A patient was brought in around midnight as a “possible stroke.” She was a 60-something woman who had suddenly become unresponsive.
She and her husband had been making love at the time, and he noticed that she was no longer conscious. Unable to revive her, he had called 911. She looked bad — but it was strange. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
In the annals of “Things You Probably Wish You Hadn’t Said,” Sue Lowden, the Republican candidate to replace Nevada Senator Harry Reid, suggested last week that bartering for medical care was a workable substitute for the Affordable Care Act, which she is campaigning to repeal.
Surprisingly, after being called out and roundly mocked for the suggestion, she doubled down on the idea:
“You know, before we all started having healthcare, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say, ‘I’ll paint your house.'” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
The woman in bed six informed me immediately on my arrival and introduction that she was a lesbian. I don’t know why it mattered because she was there for a scald injury on her arm, and I hadn’t inquired about it. In fact, I hadn’t even begun my history before she made her announcement in a somewhat belligerent tone.
So…ooookaaay. I tried not to let this non sequitur throw me too much off my stride, and I went through the brief history necessary for a minor injury such as she had.
As an aside, this self-proclaimed lesbian was quite feminine. She was well-dressed for the hour of the evening and quite pretty in her own sort of way. She even had a choker of pearls on, along with earrings, lipstick, and well-coiffed hair.
I asked a few questions, though, and was surprised at the frankly-aggressive tone of her responses. Nothing too blatant, nothing that I could call her on, but quite definite. And her story seemed to not quite add up. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
Intueri (Maria) has it. Go read. Really. I’ll wait. Go read then and come back here, because I have something to say, too. She writes beautifully, and it’s a hard read. I almost stopped before I finished it, and I did flinch more than once. The man she writes about was in my ER today, or at least someone very like him.
He was rolled onto a hallway gurney, given a cursory inspection, and left to sleep it off before being given the “bum’s rush out” when he became more sober and obnoxious. He was viewed by the staff as an irritation, a burden, an annoyance. Smelly, dirty and creepy. Scaring the children as they walked by to their rooms. Nurses were short-tempered and brusque to him, and the doctors avoided him as much as possible. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
There’s been some buzz on Twitter that the Democrats in the Senate have killed an amendment which would have prohibited federal funding for erectile dysfunction (ED) medications for sex offenders, which means in the upside-down logic of Washington D.C. that the Democrats favor giving Viagra to pedophiles. Right? Well, not exactly.
First, just a point of procedure: Remember, healthcare reform (HCR) is now a law, on the books, signed by the President. But there was this reconciliation sidecar bill which was meant to fix the HCR law as originally passed—it was passed in the House pretty much as soon as the Senate bill was passed. But it had to pass the Senate in the identical form, word for word, in order to go directly to Obama’s desk for signing. If the Senate mucked things up by tacking on amendments, it would have to go back to the House for approval, and given the razor-thin margin in the House, Democrats very much wanted to avoid that. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
