This patient was very nice and quite easy to work with. He was thankful and did well, but it was all in Spanish. I do medical Spanish, but how do you ask if there is a barb in the nail that is buried to the hub in your lower leg?
Now notice the nail on the X Ray above... nail-gun injuries used to be so ho-hum, but the folks who make the nails figured out that if you put barbs in them that they will not back out of the wood over time. Problem is, they don't back out of bone too well either. No matter! A little propofol and a mighty pull with some vice-grips and we were done, but, this muchacho will always have a small piece of barb in his tibia. A reminder of the day he said whatever 'oops' is in Spanish.
Nice one 911, woulda been cool if his name was "Jesus" and he could walk on water and raise the dead, but then he probably wouldnt need to come to the ER.
ReplyDeleteand your "Medical Spanish" is a waste of time, just yell at them in English like I do.
Trouble with not encouraging immigrants to speak good English is you end up needing to know "Medical" Korean,Vietnamese,Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, Farsi, Irdu, Russian, and Ukrainian. All languages of patients I saw last week and the reason why I'm so hoarse today.
And did you know Ukrainians don't speak Russian? I sure didn't until the Russian Interpreter filled me in.
Frank
how do you ask if there is a barb in the nail that is buried to the hub in your lower leg?
ReplyDeleteWith a whiteboard, I think. If you are an artist and can draw a barbed nail and a straight one for comparison.
"With a whiteboard, I think. If you are an artist and can draw a barbed nail and a straight one for comparison. "
ReplyDelete...
Medical Pictionary! May I play also?
Myrtle
No MRIs for him!
ReplyDeleteAn MRI would be a good way to get the barbs out
ReplyDeleteHey, exactly what mayhem and excitement does happen when someone forgets they have a bit o' metal in them and has an MRI? In my imagination, it is quite alarming ... but perhaps this is not so?
ReplyDeletedear PeggyU,
ReplyDeleteferrous metals will, i'm told, be ripped from whatever is holding them and fly to the magnetic coil.
the following is from something called the "new york times", i hear they used to be a newspaper, so consider the source...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/31/nyregion/boy-6-dies-of-skull-injury-during-mri.html
but this piece of nail is probably non-ferrous. even if it were ferrous i don't know how much damage it could do flying out of the tibia... it was about the size of a pencil point.