My First Patient

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 [...]

Best Nursing Award!

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 [...]

Extreme Lab Values – What is your “all time best”?

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? [...]

Be Careful with Epi-Pens

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 [...]

Painful? You want Painful?!?!?

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 [...]

What will they Think up Next?

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 [...]

The Paradox of Emergency Medicine

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 [...]

Alcohol or Drug Addiction?

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