With a dash of crazy...

So I had to be the doc in charge for the medical student today since the resident was in clinic. I was told that I had to pull a central line on the guy (a catheter that sticks out from the neck and runs down into the heart), but I wasn't told that the guy was wacked out of his gourd.

I first got to the room at lunchtime and told him that he could go home as soon as I pulled out the line. He put his head in his hands, groaned, then looked up and asked if I could come back after lunch. Strange reaction, I thought, but fine - if he wanted to wait, I didn't really care.

I came back to the floor 20 minutes later to do it and found him wheeling himself down the hall in a wheelchair proclaiming "I need a drink and to clear my head". Problem is, he still had that line in. I couldn't let him leave with the thing in, because it can get infected, cause heart problems, or be used for hardcore IV drug use, so I ran after him and managed to stop him in the elevator.

Suffice it to say, he freaked out a bit. Started screaming that the mother of his baby wouldn't let him see his kid anymore and therefore he needed to get a drink. He insisted that I wasn't "treating him like a man" because I wanted to take two minutes to pull the line out first. He started flailing around and banging his wheelchair into the wall, cause that's how a man acts.

Anyway, the med student went and called security. Security at Penn means humongous middle aged men that look like bouncers and you wouldn't want to mess with - a nice change from Dartmouth, where they use old alzheimer's patients that my wife could take. They got him back in the room.

Once in the room, the guard had a little chat with they guy and he agreed to get the line out. The guy even thanked me for doing it when I was done. I asked the med student if this was normal behavior for the guy - she said he kept calling her is second wife, swore at the nurses for trying to hurt him, and had security called in the day before because he was "going to bring a gatt down on our *sses. Nice guy. So philadelphia residents, as of about 3PM today, this man is back out on your streets. Enjoy.