Things I Learn From My Patients

I work in a rehab facility (medical, not substance abuse), and I learned that pouring Jack Daniels into your peg tube is more fun than pouring beer into it, but will elicit the same response from the nurse on duty.

Theresa

It would be unlikely that the peds ED would have anything like formula to feed your 3 mo/o baby, so it's best to just go ahead and put Sprite in his bottle to wash down those graham crackers you're feeding him.

If you are high on PCP and bite off your girlfriend's clitoris during sex, make sure to bite off your own thumb. This will somehow make everything all better.


If your Dad had a stroke, make sure to wait three days before calling 911, and then yell at the EMS crew for not driving fast enough to the ER.

39 year old with a heart block recently had a pacemaker inplanted, grabs 1800.00 dollars from a wallmart manager and takes off running. The cops spot him and start to chase him...after a about 2 blocks the speedy cardiac patient gets lightheaded and "falls out" cracking open his forehead and scattering money all over the street.

shookwell said:

If you are high on PCP and bite off your girlfriend's clitoris during sex, make sure to bite off your own thumb. This will somehow make everything all better.

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I just crossed my legs in sympathy. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

I may never have sex again.....holy Mother of God!

shookwell said:

If you are high on PCP and bite off your girlfriend's clitoris during sex, make sure to bite off your own thumb. This will somehow make everything all better.

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Ok. The internet is over... everyone just go home.

Depakote said:

Ok. The internet is over... everyone just go home.

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lmao!

1.) Always call 911 when you stub your toe. There are no emergent issues needing to be attended to at the present time. No one is dying from an acute MI, pulmonary edema or throwing a clot.

2.) Paramedics enjoy it when you call them 'ambulance driver'.

3.) Always call the ambulance 'taxi'.


Great thread by the way.

If you are a crackhead in an alley, that busted television would indeed make an excellent makeshift toilet. When you get to the ED, run around pulling down your pants to excitedly show everyone the deep laceration you received on your *** by sitting on the fragmented screen.

nerual said:

If you are a crackhead in an alley, that busted television would indeed make an excellent makeshift toilet. When you get to the ED, run around pulling down your pants to excitedly show everyone the deep laceration you received on your *** by sitting on the fragmented screen.

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Poor guy or gal. Just aren't enough good places to poo these days!

shookwell said:

If your Dad had a stroke, make sure to wait three days before calling 911, and then yell at the EMS crew for not driving fast enough to the ER.

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Beautiful

Napoleon goes to UCLA

off topic but thought it might work in this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=824jKlz1R_Y

If you decide you must be in a vehicle with a drunk driver, always be the drunk driver. This person will be wandering around the scene and ED being a royal pain in everyone's butt while the friends/wife/children/complete strangers involved are mangled six ways from Sunday.

nerual said:

If you decide you must be in a vehicle with a drunk driver, always be the drunk driver. This person will be wandering around the scene and ED being a royal pain in everyone's butt while the friends/wife/children/complete strangers involved are mangled six ways from Sunday.

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You know I always wondered on the indestructibility of crack heads and drunks. Why do they get up and walk away from a 10 car MVA but everyone else dies of multiple trauma?

Alcoholics and Crack Heads = Real crash test dummies.

Eddie said:

You know I always wondered on the indestructibility of crack heads and drunks. Why do they get up and walk away from a 10 car MVA but everyone else dies of multiple trauma?

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You have just verbalized the "law of inverse value" - the less you offer society, the bigger the physical insult you can tolerate with no permanent damage.

Very early on in this thread, DocB endorsed the law, as he told the story of one of these people hit in the head with a 2X4, and the guy was dead. He (DocB) was looking for something - anything - else, because these people just don't die.

Here is the post to which I refer.

I, too, now believe in this law. Madness! lol

I guess if I become a booze hound and wander around yelling into the vast nothingness, I'll live forever!

Here's something apropo:

http://www.xkcd.com/236/

emedpa said:

no, the moral of the story is only have sex with folks with 2 thumbs.....

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Good point!

Still makes me cringe.....

Sweet mother of God. ... ... I HAVE FINISHED!

I just finished reading all 46 pages of posts. It took me over a month.

Okay, NOW I can finally start posting some of my own. I didn't want to add any till I'd caught up. So... in no particular order...

If you're drunk as **** and a cop pulls you over on a bridge, cuffs you up, and sits you down in the cruiser (but neglects to close the door) while he goes to get your friend... be sure to remember that you are, in fact, STILL ON A BRIDGE. This is not the time to think that the little 3 foot cement wall is the only thing between you and sweet, delicious freedom. Cause it's not. It's what separates you from a black abyss measuring 60 feet and ending in a freezing cold, deep, river. Since it's night time, you're drunk, you just fell 60 feet onto what essentially amounts to cement as far as your body is concerned and your hands are still cuffed behind your back... you will have succeeded in escaping the police. Forever. ... They will eventually drag your body out of the river a few days later.

If you're a chic that's been smoking a lot of weed, doing coke, and drinking, and the bouncer tells you to leave cause you're causing problems... you should resist. A lot. When he tosses your 110 lb *** over his shoulder and deposits you outside without hurting you at all, you should thank him by spitting in his face. His girlfriend, whose standing outside, will then immediately pick up a brick and hit you in the face with it. When I show up to take you to the ER, you should tell me I'm an angel and try to touch my face with your God-knows-what-diseased bloody hands. I'll appreciate it.

When you're a 55 year old veteran having crushing chest pains and you pull over to the side of the road and call an ambulance... don't wait for us to get there... it took us 4 entire minutes to arrive on scene. But that's too long. You should make the smart choice: decide you need to be treated at the VA hospital that's 30 miles away and hop back in your car before we get to you. Use the interstate. During rush hour. ... You'd better hustle.

Bet someone else up the interstate was getting a 911 call 10 minutes later.

If you're whacked out of your f*cking mind on PCP and in a detention center, you should attack the cops. They like it. They'll reciprocrate by hog tying you with your hands bound behind your back to your feet. Since it's impossible for you to do anything about it... be creative. Like smashing your face onto the ground until you've got a good deal of blood going, and then spit mouthfuls of said blood at the cops. When I get there, be sure to scream at the top of your lungs (in between the spitting of course): "LET ME GO!! LET ME F*CKING GO!!"

Although, honestly, I gotta admit it... that takes a creative mind.

The cops just put this little hoodie with mesh covering over his face so he just ended up spitting onto himself after that.

So this is just a story to tell how sue-happy the world is.

Mugger asks girl for billfold. Girl hits mugger. Ends up breaking his nose. Mugger sues girl for breaking his nose. Videotape from parking lot excused the girl from the charges. The end.

... with a piece of rusty barbed wire ...

Next person, continue on.

personally, I would appreciate the irony if he was mugged by his own client after this venture.

Chronic Student said:

... with a piece of rusty barbed wire ...

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prior to being dragged naked behind stampeding elephants...

I saw a great extremity trauma lecture today...

What I learned:

If you're going to shoot yourself in the heart with a 30-ought-6, be sure to shoot your wife first. This will eliminate any doubts about your contributions to society and ensure your survival. You will somehow manage to miss your chest and hit your arm completely shattering your humerus into countless tiny pieces. Not a single one of which will nick the major vessels in your arm.

A steel rod and skin flap later, you'll be able to go to jail.

When you find you're short on things to masturbate with, try a cucumber. Then, when it becomes lodged in your vagina, tell the doc you were sitting on a chair above a bowl of vegetables, the chair broke, and you "fell" on the bowl.

If you only knew how many innocent people climb on ladders, naked and then fall on beer bottles, shampoo bottles, their friends vibrators, fruit and vegetable plates, turkey basters, hot wheels, small animals, gumballs, army men, pens, cooking utensils, etc. and are seriously injured you would not be so cavalier about it.

These poor folks were just minding their own business when these 'freak' accidents happen.

Chronic Student said:

If you only knew how many innocent people climb on ladders, naked and then fall on beer bottles, shampoo bottles, their friends vibrators, fruit and vegetable plates, turkey basters, hot wheels, small animals, gumballs, army men, pens, cooking utensils, etc. and are seriously injured you would not be so cavalier about it.

These poor folks were just minding their own business when these 'freak' accidents happen.

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You forgot light bulbs.

Hi! I'm new to SDN, and this is my first post... I thought it would be appropriate to post here, since I have been reading this thread for a long time.

I work in an ER as a volunteer, so here are my contributions:

Always wrap up your small child with a fever in three layers of clothing, the winter coat, and two blankets while sitting in the waiting room. That won't make the fever go up. Not at all.

Definitely wait until AFTER the football game (not even a SuperBowl game) to bring in your sick family member with pneumonia.

When you bring in your child with a "Very High Fever" hat suddenly resolves itself in triage, then let him or her eat a bag of Doritos and two Snickers bars, feel free to yell at the nurse/techvolunteer who comes to bring you back to an exam room because its been such a long wait and the child who just came in coughing up blood got to go ahead of you. This will surely make the situation better.

If you're shopping for groceries and some random drunk guy decides to "toss" a pint of Haagen Dazs to his equally drunk buddy, make sure you DON'T move out of the line of fire. If you do, he will somehow manage to hit you in the head with the ice cream, knocking you out, sending you to the ED with a concussion.

(This happened several years ago to a coworker of mine. The ED doc apologized to her, but he practically laughed his a** off when she related her story to him.)

docB said:

You're right. We should form a foundation to support these poor unfortuantes. The motto could be "You wouldn't believe it doc!"

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I would love to see the lapel pin for that group.

Depakote said:

I would love to see the lapel pin for that group.

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Perhaps crossed beer bottles? A gerbil holding a cucumber? Or maybe just another ribbon?

Isn't there somewhere more appropriate for the pin than the lapel?

Chronic Student said:

If you only knew how many innocent people climb on ladders, naked and then fall on beer bottles, shampoo bottles, their friends vibrators, fruit and vegetable plates, turkey basters, hot wheels, small animals, gumballs, army men, pens, cooking utensils, etc. and are seriously injured you would not be so cavalier about it.

These poor folks were just minding their own business when these 'freak' accidents happen.

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Fair enough. So here's my question - does it ever get old?

Finally done reading through this thread, and now for my contributions:

I have learned that PCP not only makes you THINK you are superman, but you may actually BECOME superman. Although, this may just fall under the law of inverse value. 2 patients, within a week of each other, both came in after 5 story falls while high on PCP, and both surviving only with the expected ortho injuries. One, however, did get up and try to run again as per Police/EMS.

I have also learned that if you are a malingerer and have the high-five, the medical student drawing your blood and placing an IV will not appreciate it when you pull the IV cath out and wildly flail your arm around, dousing the bed, walls, curtain, and yes the medical student with said infected blood.

Finally, Demerol may not treat the pain of Chronic LBP, but news of admission will. Had a patient come in for discogenic pain (with the MRI report from 5 years ago that she shoved in the face of anyone who came near her) and screaming about how her pain needed to be treated. Got Demerol x2, and was still screaming about her pain, and how we don't treat it right, and threatening to go to another hospital down the street (oh, please don't). Tried to get up and go to the bathroom herself, only to throw herself onto the floor 2 feet from her bed. IV came out, and refused to have the IV placed in her upper extremities due to her "bad kidneys". (Ok, but the veins in your legs are ok, wtf?). Got a 24 in her foot, and got the 3rd demerol in. Medicine comes down, and tells her where she will be admitted. Starts yelling, "Oh no, I told them I would get admitted anywhere but that floor!" Signs out AMA and almost runs out of the ED.

Oh yeah, almost forgot,

I learned that you can cure "chest pain" in alcoholics with a sandwich. (I know, it's been said before on here.) I just had to repeat my favorite line ever said to me in the ED:

"I don't need no mo'f***ing IV, I just need a sandwich!"

Luckily, as a 4th year medical student, I was able to cure him.

Here's another one:

If you go to a party on Saturday night and get REALLY drunk, and eventually notice that you have a terrible headache and are bleeding from the back of the head, wait two days to come in to the ED. When the doctor tells you you didn't hit you head, but you were actually SHOT, definitely tell him that that is impossible and he's "got it all wrong." Then, be offended when the nurse on the floor you are admitted to hands you a brochure about alcohol abuse.

(true story)

Drawing Dead said:

I have also learned that if you are a malingerer and have the high-five, the medical student drawing your blood and placing an IV will not appreciate it when you pull the IV cath out and wildly flail your arm around, dousing the bed, walls, curtain, and yes the medical student with said infected blood.

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I have to honestly say I've never heard that one before, but I love it!

Now I should get out in the world more to learn more medical terminology.