Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Am I the Only One That Worries?
Thursday, May 8, 2008
What were you taking this medicine for?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Things people have put in their ass that they probably shouldn't have...
I understand that people need to do things to spice up their sex lives, but I'm still amazed at things people stick up their butts. Most of the time, these items are so large that patient's have to go to the operating room to have them removed. While plain old vibrators are the most common "foreign body" I've seen, it's always interesting when they're the battery operated kind and are still on... You can hear the hum when you walk in the room, and the vibration travels nicely through the soft tissues of the abdomen to the abdominal wall. I also love the x-rays that show a perfectly focused abdominal x-ray with the blurry phallus in the middle...
I also had a guy come in with a cordless phone inserted antenna down... Yes, an actual cordless phone with the thick plastic kind of antenna that's attached (not the telescoping metal kind)...
Then there was the "ship in a bottle!" That one was unique. It was a small ship-in-a-bottle, but a ship-in-a-bottle none the less! It was made of blown glass, and the ship inside was blown glass, too. You could actually make it out on the x-ray which was pretty funny.
One other that stands out as unique, was "3-potatoes-in-a-condom." They weren't Idaho bakers, or anything like that... they were more like New Potatoes (you know, the smaller kind)... But, they were potatoes. And, there were 3 of them. They were all inside a condom, tied at the end into a knot so none of them would fall out.
These cases are hard... they are very funny in a sick sort of ER humor kind of way. The key is to laugh after the patient has left the emergency room...
I've come up with some VERY simple rules that everyone should follow in case they get an urge to shove something up their ass in the heat of the moment...
1. DON'T use anything thicker than the largest crap you've ever produced in your life.
2. DON'T use anything with sharp or jagged edges.
3. DON'T use anything that has the potential to break or shatter into little bits that are sharp or have jagged edges.
4. DO use something that has a base that is quite larger than the diameter of whatever it is you're shoving up your ass.
5. DO use LOTS of lube.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
This is NOT McDonald's...
"Chief Complaints" I hate to see, Part 1: Fall from standing.
- Broken hips lead to deep vein thromboses that progress to pulmonary embolisms
- Rib fractures or rib contusions rapidly progress to pneumonia; and full blown pneumonia in the elderly is never a good thing
- Intracranial bleeding is never a good thing in any patient, but in the elderly usually leads to permanent impairment
Monday, October 22, 2007
EMTALA
Friday, October 19, 2007
One complaint per customer, please...
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Another reason to not be an alcoholic...
I've been at this for a while, and have never seen someone hemorrhage so much from their varices. For the unitiated, varices are like hemorrhoids, but are at the bottom of your esophagus instead of in your anus... They're the end result of years of hard drinking.
For such a new blog, this is my second GI Bleeding post, but this one was even more impressive than the last one.
The man came in in cardiac arrest, and we were able to resuscitate him and get a pulse back. The paramedics told us that he had been vomiting blood at home, so we inserted a naso-gastric tube to wash out his stomach and see. After inserting the tube, we started to suction buckets of blood out of him and had to start a massive transfusion protocol. After suctioning out over 5 liters of blood, and transfusing over 20 units of blood, the surgeons were considering taking him to the OR and the GI doctors were considering getting out of bed to come see the patient; we decided to use a Sengstaken-Blakemore tube, to try to staunch the flow of blood. Follow the link to see the diagram of how to insert one of these tubes. It's an elaborate set up and not done very often--- at least not at our institution. The tube has to be tied to a football helmet to keep tension on it. You blow up a balloon at the end of the tube and pull it back so it puts pressure on the junction between the stomach and the esophagus. Then you blow up a balloon that runs along the length of the tube within the esophagus to tamponade the bleeding.
He ended up getting 54 units of blood while he was in the ER. There were a lot of doctors and nurses working furiously to try to save this guy's life. The surgeons took him to the OR, but couldnt find the source of bleeding, so he ended up getting a TIPS procedure by the interventional radiologists.
He died shortly after the procedure; but not for our lack of trying to save him...
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The exploding colostomy bag...
This patient showed up in the ER the other day... came in by ambulance. Apparently he called 911 because his colostomy bag exploded. On further investigation, I found out that not only does the guy have a colostomy, but is HIV positive, is homeless, and recently moved into the area from another city in the state. I also found out that this was not his first visit to our hospital. He'd been here almost twice a week for the past several weeks, and the nurses all knew him well already. I'd been away for a while, so he was new to me... He was also showing up at other emergency departments in the area as well; all for his exploding colostomy bags...
The thing about colostomy bags is that they tend to fill up with shit and need to be emptied once in a while...
Just like a water balloon; if you let them fill up, they tend to explode. Now picture a bag attached to your body, over-filled with shit to the point where it explodes... Now you can imagine what this guy looked like.
The nurses went in to get him cleaned up, and I started to do what I needed to do to get this guy taken care of. When they were done wiping the large clumps of shit off his body, we were going to get him to the decon room to let him take a shower. He was new to town, and hadn't been "plugged in" to our HIV clinic; so I called the social worker to come see him and get him an appointment. I called the general surgeon, so I could get him an appointment in the surgery clinic to evaluate his colostomy for possible reversal, and I called the ostomy nurse to come see him and teach him how to care for his ostomy site and to get him some bags so he wouldn't let them explode on himself anymore...
Unfortunately, once the nurses wiped most of the shit off of him, they attached a clean colostomy bag to his ostomy site, and with that, he wanted to go "home." They came to get me to intervene, and I asked him why he wanted to leave? He said that all he needed was a new bag and he was ready to go. I explained to him, again, all the things we had in the works for him... shower, social worker, ostomy nurse, a supply of bags, the surgery clinic appointment... He said he didnt' need any of that and he just needed to go.
Then I realized it... He didn't want our help. He just wanted to keep calling 911 when his colostomy bag exploded and have them bring him to us to clean the shit off of him and give him a new bag.
So I told him, very calmly I might add, that it wasn't appropriate for him to just leave. I said, "You're still covered in shit, we just were able to wipe most of it off. There's still shit underneath your fingernails... and we're trying to get you over to the shower." He was still in bed butt-naked with just a sheet over him. "I've got the Social Worker on her way to see you and the Ostomy Nurse is on her way to see you, too. We're trying to get you clinic appointments so that we can take care of you."
"I don't need any of that," he said. "Just get me out of here." So, I told him that was fine; we couldn't force him to do anything he didn't want done, and he was certainly welcome to leave. I also told him he was welcome to leave butt-naked and without the new colostomy bag, at which point he went ballistic.
He screamed at me in a high shrilly voice, jumped up out of bed and started running out the door crying... Naked. Except for his colostomy bag.
The nurses didn't know what to do... I told them to let him go. The police outside would certainly stop him, so he really wasn't going anywhere. Can't have a homeless man running around the city naked with an exploding colostomy bag.
I don't think it's appropriate for us to continue to enable this man's behaviour. He's taxing the EMS system by calling them for a non-emergency, and he's wasting the time of the Emeregency Department staff and the hospital's resources when there is appropriate outpatient care readily available.
The nurses eventually caught up with him and gave him a hospital gown... He left with the hospital gown and the new colostomy bag.
He'll be back when it explodes...