Rodent Control

A crotchety old fellow from the nursing home gets brought in for trouble breathing. After looking at the swelling in his legs and listening to the crackles in his lungs, it’s pretty obvious that he’s in congestive heart failure. We started an IV, drew labs, and performed a chest x-ray. Then he got some nitroglycerin, some captopril, and he even got Lasix just to spite all of the #FOAMed wonks. About 45 minutes later, the patient needs to go to the bathroom. We didn’t want him walking since he didn’t appear to be the steadiest on his feet, so he got a urinal. He grabbed the urinal and the nurse walked out of the room to give him some privacy. A minute later, the patient starts screaming. “Aaaaah! There’s a RAT biting my PECKER!” The nurse went back into the room and slowly pulled back the covers. She looked around and didn’t see anything. She looked at the patient. “Do you still feel something?” “Nah. It’s gone.” She walked back out of the room. Sure enough, 30 seconds later he’s screaming again. “OOOOOW! It’s biting me AGAIN! OOOOOOW! The nurse picked the covers up from the corner, screamed, and flung them off the bed, thinking that there may have been a rat from the nursing home in his clothing or something. Nothing there. Of course, after hearing the nurse scream, I went in the room to see what was going on. “There’s something biting my pecker!” I thought to myself … just when he tries to use the urinal, though? I looked at the ur...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Patient Encounters Source Type: blogs