ER fat with abdominal pain Hi shitlords! I’m glad you guys like my boring medical stories, I guess I found my niche here. The nurses really have the better stories since they get right in there with the patient, but when it comes down to it fats are never pleasant for anyone. I go back into the grind today so this may be my last story for a while. TLDR at bottom. I come in to work and things are dead, in a couple of hours we’re slammed. Steady flow of EMTs, cops guarding rooms, full waiting area… typical day. Fat comes in with abdominal pain (I’ll call him Mr. Jones, not his real name). Nurse questions him and everything indicates an intestinal disorder, so I order a CT abdomen pelvis with contrast. For those unfamiliar, a CT scan (often referred to as a CAT scan) is an excellent diagnostic tool. These give us much more information than a typical xray and can be done with or without contrast. Contrast is a material that we put inside the patient that helps us visualize his or her insides and lets us see some of the more minute details that we would otherwise miss. I want this guy to drink oral contrast, which will travel through him and coat his intestines so we get a better image. This takes some time, so basically I put in the order and the nurses communicate with the CT techs and I get the pictures. Time passes. For those unfamiliar with the ER, patient rotation is a HUGE issue. Hospital administration tracks patient time to the minute and inevitably bitches to us that we take too long, but the point is that our patient tracker has a timer next to each patient so we know how long they’ve been here. I check the timer next to Mr. Jones. He’s been here a while, surely long enough to have had the scan done. I check and there are no images. Not a huge issue. I see how busy we are, so I know how busy xray is. A lot of times they have the images but simply are not processing them in a timely manner. I’ll just give CT a call and see where my images are. CT tells me that they haven’t heard back from the nurse. Fine, I ask the nurse what’s going on. She’s telling me Mr. Jones won’t drink the contrast and she called CT and CT was supposed to call me and blah blah blah and she’s talking too much so I know she’s lying to cover her ass because she dropped the ball. Not a huge issue. Shit happens and wires get crossed. I decide to fix this so I go to Mr. Jones’s room. Sometimes patients pick and choose who they want to listen to, so I figure I’ll give it a shot. I go in the room and he’s laying there with two full bottles of contrast. His fat wife is just sitting there staring at me through enormous glasses with her hands folded in her lap like she’s thinks she’s dainty. “Hi, Mr. Jones, I’m Dr. life_is_amazing. So I see you’re not drinking the contrast.” “Yeah, I can’t drink that stuff.” “This is pretty important. We think there’s something going on with your intestines and we’d get a much better picture if you drink this contrast.” “I can’t drink that stuff. It tastes bad.” Now, I’ve never drank the contrast before, but I hear it has a chalky taste, much like Maalox. Sure, it’s mildly unpleasant, but that’s about it. “I know it doesn’t taste good, but you’re telling us that you’re in a lot of pain. If you drink this then I’ll be able to help you a lot better.” I’d like to take a moment and reflect on the fact that I’m having this conversation with a grown man. This is a grown-ass American man who came to the EMERGENCY ROOM for a fucking EMERGENCY and is now refusing to participate in his care because he doesn’t want to spend a few minutes drinking something yucky. So this is how he responds: “I can’t drink that stuff! It TASTES BAD!” I was dumbfounded. I was speechless. And then his wife chimes in with “it tastes bad,” as if that was a definitive argument. If I remember correctly, I think I just turned and walked out. At this point there’s not much else I can do. It’s hard to give a shit about someone’s healthcare when they refuse to cooperate with the most basic instructions. All I can do is change the order and see what I can get. I can’t remember what I diagnosed him with, but it was nothing severe and we were able to discharge him to go home.  So now I have a great idea for a business. I’m going to make contrast for fat people. Either bacon-flavored or loaded with high fructose corn syrup. Hell, who I kidding, it needs to be both. TLDR: Fat comes to ER for an emergency. Refuses to participate in his healthcare because he does not like the taste of medical equipment.