During my rotation at Cook County of Chicago in October-November 2013 I encountered many different patients, I remember one evening I had the following different patients: a a beautiful young girl, in her low 20s, who was a heroin addict that shot heroin into her legs, she came in with a gigantic abcess on her right buttock with over 80cc of drainage of pus. The same night, a 20s something prisoner came in with a bloody lip, he had blood all over his prison jumpsuit, it looked scary, but it turned out to be just a simple cut. The same night a homeless man was in the ER who needed 26 staples removed from his abdomen, 1 month earlier he had bowel removed for IBD and had an exlap for it. He didn't remove the staples or his Foley catheter because he couldn't get a car to the Emergency Department. That was crazy.
Now, my favorite patient over the course of the rotation was this Asian gentleman in his 80s. He came in on my first overnight at Stroger, around midnight.
He presented with 1 week of constipation/ no bowel movements and a sensation of bloating. No nausea or vomiting, no fever or chills. After our work up in the ED, it was determined he had a large bowel obstruction, and indeed he did. It was MASSIVE.
His large bowel dilated to a
maximum of 12cm! Unbelievable. The cause
of his large bowel obstruction turned out to be sigmoid volvulus. Everyone was
afraid, including the surgery team, because usually an obstruction like this in an eldery patient
screams cancer. He turned out to be very lucky. He was taken to the
colonoscopy clinic and the obstruction was decompressed.
That patient, I will never forget. He was just plain fascinating.
-MD in 14
-MD in 14
