December 9th, 2009 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Abuse, Disability, Drugs, Emergency Medicine, Game Of Life, Greenville News, Illicit Drug Use, Parenting
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Three of my children love to play the game ‘Life,’ where players choose college or career and are paid, take out loans, pay taxes, have families and all the rest as they navigate towards retirement. I especially love playing with them when they each become frantic, not for the highest income, but to finish the game with the most children. Along the way, my daughter is even naming her kids as the tiny blue and pink pegs fill up her little plastic car. (Talk about your parental validation!)
But after playing, then thinking back on my week at work, I fear that we could easily make a new game that was more familiar to many modern kids. I suppose we’d have to call it ‘The Game of Death,’ or maybe just ‘The Game of Pain.’ Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
December 8th, 2009 by Bongi in Better Health Network, True Stories
Tags: Colostomy, Gastroenterology, General Surgery, Leak, Reversal, Sepsis
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I have already spoken about the hazards of doing favours, but recently I was reminded of another example when I was still a registrar where I only just escaped the proverbial falling anvil.
It was not an unusual case but still fairly challenging for a registrar like myself. The old man presented with an acutely tender abdomen and free air revealed on x-rays. If you ignore the outside horses for a while, this is either a perforated peptic ulcer or complicated diverticulitis (some people would throw complicated appendicitis into the mix, but I’m going to leave it in the stable with the outside horses if there are no objections). The patient needed an operation and soon. So with the sun shining happily over Australia somewhere, I took him to theater. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
December 8th, 2009 by Berci in Better Health Network, News, True Stories
Tags: Facebook, Inappropriate, Legal, Patients, Sexual Advances, Social Media, Surgery, Web 2.0
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There is an interesting article in E-Health Europe about how patients try to contact doctors on Facebook, the popular social networking site, and how doctors shouldn’t respond to them. In my “Medicine and Web 2.0” university credit course, we cover this important issue several times and I try to provide students with useful pieces of advice about how to avoid such problems.
The Medical Defence Union said it was aware of a number of cases where patients have attempted to proposition doctors by sending them an unsolicited message on Facebook or similar sites.
The medical defence body said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to respond to a patient making an advance in such a way. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
December 6th, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, True Stories
Tags: Cardiology, CHF, Chronic Pain, Emergency Medicine, ER Shift, SVT
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Crummy shift the other night: 23 patients in eight hours, and 21 of them were painful. For me, that is, not necessarily for the patients. Lots of worried well, influenza, some minor injuries and a few chronic pain players. Not a single sick one in the lot. One particularly irksome case was a chronic pain patient dumped on our ER from a neighboring ER, complete with discharge instructions reading “Go to (name of our hospital).” So by the end of my shift I was pretty well burnt out. But the last two patients put an interesting perspective on the night.
The first was a 99 year-old man. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
December 6th, 2009 by KerriSparling in Better Health Network, True Stories
Tags: Calories, Carbohydrates, Diabetes, Endocrinology, Frustration, insulin, Internal Medicine, Patient Stories, Pie, Type 1
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Over the last few weeks, I have had a few run-ins with the gentlest of diabetes police – people who don’t mean to be second-guessing me or asking me why I’m eating that, but still, they can’t help but ask. Sometimes their questions are subtle and we end up having a quiet, private discussion about what type 1 diabetes means to my life, and I welcome these opportunities as ways to help educate and advocate.
But other times, when I’m at the table with a piece of pie in my hand and about to sink my fork into it, knowing full-well that I am at a very good blood sugar and have bolused for the pie carefully, and someone asks, “Why are you eating that?” … I feel completely defeated. And embarrassed. Can’t a girl have dessert without being questioned? And when questioned, why isn’t my explanation good enough to justify my actions?
I’d like to be a person with diabetes who sits down for dinner and eats with everyone without the scrutiny. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
