Unclear on the concept part 10,000

I see a patient at 3:17 am. She's been sitting in the waiting room less than 23 minutes, which is the equivalent of a minor miracle in an urban emergency department on a Saturday night.

"Wow. Took you long enough. I got a situation here."

I ignore this.

"An urgent situation. My boyfriend's wife (managing to make this word sound like a weird necrotizing fungal infection) is claiming that I gave him trichomonomas (I'm guessing she means trichomonas?). I need you to test me for it. But I can't wait for the results, I got to get to work, so when you get them just call her and him and tell them that I'm clean. And hurry up please."

Sometimes the trouble with the emergency department is that the patients are allowed to come up with their own definition of emergency.

(She was clean, surprisingly. No I did not call the boyfriend. Or his wife. Patient confidentiality, I respect it.)

Another one . . .

. . for the list of things I didn't realize I needed to be worried about.

Called to one of our shock rooms for a woman in profound shock due to vaginal bleeding.

We started fluids, ordered blood, called Ob-gyn and then asked her how long the bleeding had been going on.

-1 hour.

Have you ever had bleeding before?

-Never.

What were you doing when it started?

-Sex.

Any foreign objects. Toys?

-Just normal sex.

So we stuck in a speculum to take a look.

She had a 3 cm laceration through the wall of her vagina.

Yes. Her boyfriend . . . popped her vagina.

She ended up going straight to the OR.

The even scarier part?

When I went to find the staff physician to let him know about the patient, he wasn't at all shocked. "Oh yeah," he said, "we saw the same thing two weeks ago."

This happens???

Oh no!

You know it's a Saturday night when not one, but three, of your patients are arrested while under your care in the emergency department.

For the record: screaming "fuck the cops!" while displaying your kill the police tattoo as you walk by the, well, cops, sitting at the security desk, intentionally peeing on your nurse (twice), and trying to hump an ultrasound machine, all poor ways to pass the time while you're waiting for your doctor.

Well there goes that

I spent a good hour and a half throwing two layers of stitches into the head of a borderline white supremacist ("I don't think I hate black people or Jews, I just don't really know any or want to"). I passed the time by trying my best to make neutral conversation with his "third and final baby-mama," as he introduced her to me.

This snipped of conversation pretty much changed the destiny of my unborn child.

Baby-mama 3: What are you thinking of naming your baby?

Me, reluctantly: common boy name

BM3: No!! No way!!! That's what my first baby-daddy is named and he always locked up. He been locked up like 3 times in the past year. Don't choose that name.

Yup, back to babynames.com I go.

Emergency! of the day

"I had a blood test a few months ago that was abnormal and they told me I need to get it checked again. I called my doctor and he can't get me in until April so I came to the Emergency! department to get it checked today. Oh, and I'm in a hurry today, I can't wait for the results. Can you just call me when they come back?"

Someone was born under a lucky star

We had a young electrical worker in the department a few days ago who was shocked across the chest with over 7,000 volts of electricity while working up in a bucket on some power lines.

He came in sitting up in the stretcher, talking, making jokes. His chief complaint was "it feels like my insides are being microwaved." Being very detail-oriented, he later adjusted this to "it feels like I ate a huge bowl of spicy chilli" (admitting that he'd never had his insides microwaved so couldn't be entirely sure that was accurate).

He ended up having no complications other than some skin burns, but we all kept nervously walking by his room waiting for his heart to stop or his spleen to explode or something.

Lucky, lucky, lucky man.

The cell phone in his breast pocket was still working too.

His shirt was singed to pieces.

Amazing

49 year old gentlewoman presented around 3am this morning with the following symptoms:

-runny nose

-scratchy throat

-dry cough

Duration? 3-4 days

Sick contacts? Husband and kids with similar symptoms

Fever? Nausea? Stomach pain? Headaches? Any other complaints? Negative times five.

"Doctor, I've been to Other-Emergency-Department three times in the past three days and they told me there's nothing wrong and nothing I can do. I've just got to know what's wrong with me! What could this possibly be? I won't leave until I have an answer and something to make it go away!"

49 years of life and three kids and apparently she has never experienced the common cold before.

This may just be a true medical miracle.

Outcome? Luckily she was duly impressed by the diagnosis "viral upper respiratory tract infection" and some saline nose drops.

I'm not sure if I find this more incredible or the 29 year old who came in a few weeks ago with a chief complaint of "vaginal bleeding" one day before her period was due (it can't be my period, something else must be bleeding in me, my period isn't due until tomorrow).

Be afraid

More things that happened to innocent people who were "just minding their own business" last night:

1. Sucker punched in the face with brass knuckles

2. Knocked down and kicked repeatedly by four men

3. "Arm started swelling up out of nowhere" (yes ma'am, that may due to the heroin needle that has somehow broken off and embedded itself in the soft tissue of your forearm while you were distracted by minding your own business)

I'm sorry sir. . .

I seem to have forgotten my x-ray vision at home.

Me: Good morning Mr. Belligerent-Intoxicated-Patient, how can I help you today?

BIP (accompanied by a glare that nearly melted the lenses off my glasses): Are you even a real doctor?!? Or are you one of those student doctors?

Me (ta-da!): I am your real doctor.

BIP: Then you should be able to tell what's wrong with me!

End of interview.