Scene: 20-something year old punk, high out of his mind and sporting a deep stab wound to the left thigh, refuses to cooperate during a trauma exam.
MD: "Do you have any pain - stop moving! - do you have any pain when I push here?"
Pt: "Yo, man, what's with all these questions? Can't we have an intellectual conversation or something?"
At which point we stopped the exam, brought some coffee shop chairs into the trauma bay, and began to discuss themes of fatherhood and identity in James Joyce's Ulysses.
2 comments:
I find Dostoevsky's writing to be good ER conversation starter. "Tell me, how do you feel about Dostoevsky's endorsement of the Christian idea of redemption through pain and suffering? Was he a brilliant theologian and author, or just a crotchety old Russian?"
I'll have to try that one the next time I'm at work
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