ED Patients

You know, the ED is a funny place. You get everything there and some of it is funny and some of it is sad. I haven't had too much funny stuff yet - although the drama coming from one of our patients yesterday was hilarious. He was trying so hard to cry and produce a tear that I was afraid he was going to have a hernia. Then there was the guy who had been in the day before because he fell down the stairs and busted up his face and had to get stitches and then the next day tripped over something and busted his stitches back open. He looked worse than he was because no one had washed off the dried up blood and iodine from his face.

This week, I also had my first crack heart attack patient. She was quite the character when she came in but once we got the pain under control, she was actually quite pleasant. She was about my age and I can't say that I didn't look at her and wonder what went wrong in her life that she ended up there in her 30's having a heart attack from too much cocaine.

I promise I will write about the staff dynamics in a post - they are fascinating. This is a very, very conservative community and the differences from the world I am used to are vast!