Red Ryder

This young man didn't listen when his mother warned him what would happen if he got that BB gun - that he would shoot his eye out.

Fortunately, his vision is still intact, and it doesn't look like his eyeball was penetrated. He does have some retinal hemorrhage, which will hopefully resolve.

Family togetherness at Thanksgiving

"Patient presents to the Emergency Department with mouth pain after an argument with his sister during which she hit him in the mouth with a bottle. His right three front teeth are chipped. The patient is tearful, but more upset about his appearance than the pain. He admits to drinking alcohol tonight."

Don Juan

"27-year old patient jumped from a window onto a balcony below when he heard his girlfriend's dad's voice coming to the bedroom." Don Juan here barely even qualifies as young - though his girlfriend still lives at home, so she may be. He broke his ankle very badly on that jump, which is no less than he deserves, the cad. The ten shots of vodka he drank doubtlessly affected his balance.

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

This patient's brother won their argument in dramatic fashion. Youch!

Unbelievable...

This is another history from my favorite type of patient:

"Patient in his 40's who 'accidentally' ingested Drano that he thought was alcohol."

And another:

"Woman with psychiatric history was visiting her boyfriend in the ER when she became aggressive and loud, yelling at the nurses, and was placed on a 5150 hold by the Sacramento Police Department."

For the uninitiated, a 5150 hold refers to the section of the California Welfare and Institutions Code that allows a policeman or clinician to place a person under involuntary confinement for up to 72 hours. The person has to be a danger to him or her self, and/or others and/or gravely disabled.

Her boyfriend was a patient in the ER as well, by the way. I am not sure what his issue is. He is probably not the guy who drank the Drano, though.

Crush

Ouch! This poor guy got his hand caught in some industrial machinery. Be careful out there!

Season's Greetings

This is the position in which this poor patient's hands are fixed, which is what happens when rheumatoid arthritis is poorly controlled.

High four!

Give me five!...er, four!

Car vs. house

This is what can happen when the car you are joyriding in runs into a house while you are running from the police.



One of these hips is not like the other. The head of the patient's right femur (the one on the left of the image) is inside the pelvis, which is, as you might imagine, a suboptimal location for the femur.

It turned out that the patient was bleeding extensively from the left side of his pelvis, and needed the arteries that were bleeding blocked off. This was done by feeding a small tube through an artery in the right groin, putting the tube into the artery that was bleeding, then putting metal coils and small fragments of material that encourages clotting into the artery.

Two thumbs up

Self-explanatory title for this post.



One of the many weird skeletal malformations that can occur.