Ass Invasion

I get unusual cases at work from time to time. Some make my day and some are just simply bizarre. Today's one for the bizarre cases. I had a man come in today worried that he might have been raped in his sleep. He, for obvious reason cannot be named, had too much to drink and was hanging out with this mate of his whom he claimed was of bisexual orientation and would bugger anybody up the ass.

So this two cowboys were having a few drinks together and happened to crash in the same living room that night. I don't know what happened that night but he woke up in the morning thinking he had been ass invaded. He shows one week later in the Emergency Dept, wanting to know for sure if he had been sexually assaulted. I asked him why he would think that, he cited it was because his mate was bisexual and had multiple partners. The moment he said that, I looked around to see if the crazy squad had arrived to look for their missing nut case.

So I asked him if he woke up the next day with a sore ass. He said no. So I ask him if there was traces of semen, vaseline on his body the next day. He said no. I asked him if his clothes had been removed from his person or if there was any sign of physical injury or struggle. He said no. I asked him if his mate had been known to sexually assault somebody, he said he didn't know. Well, I told him then it was unlikely anything had happened. So he asked if he was okay then? I said "Yeah, you're probably ok" though what I should have said was, " No, you're not. You've got some serious problems mate! Now shag off!"

I'll Kill Him

Hey there, it's one of those days at work again. 12 hours of mayhem. It didn't help that I had a cold brewing inside me. Anyways, I treated an infant today who was brought in by his mum. The kid had fallen off his buggy and mum wanted to be sure he was ok. So here I was examining the kid, building rapport with mum and child. Big grinning face on the kid and I decided I would press on the lump on his forehead just to see if it's boggy. Sure enough the kid started crying.

Mum smiled and tried to console the kid, knowing I was merely examining the kid. But she said something that really startled me.

"It's ok, it's ok. Oh poor boy. I'll kill him, I'll kill him".

I paused for a second.

I know she was not being malicious but the expression was a little disturbing. I've heard the term used when somebody's pissed off with somebody but there was no sign of anger here and it was totally out of context. Granted she came from a rough part of the city but surely that can't be part of their daily vernacular, not especially when talking to a 1 year old.

Another patient I saw jumped off 40 feet as part of a suicide attempt. With the exception of a couple of broken bones in his spine and a couple of busted ankles, he was relatively ok. The funny thing is this was his fourth attempt at suicide. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it high time he gives up and embrace life!

Anyway, time to get some sleep. Long day tomorrow!

Good night!

One Night Stand

Not my life story, just the name of a song by a band I manage. The video below is that of my guys playing one of their live gigs. The song's One Night Stand, the venue, Carlow Music Factory. Our myspace site: www.myspace.com/thesecretpolice .

Have a good bank holiday weekend.

Carol sips coffee

This is one of my favourite pictures of Carol, taken nearly a year ago. The pose doesn't really show how irate she was with me when I took the picture. We just had a small argument and I was going through a phase then where I took my camera with me wherever I went. Knowing she was irate, I took this picture at my peril. Glad I did too! Which reminds me, I must take lots of pictures when we go to South Africa in 3 weeks time.

Emergency Department Stories

It's been a couple of crazy but fun days at work. First we had a young chap in his 30s presenting to us at 8.30 am after sleeping out in the cold after a few drinks. It was -2 celcius when it happened and he showed up with a core temperature of 25 celcius. He had arrested on route to the AE department. We spent 2 hours just to bring his body temperature up to 30 celcius before he started breathing spontaneously and his heart beat returned to normal. At this stage, he had been defibrillated multiple times and had warm water tubed into his body core via every possible orifice. Last I checked, he's doing quite well in ICU.

Later today, the ambulance brought in a lady in her 70s who had just had status epilepticus. For those not in the know, that just means continuous episodes of fitting. She was unconscious when she came in so I had to quiz the husband for a collateral history. He was quite shy about telling it but it transpired that they had decided to stay in bed for the day and take it easy. However, in doing so, she neglected to take her anti epileptic medications for the day. Hence the fitting episodes. We all thought it was quite sweet but the drama wasn't over yet. As he was sitting there waiting for us to complete our tests on her, he too collapsed and had to be checked in for further test.

Wait, there's more. Then came in the daughter, who showed up to see her mum. Upon entering the AE department suddenly developed abdominal pain and had to be sat down. We thought to ourselves, this is all starting to sound like a piss take! What are the odds of having 3 family members checking in at the around the same time for various reasons? We just had to roll our eyes and hope the rest of the family don't decide to follow suite. Busy day, lots of drama, good fun. Hope you have a good weekend.

ps: We've decided, Odie needs to get the chop!

Stag Weekend

Last weekend I went to my first ever stag weekend and discovered that the stag weekend was not really about the stag, but the people that went with him. Ok, maybe this weekend is probably not one of the tamer stag weekends but having said that, it would be similar to a typical night out in Ireland except that it was drawn out over 3 days with no holds barred. I had never experience something like this before and consequently the weekend was spent watching a group of 17 men, actually boys, decidedly behaving badly, indulging in unrefrained excesses and acts of dumbing down ones conscience (applied for those that had any at the first place) I was, through it all, rather intrigue of the motivation and pack mentality of the group.

To summarise, weekend activities included:
Lots of drinks
Trip to strip club
Casino
More drinks
Pulling any bird at any oppurtunity. (There's no quality control here)
Clay pigeon shooting
Random bird snogging contest
and then More drinks

Oh how the drinks seemed to help pass the time and bring out the fools in all of us and sometimes I wonder if this lot could manage a good time without any of that. Don't get me wrong, these are a bunch of nice guys, some of them just a little too nuts for me! Some of them wanted to go on my stag and it got me worried for a minute.

Clay pigeon shooting is fun though! I am gonna look into buying me a gun and join a local clay pigeon shooting club.

All in all an interesting weekend, but I felt it might have dragged on a little. Would have appreciated more activities rather than just hanging around the pub playing pool. Good break from normality nevertheless!

Boa Constrictor

The girl friend came home and told me this story today.

Apparently a friend of a friend had a boa constrictor for a pet.

Now this lovely boa constrictor would sleep curled up at the foot of her bed every night. Once a month, she would feed it a tasty gerbil or hamster. Apparently boas don't eat very much. Then suddenly, the boa stopped eating and refused any food offered to it. So she decided to take the boa to see a reptile specialist in Dublin. The man gave the snake a once over and gave it a clean bill of health. Suggested perhaps the snake just wasn't hungry. So our friend's friend brought the boa home.

Two months later, it still wasn't eating. Another trip to the reptile specialist yielded no answer. Normal examination. A couple more months passed and still the boa wasn't eating so she brought it back to the specialist. This time round, he still couldn't find anything wrong with it. So he queried if there was any change in terms of habitat, home environment or the snake's behaviour. Everything seemed to be the same except that the snake did not spend its time curled up at the foot of the bed anymore. When she wakes up in the morning, she would find the snake stretch out alongside her.

This alarmed the specialist and he suggested that she had the boa put down. This was because the boa was eyeing her up and was starving itself so it could eat her!

Now, how bout that for a potential urban myth! The girlfriend claims it's fact!

Good night!

Stress Management

Stress is a part of modern life and yes, you know that too.

Stress is implicated as being a factor in a lot of medical conditions. Primarily heart diseases and hormonal disorders. Stress causes the releases of hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) responsible in conditions related to fight-fright-flight responses. Not all stress is bad of course. You have positive stress (eustress) and you have negative stress (distress). Positive stress is what drives you forward and it's something that motivates you in a positive manner. Negative stress is the opposite, where the outcome is generally manifested in physical and mental ailments.

Why am I writing about this? This is because as of late, I've been feeling lethargic, fatigue and irritable. Not to mention the increased amount of neck and shoulder aches I've been experiencing. Heart burns and palpitations were also quite frequent. My primary source of stress is my work. I don't and rarely relax at work. I feel as though I'm on my toes all the time. Anticipating a major case and wanting to be ready when it happens. I know I've been stressed out as of late but I haven't really addressed the issue nor did I really know how. It's not really something they teach you in medical school. Well, I don't know if the current syllabus has been modified but when I was in med school, there really wasn't a chapter on it then. I figured it was time to do some research.

A simple google search on stress management will reveal a truckload of articles on the subject and a whole lot of different suggestions on how to deal with the issue. The challenge is to simplify things and to make it practical for every day use. I'm a big fan of algorithms and flow charts as it helps me to structure my thoughts. Here's the first one.

That's pretty simple huh?

I would say a lot of stress is avoidable. But in some cases, they might not be. Those not living in the free world, under persecution will find that they don't have a choice in the matter but in a lot of cases, negative stress can be avoided. The only thing then is to weigh the options and to decide if avoiding stress is the best strategy in those circumstances.

I'll touch on stress avoidance strategy in my next post. Till then, have a good day.

Negative close relationship may increase heart disease risk

For those of you in bad and stressful relationships, this might be of interest to you. Archives of Internal Medicine reports that people who have frequent negative interactions with the people whom they feel closest may have an increased risk for heart disease! That's right, your spouse or partner may give you a heart attack if you are in a crappy and stressful relationship!

So beware, if you find yourself in an unhappy relationship of late, perhaps it's time to consider measures on how to fix it or get out of it. Otherwise, it may literally kill you!

Click here for the abstract of the article.

Odie learns to lie down

Odie had a bath today. Deservedly so, he was starting to stink. Not like it's a punishment but Odie's no Newfoundland, so he's rather adverse to water. But he got his wash anyway. Got rid of the smell but somehow he ended up shedding a lot of hair in the process. I think it's the warm water. Had to give him a good brush and there was dog hair everywhere. I think some of it got stuck in my left nostril.

My blog seems preoccupied with Odie of late. I know, it seems that's all I seem to do for the last few days, is spend more time with him. I've been teaching him to lie down . I was expecting him to do it in one week but he's learnt it in two days, two thirty minute sessions. I'm impressed as all this while I thought he was a dumb dog but seemingly, he's just willful. Even now, he won't lie down immediately. He'll wait and see if you would back down with your request before he complies. The key to training a dog tricks is to never let him get away with disobeying you. You have to mean it or he won't listen to you. As you can see from the video below, Odie will try and have his way first.

Training Odie has been fun. It's been satisfying to see him actually understand what you're saying to him. Then there's the part where I have to figure out how to make him understand what I want him to do, creating pathways of associations. Actions that generate rewards, and counter actions that generate the abscence of reward or a negative reactions. Having seen a few episodes of Super Nanny, I'm starting to draw parallels between child discipline and dog discipline. The methods for training either are actually very similar. All very Pavlovian.

Anyways, I'm off to play some Halo3, which I must say, is somewhat overrated!

Good night.

Odie's puppy picture

I was sorting out some old pictures when I stumbled on some pictures I took of Odie when he was still a small tiny puppy and how he's grown. It's something for you dog lovers, hope you like it.

Odie learns to stay

It took me a couple of weeks to get Odie to learn how to stay. I especially wanted him to calm down before I fed him so that way he didn't jump all over me when I brought the food out. Here's a video showing Odie being a good dog. Odie doesn't touch his food until I say 'Go'.

It's nice when he behaves.