Peanut butter ball

This is a funny one from a colleague:

My friend was going to see a patient and happened to arrive just as the patient began to have a generalized seizure. My friend did the appropriate things for a seizure like rolling the patient on his side and just allowing him to seize without hurting himself. But the seizure kept going, and all the while the patient's wife is becoming more frantic. My friend calls for the nurse, and the patient's wife begins shouting, "he just needs his peanut butter ball! He needs his peanut butter ball!"
"He needs his what?"
"His peanut butter ball. That's what he takes to stop his seizures."
It took a moment, but my friend finally realized that she meant phenobarbital, not peanut butter ball.

Patient mispronunciations of medical words are often funny, but that's one of the funniest I've heard. I'm sure there will be many more now that I'm in Alabama.

Ready for a life change?

Old habits die hard. I don't know how many times I've resolved to do this or that, and then it just keeps getting put off. So I guess I must have understood when my patient said:
"Doc, I'm ready for a life change."

You see, this patient has had multiple hospitalizations for seizures in recent months. Some were amphetamine-related seizures, some were alcohol withdrawal seizures. Now he's here again after seizing, falling, and breaking his jaw. Ouch. That's a wake-up call, and the patient agreed.

He said, "I think this is my chance. I'm really going to quit all that stuff and stay off of it. Really, I haven't used any of it in the past 5 days, and I really haven't needed it."

So I commended him on his resolve and encouraged him still to seek out support groups so he could stay off of "that stuff." I told him that if he stayed off of all of it, he may not need seizure medicines, and he may not have any more seizures. Then as I turned to go, I asked if he had any more questions.

"Just one. So is there anything out there that is not amphetamines, not alcohol, that will not cause seizures, that I could still use to party with?"

Well, I guess he wasn't quite ready for that life change yet.

Middle of the night calls

It's been a while since I've posted, but November was quite possibly the busiest month ever. Here are some funny calls I got in the middle of the night this month:

"Doctor, Mr. So-and-so is refusing to take his Lipitor."
"Why is that?"
"Well, he says that it makes him impotent."
"So tell me how exactly that will be a problem for him while he's in the hospital working up and rehabbing from his major stroke? I guess if our stroke patients are trying to do that in the hospital, it's a good sign in some ways, but..."
"Yeah, I guess I'll go tell him to just take his Lipitor for now."

"Doctor, this patient is on an insulin drip at 30cc/hr, but his sugar is still 252. Should I give him regular insulin from his sliding scale or go up on his insulin rate?"
--Now on the surface, that seems like a good question. However...
"Well actually the patient is on a D10 drip at 30cc/hr, so you should do neither of those..."
"Oh, but I thought D10 IS insulin."
"Actually, no, it's quite the opposite. The D in D10 stands for dextrose, which is sugar. Thus, since he's getting sugar pumped into his veins, and his blood sugar is high, then the solution would be to turn down the rate that the sugar is going in."
"Wait, but I asked another nurse too, and she said that D10 is insulin."
[sigh] "Just turn whatever he's getting down to 15cc/hr, and I'll come take a look at it."