Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Laws of Large Numbers

Every now and again, something unusual happens.

Of course, this, at least in part, depends on your definition of unusual.

One-in-a-million?

Sounds pretty unusual, but in the UK, that might be as many as 60 times a day...

So maybe it just seems unusual; or maybe, as a great philosopher once wrote, "It's not unusual"

Nonetheless, it is a truth universally acknowledged that patients collapsing in Radiology have,usually, just fainted, sometimes as badly as Gillian McKeith. (Or, "Gillian McKeith" to give her her full medical title.)

So, today, when the Resus doors banged open and he was wheeled in I was not unduly concerned.

Shows what I know.

To be fair, he did look worse than the usual fainter, and his thready pulse and agonal respiration pattern did little to reassure us. Even that meagre effort didn't last long, and his light went out. There was surprisingly little fanfare.

His history, gleaned in shouted snatches between the requests for adrenaline and flushes, demands for pads and tubes, added little. But we did get him back, and after a prodigious bout of vomiting, he declared himself better.

Well, he didn't know he just survived a VF cardiac arrest brought in by a substantial STEMI.

In fact, one almost wonders how he'd have fared if he HADN'T gone to the pub and fallen over.

But he came back. I still don't know how long he'll stay this time, but he came.

Unusual, eh?

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