Tales From the ER and Other Places
OR Always Eat the Lamb Brains!
by
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IT’S A WONDER DRUG! digitalize: Verb. To administer digitalis or digoxin to (a patient with a heart complaint). -Dictionary definition Digitalis is a very old drug. It is originally from the foxglove plant. Van Gogh has a famous painting of his doctor holding a foxglove flower. He was getting it for his bipolar (?) disorder. Doesn’t work for that unfortunately. But it might have influenced some of his paintings. It can turn your vision yellow or make you see halos around lights. Take a look on Google under VG Sunflowers or Starry Night and get back to me. It can slow the heart rate down if it is too fast and make it pump a little stronger. It is still used to this day. My first rotation in medical school after the classroom years was in surgery. You get put in one of the teams of surgeons and follow them around the hospital during their daily rounds for a month. This involves a lot of walking from room to room seeing patients then talking about their case/plans, etc. after reviewing their latest labs & X-Rays. Surgery (especially on your belly) and the immobility and (constipating) narcotics that go with it tend to block your bowels for a few days afterward. Normally the surgeons are very interested in whether you have had a poop or even gas since the surgery. It is one of the things that determine when you can go home. Normally you can’t go home until you’ve pooped. One particular patient was a monolingual Korean speaker. He had just had surgery for stomach cancer. Something Koreans are especially prone to due to a diet high in salted fish. And probably a diet high in Marlboro too. Smoking is SUPER common in Korean men. At that point I knew how to say 3 things in Korean: hi, fart & thanks. Every day when we went in to see him, I trotted out my 3 words. We were all standing around the X-Ray box one day looking at a different patient’s belly X-Ray. He was full of shit. Literally. The various residents were talking about him & one said: ‘If he doesn’t shit soon, we’re going to have to digitalize him. My first thought and (unfortunately) the first words out of my mouth were: ‘Digitalis?!? I knew the heart stuff, but it helps you poop too?!?’ Needless to say I was wrong. The guy lifted his hand and used one finger (digit) to show what someone (probably me as I was the low man on the totem pole & as they say: Shit flows downhill.) would be doing with said digit to pull the poop out of his rectum if needed. I like to picture & hear the ‘shark music’ from the movie Jaws with an outstretched index finger swimming along to the beat like the shark’s dorsal fin. Duh-Dum Dah Dum… This is called Digital Disimpaction. You put on some gloves, grab some K-Y and use your finger to hook out one piece at a time. Usually smells really nice too. Everyone had a good laugh & fortunately, I never had to touch his rectum. I still have to do it on someone every once it in a while. You think you got a shitty job? Or your boss always gives you the shittiest assignments? Or those rich doctors get shitloads of money for talking & writing stuff? Let’s see how you feel about that after you’ve walked a mile in my gloves up various assholes…
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About the Book
After being an ER doctor for over twenty years, traveling all over, running international medical missions, and working at a cancer hospital, Jeff Wade has collected many stories. Some of these he has been telling for decades. In Tales from the ER and Other Places, Dr. Wade shares a lifetime of interesting, funny, educational, and sometimes disgusting stories, with medicine being at the center of most. And whether the stories are incredible and humorous or touching and sad, they offer a compelling and engaging window into the life and times of a doctor and his passions --and his patients.
About the Author
Jeff Wade, MD has been a practicing emergency room doctor for nearly twenty-five years. Recently he has begun writing, leading medical missions abroad, and working at a leading cancer hospital. Wade resides in Pasadena, California. This is his first book.