when i write notes and have nothing to say, i usually start with "uneventful PM shift". tonight did not apply. a rundown of my special friends
1. a spanish speaking only man who got drunk and fell down. apparently sometime during the festivities, he knocked a tooth loose. i came into his room to answer a call light. he says "mi diente" and hands me his left front tooth. i tell trauma, who go put the tooth back in the socket and make a gauze dressing. when i checked on the patient 15 minutes later, the tooth was on his bedside table. he had taken it out to eat a chocolate chip cookie. needless to say, the tooth will not be getting replaced. when i tried to explain this to the patient in my minimal spanish, he was very understanding. he plans to "just get dentures".
2. a twentysomething in a car accident...not much excitement there.
3. a septic medicine patient from africa who speaks only a rare dialect that we don't have an interpreter for. temp of 103.2. heart rate 127. shaking chills. can't seem to find a source of infection. i have been watching too much House, and therefore am somewhat convinced that she has Dengue fever and so do i. but not to worry!! per the progress note "risk of morbidity: medium". lets all breathe a sigh of relief for that one.
4. and finally, a man who got his arm stuck in a grinding machine. surprise surprise, he too is a spanish speaker!! (in case anyone is keeping track, i'm at a 75% language barrier here). but as it is not enough to simply get your arm almost ripped off, he now is in uncontrolled A-fib. hopefully he doesn't need a doctor for any reason, because he's lucky enough to be a plastics patient, which means that his doctor will not call back, even after you page him 3 times to ask a question.
then on the way out of work, we had to walk through an arrest. security and the police were gathered in the middle of the hall handcuffing and frisking a man. nobody batted and eye and we walked on through. just another day on the trauma floor :)
