Hey, kids! Drugs are bad! Because if you do drugs, you might find that your drugs have been cut with something that contains strychnine, and you'll find yourself rolling around on the floor with your heels touching your head. As if that didn't suck enough, you'll then find yourself intubated and sedated in a hospital somewhere so that you don't twitch and jerk yourself out of the bed. And you'll stay that way for three weeks and counting.
And, while we're at it, intravenous injections of hydrogen peroxide aren't great either! I don't care if the self-styled guru who does your colonics says they'll keep you young. They won't. All you'll get is some nasty shit cutting loose into your brain. Please, please do not ask me, as I'm discharging you, when it'll be safe for you to go back to doing whatever woo treatment brought you in here in the first place, because it'll be very hard for me not to get snarky right then and there.
Only about thirty percent of the people exposed to syphillis will, if untreated, go on to develop the tertiary stage of the disease. It's still a good idea to finish your treatments if you've been diagnosed with the pox, so as not to end up with neurosyphillis thirty years after the fact.
Also, weird demyelinating diseases: Please do try to avoid them, especially if you're offered one which we can't identify.
And don't get your aneurysm clipped by a general surgeon in Backobeyondville. Really.
These last two weeks have left me and everyone else at Sunnydale with our jaws hanging open and our eyes wide. Weird isn't weird where I work, but this much weird, and this severity of weird, is.
OMG what would possess somebody to inject peroxide??You see what it does when it hits blood if you pour it on a cut!!That's what I use to clean blood out of my scrubs for crying out loud.All in the name of the insane god of youth.
ReplyDeleteI know it's horrible for them (and a scary amount qualify for Darwin awards) but I love your clinical cases posts!
ReplyDeleteWow. Forget kids, patients really do the darndests things!
ReplyDeleteH2O2?????? WTF?????
ReplyDeleteSounds as if you have at least had a very interesting time, even if you have been overwhelmed by the workload.
I'm raising my hand to say, "No, I will not get the weird demyelinating disease," but, darn, there's so blasted many demyelinating diseases out there, jo!
ReplyDeleteMy jaw was dropping reading some of those.
The drug one ought to scare the crap out of a few...I hope. My advice to patients: if you don't know where it came from, don't take it, and do you think your local street drug dealer REALLY cares about you? Naw!
My son had cystic fibrosis and among the many drawbacks to that disease are health suggestions from well-meaning people who are a few bricks short of a load. My (and his) favorite was the urge to inject "Vitamin O", reputed to cure any/all lung issues. On investigation, Vitamin O turned out to be....hydrogen peroxide. We gave it a pass, but could not resist sending a copy of the debunking article that came out a few months later to the person who urged it upon him. People will believe almost anything, and cling to the belief in the face of good science, common sense, and reasoning. Go Figure.
ReplyDeleteYikes!!!
ReplyDelete