Elves And Sausage Examination
Shadowfax’s hilarious and freaking bizarre story of a guy seeing Christmas elves reminds me of a patient 2 months ago who, when asked if he knew why he was in the hospital, answered, “I’m here for a meat inspection.” He told this to multiple people.
And my roommate’s girlfriend had a patient who, when asked the date, would frequently answer “6007″ for the year.
So, what’s your weirdest chief complaint/response to orientation question? (Comments are open!)
(Update, I take that back, my best one-liner was in the ER awhile back. The chief complaint, which I’m sure the triage nurse got a kick out of writing–since she’d normally just write “altered mental status” was “911 called by roommate, patient was meeowing like a cat in his room.)
I’ve had to run someone through an awareness check once or twice, but not in a hospital situation. The best line I had to call 911 on (if that’s good enough) was this:
The guy living across the hallway from my apartment was outside beating on all of our doors, yelling at the top of his lungs. When he finally got far enough down the hall, I could understand him – he was now a Secret Service agent, and the United States had been bitten by a snake, and we all had to GET UP and help him save the country. This was about 1130PM. Needless to say we didn’t open the door. He didn’t run out of steam until the uniforms showed up. Maybe not after that, but we couldn’t hear him in the squad car.
CS