  How do you like it there? I like it. I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And this is a small town feel. We're just here because my husband's going to grad school. So it's just a short two years.

• 5:05Dax Shepard?

  It's charming, no?

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Very historic, but yeah.

• 5:09Dax Shepard?

  But a troubled past. Is that what you wanted to say? Or a beating around the bush that the most horrific thing ever happened there? Is that palpable when you're there or have people moved on?

• 5:17Speaker 02

  It's palpable, especially because I work in an elementary school now as a nurse. And it's crazy. They have to do a whole bunch of rezoning for the school districts because it was historically racist zoning. So now they're like trying to go back and redo it all. Wow.

• 5:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I'm gonna add, I have another stereotype, not just about nurses, but I have a stereotype about Minnesotans. I would argue that Minnesotans are like Michiganders, but a little even elevated.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  What's that mean?

• 5:47Dax Shepard?

  They have so much Scandinavian in them, right? That they're modest by nature. They hate attention and acclaim. So it's kind of the same stock as Michigan, but they have this nice layer of humility, I'd say.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I would say the humility aspect didn't hit me.

• 6:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  I love talking about Minnesota. I think it's the best.

• 6:05Dax Shepard?

  Well, home of Prince, any place that can claim Prince.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'm sure you've racked up many stories as a nurse, but you're gonna hit us with one in particular.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  This is back in 2021 in Minneapolis. I'm a new baby nurse and I'm working in the emergency department. I came in and I had an empty room and I was the next to get a patient. Lucky me, which is always scary. So I go to the room, I meet the patient. Immediately upon entering the room, I am struck with the worst smell in the world.

• 6:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, perfect. I just ate. This is great.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Immediate infection smell.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Oh, infection smell is such a bad combo of words.

• 6:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, evolutionarily, it has to be the one we're most repulsed by.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  I have a mask on, which I don't think is really doing much, but maybe a little.

• 6:49Dax Shepard?

  Do you guys ever put anything under your nose?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  We have little like essential oil sticks.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  One time Dax said, you should put a Jolly Rancher in there.

• 6:56Dax Shepard?

  I did say?

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did.

• 6:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, have you tried that?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  I'll try that next time.

• 7:01Dax Shepard?

  Don't try that because I don't want you to choke.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I'm assessing this patient. I'm like, where is this coming from? I don't see anything right away, but she's like the cutest little five foot.

• 7:11Dax Shepard?

  Monica type? Oh, grandma.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  For sure, but she's old.

• 7:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay, old Monica.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  In her seventies, she has a scarf wrapped around her head. And I am like, what's your emergency? What brings you in? She says, oh, I just haven't been feeling well the past few days. She doesn't really go on and I'm like, what's your history? And she says, well, nine months ago, I had a cranioplasty.

• 7:35Dax Shepard?

  What's that?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  A section of her skull was missing from a birth defect. And so she had to have a mesh plate put in to reform the skull.

• 7:43Dax Shepard?

  She really waited a while, it sounds like. She got through most of her life with this gap.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  I think it's something that gets redone.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  I leave the room to go get the doctor, brief them that you might want to put a double mask on. We go back into the room and the doctor's like, can you take your scarf off? I want to see like, what's happening under there?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  She removes it. There is a quarter to half an inch slit open at the top of her forehead. We can see the mesh plate.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  And her brain.

• 8:18Dax Shepard?

  You can see grandma's brain?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  We can see granny's brain.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Her brain?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And we're like, all right, there we go.

• 8:26Dax Shepard?

  Bingo.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Apparently brains stink. Now we know.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  And it like is very clearly infected. It's like red. It doesn't look well.

• 8:34Dax Shepard?

  Am I right to assume that's the last thing you want infected?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Definitely. And she was off in. All the ways.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  What happens if the scarf comes off and you go, you can't help it sometimes.

• 8:47Dax Shepard?

  You can't do that.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Can you? Did you?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I mean, you definitely probably shouldn't, but being a new nurse, thank God for the mask, because I was not expecting grandma's brain to be out.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 8:58Dax Shepard?

  Right. You're not watching Pulp Fiction.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You're only human.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  So we're like, have you been taking care of it? And she's like, I was taking pretty good care of it. I keep the scarf on. I change the gauze. It's been going well. Like, okay, has anything been irritating it? Anything you can think of? And she says, no, I take the scarf off at night. And then my cats like to lick it.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Stop it!

• 9:22Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  This is the nasty.

• 9:25Dax Shepard?

  Nurses have all the deets.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  I almost said something really bad. I'm not gonna say it. She deserves.

• 9:32Dax Shepard?

  Don't victim shame her.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  You're gonna let your cat lick your open brain?

• 9:38Dax Shepard?

  She said she likes to. She wants to make Mittens happy.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And also she didn't do her research. Cats love human brains. They eat them.

• 9:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, they eat their face. Yeah, yeah. The cat got a little ahead of itself. I think the cat was like, grandma's dying and dead and I can't wait.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  I definitely think Mittens was like, she's on her way out. I gotta have a slice.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  So she obviously had to be admitted to the hospital, because that's not good. But since it was COVID time, it took three days to get her from the emergency department up to a room. So for the three days she was down there, the entire back hallway just smelled the whole time.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  We obviously attempt to clean it. We started IV antibiotics and would do the basic treatment, but we weren't like getting in there.

• 10:25Dax Shepard?

  Because someone needed to go in there surgically and get rid of this necrotic flesh and everything.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  And drain all the cat saliva.

• 10:31Dax Shepard?

  Pull the cat babies out of her.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Don't say cat babies in a brain. Oh my.

• 10:40Dax Shepard?

  Mittens kittens.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  She was kinda like Voldemort. You know when what's his name's wearing the scarf and then he takes off and Voldemort's there?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yes, Professor Quarrel. I literally was thinking that.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  It's literally that. Oh my god.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  You never know what someone's hiding under there.

• 10:57Dax Shepard?

  And what was her spirits? She sounds very nice.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  She was the sweetest little lady. So kooky. If you were in the room, she'd tell you everything you wanted to know about anything.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but she was also crazy. Literally cat saliva induced crazy.

• 11:13Dax Shepard?

  Madness?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:14Dax Shepard?

  Maybe you can say madness.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  So we don't know if she was nice or not. Maybe that was part of the delirium.

• 11:19Dax Shepard?

  What ended up happening to Granny? She got a room, obviously.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  She got a room and that's all I know.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  I'm glad. I don't want to know the end of this. This is rough.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  At this hospital, we had a lot of frequent flyers and I never saw her again.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:37Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's good. And would you have heard if she had passed in that upstairs room? Then would they have told you?

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 11:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I think all signs point to she's probably with mittens now on her lap.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  All signs point to she turned into a cat. I think her brain turned into a cat brain and now she thinks she's a cat.

• 11:54Dax Shepard?

  Peyton, what if you saw her boogying down the sidewalk on all fours with the most agility you'd ever seen?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  That would be amazing. I'd have to call you guys back.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  What an experiment.

• 12:05Dax Shepard?

  I have a hunch we're gonna talk to you again, because I'm sure you were probably debating which story to even tell.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  I was talking to my husband and I was like, I don't have any stories, just the cat lady. He was like, yeah, you should submit that. That's a pretty good one.

• 12:20Dax Shepard?

  That really puts a new spin on Cat Lady.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:22Dax Shepard?

  Do you think that's Laura's dream in life?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  No, don't say that.

• 12:25Dax Shepard?

  To have her brain licked by her cat.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Ew, probably. This is what happens with people who love cats. They love them way too much.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  It's kind of a good ending.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  I guess so.

• 12:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, what a joy that was. Thank you.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Thanks for sharing.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Can my husband come say hi?

• 12:39Dax Shepard?

  Of course. Oh, you're as cute as they come.

• 12:44Dax Shepard?

  Look at the symmetry. It's completely homogeneous.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  And you're in graduate school.

• 12:49Dax Shepard?

  And your teeth are that nice?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  It's awesome to see you guys. I wanted to say we drove from Virginia to Minneapolis before the holidays, which is about 18 hours. And we listen almost exclusively to Armchair.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so nice.

• 13:04Dax Shepard?

  Is there one moment that was your favorite?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Any anonymous, but we just listened to the Munchausen by proxy Andrea Dunlop. I don't have Munchausen, wanna say.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Thank you for clarifying.

• 13:16Dax Shepard?

  You guys don't have a child yet.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  No, you can still have it with a partner and stuff.

• 13:20Dax Shepard?

  But it's most common for the mother to be in the medical. Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  We'll let you know.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Okay, keep us updated on that.

• 13:27Dax Shepard?

  Well, again, we were gonna talk to you about another nurse story, but it might be like, tell us about a story of inflicting Munchausen's on your child.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  I'll wait for that prompt for sure.

• 13:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, delightful meeting both of you. Good luck down there in Virginia.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Thank you very much.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  So nice to meet you.

• 13:39Dax Shepard?

  Bye. Hello, is this Lucy?

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Yes, it is.

• 13:44Dax Shepard?

  How you doing? Have we caught you at work?

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Yes, I'm at work in a nice fancy little telephone booth.

• 13:50Dax Shepard?

  And if there were any doubt of the validity to your claim of being a nurse, you are currently in scrubs, which really lends to your case.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, right? I'm out of the bedside now, so I'm in healthcare education and simulation.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 14:06Dax Shepard?

  And where are you in the country?

• 14:08Speaker 04

  I'm up in Canada.

• 14:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I assume you have a Kabillion stories you could have told. Did you have a hard time whittling it down to which one?

• 14:15Speaker 04

  No, I definitely have a lot of stories, but this one has just always been kind of in the forefront. So I've been in the emergency room for most of my career. Always small town, always rural hospitals, so you can get creative.

• 14:29Dax Shepard?

  Farming accidents.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  Wood splitter against foot, you know, never a good thing. So I've done some travel nursing too, in small urban cities to fly in, fly out communities.

• 14:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, like in the bush, you mean, fly in, fly out?

• 14:41Speaker 04

  More on the coast in B C or up in Yukon.

• 14:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  It's been very cool.

• 14:46Dax Shepard?

  Who would have thought nursing could take you as many places as like a flight attendant?

• 14:50Speaker 04

  And be able to make a good income and have some paid travel and accommodation and learn and. Meet a lot of cool people and see the country at the same time.

• 14:59Dax Shepard?

  So this would be the one you're at a dinner party and they want to hear a story. This is the one you always reel out.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  If they're with nurses or other healthcare providers, sure.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  But not a layman.

• 15:07Dax Shepard?

  Not for civilians.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  So small town emerged, someone comes into triage after biking in from a neighboring community. It's like a 15 minute drive, so it's not a short bike. Comes in not really saying much, not making great eye contact, being a little elusive, just repeating that he wants to see a doctor. We try and obtain a little bit more pertinent information, the triage process is important, and only get out of them pain back there.

• 15:33Dax Shepard?

  Great, because I was gonna say, the times I've had to go to the doctor and talk about something I just really don't want to talk about, I have decided I'm willing to tell this one person. In your mind, you've committed to that, and then you get there and you start realizing, no, I'm gonna have to tell many people, and I hate that. Is that common? Where like they don't really want to tell you because they've already decided only one person shall ever know this?

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, it can happen, and then also at the same time, like you're writing it down. So that's a whole other added layer that people don't love.

• 16:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Dax Shepard?

  We get support from no bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 16:24Dax Shepard?

  Exactly, and that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole no bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid, and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform, and I want a little more flexibility, and boy, do they deliver.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 17:05Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging, I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines, and it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of a closet.

• 17:22Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobowlproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week.

• 17:30Speaker 05

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• 18:25Speaker 04

  So they're referencing pain back there, just being pretty elusive and not wanting to say much. So we respect that and then get them back. So the physician goes in to assess, a little bit later comes out and orders some abdominal imaging. A little while later, imaging is ready and we review it to find a foreign body lodged nicely between those pelvic bones. Ah!

• 18:46Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, so deep up into his rectum.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, so like a little callback, this person biked in.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Right. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  All I can imagine hearing this is every pedal revolution, you know, just going up a little bit further each time.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Oh, no. This is sad.

• 19:04Dax Shepard?

  And is it clear from the imaging what the object is?

• 19:09Speaker 04

  So it definitely had the structure of a bottle. The person just wasn't really saying a whole lot to everyone. So it had a bottle-like shape, but I wouldn't be able to be like, oh, that's a Coke bottle or something.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:18Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  But we're a rural hospital. We try and get creative with what you have. Babies do get delivered here, and there are like vacuum-assisted devices for babies that... It was pitched to see if maybe that could work. Ultimately didn't go with that because the physician could barely reach the object.

• 19:35Dax Shepard?

  If you had to guess how many inches beyond the anus it was, could you guess?

• 19:40Speaker 04

  He said he could barely touch it with his finger. Wow.

• 19:43Dax Shepard?

  Three or four inches up there.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  This physician's probably like your stature too.

• 19:47Dax Shepard?

  He really had a long finger to work with.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  Yes, so he could feel it a little bit, but obviously a vacuum can't suction to that small of a piece and that piece of plastic, whatever it might have been. It took a lot of convincing and encouraging, but he really needed to go to the city to have a procedure to get it removed. The other concern with the imaging was there's free air on the x-ray, which means something might have perforated. Oh. So there's more severity there that you don't want to mess around with rurally. And then also if you were just to simply like pull it out, it creates a vacuum. Oh.

• 20:21Dax Shepard?

  You kind of maybe got to fill air around it. You might have to be inflating basically as you pull it out.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  Or like have another hole in it elsewhere to kind of help prevent a vacuum and have all the intestines come with it.

• 20:35Dax Shepard?

  I mean, there's a lot to think about.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot to think about beforehand. This poor person, they finally came around to heading to the city. So a lot of times people don't necessarily come back for discharge or anything like that. Usually when they go, that's the last time we'll see them.

• 20:48Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I'm going to guess, I mean, his bike is there.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, the next day he came back into emerge to pick up his bike seat. I find this sad. I know. I feel so much for this person. It would be such a hard thing.

• 21:03Dax Shepard?

  It would, they have to go back to get your bike. And also you just had a pretty massive procedure up there and you're going to now ride.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  The fact that he biked there in the first place. Yeah, I don't know what kind of procedure he had. Obviously it wasn't an open abdominal anything because they were able to walk in the next day. Do we know what it was?

• 21:21Dax Shepard?

  I bet there'd be like a HIPAA issue like they couldn't call the next hospital and be like, hey, what was that? Wouldn't that violate HIPAA somehow?

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't have confirmations of anything, just what I saw on the x-ray, which was impressive for sure.

• 21:33Dax Shepard?

  I have an immediate guess. I think it was a bottle of conditioner. I think he was in the shower and he decided to masturbate and he thought it might feel nice to have this bottle up his butt. Now, when you think back in your mind of the image, could it have been a conditioner bottle?

• 21:47Speaker 04

  It definitely looked like a drink bottle.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful. I take it all back. He was sitting on a picnic table, having a nice cold.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  It was an accident. It was a pure accident. He just sat down. It got up there.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  It's the classic slip and fall.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, classic.

• 22:05Dax Shepard?

  And I'm sorry to ask for this detail, but my assumption now is that the thin end was first.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 22:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Also, do you think it was full?

• 22:14Dax Shepard?

  Of the soda or whatever?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:16Dax Shepard?

  No, because the cap would have had to have been on.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Also, that's what I'm thinking about, the cap in you?

• 22:20Dax Shepard?

  No, he would have taken the cap.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  I think it might have come up a bit more opaque too with the liquid in it. But yeah, classic slip and fall. I'm sure many nurses have this story.

• 22:31Dax Shepard?

  I hope he figured out how to enjoy that hobby without any further complications. If someone wants to do that and that feels nice, I'm all for it.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  I just wish he didn't have to ride his bike.

• 22:41Dax Shepard?

  No, that is really a cruel detail of the story.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Plot twist for sure. The bike ride in couldn't have been comfortable.

• 22:48Dax Shepard?

  Now I'm double set because he didn't have anyone to call, but then I don't know that that's the truth either because he might have just been like, there's no way I'm calling anyone.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  But he also doesn't have a car. The only mode of transportation he has is that bike. That's a little telling.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  It's also small rural town. People know everyone, right?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  That's even worse.

• 23:06Dax Shepard?

  Well, Lucy, this has been incredible. I've kind of had fingers crossed we would get something stuck up the butt story. You read about those occasionally.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I figured it might be appealing in that sense based on what I've heard in the past.

• 23:21Dax Shepard?

  Based on the tone of the show, I thought this might interest you.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  I've been listening to you guys since it started. This is crazy to see behind the scenes.

• 23:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, we're so happy to have you.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for listening.

• 23:33Dax Shepard?

  And from the bottom of my heart, I'm more grateful for y'all than even doctors. I think the stuff that you guys have to do.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:41Dax Shepard?

  Is just the most impressive.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  From the bottom of your butt.

• 23:44Dax Shepard?

  From the bottom of my butt to the bottom of your heart.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, nurses are pretty amazing.

• 23:50Dax Shepard?

  All right. Well, it was lovely meeting you. And again, thank you so much for the work you do.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for this opportunity.

• 23:55Dax Shepard?

  All right. Take care.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Bye, guys.

• 23:57Dax Shepard?

  Bye.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  What does bottom of my heart?

• 24:01Dax Shepard?

  The depths of my heart, the deepest part.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  But the deepest part, I feel like, is this center.

• 24:07Dax Shepard?

  You're hung up on bottom because we're talking about someone's bottom.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  No, you said from the bottom of my heart, and then it made me think.

• 24:13Dax Shepard?

  The rectum of the heart. That's my point, is we're talking about bottoms right now, like butt bottoms.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  But I'm just saying, bottom of the heart doesn't feel that much more important than the middle of the heart, the core, the pulsing part.

• 24:28Dax Shepard?

  From the top of my heart.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just curious who made that up.

• 24:31Dax Shepard?

  From the left chamber of my heart. Probably.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Or Abraham Lincoln.

• 24:35Dax Shepard?

  Never gonna watch that doc.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  You already told me the whole doc.

• 24:39Dax Shepard?

  It was Abraham Lincoln.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  How are you guys?

• 24:44Dax Shepard?

  So good. Do you want to use a code name?

• 24:47Speaker 06

  Let's go with the name Evan.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  You look like an Evan.

• 24:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I like the name Evan. Do you have a best friend named Evan or something?

• 24:52Speaker 06

  I don't. It's actually a family name.

• 24:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. So Evan, where are you in the country? You can be as vague as you'd like. I just am curious.

• 25:01Speaker 06

  I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But funny enough, about a year ago, I moved, I was in LA for 10 years. And I lived in a pretty decent apartment complex right near Hollywood and Western.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  So I always used to go to Maru and hope that I would run into Monica.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Well, you're more likely to run into Rob. I'm shocked you didn't run into Rob.

• 25:21Dax Shepard?

  Probably did.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  You probably did. But, oh, man, that would have been great.

• 25:26Dax Shepard?

  Now, were you on the hunt for Monica so you could explore something romantic with her?

• 25:29Speaker 06

  No, I'm actually gay.

• 25:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  That's a bummer.

• 25:33Dax Shepard?

  I feel like that's more substantive.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's more pure. I'm sorry I missed you.

• 25:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you are a nurse, I presume?

• 25:40Speaker 06

  I'm an emergency room nurse.

• 25:42Dax Shepard?

  For how long?

• 25:43Speaker 06

  It'll be 14 years this year.

• 25:44Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you have a juicy story. I'm sure you've got many, but you have pared it down to this one.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  I hope juicy isn't an operative word.

• 25:51Dax Shepard?

  I do. I hope juice is involved in this story.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  No juice is in this story, but it's a pretty wild one. This doesn't take place in LA. It does take place somewhere else in California. I was working in a pretty busy emergency department. It was a level two trauma center. So we see pretty much all the crazy gunshots, stabbings, car accidents, falls, all of those things.

• 26:12Dax Shepard?

  Will you tell us about the levels? I've never heard it being described as level one or two or three.

• 26:16Speaker 06

  It goes from level one to level four. Level one is the highest. So that's your Cedars-Sinai. The main difference between a level one and a level two is that they have neurosurgery 24 hours a day in-house.

• 26:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 26:29Speaker 06

  So if you have a head injury, they can do procedures right then and there. Whereas level two, they have to bring a neurosurgeon in or they have to fly the patient, depending on their injury, to a different facility.

• 26:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  And then down to level four, it just really is resources that are available at that specific facility. So this particular hospital was a level two, but there were only two trauma centers in the area. So we would get a lot of the traumas and the crazy stuff along with just basic medical patients that come in. This was around 2017, 2018. Busy day in the emergency department. We had a lot of traumas coming in. The waiting room was full. But on top of that, we have a lot of psychiatric patients that are on a 5150 hold. They're there on the hold for 72 hours. For whatever reason, either they're suicidal, homicidal, or gravely disabled, meaning they can't care for themselves. We're kind of responsible for those patients until they get to a psychiatric facility, which sometimes, you know, that can be days that they're in our emergency department.

• 27:24Dax Shepard?

  And is protocol to kind of, for lack of a better word, anesthetize them? Do you want to get them on some kind of benzo to calm everyone down?

• 27:32Speaker 06

  So it depends on their level of how violent they are. If you come in and just say, hey, you know, I'm thinking of committing suicide, but they're willing to be there voluntarily, that's one thing. Some other patients will be brought in by the cops because they tried to kill their spouse. At that point, we hold them, but some of them are cooperative and they're calm. Other patients are a little less calm and we have to end up restraining them physically or we have to sedate them with a chemical restraint. I remember this day, we particularly had, I think, probably seven or eight psychiatric patients, which is a lot. Oh. They will be in our psych rooms and then some of them are in the hallways, but typically they have to be a one-to-one sitter and the person that's watching them has to be within arms' reach in case they try to hurt themselves.

• 28:14Speaker 06

  So, we're busy doing our thing throughout the day and the chief medical officer comes to the department and he quickly tells the team, "Hey, we just received a call that there was a bomb threat made at the hospital and we need to evacuate the emergency department immediately." Whoa.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  With seven or eight psychiatric-

• 28:32Speaker 06

  Does that mean bring them outdoors? Bring everyone. Oh my god. There could be fifty patients, including the psychiatric patients, outside.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:40Speaker 06

  This is the worst kind of bomb threat, I'm gonna say.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a mean one.

• 28:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. I've worked places where there's been a threat called in and we typically have security teams and the police are always there because of various reasons, but this particular day, he made the decision that we need to evacuate the emergency department. So, as ER nurses do, our team figures it out. A lot of times for disasters, we'll put up tents out in the parking lot. So, the team began assembling the tents and trying to get patients out as quickly and as safely as possible. There may be fifty patients in the department and there's a handful of nurses. Oh.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  This is horrible.

• 29:14Speaker 06

  The worst scenario that you could probably imagine in the emergency department and we see awful things. So, while trying to maintain all of the other patients, getting them out safely, you know, the people that can't walk on their own, this really sick patients, we have to make sure that all of the psychiatric patients are accounted for. So, we get them all outside, everything comes together perfectly. There's enough people to watch, we kind of quarantined the psychiatric patients to one area, we had security guards, there were cops there that had responded to the event. Everything seems to be going well, the bomb squad shows up and they clear the hospital. And we're like, "What exactly happened here? Why did we so quickly make this decision?" So, it turns out, luckily, none of the patients were harmed, but the hospital operator, he was off-shift, decided to call in a bomb threat.

• 29:58Speaker 06

  This was a guy that worked at our hospital. Oh. Calls in the bomb threat to an operator who is his coworker.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 30:07Speaker 06

  There was really no way to verify this because they didn't release a 911 tape, but the story is that- This person called the operator and the operator was like, is this you, Peter? I recognize your voice. And he's like, no, no, it's not me.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 30:36Speaker 06

  So the gentleman who was making the bomb threat apparently had made multiple bomb threats. He had worked at various facilities over the years. He called in a bomb threat to a school, to various different township buildings. So he was calling in bomb threats for many years. They found out that it could have been potentially three or four years prior to this event.

• 30:56Dax Shepard?

  Evan, have you spent any time trying to get into the mind of why that would be satisfying? I can generally find my way into understanding people's motives, but I don't even understand what the pleasure of that is, other than if I just had this total ire for government and I wanted to keep fucking up municipalities. I can't really get it.

• 31:17Speaker 06

  He was calling in the bomb threat and then showing up to work. I think this day he showed up a few hours later. I don't know if it was a thrill that he got from like being in and out of the chaos.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 31:27Dax Shepard?

  Well, they say that about arsonists, that they often are there watching the fire.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  But is he a hero? Is it like he comes in to help save the day?

• 31:35Speaker 06

  I'm sure they're getting numerous calls like, hey, is it safe to come into the hospital? Because I'm sure that word spreads quickly throughout the community. So I don't know what he was getting from that.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Is it a ding ding ding? Did he get admitted to the psychiatric ward?

• 31:48Speaker 06

  I think he got admitted to the jail.

• 31:50Dax Shepard?

  The jail ward.

• 31:53Speaker 06

  It was a wild day, but that team, I mean, the ER is chaotic all the time, but it shows you how quickly we come together. And no matter what the task at hand is, we just do what we have to to keep our patients safe.

• 32:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're like the Marines. My first thought as someone who's always thinking about mechanical stuff is like, well, certainly among those 50 patients, some of them have to be hooked to machines to stay alive that require electricity. Are there generators that are put out in the parking lot? Or are there battery supplies on these carts?

• 32:23Speaker 06

  So the patients that were on a ventilator at the time, there's two options and we do have battery supply outside because we have patients with IV pumps, but you can also manually ventilate them. It's called an Ambu bag. So you can just squeeze a bag to give them breaths. I don't remember that being a huge issue and we have respiratory therapists that will kind of manage that. But yeah, those are things that go into our head and we do disaster drills throughout the year and set up the tents and kind of practice what we would do in that scenario. So we truly are prepared at any given time for something like this to happen. It turns out it probably jumped the gun, for lack of a better phrase. We probably didn't need to evacuate, but it was good practice. In my 14 years, I've never experienced anything else like it.

• 33:02Dax Shepard?

  We're so lucky that you guys exist.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  So lucky.

• 33:06Dax Shepard?

  Like they're practicing and they can do it.

• 33:08Speaker 06

  It's a pretty amazing career. You guys are fortunate to be in LA where there's so many great hospitals.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Not going.

• 33:14Dax Shepard?

  What, we're not going to live in LA?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:16Dax Shepard?

  Or they're going to shut down hospitals?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Just do it.

• 33:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'm just not sure what thing we're gonna, we're afraid to leave LA or?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  I just don't want to go to the hospital.

• 33:24Dax Shepard?

  We're knocking down one because LA has so many good hospitals.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I just don't want to go there. Don't ask questions, just do it. Wow, that's wild.

• 33:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh man, that is. Thank you, Evan, so much for sharing that story with us.

• 33:36Speaker 06

  When I saw the nursing prompt came up, I'm like, I have to submit this story. I mean, I have so many great ones, but that was a very interesting day and I don't think that anyone that I worked with will ever forget that.

• 33:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'm just gonna ask you one simple question before we go because the previous nurse we just spoke with said that every single nurse has a foreign object in rectum story. You don't need to tell it, just do you have a foreign object in rectum story?

• 33:55Speaker 06

  I have many.

• 33:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, yeah, you were in LA.

• 33:59Speaker 06

  They always fall onto it.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Right, of course.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Can you tell us the weirdest object or are you not allowed?

• 34:10Dax Shepard?

  Shampoo bottle.

• 34:12Speaker 06

  I've seen an apple.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:15Speaker 06

  I've seen candlesticks.

• 34:17Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  That one kinda makes sense.

• 34:19Speaker 06

  Wooden candlesticks, though. They didn't choose the wax one, but wooden, like a fake decorative candlestick, which then splintered.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 34:27Speaker 06

  It punctured their colon, so I could talk about, you know, those stories for days.

• 34:31Dax Shepard?

  Shit, maybe we need our own prompt for notes that just foreign. What was it called, foreign?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Foreign objects and rectum.

• 34:37Dax Shepard?

  Not objects.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Foreign agent, maybe?

• 34:39Speaker 06

  Oh, foreign body?

• 34:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he said foreign body. She said foreign body and you said foreign body. I just wanna get the prompt right.

• 34:45Speaker 06

  Well, I'll submit another one.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we look forward to hearing from you again.

• 34:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, great meeting you, Evan. Thank you so much for your job.

• 34:52Speaker 06

  You guys are doing great work. Keep it up.

• 34:53Dax Shepard?

  Thank you, we will. You too. All right, be well.

• 34:56Speaker 06

  Bye.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  I can't believe I missed him at Maru. That's sad.

• 35:01Dax Shepard?

  Foreign body and rectum.

• 35:02Speaker 07

  I feel like we're just gonna get weird submissions.

• 35:04Dax Shepard?

  Hopefully.

• 35:05Speaker 07

  Well, no, someone that had someone else's foreign body in their butt.

• 35:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, like a body part?

• 35:09Speaker 01

  We'll have to say ner- medical.

• 35:11Dax Shepard?

  I think they'll open it up to everybody. Cause maybe someone will be brave enough to tell foreign body in their own rectum story. Cause I wanna know how you lose control of it. Cause you must have a game plan. Obviously, you're only gonna insert so much of it. And then you go too far and then I guess you lose grip. Then you try to get it out and it just goes up.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think often there's another person involved.

• 35:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, a bad actor?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 35:38Dax Shepard?

  Can you hear us?

• 35:39Speaker 08

  Yes, can you hear me?

• 35:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, beautifully. Is this Tori?

• 35:43Speaker 08

  Yes, we're gonna go with Tori. I will warn you guys, I am like the sickest I've ever been in my life. I'm pregnant and I got norovirus and I'm like this close to calling it. I sound terrible, I look terrible, so my apologies.

• 35:56Dax Shepard?

  I just want you to know that I was just on a trip with eight people and all eight of us got it. So I'm with you, I'm in the noro camp currently.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I can't imagine being pregnant and dealing with this.

• 36:05Speaker 08

  It is hellish.

• 36:06Dax Shepard?

  It gets scary when you're pregnant, right? It ups the ante a lot.

• 36:09Speaker 08

  I think so. I think I got it cause I'm pregnant, like, cause I'm immunocompromised, I'm more likely to get it cause no one else in our travel group got it, of course.

• 36:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Interesting. Oh, I'm so sorry. You look like Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

• 36:22Dax Shepard?

  She's very attractive.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  She is. She's beautiful.

• 36:24Speaker 08

  Thank you. From Fleabag. Can I get started?

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, let it rip.

• 36:28Speaker 08

  Okay, for patient confidentiality reasons, I won't give you specifics on where I'm from, where the story took place. But central Canada, I'm on the prairies. I'll say that.

• 36:37Dax Shepard?

  I gotta tell you, you're our second Canadian.

• 36:39Speaker 08

  We got some crazy nursing stories up here.

• 36:43Speaker 08

  I've been a nurse now for six and a half years. I came into this field. I had no family that worked in healthcare. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. So that's just kind of a preface to say how ignorant and naive I was to what this job was really like. But yeah, this story takes place on the first job I had, and it's a job I had up until last year, actually. I took the job right out of graduation at an inpatient neurology and neurosurgery ward at our hospital. So dealt with a ton of strokes, seizures, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, brain cancer, spine cancer, anything like that. Really heavy, but got to see some pretty amazing stuff regarding kind of where I'm from. We do have a really bad epidemic of gang violence here.

• 37:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 37:27Speaker 08

  Yeah, a lot of the prairies. And my hospital is the Level One Trauma Center for our province, so we get to see it all. So you get to see some horrific, senseless acts of violence and assaults. Really sad, really awful, but medically, I gotta say, you get to see some pretty cool stuff.

• 37:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 08

  So I worked that job for six years, and to this day, the patient I'm gonna tell you about is probably the most wild patient I've ever seen. So this man, a middle-aged guy, he was an ex-con who was beaten head with a hammer.

• 37:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 37:57Speaker 08

  When the swelling is really bad in the brain, the surgeons will take off a piece of their skull to let the brain swell and heal, because otherwise it'll herniate. So usually when that happens, we see it all the time, take off usually a front piece, a side piece. If the person's walking around or doing therapy, they must have this helmet on at all times, obviously. Because if they are to fall and hit their head, there's nothing protecting their soft, squishy brain. So this man in particular, just the location of his injuries, the back of his head, kind of on like the nape of his neck, because it was at the very back part of his head. His head and because he was so wild and agitated, he had to wear this helmet for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week in bed. Kind of picture like a hockey helmet that's hard foam.

• 38:39Speaker 08

  Trigger warning, we have to restrain heavily a ton of our patients that might bother some people. It's for their safety, it's for our safety, it's temporary, they have tubes they can pull out. They have such varied levels of awareness of what's going on, they just rip everything out, they can and do hurt themselves all the time.

• 38:57Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 08

  So this man was also heavily restrained. Depending on the level of their injury and kind of where they are in their recovery, you can't rationalize with them, you can't reason with them. They can't speak, when they can speak, their first and only words are always fuck you. That was the case of this man. So he was in what we would call seven point restraint. So he had a belt around his waist, he had this piece of fabric that kind of comes up like a diaper that attaches to the waist and it keeps him from sliding down in bed. Getting strangled by it, seen that before, he had both of his wrists restrained, both of his ankles restrained to the bed. And then he was so wild and head butting that he had a chest strap on.

• 39:38Speaker 08

  And we have to have the bed elevated a little bit because when they're getting tube fed, if they're laying flat, it can put them at risk of choking. So he had the head of the bed up and we had the chest strap there. Also, this man had what we call posy mitts on, so picture giant puffy oven mitts. That are like Velcroed to their hands, they can't grab or squeeze or scratch or anything, so it's just like boxing. That's the first part is the visualization of this is how this poor man lived for weeks. Oh, wow.

• 40:08Speaker 09

  Wow.

• 40:09Speaker 08

  He put three separate people on injury leave while being that level of restraint. Oh, my god.

• 40:15Speaker 09

  Wow.

• 40:15Speaker 08

  It's really awful, but I kind of liken it to picture just like a rabid rescue animal in a cage. They don't know what's going on, they're just fighting you. So that was this man, to this day, one of the most wild ones I've looked after. So the shift that this happened was on a night shift. I was new and my partner was new, so her and I had both been on this job for like maybe a few months and it's in an observation room. So there's four patients, there's two nurses. It's close observation, so it's intended for really sick patients or really kind of wild thrashy patients that you need to have eyes on at all times. Our nursing station's fifteen, twenty feet away from all of their beds. We can see what's going on at all times. My partner was on break, it's like one o'clock in the morning.

• 40:57Speaker 08

  The lights are all off because it's nighttime, we want them all to sleep and I go into this guy's room. He's heavily restrained and I see a puddle of liquid on the floor, which is not that unusual in this job. So I turn the light on and I see that it's urine and that's a bit unusual because he has a catheter in.

• 41:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, right.

• 41:17Speaker 08

  And I could see he's like covered up in a blanket still. I could see the catheter tubing's coming out as it should be. It's secured to the bottom of the bed, the bag as it should be. So I'm like, where is this urine coming from? And I guess I'll stop here. Do you guys know how catheters get put in and are secured? No, you should tell us.

• 41:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, doesn't it go all the way up into your bladder and there's kind of a balloon on the end?

• 41:38Speaker 08

  Yes, I figured you would know, Dax. Have you had a catheter?

• 41:41Dax Shepard?

  Thank God, no. Shockingly, you have?

• 41:44Speaker 08

  Yeah, for egg freezing. It's a small rubber tube, goes into the urethra. Once you get urine back, you know, you're in the bladder, so you can safely inflate the balloon. So on the tubing, there's a side port and you inflate with ten mils of saline and it inflates the balloon to like two thirds the size of a golf ball and it's just to keep it in place. So then if someone accidentally or purposely like gently tugs on it, it's not going to come out. However, do people rip them out with their balloon fully intact all the time at this job? Oh my God.

• 42:15Dax Shepard?

  That is the worst thought imaginable.

• 42:18Speaker 08

  I know, especially for men. It's atrocious and it's a bloodbath when it happens.

• 42:25Speaker 08

  That is immediately my next thought. It's like, well, this guy's wild. He probably somehow got his oven mitt hands on and ripped it out. So I pull back the blanket, the catheter is out. It's just like sitting on his bed between his legs, but the balloon is deflated, which is good. I'm just kind of processing this as I'm seeing it. I'm like, well, I guess he didn't rip it out. But I noticed that the side port is gone. So what I realized, because he had the chest strap on, but his head of the bed was elevated. He had gotten a catheter in his mouth.

• 42:58Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 42:59Speaker 08

  And he had chewed off the side port because of that, the balloon deflated on its own.

• 43:05Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 43:06Speaker 08

  Good. He didn't rip it right out of his penis.

• 43:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 08

  But then he grabbed the catheter in his mouth with his teeth and ripped it out of his penis. Jesus. Why? Why?

• 43:16Dax Shepard?

  Cause he doesn't know what the fuck's going on.

• 43:19Speaker 08

  That was a few months on the job. Oh, boy. That was my introduction to nursing and neuro nursing.

• 43:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, do you ever get to see the people when they return to sanity?

• 43:31Speaker 08

  Yes, that's what I loved about working there is some of them were there for months and we're acute. So we're supposed to medically stabilize them and then the ones that need further neurological rehab would go to another facility in our city. But our doctors were really good at like, hey, so and so's doing so good. You should hear. But this guy recovered really well. By the time we sent him to rehab, he was walking, he was talking, he was eating. He was like wheeling himself around the unit in his wheelchair. He was very brain injured. He was very childlike almost. I remember he would throw some temper tantrums. I think he probably would have needed some kind of care his whole life.

• 44:06Dax Shepard?

  But he wasn't aggressive.

• 44:08Speaker 08

  No.

• 44:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 44:09Speaker 08

  He was just a kind of a big child. But yeah, you do get to see them recover even in their time on our unit, which is so fulfilling. Yeah, it must be.

• 44:18Dax Shepard?

  Woo, wow.

• 44:20Speaker 08

  That's crazy.

• 44:21Dax Shepard?

  Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Was there any point having not had any family members in it and maybe not having the correct expectations for the job? Were there moments at the beginning where you're like, oh, fuck this. I didn't choose right? Or did you immediately know it was for you?

• 44:37Speaker 08

  I really loved it. I loved the chaos. So I moved to intensive care this year and it's a lot of the same patients where they started before I ever saw them on my unit. This is where they began, but it's definitely a lot. It definitely tests your patience. When I started at ICU, I was like, I don't think I'm really burnt out. I think I just want to change. And then a few months in, I was like, oh, I was really burnt out and I didn't even realize it. I was so impatient and it's hard. You know, they're brain injured. You know, it's not their fault. You know, they have no control, but they're still saying and doing terrible things all the time. So it's really hard to separate.

• 45:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you have a finite capacity and then you have a real life outside of it. And maybe you're sleep deprived and maybe you're having a marital issue and you add all these things together. It's impossible. I will say it's prepared you nicely to have a child, though.

• 45:24Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think so. My brother and my family, they're not in nursing and I always tell them my crazy stories because they don't live here either, so they wouldn't know any of the people. And they're like, how do you do that? And I'm like, honestly, it puts your own life in perspective because you're like, man, things could always be worse.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 45:40Speaker 08

  Whenever people ask me what working on Nero is like, I'm like, well, I had a man with half a skull and seven point restraints choose catheter out of his penis.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  That is crazy. Thanks for sharing.

• 45:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Tori, I'm so sorry you're feeling so ill, but congratulations on your impending baby time. And it was great meeting you and thank you for telling us that story.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope you feel better fast.

• 46:02Speaker 08

  Thank you. I would like to do a quick shout out to my sisters. My sisters also have unique names, so I'm not going to single them out by names. My cousin Cara, I will call out. She is the world's biggest Armchair Anonymous fan. She listens like every morning at 7:00 a.m. and I was so close to calling it today. I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but I was like, I can't, but I was like, she'll kill me.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  You did great as a nurse would.

• 46:25Dax Shepard?

  Feel better. Take a nice nap now and thanks so much for rallying.

• 46:28Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 46:29Dax Shepard?

  All right, take care.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Oh, nurses.

• 46:33Dax Shepard?

  Chew your catheter out.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's wild.

• 46:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I got a little claustrophobic at the thought of a seven point harness.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot, but I get it.

• 46:43Dax Shepard?

  That happened with my dad when he had this very massive head on collision when I was in eighth grade. And I had to go to the hospital and they said, basically go in and say goodbye. He's unconscious. I went in there and his head was like the size of a basketball. And he woke up while I was in there and the first thing he did is pulled the breathing tube out. And I was begging him, no, Daddy, you need that, you need that. Oh my God, it was so stressful.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  That's scary.

• 47:13Dax Shepard?

  God bless the nurses.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're incredible.

• 47:16Dax Shepard?

  Round of applause.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  We love them.

• 47:18Dax Shepard?

  We love them. I love you.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 47:20Dax Shepard?

  That delivered.

• 47:23Speaker 07

  Do you want to sing a tune or something? I want to have a theme song.

• 47:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fire, Rhyme Dish. On the fire, Rhyme Dish. Enjoy.