PGYx: You just almost died. You stopped breathing and if your sister hadn't brought help (after bringing you the heroin) you'd be dead.
[Sister looking on shifts uncomfortably]
Mr. Heroin: I'm never doing that again!
PGYx: Ok, so would you be interested in going to rehab?
Mr. Heroin: I think I'd do well with AA meetings and things like that.
PGYx: What about rehab?
Mr. Heroin: Well, I sort of just got out of rehab...
PGYx: Ok, but you just now shot up heroin, so clearly there's more work to do regarding your addiction.
Mr. Heroin: Well I had to do it because the IV pain meds you're giving me weren't working.
PGYx: Do you see that you're proving my point here?
(And if I haven't said it enough before, Thanks, Narcan!*)
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2 comments:
Ohhhh dear.
Yeah, that is not good.
See, I figure this is where a video of being discovered by your family, then brought in to ED unconscious and incontinent, resuscitated and then coherent again could be a really useful patient education tool.
I really think the "you almost died" doesn't sink in for most people.
Yep, gotta love narcan. :)
You're absolutely right that the "you nearly died" line doesn't impress the one who nearly died. I said it matter of factly and didn't dwell on it as I figured he wouldn't care, but the sister who brought him the heroin in the hospital seemed impressed in a "Oh shit!" kind of way.
He was really fortunate, in a way, to have chosen the hospital as the place to shoot up as he likely would have suffered full respiratory arrest (O2 sat in the 40s and rapidly falling) without the benefit of good old bag-mask ventilation and trusty Narcan.
I don't want to write him off, but I can't imagine him anything but dead within the next few years if he keeps using.
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