Interesting night at the ER
First we had a 35 year old black female with altered mental status. She stopped responding to people around lunch time. By the time I scanned her head she had come around a little bit saying yes and no and following simple directions. Shortly after she urinated about a liter on the floor. That's quite a bit of urine. Plus she was on her cycle so it was mixed with a fair amount of blood. She then got off the stretcher and got down on her hands and knees and began to lick it up off the floor. The person sitting with her tried to stop her, but she would not. So she went and got a nurse and when the nurse tried to stop her she cursed at the nurse and went back to licking. the nurse went and got the other nurse to help her, and when she came in she was able to get her back up on the bed. While she was licking the floor she was not causally licking, but going fast like a cat would, so she got quite a bit of the mess up. CT of the head came back normal, so her problem was psych and we shipped her out.
When co-workers were told of this at shift change they had the same reaction we did. Everyone was much more horrified that she was licking the nasty ER floor where God knows what diseases lurk than we were about her licking up urine mixed with blood.
Then as the morning came a guy came in that was loading a back hoe and some heavy piece of machinery fell and flipped up a piece of wood that lodged in his forehead. He was okay, no bony injury so they pulled it, taped it, and let him go on his way. He was nice enough to let me grab a picture.
When co-workers were told of this at shift change they had the same reaction we did. Everyone was much more horrified that she was licking the nasty ER floor where God knows what diseases lurk than we were about her licking up urine mixed with blood.
Then as the morning came a guy came in that was loading a back hoe and some heavy piece of machinery fell and flipped up a piece of wood that lodged in his forehead. He was okay, no bony injury so they pulled it, taped it, and let him go on his way. He was nice enough to let me grab a picture.