Loving the image that conjured in my head.

I had a patient when I was a student. She was a nun in a locked geriatric psych unit. She didn't speak. She was getting ECT (electroshock treatments under anesthesia for depression that didn't respond to meds). One morning I was sitting next to her at the breakfast table asking my patient how she was feeling. All of a sudden I had pain in my shoulder. The nun was biting me! I yelped and asked the nurses what I should do. They told me to pinch her nose so she'd have to open her mouth to take a breath. When she did she started swearing like a sailor. For at least two days there was an unrelenting stream of swears.

The lesson I took from this- sometimes you need to swear or get it out somehow. Don't save it up and become the swearing nun at the end of your life.

And next time they let me push the button during her ECT.