Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Gallows Humor
One of our triage nurses today encountered a young suicidal patient. Our waiting times are right now at about 6 hours. Our hospital is full. The ER is full. The surrounding hospitals are full. We are in gridlock. The nurse asked the patient if he had a plan as to how he would off himself (very important in assessing the likelihood of actual suicide), and the patient responded "I'd eat rat poison". The nurse responded, correctly, "Oh, that probably wouldn't do it". He said, "Well, do you have any suggestions?". Guess he's serious.
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Eek!
ReplyDeleteMy answer to that question would depend on how far into a shitty shit I am, or how many nights in a row I am working.
ReplyDeleteI meant shitty shift.
ReplyDeleteCAT
A Mack truck ought to do the trick.
ReplyDeleteYou should have told him that on any given day, millions of people willingly ingest rat poison (i.e. coumadin) and it hasn't killed them yet. Tell him there's better ways.
ReplyDeleteI think she should have told him to go ahead and eat the rat poison, and stay "in line". By the time you get to him, he might have begun to see the effects of the delayed toxin (48 hours)! Not a refusal or delay of care....just good planning.
ReplyDeleteThe only bright spot of my Tox rotation was a lady who called into Poison Control. "Yeah" she said, "I need to know how much rat poison it would take to kill a 185 pound man". I told her that before I could access the computer program, I needed to enter her name, address, and phone number. She hung up.
85
erdoc85: LMAO! That's great!
ReplyDeleteI see cases of this all the time (I'm a vet) and I get deaths from it. How much rat poison WOULD it take? Five or six cartons?!?
ReplyDeleteIt would only take 50mg of cyanide, and for some reason, the lab used to have a huge bottle of it just sitting on the shelf. Another example of government waste is that California used to use several pounds of cyanide during each execution, quite the overdose when you figure you can kill 9000 people/lb. I remember the question being posed during the lecture on pulse oximetry of how you would be able to detect cyanide poisoning during a case (prior to the lethal moment) as your pulse oximeter is going to happily beep along at 100%.
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