The case of The beautiful young girl who had a big SURPRISE
I had seen so many cases over the years that entered our emergency room. I was no longer surprised easily but this case was very surprising to me.
Many times when people enter an emergency room they do not look their best. Often accidents happen while people are working or out pursuing the interests of their choice, so they come in sweaty, dirty, greasy, bloody and on rare occasions they are neat and clean.
This case is about a very neat and clean young teenage girl who surprised me. My shift was only an hour or two from being complete by the time she came in with her mother. It had been a harrowing day.
On this particular day we had a two patients who came in with cardiac arrest and neither had survived. So my heart was heavy as I had seen the grieving families as they were given the horrific news of the death of their loved ones. It has a way of taking the wind out of your sails when you live those moments with people that mark so much sorrow and loss.
After reeling from such a tough shift of horror, a young lady walked in with her mother. She was 17 years old and her mother looked very young to me as well. Both were very attractive ladies and both were impeccably dressed. I saw their nurse leading them to the OB/GYN room, so I picked up the chart to see what her “chief complaint” was that caused them to come to the ER. The patient was the daughter and the chart only said that she was having vaginal discomfort. I thought that was a strange reason to come to the ER and wondered why they did not just wait and see their own gynecologist the next day. To me it did not sound emergent.
I quickly forgot about this patient when we suddenly had another patient come in who had cut his finger off and brought it with him on ice in a plastic cup. He was holding the place where his finger once was and the cloth on it was completely saturated with blood. The physician immediately had me to call in the orthopedic physician on call for that one. I am happy to report that the reattachment of this man’s severed finger was a success, at least in the short term. I hope in the long term as well.
Then Dr. M. came back by my desk as he had just examined the young lady who was in the gynecology room and he had a funny look on his face. Dr. M is closer to my age, even a couple of years older than me and we often talked about how different people are today than in the sixties. After a minute or so he said, “Juanita that pretty young lady has the worse case of pubic lice I have ever seen!” I sat there shocked for a minute. He stood there writing on her chart at the counter next to my desk. Then I told him I had never heard of public lice. I only thought lice were in people’s heads. He looked up and said, “Have you ever heard of a venereal disease called crabs?” I nodded, and said, "I have 5 brothers and remember them laughing about one of their friends that had crabs at one time. So I knew it was a veneral disease, but I never thought about the details. He told me that crabs is actual lice that reside in the pubic area. They sometimes look a little different than head lice, but they are in the same family.
He advised that patient and her mother to wash anything in her room, not just her bed linens. Then he wrote a prescription and directions and discharged the patient.
After the crabs patient left, he said to get the special cleaning people that sterilize an infected room to come and hazard clean that gynecology room. I did as I was instructed. I then sat there feeling all creeped out. The thought of bugs crawling on a person like that was a nightmare, I do not know how this young woman could look so pleasant like she did, on the way in and on the way out. The mom had a very embarrassed, red face, yet the daughter smiled.
You can never guess what might walk in the emergency room door. This is one I did not see coming and I would never have guessed. It turned out to be another new thing I learned while working in the Emergency Room.
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