CSI Madhouse

This morning I was assigned a forty year old man who recently came into the Madhouse with a horrible cocaine overdose. So horrible, he laid on his floor for so long that much of the muscle tissue in his legs began to break down, causing his kidneys to shut down in protest. We had to put him on hemodialysis and keep him on it for over a month. Not to mention the two operations he had to endure just to try and save his leg. We finally discharged him one month later with one barely functional leg. He had only recently been discharged from jail.
This time he nearly did it again. Found on the street with his face in the concrete he was saved from a horrible life threatening arrhythmia seconds before it would have ended his life. His urine was positive for drugs. When I finally saw him he was stable and able to talk and breath. All I wanted to do after seeing what he did to himself was knock his teeth out and choke him. I wanted to shake him and say “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING????” Instead I asked him what happened, how, why? Etc. etc. etc. The whole time thinking “idiot”.
It is not becoming of a doctor to speak such filthy language, at least not to patients. So it was very amusing to see Attending Giant walk the team over to the patient’s bed, approach the patient, smack the patient and then turn to us and say “Here we have a forty year old man who is ROYALLY FUCKING UP HIS LIFE!”
PGY50 (Post-Graduate Year 50), it takes time to be that good.

Different Subject: Over the course of the last month we have had over ten patients who have recently snorted cocaine and came to the hospital with heart rates in the 30’s. It appears that there is a bad stash of coke being sold in the area. We recently began asking our patients to bring in the cocaine so that we can get it analyzed. I wonder if they think we are taking it for ourselves.