Whenever I get an admit from the ER, I have to do an admission sheet. This basically entails asking about 100 questions that the patient has already been asked 100 times. I need to know things such as what they are allergic to, if they have an advance directive, why they came to the hospital today, and what their past medical history is.

This is usually the most loaded question for some people. Some patients will tell you about everything from the time they stubbed their toe when they were 6 to that “heart surgery” that they had a few years ago. (”What kind of heart surgery?” “Oh, I dunno… it was a few years back…”) Some will tell you that they have no past medical history. No surgeries, no afflictions that they’re being treated for. Healthy as a horse, they say.

Then I ask about what medications they take at home. When a patient has told me that they have no past medical history, then answer this question with “Lopressor, Prevacid, Aspirin, and Synthroid,” I get a bit cranky. These meds suggest that the patient has high blood pressure, gastric reflux disease, some kind of vascular disease, and hypothyroidism. So then I ask, “What are you taking these meds for?”

“Because the doctor told me to.” Ah geez.

*Switch gears* One day we got a call from the shift supervisor telling us that a cardiologist was sending over a 40something woman directly from the doctor’s office because the patient was having a lot of trouble breathing and had a very long and complicated history of heart disease. The patient refused to go by ambulance, saying that her boyfriend would drive her to the ER.

An hour goes by…. no word from the patient. We start to get a bit worried… the MD office isn’t quite that far away. Another hour goes by…. nothing. We think maybe she went to a different hospital. Why would someone with such severe heart disease (and so young!) wait? Why would they refuse an ambulance? What if something happened to them?

We finally hear that the patient is on their way over from the ER. What took her so long, we ask?

Apparently said patient needed to stop for some lunch before coming to the hospital. She made her presence known by banging on the ambulance bay doors with her Wendy’s Biggie cup.

Ah geez.