I got a hospital consult to see a guy who'd suffered a closed head injury, so I wandered over to see him. The admitting note began like this:
"77 year old male who fell and struck his head. While working in his yard he was attacked by a snake. He pulled off his artificial leg to bludgeon the snake with it, then lost his balance and fell. He hit his head on a rock, and was knocked unconscious."
Was the snake OK?
ReplyDeleteLOL!!! Did he get the snake?
ReplyDeletexx
Jaxs
Awesome! That has to be one of the best stories of "why I am in the ER" for sheer insanity.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I could handle living in a place with snakes that attack. The worst we've got are garter snakes. And they're cute!
ReplyDeleteI laughed. A good idea (although running might have been better), but unfortunately a foiled execution. You can't invent stories like that.
ReplyDeleteIt's all in the execution of the note. Patient breaks leg in poorly executed parachuting landing:
ReplyDelete"cause of injury: falling out of a plane."
(saw this once... it definitly makes you read further into the chart)
A grand tale, and props to the admitting doc for employing the splendid word "bludgeon." In these harried times it's a rare practitioner who'll take the extra moment to adorn his chart with a vivid action verb.
ReplyDeleteI hate when that happens.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a rather lively 77 year old. Wonder if he's had to use his artificial leg as a defensive weapon in other situations.
ReplyDeleteTake note, you whiny whippersnappers. Back in Grandpa's day, men had CHARACTER and they would take off their artificial legs to bludgeon snakes with them. None of these namby-pamby shovels or pistols for the snake killing.
ReplyDeleteLOL!!! I am betting it isn't the first time he has used his prosthetic as a tool, or weapon! I always ask my patients why they are injured, as all nurses do. If they are embarrassed or the story is lame, I encourage them to make one up to tell their their friends. I, of course, write the real story in the chart. None have been so fun as this one however!!!
ReplyDeleteI like the guy already!
ReplyDeleteDude, don't even look at his wallet!
ReplyDeleteI have had some patients, even quads who "carry" self-defense items in their wheelchairs.
Better be careful of messing with some of those veterans, especially old Marines. You don't know what you might find!
Love the terminology in the note. (Not having studied English lit since high school with too many chemistries, physics, maths, other sciences, occasionally am at a loss for apt, modern succinct and the less vulgar descriptors we use in common discourse, having to rely instead on old-fashioned adjectives.) I wonder where the scribe pulled the word 'bludgeon', or maybe it was the patient's rumination while coming to. I thank the good Lord I don't live somewhere that snakes 'attack' me while working in the yard, although my husband unwittingly dug into an underground yellowjacket or wasps' nest while transplanting a bush a couple years ago. I would use the term 'attack' to describe how he received tremendous welts on bilateral lower extremities, hands, and the top of his bald pate.
ReplyDeleteMy "esprit de escalier" response is "Step on the snake with the artificial leg. What's the problem if it strikes? It'll bend its fangs in half!
ReplyDelete(My initial gut response was Cool! Whoops, but Cool! Then my brain caught up...
The worst we've got are garter snakes
ReplyDeleteBanner Advertising Network India
Remember that old song "Three-Legged Man"?
ReplyDelete"Well now friends you'd never guess it so I really must confess it
I just met the sweetest woman in my long dismal life,
But a friend of mine said buddy just in case your mind is muddy
Don't you know that girl you're fooling with is Old Peg-Leg Johnson's wife!
And Old Peg Leg's big and mean and tough and grim,
And he'll brain you with his artificial limb..."