some old people just aren’t that cute

I saw a patient the other day. She was the quintissential grandmother. Lovely fluffy white hair, pink cardigan with little embriodered roses on the edges and a lilting Irish accent. She had presented with shortness of breath, which was due to a bit too much fluid on her lungs. Nothing a brief stay in hospital and some tinkering with her medications wouldn’t control. She’d be back baking biscuits, mending clothes and doting on her family (or whatever it was she did) in no time. Of course, adding to this, she was lovely and thought I was the ‘bees knees’ because I was her doctor – all in all a nice change from the patients on the opposite end of the spectrum that try to cajole you to write them a script for Valium, vomit on you or worse still try to assault you.

Anyway, I treated the fluid on her lungs, referred her to the medical team and tucked her up in the emergency department for the night. She was staying in a bed in A & E due to the overcrowding problemswe were having at St Elsewhere’s. Having such a patient early in the night shift somewhat validates one’s choice to work in medicine and even more so seeing as my grandparents died before I was old enough to really appreciate them.

The next morning we did the usual wander around the department with the morning staff, telling them about each patient, handing over tasks that needed to be followed up.etc Sadly we wandered passed the lovely old lady’s room. Yes, the hair was still white, the cardigan still pink and decidedly warm looking in a pink hairy sort of way…unfortunately she was no longer quite as lovely as the night before. She was fast asleep with her mouthwide open snoring loudly, the top dentures had fallen down lying somewhere in the middle of her mouth (yes a bit like the creature in Aliens), drool glistened on her chin and loud trumpeting farts emanated from the bedclothes with alarming, and somewhat pathological regularity.

It wasn’t just the twelve hour shift that left me tired and dirty on the tram home, it was image of the cute grandmother baking cookies and pottering around her house that lay shattered on a hospital bed in A & E wearing a fluffy pink cardigan.

~ by Dr Ben on February 21, 2007.