Paul Broun

Paul Broun, The doctor turned Congressman from Athens, GA who allowed rhetoric about assasinating Obama to go unchallenged at his own rally is a disgrace to both of the professions he represents. His inaction and complacence is no better than that of Sarah Palin or the silent under Hitler. Let me say, he does not represent all doctors. Unfortunatly, he does likely represent the majority, but definetly not the majority of ED docs. or is it spelled Paul braun?

Rectal Foreign Bodies

The people who have worked around an emergency department for years have seen all sorts of rectal foreign bodies. everything from gerbels (often in weather men or local news anchors if you believe the urban legends) to coke bottle to vibrators, shampoo bottles, fruits and vegetables, and whatever else you can think of. I have only seen a vibrator, a condom half full of crack (crack in the crack), and most impressive, one of these long oil funnels that is big on one end and tappered on the other. The bad thing is, this guy (who was just changing the oil in his car naked and slipped and fell on top of this thing on accident), had it in his rectum big end first! HOW!? Good thing is, it was easy to remove. pass a foley through the hole, blow up the balloon and pull it out. Crazy guy!.......in other news, arthur "Red" Heirin is working on his first case presentation for the blog, and it should be up soon. Stay tuned.

Bad Weather, and the razorbacks season in review

With a patch of bad weather coming through the area lately, the ER has been busy. Car accidents, of course, and slips and falls with broken hips, and broken everything else, and hypothermic bums, and hypothermic little old ladies. And of course fires, which are the worst, and even people getting killed trying to make fire, like the two different guys we have seen killed cutting firewood this winter. I am certainly not a global warming naysayer, but this is the coldest winter since at least 1977 in many parts of the world. It is the coldest it has been in Key West for 131 years! I like the cold sometimes, but this is causing a lot of anguish, and is having all kinds of unseen effects like driving up fuel prices, and may even contribute to another flu (swine or otherwise) outbreak by keeping everyone jammed together in doors. ... (By the way, sorry to use all these dots and wierd punctuations, but it seems you can't start a new paragraph and indent on here.)..... Anyway, I have been using some of my extra time inside to reflect on the razorbacks. I am happy with the bowl we got, and I think we beat a tough team, from a tougher than most think conference. I am not Happy with Mallett, though. He looks like Gumby trying to play football, and he thinks he could have even thought about going pro? I doubt it. But the thing I hate the most is here he is, after his "sophomore" year, wanting to go. We know he doesn't care about the team. We can see where his selfish thoughts lie, and we have to spend the whole next season knowing he is leaving us early, and wishing he could have done it sooner. Oh well, I do think we will have an awesome season next year, maybe we actually will be a contender in the west?

The residency lounge update

I went in to work early this am to find a neatly made mattress lying on the floor, its frame shattered into a shambles. The vandals strike again!!

Swine Flu

The Swine Flu is heating up. Where are those vaccines? Several people in our area have died, who I believe probably wouldn't have died from traditional seasonal flu. It seems like, when you look at our ED board, 75% of the complaints are fever, cough, flu-like symptoms, or exposure to flu, or positive flu test. All the pts wear masks, and things are crazy. wait times are through the roof. What will we do for room in the hospital if things get a little worse? Back to the vaccines, I guarantee these same people who rush thekids in for every little sniffle and demand testing and treatment for the swine flu are the same ones who will refuse the vaccine, and we will have to spend just as much time convincing them it is safe.