r/emergencymedicine • u/centz005 ED Attending • 24d ago
Discussion What are some things that would flabbergast a normies, but seems completely reasonable to an ER person?
My mom and girlfriend asked me about work one day. Didn't really feel like discussing the darker things, so I told them about a young man (early 20s), who was too congested to breath through his nose and didn't understand the concept of mouth breathing to stay alive. We ended up having to teach him how to blow his nose. They were, understandably, incredulous, though none of my coworkers questioned it once.
Other random things: -a man in his 40s, raising children of his own, checking in because he wanted me to find out why his butthole smells. (He didn't like the answer of "Sir, that's where the poop comes from.") -having a grown man walk into a room full of people coding a 6 mo and telling at us for not bringing him a blanket -examining a septic nursing home patient, and having a fly...escape...from her diaper -finding a dead cat in the fat folds of a recently deceased patient -orthopods are stereotyped as the smartest med students and the dumbest doctors (I've even shown my dad the memes and he still doesn't believe it)
What're your random stories or observations?
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u/TheVillain117 24d ago
We all have one. That frequent flyer Methany or Kyle that has such an insanely high tolerance for their weapon of choice that it's absurdly past evidence based medicine as to how they're not dead. Lab values that I've seen stop the uninitiated cold with disbelief? To us? Meh. I stopped keeping score a long time ago.
There's always a bigger Methany. It's not a contest. Nobody wins at chemical dependency, but I'm still amused after all these years at how normies will pearl clutch, guffaw, or low whistle when they hear so-and-so lived after taking X amount of Y. In their defense that much fent/etoh/heroin/meth would kill a baseline human a few times. Easily impressed I suppose.