Pain Predicament

A family doctor calls to give us a heads up about a patient coming to the emergency department. He was obviously upset and sounded frustrated. He started in with the story … I used some lidocaine a pair of tweezers, and some small scissors to remove a small lesion from a patient’s tongue. There was a little bleeding afterwards, but that seemed to stop with pressure. Then the patient said that it felt like her tongue was swelling. I thought it was from the lidocaine, so I kept her in the office and watched her for a half hour, then sent her home. They wanted some pain medication. She was allergic to codeine, so I prescribed her a few Norco pills. The husband just called me and was screaming at me for the past 20 minutes, calling me an “asshole” and a “quack.” He said that his wife was in pain, so they went to the pharmacy to have the prescription filled. The pharmacist told them that there is a 50% likelihood of having a reaction to hydrocodone when someone has a codeine allergy. After that statement, the husband just accused me of trying to kill his wife. He wanted to know what I was going to do. I can’t give her NSAIDS because I don’t want her tongue to bleed. I’m afraid to give her any other opiates due to her allergy. Tylenol isn’t going to cut it. They called and said they’re on the way to your emergency department. What are you going to do? His voice kept getting more and more stressed, so I tried to lighten things up a little. “Eh, I’ll p...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Patient Encounters Source Type: blogs