Aaahhh.

I'm home from my last medicine call for a month. Yay!!

Here are some of my favorite presenting complaints that patients have had recently:

"I been vomicking."
"She looked delicant."
"I've been feeling woozy headed."
"I'm full of fluid."

This one is actually quite common:
"I done fell out." (translation: I fainted, I felt lightheaded, I fell down, I passed out, I had a seizure. It can mean MANY things. When we residents talk amongst ourselves, we actually abbreviate this one a "DFO.")

Here's a fairly common one from the nursing home:
"He's hallucinating. That's how we know he is sick."
"Unable to measure pulse ox." (??? as in the machine is not working? as in you didn't try?)

Or another I saw on an old hospital discharge:
"I drank and took some medicine, but they didn't gee-haw."

Another interesting phrase I heard from a son describing his dad, and an apparent ability he had:
"He has saved lots of lives. He can blow the thrush out of babies."
(I assume this means that women would bring this man their children to blow on them? or in their mouths? if they had thrush. Just the thought of that one sounds pretty gross to me. And I definitely don't think the kind of thrush babies usually get has killed anyone.)

We'll see if I hear anything this interesting when I'm on Sports Medicine.....

Comments

Melanie said…
I was just formulating a comment for your blog last night ... I was contemplating getting Rice Chex for Sam and thought of Jeff's "You mean like the cereal" guy from the bank. Well, my plan was to tell you all that I missed Jeff's bank stories. This filled the void nicely. DFO had Andrew and I laughing out loud.
2:13 PM
Anonymous said…
Well, Aubrey, you'll have to get your father to tell you some of the amazing abilities our Granny Mac had. I'm sure she could "blow the thrush out" as well.
RE
3:10 PM
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