A clinical observation: Crack cocaine makes people think oddly.
Within the last week I’ve had: the 50ish man whose mailing address is a park come in with chest pain, and his prize posession is the picture: his crack setup. He decided to leave the hospital after a couple of hours, and made sure he took it with him.
I had a kid who says he’s been out of prison for about a week, who cannot take his seizure medications because he has to take them with food, and he had no money for food. His pressing concern: he wanted me to call a cop so he could give his crack pipe to them. ?You can afford crack, but not food? Well, yeah. The cops took his crack pipe, and we gave him a box lunch. The kid wanted to go back to jail, but the cops wouldn’t play, so then he decided that he’d been having suicidal thoughts. His behavior was plenty odd, and since the cops weren’t going to do what he needed, we sent him to the psych place instead.
The topper was a young female with chest pain who’s been smoking crack. ?When’s the last time? ‘Today, but I’ve been cutting down, because I think I’m pregnant’. She is. Mother of the year candidate.
Alcohol sends me more patients, but they don’t seem to have the bizarre decision making skills of the crack addict.
also posted at LingualNerve
My personal favorites are the patients who come in for “belly pain” or a “headache” and when you ask them if they tried anything to relieve the pain they reply, “Well, I did a little cocaine, but it didn’t seem to help.” I wonder if there’s someone out on the street telling people that cocaine is good for their aches and pains, because I hear that phrase at least a few times a month.