” I don’t want these discharge instructions!” ” I want you to change it so it just says about my asthma and head injury!” My response: “Sorry Ma’am, I can’t change the medical record because you don’t want it documented that you were also very intoxicated.” She replied, “How am I gonna show this to […]

New mothers often call EMS and come to the ER for the slightest little thing with their newborn. Coughing a few times, spitting up, “diarrhoea” (soft stool is normal for a newborn), “not breathing”, crying, etc. Some of this can be attributed to poor education of the mother by the L and D […]

One of my colleagues had a difficult drug seeker the other night. She was also morbidly obese - honestly it looked like her dress could double as a tent.  Anyway, she was of Nurse K’s and Monkey Girl’s favourites - a Fibromyalgieur and a Migraineur.  She had not one, not two , but three Fentanyl […]

Wow - two shifts with two interesting cases each! Will miracles never cease!
A. An 89 year old woman comes in with low grade fever (100.7) and left flank pain. Pylo?(UTI that spread to the kidney) Think again. Kidney stone? Nope. Well, she was really tender all over the whole abdomen, was in rapid afib (irregular […]

Yesterday I had not one, but two interesting cases mixed in with all the run-of-the-mill stuff.
A. A woman in her thirties came in for a “cyst in her vagina” - wait, you think, a boring Bartholin’s Abscess? Nope. Rarer. I have never seen one before. A Skene’s Gland Abscess. This entirely unpleasant […]

Ask any ER physician what ranks among the most painful 10 things he or she has to do and I am sure “transfer” ranks up there. Now, some are very lucky and have painless transfer agreements with a nearby academic centre where they basically take everything (especially if you work at a very small community […]

Well, this capped off a busy three day weekend of evening/night shifts. A 14 week pregnant woman came in at 11pm saying that she was “hot” - or more specificially in my awful Spanish, “Caliente in my Cabeza”. Not a headache, not burning skin, not a fever, but that she felt like literally she […]