We got one back!
We've had a lot of patients, in my month on the psych ward, that came in crazy and left less so. I do find that satisfying, but seeing as I don't know where they started, I don't have any expectation to meet. Today though, a patient that I have been following closely since his arrival, final started looking like he did on that arrival date - not great, but better.
On admission, he was an eccentric (and very manic) man. A few days later, he was a six-foot-tall two-year-old. At his worst, he couldn't string a coherent sentence together, couldn't keep his clothes on, and couldn't use the toilet. It is so much more frustrating when a patient decompensates if you know what they were like before.
Today, a few weeks into his painfully slow treatment, the fog finally began to clear. Suddenly sentences were coming through again, laughing was somewhat aligned to jokes, and he seemed to know where he was and why.
I played a vanishingly small part in his improvement, but his recovery is easily the most satisfying case I've experienced so far. I can't wait to see who awaits us each day as he continues to descend from the heights of insanity.
TIL: Discharging medications can be ordered at another facility if the patient can't wait for the pharmacy to prepare the prescriptions. This became very useful today when a particular patient decided he wanted to leave against our advice for drug withdrawal observation. Had we forced him to wait another hour for his meds, I'm pretty sure there would have been an incident.
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