Tips from the ER...Follow

I knew if I took the quote out of my sig you would come back.

/wave Dalliance

I've heard some wonderful stories from EMTs and Paramedics. One of my favorites was about finding a car wrecked in the woods, and determining how long it had been there by the larvae growing in the driver's eyeballs.

This just reminded me of a story. The moral is that when you are really injured, sometimes you need to act like it. It seems like ER personel are used to everyone with a serious medical condition to be in a panic and crying and screaming. This can cause some interesting misunderstandings when you hang out with a bunch of friends who *don't* panic in those situations...

We're having a Christmas Eve party with a group of friends doing a gift exchange. Lots of people there into live full steel mideval fighting, so knives, swords and the like are common gifts (in addition to the usual computer games, DVDs, and whatever). One of my friends is checking out his new knife (don't remember what the hell he was doing, but he screwed up) and he ends up slicing his arm and severs the artery. Bloods spurting out, but he clamps some pressure on it, his brother grabs some cloth to use as a bandage, they wrap it up and head off to the ER in someone's car. The wife meanwhile is more concerned about bloodstains on the new carpet (this was their first year in their new home after all).

So... A group of us pile into the car and drive to the ER. We walk in. No one's panicing. It's not like he's going to die or anything. We explain that he's got a bad cut on his arm and needs immediate attention. The nurse there apparently assumed this meant *small* cut. She's handing him forms to fill out. We're calmly explaining that maybe she should get a doctor and that it really is a bad cut. Nope. Gotta fill out the forms and wait in line with the people that apparently don't know how to go to the sudafed isle at the grocery store.

Finally, after about 10 minutes of insistence that she really should take a look at him, she (giving us that "you're bothering me" look) kinda sighs and unwraps the cloths and pulls it away. Blood starts spurting across the ER quite nicely (we'd told her like 10 times that he'd severed his artery, but did she believe us... no...). The look on her face was priceless! Suddenly, she starts panicing and running around calling for a doctor. Needless to say, we didn't have to wait in line anymore.

I just found it amusing seeing the other side of that. The ER staff is pretty used to people thinking their problems are much more severe then they are. Must not get a lot of calm people who really do need immediate attention.

Gbaji, your post reminds me of the time a friend of mine went to the ER with abdominal pain (because his girlfriend made him go).

He's a very calm, stoic person, so he was sitting there forever reading his book while the noisier crowd got pushed ahead of him. When he finally got shown to a room his temp was way up and the pain was pretty bad. Hard to know how far he was from a ruptured appendix, but my guess is, not far at all.

So, she was squashed AND diseased?

given the number of reponses from people who work at hospitals/trauma centers or have had friends in one, i find it hard to believe that there are so few out there that have spent time in them as patients. between a reckless youth and a work related accident(and those can really suck in the military), all i can say is the people working those units kick ***. i definitely would not be around if not for people like them.

Dall, I dont know if the laws are different in your state. Here we have to have a judge sign saying that the patient be under lock and key.

Mmmm...pork chops 'n' apple sauce.

Please tell me it wasn't because he was trying the Hitchcock lighter bet....

Here in Queensland (Australia), the Head Doctor on the shift, can make the call as to whether you stay or leave.
If he thinks you are a threat/danger to yourself or to others, then you will be detained, by force if needed.
We'd detain at least one person a night, more on Fridays and Saturdays.

Dude, that's sick.

I like your way of thinking.

This one happened last night:

This young girl (20 to 25) is brought in around 2am. She is as drunk as a skunk and quiry drug overdose. She's collapsed on the Ambo stretcher, passed out.
The Triage Nurse comes over and wakes her up and whatever she's taken (drugs) kicks in and she starts going off and tries to get off the Ambo stretcher. She's punching and kicking and being a right little *****, so we take her inside to Resus and eventually get her onto one of our trolleys.
She then starts hacking and coughing, like she has a hairball in her throat and after about 20-30 second coughs up a large globb of what we at first think is phlem.
Then we look closer, (there's a lot of it now, on her chin and the side of her mouth) and we're all saying "WTF is it?"
Well the best guess we could make was it was a good amount of "Man Gravy".
Not often we're all grossed out by something, but everyone was a little put off by it.

We spoke to the Ambos, who brought her in and they said they had collected her from outside one of the nightclubs, in the city. Apparently she had been thrown out of the club, because she was caught giving some guy a *******, at the Bar.

Well at least we now know where the "Man Gravy" came from...