Kooks

I recently took care of two interesting cases that came from the jail on the same night. You never know […]

This is transcribed exactly from a paper a patient handed me when asked about allergies. I didn’t have time to

A 47-year-old man came in with so many complaints that, after I listed them, there was no more space to

We all search for patterns in life. It is the way our brains allow us to navigate this crazy, complicated

The medics brought in a middle-aged woman who was in cardiac arrest. Her husband had found her down and called

Last week I posted about a woman so obese she couldn’t be taken out of the ambulance to try to

A 56-year-old lady went down on the floor at home and was unable to get up because she had injured

Last week we did crazy teen drivers. Here are some more crazy car stories. Crushed by Daughter A 44-year-old man

How Did You Do That? Several teenagers were brought in for evaluation after a car crash. When I asked the

Fair warning: not G-rated. My patient of the week was a sixty-five-year-old man. He was thin and disheveled. Though it was

A 31-year-old woman was brought in by police on a psychiatric hold. In such cases, the police officer writes out

Here are two stories where someone really needed to call 911 immediately. Get Cleaned Up for the Paramedics A 71-year-old

How to Stay Skinny Mr. Alvarez was forty-seven. He came in right at the first of my shift with confusion

In my job, I get to see the good and bad side of most everything in life. Pregnancy is so

Like Father, Like Son Two trauma patients came in from the same accident. Both were driving cars that ran head-on

I look at myself as being culturally sensitive as a result of being exposed to many different cultures, especially while

A young man was seen by a state trouper to be weaving on the road. When the trouper tried to

When I got to work at 11:00 PM, I was greeted by loud screams coming from two women recently arrived

About four o’clock in the morning, the ring down from the medics came in as “vomiting blood.” Though vomiting blood

A part of medical evaluation in the emergency department is assessing what color a person is. I am not talking

Here are three true stories about something that happened to the patient before he or she arrived in the emergency

A young adult man came in as a trauma alert. He was very drunk and obviously injured. The alcohol-induced lack

One of the main jobs I have in running the emergency department is what we call “disposition.” That means getting

About 4:30 in the morning, I heard an overhead announcement, “Help at triage for a patient to Labor and Delivery,

A seventy-four-year-old woman was brought to the ED by her daughter. I approached them and introduced myself. The patient didn’t

Backed Over by a Good Samaritan A 62-year-old lady was lying in the road in the middle of the night.

About 4:00 in the morning, the paramedics brought in a twenty-six-year-old man who had been beaten by bouncers who kicked

A twenty-six-year-old man with mental problems was taken by his family to emergency psychiatry. Before they could get him inside,

I work in a place where we may see patients from almost anywhere in the world. This richness in humanity

I wanted to share with you all an amazing medical story that hit close to home for me, though I