Wife From Hell

Sometimes I wonder what in the world I was thinking when i decided that having a job in the public sector was best for me.  I mean I'm not even a major people person.  I am much more content most of the time to be a loner and lost in a good book or watching a movie then being around a group of people.  And after last night I know exactly why that is!
When I arrived on the unit, I was informed that I was getting a new patient.  No one likes to get new admits just because its more work and you don't know the baseline of the patient so if anything starts to go wrong, you may not always know right away.  Anyway, I was getting report and the patient sounded pretty straight forward.  He was being admitted for a pulmonary embolism but was stable. Sounded pretty good.  And then they started to tell me about his wife.
The names that this other nurse called the wife were names that I am not going to repeat but they were pretty vulgar.  And I knew instantly I was not going to have much fun with this patient.
The patient arrived on the floor and before they even made it into the room, the wife was carrying on about how "It must be time for your pain meds....I wonder why they haven't given you any yet...They need to hurry up and do their da*n jobs and get you your meds".  Oh so much fun!!!!
I went into the room and introduced myself.  The patient seemed pleasant and began to assess him.  He denied having any pain at the moment.  Of course with no pain, I was not going to give him his pain meds that were not scheduled but instead only as needed.  I began to ask questions and before the patient could even get his answers out, the wife kept interfering.  "No he does not want that.  I don't know why you think he would.  He does not want an advanced directive, he wants to be a full code...he is not going home...I don't care what you say".  Okay...thanks for the peanut gallery but I'm pretty sure I was talking to the patient.
About an hour after being on the floor he was complaining of pain, so I went ahead and gave him 4mg of dilaudid.  He began to rest.  Within 30 minutes, his wife came storming out of his room.  When I asked her what I could do for her, she demanded. "He needs to be moved right now!!!  I want to speak to your manager."  I was a little confused, and asked her what was going on.  "The patient in the other room, has hepatitis and he's coughing and my husband has been getting radiation and is not supposed to be around that.  And you need to get him moved now!!!"  I told her I would do what I could.  (Little side note...the patient on the other side of the room DID NOT have hepatitis and he was not coughing, he was snoring and sleeping like a baby).
I called and found him a private room but it was going to be 1 in the morning before we could get him moved.  The wife was not happy with that and I swear I really thought about slapping her when she rolled her eyes at me...but I was very pleasant and polite.
Another hour passed and his wife came flying out of the room and demanded I go check on him.  When I entered the patient was sleeping, I listened to his lungs and noticed a little bit of wheezing so I got a breathing treatment ordered.  As I was listening to him, he told me he was hurting, so I got him 2 mg more of dilaudid.
After the breathing treatment the patient went back to sleep, and started to have upper respiratory sounding wheezing and loud snoring.  Now this was because of the pain meds and the relaxation of the throat, but the wife was convinced that I was trying to kill him.  Needless to say 1:00 could not come fast enough for me.
At 0230 I was finally able to move the patient to a different floor, but let me tell you that wife wore me out to the point, I was not sure I was going to survive the last 5 hours of my shift.