A 37 year old alcoholic female was admitted to an outside hospital 2 days ago due to alcohol poisoning. She was being transferred today to a rehab facility. She was going voluntarily.For whatever reason....and I have no reason why...the outside hospital transferred her by private vehicle. This means that instead of being transferred by an ambulance service, her husband was able to take her in his car.
Well, he decided to stop for gas. She went inside, and when she came out, he noticed she was completely trashed.
She downed some wine and 12 ounces of HAND SANITIZER. Hand sanitizer has an extremely high concentration of alcohol.
She said she did it because she wanted to get drunk "one more time before detox."
Her alcohol came back greater than 450, she continued to get more and more obtunded, and eventually required being put on a mechanical ventilator.
Some people.
-ER Doc
12 comments:
I heard a recent fad of kids drinking shots of hand sanitizer to get a buzz. Well when that runs out they can hit the parents fondue sterno.
Is she ever going to get her brain back? I'm curious.
At the VA they had enough patients hitting the sauce that they changed from gel hand sanitizers to foam. The things folks will do to feed their addictions are pretty sad.
Yes, my hospital also had to remove the hand sanitizer from rooms for this reason.
I cannot imagine being that desperate for a buzz that I'd drink Purell. That stuff just looks like it would taste like crap. :P
Melissa - I always imagined hand sanitizer would taste like Everclear (oh, the things I drank in college...)
It's a problem in UK hospitals: central european economic immigrants (amongst others) call 999 to get taken to the emergency department to get their fix of alcohol. In the form of the hand rub stuff that hangs outside every ward/department for the general public to disinfect their hands before entering.
Well that's where it should be - except it's been drunk! Makes you wonder what some of their local vodkas taste like.
Just. Plain. Sad
And that's addiction. And all it is.
I rememrber my dad telling me a story when he was an Intern in the early 60's in North Carolina that a guy came in wasted from drinking shoe polish. When asked why he did it, he said "well, I gotta drink somethin'!"
When I was a student working on a psych unit, I was told that there was no hand sanitizer on the unit because patients would drink it. We had to unlock a drawer to get sanitizer to clean our hands.
-OT
I knew a guy who drank After Shave & mouth wash. We had to hide any prefume we had... wonder if he's still alive...
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