Well into my ER rotation now. I'm surprised at how few great stories I have to tell. I've been seeing a lot of bread and butter ER things, but nothing unbelievable. Seems like 1/3 of the people we see have abdominal pain that we often don't find a good reason for. I've seen a few cool fractures, a handful of burns, some people with weird neurologic symptoms, a few gnarly traumas, and I've sewn up some pretty good lacerations, which is pretty fun.
We had a huge guy in the other night (he was about 6'5", 250 lbs) who had the most violent seizure I've ever seen. He damn near flopped out of the bed. He's had a seizure disorder for many years so it's not unusual for him to seize, but it was pretty unsettling to watch/wrestle. It took several of us to keep him from thrashing out of the bed.
I've discovered that I love seeing Psych patients (no shortage of them in the ER). They're usually pretty sad situations. Had a guy in his late 50s come in after his family discovered that he'd fired up a couple of diesels in the garage at work with the garage door shut. He was a pretty normal guy--married, kids, job. Until the last year or so, he'd been very successful in his business. He recently upgraded a whole bunch of his equipment by taking out massive loans and then the economic downturn hammered his business and he's in the financial hurt locker. Very sad that it got to the point it did. He's wife had a hunch that something was wrong and called him at work, otherwise he likely would have been heading to a mortuary instead of the ER.
There was a gal that came in not too long ago (I didn't personally take care of her, but one of the residents I'm working with did) who "lost" a sex toy in her lady orifice. Apparently it had more than one working part and somehow a piece of this toy decided not to come out. She figured she'd better come to the ER to get it out cause she wasn't able to retrieve it herself. She didn't have a good explanation as to why she decided to wait for a month before coming in. No, not a typo, she waited for one month. FYI, as a general rule, if something has not come out on its own in 24-36 hours, odds are it's not going to. Go to the hospital. Better yet, don't put stuff in there that may not come out.
The ER is definitely an interesting place to work. Time goes by quickly, and you can see some cool stuff. You also can't beat the job security because, as they say, there is no cure for stupid. But it's not for me.
4 comments:
I'm curious as to what areas of medicine you are really interested in? I remember shortly after you were accepted you said you had some ideas - but you needed some time in school to really figure it out - anything further on that?
Before I started medical school, I was planning to do Psychiatry. Once in school I was gravitating towards either anesthesia and possibly a critical care fellowship or emergency medicine. I love all the high acuity stuff with really sick or critically ill patients as rotations, but the more time I spend doing stuff like that, the more I realize that those fields probably aren't a good fit for me long-term.
I'm leaning towards Psychiatry again with the idea of doing a fellowship in addiction Psychiatry--a fascinating field that's close to home.
I wish you the best of luck. I often wish someone had been able to get through to my father. Hopefully, your closeness to it gives you the insight needed to get through and help other families.
Thanks! I know we all feel the same about your dad, my brother, and the others in our family that struggled, or continue to struggle with it. I hope to make more sense of it through study and experience with the hope of helping a lot of people live more functional, sober lives. We'll see how it goes.
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