Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Cold Foot

Funny story from a colleague about a cold foot:

A patient from a neighboring country had a vascular problem with her foot. The prognosis given to her foot was grave, and she wanted a second opinion. Someone from her family recomended our hospital (which again is in another country) as her saving grace. They packed up and got in the car and started to drive. For some odd reason, they put her foot in ice for the drive to "stop the infection from spreading." So they drove, and drove, and drove (passing many large cities and hospitals on the way) for about 20 hours to our hospital....all with the foot in ice. So needless to say when she arrived her foot was hypothermic, black, and dead.

Not much could be done at that point. I guess second opinions can be overrated.

-ER Doc

7 comments:

Gia's Spot said...

Guess you had to be there? Ew.

Gert said...

Who said, "A little information is a dangerous thing"...?

Nancy said...

Dead on arrival, eh?

RehabNurse said...

Doc:

Reminds me of the patient who had a severe foot wound and MD writes in note that patient needs to be evaluated re: amputation due to severity.

Well, patient got real quick, free trip to OR when foot fell off while nurse was trying to fix dressing for appointment.

Me said...

Wow. My husband has Buerger's Disease and in the days before he had his foot whacked off NO ONE ever had to tell me to try to keep that puppy warm. It was just intuitive.

Mark p.s.2 said...

Hope springs eternal
People will keep on hoping, no matter what the odds. For example, I keep buying lottery tickets—hope springs eternal. This expression was coined by Alexander Pope (An Essay on Man, 1732) and quickly became proverbial.

Mark p.s.2 said...

sorry. I forgot to put it in quotes. Its copy and pasted from www.yourdictionary.com