What was the MOST ridiculous thing a patient came to the ER for?

Had a guy aged in his 50's come in to ED who had an aftershave/cologne bottle up his butt base first! It had been there for five days. We tried to remove it with long forceps, but it was stuck.

We gave him IV diazepam in the hope of him relaxing enough for it to come loose. Nup. It was decided to take him the OR for laparotomy....problem was he could not consent having had sedation.

We called his wife to come in to consent.....poor lady had no idea what her husband had been up to.

He had a bowel resection and colostomy, his bowel had become gangrenous.

A white kitten brought in to a major trauma center in the middle of the night because it fell off the sofa and hurt its leg. 50 bed busy trauma center with 5 doctors all stopped what they were doing and looked at the kitten walk across the floor.

Sorry, but this one doesn't bother me. I'm "mom" to 5 cats and 1 dog and I have called the "people" ER to ask a meds question when one of our elderly (age 24) kitties had a reacton to an antibiotic and our beloved vet was out of town. I'd do it again. They called a local pedi and he even volunteered to come to the house and check her.

Back to the regularly scheduled rant...


sharpeimom

I stepped on a 4 week old kitten, and after rushing her to the vet I brought her to the ED staff room so I could peek in on her every few hours. I got pretty much Q30 minute updates as all my coworkers were checking in on her too. I think kids and animals are seen as innocents, and most anyone will go out of their way if they can help. About 90% of our adult ER population aren't innocent, and I know they're much less cuddly than a little kitten.

I sometimes wish a cute, furry little thing could be in the ED for everyone to pet and cuddle. Very good stress reliever.

Until you had to break out the Epipens!

One of our nurses brought a tiny duckling in a few years ago! She almost ran it over on her way to work. So cute! We all kept checking on it during the day.

When I was the director of nursing at a large inner city level I trauma center we had a guy come in the ED with severe abdominal pain. He was traveling by bus to Florida to see his family and he was carrying a rather large lizard with him that was his pet. He was traveling by bus. When he arrived in Houston, he was really sick so he got off the bus and took a cab to the hospital. Turned out he had a hot appy. So they were taking him to surgery but he was really worried about his lizard. So I took his lizard. We found an old aquarium from somewhere and got to news paper to put in the bottom and some water for him. Then the patient said he had to have some light on him so he would stay warm. So the maintenance guys came down and rigged up a light for his little home. But he still did not look to good to me. So I called the Houston zoo across the street and talked to the guy who was the lizard expert and asked him to come over and make a house call on this lizard. He did and as it turns out the lizard was very healthy and well cared for. We all brought him stuff to eat and he was a very fat lizard by the time the patient was ready to leave to continue his trip to Florida. We put his lizard inside a pillow case and into his duffel bag (the lizard apparently really liked it there) and he went on his way. I sure did miss the lizard after he was gone.

I know. I know we can't have something furry in the ED considering a lot of people are allergic to pet dander. Sigh.

Several years ago I worked on a hospital adult mental health unit. We had a middle-aged female patient who was a frequent flier and a known opiate addict. She claimed to have migraine headaches, and also allergies to every migraine medication known to man (including one that had barely hit the market) except Demerol. Sure enough, she wasn't on the unit 30 minutes before her "migraine" hit (she was sitting in a brightly-lit room watching television at the time). She insisted that I call her doctor for pain medication. I did and he, knowing her as well as I did, would not order anything. She left AMA.

About 30 minutes later I got a call from the charge nurse in our ER. She asked, "Did you just discharge (patient's name)? I said, "Yes, she left here AMA because her doctor wouldn't give her Demerol for her migraine." The ER nurse said "Well, she's down here now trying to get the same thing from us. I'll send her packing."

How stupid do you have to be to leave a unit AMA and immediately go to the ER in the same hospital?