My post the other day about “extremes” reminded me of my first patient I ever had as a doctor (not including those I had as a med student, this was my first patient my first day of internship). I got sign out from a relieved soon-to-be ex-intern who was glad to get rid of […]

The other day we had a guy who was in a car accident and had a broken sternum and two broken spinal vertebrae (luckily not very serious). He just so happened to be gay and had a VERY anxious, obnoxious, and annoying partner who was hovering over him the whole time. This partner happened to […]

OK, so everyone in medicine seems to revel in extremes. This seems especially true when one talks about lab values. Docs and RN’s seem to always want to one-up each other about extremes of lab values. So here are my most extreme (as officially reported by the lab). What are yours? […]

Epi-pens are used by patients who have severe allergies (anaphylaxis) to food or bee-stings and can be life-saving. To use one, one only needs to take the cap off, and then forcefully stab into their thigh (it has a device to prevent it from going in too deep). It is a potent vaso-constrictor […]

The ads for all the erectile dysfunction pills (like Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra) say “seek medical attention if you have an erection lasting for more than 4 hours”. Called priapism, this is a potentially serious medical condition. Often occurring in men with Sickle Cell Anaemia (of the trait) due to the abnormal shape of the […]

Just when it seems that I have heard or conceived of every possible sexual paraphilia, I hear about or have a patient who performs another one. Yesterday a urologist who was doing a consult in the ER told me of his days of being a resident in a big, inner city hospital. The […]

Lay people are often surprised when I tell them about how Emergency Medicine and ER docs are viewed by the rest of the medical community. This is what I call the paradox of the ER. The rest of the world thinks we (ER docs and RN’s) are really exciting, cool, and usually good looking people […]