Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Yet Another Enlightening Triage Experience

Woman presents with her toddler. You know the rest.
Pt's mother: Yeah, so I'm bring him in 'cause he has a fever, he woke up and was just shivering and stuff.
Me: Okay, yeah. So what was his temperature?
Pt's mother: Scoff. Well, I didn't take his temperature, I mean, that's why I brought him here.

He didn't have a fever. But he did have Cheetos!

9 comments:

  1. Better yet.....when they tell you that they did not give tylenol or motrin because they wanted you to see how high their fever really is. Meanwhile the kid is on the verge of seizing.

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  2. Oh hell, Cheetos cure everything!

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  3. "But he did have Cheetos!"
    *Sigh*. As they almost always do.

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  4. Cheez Doodles and Cheetos are ghetto zweiback. All teething children where I work have a permanent crust of orange crumbs on their face and hands.

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  5. Funny to read this today, as I am stuck on the couch with my feverish 4 year old. She's wrapped in blankets, watching lots of TV and drinking lots of water. Yes, she's uncomfortable, but I don't understand why people take kids to the ER -- or even the pediatrician -- for NORMAL illnesses. What on earth do they expect a doctor to do??

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  6. I honestly can't remember the last time someone had actually checked their kid's temperature before bringing them to the ER for "fever". Working overnights, it's especially fun because all these non-ill "fever" kids with temps of 97.6 are just screaming in the room because mom drug them out of bed to come get their temp checked. It's like the peds version of a pregnancy test.

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  7. LOL this is one scenario that is different than my current job. We had a lady last week who came and said "My cat has a fever of 104". I looked at her like she had two heads.

    You actually took your own cat's temperature? Holy -it. I wanted to give her a fist bump or something.

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  8. I am going to go out on a limb and guess this mother will probably have a cost of $0 for this ER visit, which is cheaper than buying a $4 digital thermometer, and therefore leaves more money for Cheetos.

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  9. That's like, four bags of Cheetos!

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