Some more weird complaints from patients from my last moonlighting shift in the boonies:
Patient 1: Chief complaint of "I think I have forceps coming out of my vagina!" Oh course everyone was cracking up before I went into the room. The patient stated that she had a c section done a year ago. Since then, she had pain and pressure to her lower abdomen. She was convinced the doctors left forceps in her uterus and they were slowly falling out. I did the vag exam, and of course no forceps. But....Before I left the room I got some forceps from the drawer, gooped them withe some jelly, and brought them out of the room with my gloves on. I had a shocked looked on my face and told the nurses, "Look! She really did have forceps in her snatch!" I couldn't hold my laughter for long and they quickly figured out the joke.
Patient 2: Was actually a phone call to the nurses. The person called at 3 am b/c she cut her dogs toenails too much and they were bleeding. She was frantic and didn't know what to do. My nurse told her to call a vet. She said all vets were closed. So my nurse said, "So go to sleep!" and hung up the phone. Greatness
-ER Doc
11 comments:
Ok, Doc, I hate to call you on this but I'm sure for the sake of brevity you cut some details out. Don't tell me that you did this vaginal exam without a nurse chaperone. If you did, then I suggest you change that practice quickly, otherwise, pretty funny stuff.
I used to work at a vet's office, and cornstarch over the bleeding part of the nail stops the bleeding almost immediately. They also sell a special powder (mostly cornstarch) at pet supply stores for the same purpose.
What your nurse should have said, rather than being rude to the caller, is that most areas have emergency veterinary clinics these days and in areas that don't have them, local veterinarians will generally take emergency call.
On the other hand, we get plenty of people calling us ad nauseum with those sorts of problems who won't bring their pets in because they don't want to spend any money. Sorry, but I don't work 15 hour night shifts for my health and no, I won't just give you antibiotics because you've already diagnosed your pet's condition.
Of course i had a chaperone. She was in on the joke. Do you want to know what everyone was wearing too? What about what I had for dinner that night.
-ER Doc
Doc I would be interested in the dinner- I was just thinking today... what is serenity now missing? Recipes!
Don't be such a prick Doc, I know exactly what you had for dinner an "EGO DROP SOUP". I prefaced my question with "I'm sure for the sake of brevity you cut some details out." so a simple "Yes, thank you" would have sufficed.
Maybe you should take up drinking, you're too wound up!
Love it!
Did you ever read post about the man who thought a mouse was biting him in his wife's vagina and he did come out bleeding?
http://erstories.net/archives/69
Also re:second post -off track a bit..but I thought it was neat when our ER doc checked out a dog who had fallen off a cliff with his owner (they were hiking the Appalachian trail)and she actually had the dog brought in to be examined. (She loved dogs) Both patients were treated and released. :)
But....Before I left the room I got some forceps from the drawer, gooped them withe some jelly, and brought them out of the room with my gloves on. I had a shocked looked on my face and told the nurses, "Look! She really did have forceps in her snatch!"
Good One! Ain't nothing better than working with someone with a great sense of humor.
Re: Chaperones It's too bad they are such a necessity to protect the physican. It seems that they (not by their fault) interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and the trust that should be there. That said, i know, especially in an ED, they would be necessary. But i wouldn't want one.
"a great sense of humor" indeed!
If done to the patient, maybe it would have helped the patient feel better as well...
but seriously no, but some witch doctory helps people.
The following is copy and pasted
In 1939, an Italian surgeon named Davide Fieschi invented a new technique for treating angina pectoris (chest pain due to ischaemia or lack of blood/oxygen getting to the heart muscle, usually due to obstruction of the coronary arteries).Reasoning that increased blood flow to the heart would reduce his patients’ pain, he performed tiny incisions in their chests and tied knots on the two internal mammary arteries. Three quarters of the patients showed improvement; one quarter of them was cured. The surgical intervention became standard procedure for the treatment of angina for the next 20 years.
But in 1959, a young cardiologist, Leonard Cobb, put the Fieschi procedure to the test. He operated on 17 patients: on eight of them he followed the standard procedure; on the other nine he performed only the tiny incisions, letting the patients believe that they’d had the real thing. The result was a real upset: those who’d had the sham surgery did as well as those who’d had the Fieschi technique. That was the end of the Fieschi technique and the beginning of the documented surgical placebo effect.
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