ER: Fourteenth Day

Because of the sleetstorm/icy roads from Tuesday night, I didn't go to work yesterday, but I did go this morning to a nearly empty ER. We had one trauma patient who was thrown through his windshield and had numerous cuts on his face and one huge cut on his hand. Later Dr. L had me sew up the hand while she sewed everything else. It was hard approximating some of the tears on that laceration b/c the edges were fairly jagged but I tried my best. Dr. L commented that I wasn't as slow as other students, and I didn't know whether to take that as a compliment or not. When there was time for a break, Mathilde (the scribe) said she didn't carry cash on her, so I offered to buy her something. She said no, but I went ahead and got her a huge peanut butter cookie =)

One of the patients I saw today was a pretty sad case. She was the same age as my sister and had suffered from hidradenitis suppurativa for the last ten years, to the point where she had reconstructive surgery done on her perineal area and got a colostomy bag put in. Her chief complaint was lower abdominal pain, and she said that she felt like dying but had two kids and another on the way to keep her going. When I mentioned "hidradenitis" to Dr. L, she noted that the patient had been hospitalized many times in the last few years for similar pain and wondered aloud if this was the same "girl" she saw about ten years ago who required extensive surgery for her illness. As it turned out, it was; the patient remembered Dr. L, and Dr. L said that she'd thought about her (the patient) on and off throughout the years. Apparently Dr. L saw her not long after she first started working at Harris, and her case was so serious that it stayed in her mind all these years. But it really was a sad case. The patient was obese and her folds were rubbed raw and pink, and you could tell from the smell in the room that she had a yeast infection. She admitted gaining a lot of weight b/c she liked to cook, and Dr. L told her that if she lost a little weight, her skin problems might improve. We tested her beta-HCG levels and found her levels to be appropriate for a pregnancy, but she was so large that sono couldn't detect her uterus OR a fetus. *sigh* Poor girl. I hope for her sake she recovers from her pain so that she can enjoy her pregnancy and have that baby she wants so much.