Yes, yes, my dear. I know you feel like crap. I know you have been vomiting and having diarrhoea for one and a half hours. I know you may not have felt such misery in all of your 27 years. I know you are having abdominal spasms and that nausea is a horrible feeling. […]

OK, I am at the end of my patience. How I can maintain a straight face and offer positive medical advise when a patient comes in for “Infection in the System” - which in her case is indicated by “one to two months” of electrical shocks in her arms radiating down to her groin. This […]

If you REALLY have no pulse, then you are dead. End of story. Just because you can’t FEEL your radial pulse (which was her chief complaint), are not passing out or at least severely lightheaded, then it is not really a problem. Except of course that you are very obese and perhaps that is […]

This is a brief rant about a thing that totally annoys the crap out of me about my job. One word. Telemetry. No, not the telemetry beds that patients go to when they have cardiac issues, I am talking about the telemetry where paramedics have to call the ER and we as docs have to […]

This is something most people would assume was coming from the ER staff directed towards the growing volume of non-English speaking patients - and usually you would be right. However this is something a little different. We recently have had to sit through an epically painful series of “Team Building” exercises where we “learn” how […]

Usually not -unless accompanied by fever, severe tenderness, jaundice, or other serious accompanying symptoms. Once and a while we see a big breast abscess or a fungating cancer that has been ignored for ages but most are just overly anxious women who suddenly discover something and need referral for a mammogram or ultrasound. […]

Another case that makes you pause. In fact, I am still baffled by this one. About two weeks ago I had a patient who was a 16 year old female -no medical history but was sexually active. She presented with a few days of nonspecific abdominal pain. Nausea, no vomiting. No fever. She was also, […]