Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Weird night.

On call last night I got not one, but four, unrelated calls from four different wards on four different patients with four entirely unique medical problems. Every single one of these gentlemen was experiencing. . .

A bleeding penis.

And of course each of the four different nurses prefaced their call with "Hey, doctor, you probably want to come take a look at this."

(For the records, whenever a call starts that way, it will almost indefinitely lead to something I really really don't, thanks for asking, want to take a look at).

Now they each turned out to have four different and perfectly valid excuses for having blood in their urine.

But still. Really weird.

And awkward for me when I received repeat calls that evening:

"Hey doc, it's me the nurse with the patient with the bleeding penis. . ."
Me: "I'm sorry. . . can you describe which bleeding penis you're with?"

2 comments:

PGYx said...

And the future interns among us want to know: What were the four causes? I have my guesses ready!

scopesandsneaks said...

Good question! None terribly exotic (and these are just my guesses based on looking through the charts, they weren't my official patients, I was just cross-covering):

1. hemorrhagic cystitis
2. rhabdomyolysis
3. run of the mill catheter removal related trauma
4. self induced catheter related trauma (he pulled it out, breaking off the tip, and then tried to shove it back in so the nurse wouldn't yell at him).