naked maniac

Somehow since January I've shared an office with social workers and I regularly hear dynamic stories. Today's story was dynamic.

It seems a patient came to the hospital today because of complications due to his use of crystal meth. Another patient, significantly older, also visited the hospital today because of breathing trouble. These two should never have met but, yes, somehow they met.

The older patient was placed in a bed for some rest. The doctor told the patient's sixty-year-old daughter that if the breathing trouble continued, an air tube might have to be sent down the elderly patient's throat.

Hospital staff took the crystal meth user to an examination room. He was said to have been calm and the staff left him alone in the room, although he had made numerous recent trips to the hospital, all of these visits due to psychiatric trouble and disturbances. Apparently the fellow took advantage of his privacy to enjoy some drugs that he brought with him to the hospital. This is assumed because he suddenly went berserk, stripped himself naked and went on a rampage through the emergency department.

Meanwhile, our elderly patient is beginning to feel better. Seems like intubation for oxygen won't be necessary after all. That was a close call.

As fate would have it, while on his rampage, the naked, psychotic drug addict managed to dart into to the elderly stranger's room. What for? Why, to strangle the wretch! He choked and choked the aged neck and almost choked all the air out of the oldster. Who knows what he would have accomplished given enough time and opportunity.

Somehow the hospital staff became alerted to the problem and, ultimately, responded. The naked psychotic was dragged away laughing, well on his way to a date with the behavioral therapy department across town. The emergency crew did some work on the elderly patient. They informed the distraught sixty-year-old daughter that the visit from the naked maniac had only made the original breathing trouble much worse. Ironically, an oxygen tube insertion was necessary after all.