Consult Note

Here’s the latest from the Department of Inappropriate Use of Psychiatric Services:

Ms. Parsons is an extremely nice elderly lady with a history of heart disease and mild dementia. She was brought to us early this morning from the nursing home for agitated behavior. The nursing home transfer sheet said she had assaulted her roommate and “needs evaluation for altered mental status.”

Here’s what actually happened. There was another resident of the nursing home who simply couldn’t keep quiet. She would be talking at all hours of the day and night, her screeching often littered with profanities. She had already been moved out of two rooms, and was finally placed with Ms. Parsons because every night she took a sleeping pill, and it was through that she could doze through the verbal hijinks in a pharmacologic-induced haze.

Problem is, it didn’t work. The new roommate’s voice broke through her serene slumber, and she couldn’t get back to sleep. After three hours of this, something inside her snapped. By her own admission, she got out of bed, grabbed the new roommate by the shoulders, and started screaming, “I told you to shut up or I’d slap the (excrement) out of you!”

No need to see psych on that one…