This morning, I picked up a "Nose Lac" patient (lac = chance to suture). It was an older woman, and I expected a nursing home patients, of which we see quite a few. Generally the demented/unstable on their feet/not agile with a cane patients that we patch up and send on their merry little way (have I mentioned that I want to be crazy when I'm old?).
Anyway (obviously I don't have what it takes to be a true reporter - get the story all within the first five sentences? Yeah, right), this older lady was very spry - seemed much, much younger than I expected. She'd been at church, had tripped and face-planted a brick column. I was about halfway through my work-up when she asked me if I knew one of the fourth year students. Turns out, she was (is, actually) his grandmother. And today was graduation day! She was in town specifically to see her little baby become a doctor (they're doctors now! SCARY) I promised her we'd get her through as quickly as possible.
Being at the biggest hospital in the area, we get a lot of patients. We also get relatives of attendings as patients - especially kids. They get the royal treatment, usually. They basically just walk right into a room - no waiting - and get everything done very quickly and nicely. It makes sense - they're attendings. They've put in a lot of hard work, and are generally well respected (or feared). I've also seen residents and nurses (especially nurses) get golden glove care. I didn't really know what to expect for relatives of med students... Turns out, they're just as special! Or, at least they are on graduation day. The ENT doc actually came right in when we called him. (Usually it takes...hours)
The point of that whole rambling was that I was happy to see that we med students get some benefit of our time in the trenches. Or, at least our grandmothers do.
Psych Patient Takes Pills, Calls Student
This morning, when I first got to work, I heard a psych resident telling an attending about a suicide attempt patient she had just talked to.
Psych Resident: She kept saying that [name] didn't care because he wasn't here.
This perked up my ears, because we have a [name] in our class, and it isn't the most common of [name]s.
Psych Resident: She said that [name] worked here, but the only one I know of was a medical student that rotated through psych.
Brenna (to herself): Hmmm. Maybe it IS [name]. Fantastic! Mystery time.
[Name]'s good friend was on the day shift with me today, so I told him about it, and he called [name] to find out. (Okay, so it wasn't a hard mystery to solve... I never claimed to be Encyclopedia Brown. Or Harriet the Spy. Or Nancy Drew....)
Apparently, [name] got a call at 3:30 in the morning:
Crazy Patient: [Name], it's me. I'm going to kill myself.
[Name]: {dumbfounded silence}
[Name] got their fiance to call the police, and in an hour long process, the police managed to track Crazy Patient down and brought them into the ED.
Good. God. Can you believe that? Right there is why you should not be nice to crazy people. Especially if you have a name tag on! Crazy Patient looked [name]'s name up in the phone book.
I was not nice to the crazy people. I scowled a lot and sometimes glared. I do not expect to be getting any middle of the night calls.
Student Gets Engaged, E-mails Friends
That's really all there is to that story, but I felt like I should have three stories. It is a nice, complete-feeling number, you know?
Five days left of my ED rotation. Thank goodness.
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