Sunday, May 31, 2009

NPO





NPO stands for "nothing by mouth." Patients are kept NPO before a procedure or if they are very sick incase they are at risk of aspirating their food.

A man came in around midnight with a chief complaint of "I need a chest tube." I asked him how he knew this. He said that he was in a fight that day, and has had bad chest pain and shortness of breath. He went to an urgent care at 10 pm, and they diagnosed him with a pneumothorax (hole in lung). They told him that he needed to go to our trauma hospital to get a tube in his chest to reexpand the lung. I asked him what the delay was....what he was doing for the last 3 hours. He said he knew we weren't going to let him eat before the chest tube, so he went out to have a nice big steak and a few beers before the procedure!

This reminded my attending of an even better story. A man walked into the ER holding his abdomen. It was quickly identified that he had been shot in the stomach. He gave no details, and was taken to the OR emergently. In the OR, they found a hole in his stomach. Visible in the hole was fresh chicken nuggets and fries! When the surgeon asked him about the nuggets post op, the patient said "last time I got shot you guys didn't let me eat for days, so I went to McDonald's before coming here." It takes a tough, dumb mo fo to head to micky dee's being shot in the abdomen.

-ER Doc

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Just when you think people can't be any dumber...there is always one more.
Love your blog!

Mel said...

Clearly the labrador retrievers of the human world. I don't know how the term "dumb animals" made it into the lexicon, since clearly our kind isn't that much ahead.

One Nurse said...

This happens so often. Just like the direct admit that is having a family member drive them to the hospital and are in terrible pain or worse. But hey. . .hospital food is terrible, let's stop for dinner first and then maybe go home for a shower and pack some clothes, computer, cell phone and all the other amenities of home.
Seriously, if it is that bad that you MUST be admitted. . . why not just come straight to the hospital instead of taking several hours to get there?

LivingDeadNurse said...

Hmm..sounds like he really tried to think that out. Sad part is I could see my brother-in-law doing something like that lol...not that my man wouldn't be far behind that...ie the blog i wrote...i'm a nurse not a doctor.

ERP said...

Did they removed the chicken and fries from the stomach?

Me said...

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I love these stories!

Grumpy, M.D. said...

Gotta respect a man who knows what he wants!