2 AM Admission

cwdrell

At first glance, he's an 83-year-old with new onset a-fib. Fine. I can do a-fib in my sleep. No problem. Then I hear from one of the ER techs that its crazy down there and some guy is threatening to shoot his wife and there are cops everywhere.

Now, I think back to the good old days at Brackenridge and figure nothing could really surprise me. Gun threats, big deal. I work at a small level 3 trauma on the outskirts of Denver that only sees life-flight if they're coming to take somebody downtown.

People around here get excited when patients go into a-fib because it gives us something to do.

Anyways, come to find out, the crazy gun-threatening guy is my new admit. Perfect. I needed help staying awake tonight.

So in the report, I get that this guy was yelling and threatening to get his gun and put his currently hospitalized wife "out of her misery". Now, this sounds really sad, but apparently, he has a history of bringing a gun to hospitals and taking her AMA.

Now, why does he bring her into the hospital in the first place, you may ask? Because she's an uncontrolled diabetic, and also as crazy as him. They've actually spent time at West Pines together (local psych hospital). And their daughter who lives with them is taking their social security checks to buy drugs. Fabulous.

So mom is on the med-surg floor needing surgery and not able to get up or talk and last week he decided that he was taking her home. Now, the woman has uncontrolled diabetes, a gangrenous foot, and will either be going to surgery or hospice, but its all our fault for not taking better care of her, and he is taking her out of here. So in the midst of him literally trying to pull a semi-conscious woman out of her bed the charge nurse, house super, and a large aide come in to stop him and he starts hitting, kicking, and biting them.

This was apparently not the first time he was combative with the staff, so he bought himself an escort off the premises with a warning that if he ever came back he would be arrested.

The key piece of information here. His very clever daughter sees this loophole as a way to get him out of the house saying she's scared of him and they don't get along. So he's been banned from Good Samaritan premises for a week and tonight the daughter brings him up here to visit mom.

Knowing he's not allowed inside, he waits in the car with his little poodle. Daughter goes and tells security that he's back and that they need to go arrest him and take him back to West Pines. So four rent-a-cop security guys go out to the parking lot to confront him.

This was a bad idea.

He tells them that he's going to go home, get his gun and come back to kill his wife. No no no, say the security guards, that won't do. You need to get out of the car, please. At which point he locks all of his doors and refuses to come out. After calling the cops and much yelling and arguing, he decides that he's going to take the poodle "hostage" and starts strangling it telling everyone to get out of his way.

Now picture this: a crazy 83-year-old, four overweight security guards, and a tormented poodle out in front of the ER. I just couldn't stop laughing because really? Seriously?

So they find the keys from the useless daughter who's hanging out with mom up on the 5th floor, the cops show up, and they finally get him out of the car at which point he is throwing punches and refusing to walk. We need some sedation says one of the nurses.

Well ER nurses aren't so much allowed to bring a syringe of Haldol out to the parking lot and start shooting people up. So they call EMS. At this point, all the cops in Boulder County, half the hospital staff, and the k-9 unit have shown up.

(What are they going to do? Give moral support to the poor poodle?)

And he is digging his heels into the ground refusing to go anywhere. So EMS gives him a shot of Haldol and they wheel him into the ER on a mental hold with the plan to send him back to west pines.

Once they get him inside some genius comes up with the idea to get a 12-lead. Now, why go looking for problems here guys? Come to find out that he's in a-fib. Not able to determine whether or not this is a new or chronic condition, they admit him to telemetry. Hence, my 2 am admission.

2 AM Admission

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