Welcome to another installment of the Top 10 Ways to Avoid the ER.
Don’t get overweight
Have you ever seen a little sign on a step ladder that tells you how many pounds it can support? Typically it will say that it is rated for no more than 250 pounds, for example. Unfortunately, our bodies do not come with a weight limit rating printed on our foreheads, but they should. Once you have exceeded your own personal limit, you cannot expect your body to function normally, but you can expect to come visit me in the ER. You will be more likely to have strokes, heart attacks, problems with your joints, injuries, etc. Take a moment to calculate your body mass index (BMI), and if you are higher than 25, you’ve got some work to do.
Toxicology tip of the day.
Don’t smoke rat poison. Perhaps this warning is not necessary for the vast majority of patients, but for one unfortunate young man who presented to the ER with severe hemorrhage, it would have helped a lot. Evidently, he was combining marijuana with rat poison pellets, tossing it into a bong, and toking away.
Finally, someone comes along to make Cheech and Chong look like geniuses.
Welcome to another installment of the Top 10 Ways to Avoid the ER.
Number 8 – Hire someone else to do it
I know, I know, your gutters are full of leaves and the ladder is just sitting there. Or maybe your trees need trimming and you can borrow your neighbor’s chainsaw. The problem is that the money you save by not hiring someone else to do these tasks will seem like nothing compared to the costs you will face from any injury. So I want you to really think about this. Are you really comfortable with power tools, working on a ladder, or a roof? I see a steady stream of homeowners who injure themselves doing home maintenance projects, and their only crime is overconfidence. I use my wife as a good measuring stick of when a job is too dangerous for me. She will give me an honest opinion about whether I should do a job myself or farm it out. So if there is any doubt in your mind, before you pick up that skillsaw, pick up the phone instead, and call your local handyman.
For those of us who feel comprehensive health care reform is not needed, I would like to present the following case. I recently had a middle aged man who had undergone a common procedure on his kidney a few days prior. He had this procedure done in a city about 4 hours away. I asked why he didn’t have the procedure closer to home, and he answered that nobody took his MediCal. However, since he had been in the military, he was able to have the VA do it, but 4 hours away was their closest location with urology services. When I saw him, he had an infection. He needed to be admitted, and unfortunately, he had to go back to where the procedure was done. And of course, he needed to go there by ambulance, just in case “anything happened.” Naturally, this was the middle of the night, and so we had to get the medics and ambulance and send them on an 8 hour round trip ride to transfer this patient, who could easily have been treated closer to home. Follow up will be very difficult for this patient, as he will undoubtedly not drive 4 hours unless absolutely necessary.
I wish these stories were unusual, but they are not. I realize there is no perfect system, but our current method is so inefficient and expensive, I have to think there are better alternatives.
