The more elaborate the story, the more I think the patient is full of shit. After 35 years, I think I have developed a pretty good sense of what is and what is not complete bollocks. You just know that a knee injury that occurred after "tripping over the cat while carrying laundry and answering the phone while simultaneously doing a crossword puzzle and reciting the Gettysburg Address" is overkill. But then, you never know. Mostly if it's yellow, has webbed feet and quacks, you'd probably think duck and not chicken.
OK. The following are three examples of injuries that presented themselves to the ER. Let's see if you can figure out which one I thought was absolutely real.
1. 52 year old woman with a facial laceration and a black eye. She had slipped on some ice in the parking lot at work, skidded, fell over a snowbank, slid down an embankment and came to rest on the frozen river. She complained of headache since she had banged her head on a tree on the way down.
2. 55 year old male complained of severe back pain and laceration. He had been rough housing with grandchildren and had fallen off the bed, landing on a Lego Empire State Building under which the cat was slumbering. The cat scratched his arm because the lamp landed on it.
3. 32 year old female with complaint of dislocated shoulder. She had slipped on maybe some juice on the floor of her kitchen while carrying a case of water, went on to trip over the dog and had fallen, landing on her shoulder on top of the open dishwasher as the case of water flew into the air and landed on her leg.
Two out of the three are frequent visitors to the ER with uncanny propensity for freak accidents which result in minimal physical finding but always a request for narcotic analgesia.
What do you think? Answer on Monday. Class dismissed.
