Ammonia cures all

So I'm sitting here watching house and a scene comes on where the doctors are checking a patients level of consciousness  (they've suddenly gone unconscious). They place a pen cross-wise against the patients finger and bend as hard as humanly possible. Try this on yourself. It hurts like hell. This scene reminds me of an inmate patient we had. I'm walking down the back hall and all of a sudden the people near the room say, "Nurse Nurse!! Come check on him, he just slumped over!" So I go by and said patient is slumped over in the bed, I rock his shoulders to try to arouse him. Nothing. Next, I do a sternal rub, nothing. I'm looking at the monitor, HR is normal, SpO2 is normal, BP is normal, Pleth shows good wave form, what the heck?!

So I yell at his nurse to come look at him. He comes over and does other various painful maneuvers to try to arouse him. Nothing! So we get the dr, who asks us to bring 2 packets of ammonia. The doctor then tries to arouse him with similar techniques and no response. I'm puzzled, what is going on? Did the patient have stroke? Did he go in a coma? Next the doctor places a rebreather mask on the patient without oxygen. The nurse comes in and has the 2 ammonia sticks. The doctor orders her to break them in half and he places them both inside the mask.

An entire minute goes by with no response. I'm standing there puzzled, what is going on? Then I noticed that there was no longer steam in the mask from his breathing. He begins to cough and choke. Vomit is spewing out and he's thoroughly pissed.

The doctors walks out laughing. What is going on? I ask him, so what does that mean? He says, "he's full of shit and faking."

Ooh.

I seriously was dooped. I felt stupid, I had fallen for a patients attempt to be "unconscious" and avoid going back to the prison. Honestly, I felt I was more seasoned than this. I retold this story to a professor of mine who is an ER nurse and a psych nurse. She explained that yes, I had fallen for an age old trick, but that I would never fall for it again. I just thought this was funny. Next time an inmate wants a trip out of the prison, they're gonna have to hold their breath for a lot longer than 1 minute.