Category: Kooks

Ride Motorcycles, Not Fences A 27-year-old man lost control of his motorcycle and ran up against a three-foot-tall chain link fence. He was brought in by ambulance complaining of severe groin pain from having been dragged along the top of the fence. The medics reported that his testicle had been amputated. They said they picked…

Here is a guitar that was left in the emergency department by some patient.  

Customer Service 2 Last week, I posted about a man who complained to Customer Service after being refused intravenous morphine. Today I will share with you another noteworthy complaint. A middle-aged woman came to the emergency department with many complaints. From the time she arrived, the staff found her to be difficult to deal with.…

I went into medicine to help people. Emergency medicine gives me a lot of opportunities to do this and relieving pain is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Usually, making pain go away makes patients happy. Making patients happy is more and more an important part of medicine. Hospitals survey patients and…

My patient was a 34-year-old man who was brought in by ambulance after having a seizure. He was confused and not able to tell us what had happened. A while later, the wife arrived and said the patient woke up in the middle of the night, as he was prone to doing lately. She said…

Call for a Ride Home A man was seen in the emergency department and discharged. As he walked out, he went to the triage nurse and asked for a taxi voucher for a ride home. When she told him that would not be possible, he went to the phone, called the AT&T operator and asked…

Ete was a five-year-old boy. At 2:00 in the morning, he woke up screaming with pain from a headache. Mom gave him Tylenol but he was not able to go back to sleep. By the time I saw him, he had suffered with headache for almost twenty-four hours. His vital signs were normal and he…

As Edna was waiting for her bed upstairs, I sat down and talked with her for a minute. First, we talked about her medical condition and what she was to expect once she was admitted to the hospital. We then wandered into a more general conversation. I asked her how long she had been coming…

Lucky or Unlucky? A 16-year-old girl was flown in by helicopter after being shot in the chest. The bullet went down trough her lung, diaphragm, spleen and a rib. It ended up just under the skin of her flank. She needed an operation and would have a tough time recovering but, when you think of…

A 14-year-old was brought in by ambulance after having given birth at home. She was 35 weeks pregnant and had received no prenatal care. She had given birth to her first child approximately nine months earlier. On the evening of the delivery she went outside to get some fresh air. She felt the baby kick…