- In my second year of high school
I contracted malaria, while we were visiting there.
So hopefully the malaria was treated.
Today we are breaking down
and reacting to some of the most unusual medical stories
and patient mishaps sent in by some of you.
Don't worry, I'll keep it anonymous.
All right, let's dive right in.
I got poisoned by gold.
Oh, interesting.
Don't eat gold.
- I love gold.
- Heavy metals (object whooshing)
such as like lead, arsenic,
they all kind of fall under the same category
of causing nausea, vomiting, upset stomach,
could also cause numbness and tingling of your hands.
Basically the treatment is stop ingesting it
or stop getting exposure to it.
And then the other component is chelation,
basically binding to it.
Different agents such as dimercaprol,
or other word is BAL,
and other different types of medications.
So if you have these general symptoms
and they're persistent over a period of time,
go to your doctor, get it checked out
and they actually can run tests to see if you have these.
Now other people may have symptoms
of gold hypersensitivity because gold is in jewelry.
You can have, like, an allergic type reaction
reacting to your skin
and that's a different type of pathology.
Typically it's treated like a normal reaction.
One, remove the offending agent
and then two, treat with topical medications,
if it's a local,
and then treat with systemic or ingested medications
if it's fully within your body like hives
all over the place, difficulty breathing,
swelling, those sorts of things.
When I was younger, I swallowed a bunch of coins
and it hurt like heck on my insides.
Then I drank some water and it felt better.
Needless to say, when I took a poop later
it sounded like old timey cash register.
Okay. (chuckles)
Swallowing coins is actually a common thing
that we see in the emergency department
and we do pretty much get worried
if it gets stuck in an airway.
Coins in themselves will pass
through your gastrointestinal tract,
they'll go through your stomach,
they'll go through your small intestine,
large intestine and you will (censored) them out.
If you accidentally inhale a coin
that needs to be emergently taken out
and sometimes if the coin is very large
it can get stuck in the esophagus or into the stomach.
So we'll do, basically, x-rays
of somebody when they come into the emergency department
and if you ever see an x-ray of a coin stuck in the airway,
it most likely it's going to appear this way,
where you see the thin part looking at you on a plain film.
And that is because the vocal cords go in this direction
and so it's gotta go through it like a slot machine.
Typically, if you see it flat,
where you can actually see the whole coin,
that typically means it's stuck in the esophagus.
If it's stuck in the esophagus,
you need a gastroenterologist
to come and do an upper endoscopy to remove it.
If it's stuck in the airway
you need a pulmonologist to do a bronchoscopy,
to go in there and get the coin out.
Sometimes these can cause local inflammatory reactions,
but typically they're not detrimental
as long as you get them out.
My wife had her gallbladder removed,
three months after having her son.
She was in extreme pain
that lasted two and a half years
until we found out that it could be a titanium allergy,
and sure enough it was.
She got better 100% after the titanium clips were removed.
So very interesting.
So your gallbladder sits underneath your liver,
produces a fluid bile that is stored there
then helps to digest fats when we have them in our diet.
Sometimes you can get stones in there
or it may not function as it should.
Typically you remove the gallbladder
and you put clips to basically block off the ducts
and the vessels on that area.
People have different allergies to different things
and obviously this individual potentially had an allergy
to the metal that's in these clips.
We worry about all these other things first.
So we'll get images, we'll see the clips,
continue to follow up and, you know,
see what makes it feel better, you know,
what makes it feel worse
and trying to figure out from there.
So I'm glad this individual got better,
but it also just, you know, brings to light
that some things that might be so benign,
that we think, might be causing the greatest problem.
When I was younger I ate a light bulb.
It was a Christmas tree light bulb, not a regular one.
After being rushed to the hospital and being x-rayed
they couldn't find it in my system.
Luckily it passed without a problem.
Typically these type of light bulbs
are quite small compared to a normalized light bulb,
should still be picked up on an x-ray
because they do have some metal components.
If it's all plastic, you still should be able to pick it up.
Now if it's hidden behind something,
if it's behind a bone or over top of a bone on an x-ray
you may not be able to see it.
It's probably small enough that they weren't concerned
and allow it to pass through the GI tract.
Typically it has to do with size
and sharpness for an emergent upper endoscopy
to have a foreign body removed.
We do see people who swallow a lot of different objects
and they're typically fine,
if they're small objects
they won't cause a perforation of the intestines
and you'll be okay.
I stood up on a crate to hang some curtains
from my mother in the basement.
Getting down, something didn't seem right
and I stepped on a glass fishbowl barefoot.
Needless to say, my foot was cut wide open.
Oh my gosh!
Okay, very common to have a glass injuries.
We have people that come to the emergency department
with lacerations and puncture wounds
due to glass and the feet.
The bottom of the feet are very uncomfortable and painful,
especially to try to then anesthetize and numb up
to fix it because the skin is so thick down there,
that's why we're able to walk,
without any difficulty, barefoot.
And very rarely do we get injuries.
Now, when actually something lacerates through it
or punctures through it, the skin is very thick.
So when we actually do sutures,
we actually push really, really hard with a suture needle
to close it after we clean it up.
We'll typically get an x-ray
'cause we may not be able to see it,
but you can see it on an x-ray.
Sometimes it's very difficult to then try to find it.
I've had patients where they've had pieces
of glass puncture into their tissue.
It takes a little while to find this piece of glass blindly.
If it becomes an issue,
you can have a specialist do a fluoroscopy,
which is basically a special type of continued x-ray,
so that way they have an x-ray
while they're actually trying to find it.
And so they know exactly where their instrument is
relating to the object,
especially if you can pick it up on an x-ray.
Every year we usually spend summer vacations
in Morocco and in 2012, in my second year of high school
I contracted malaria while we were visiting there.
So hopefully the malaria was treated.
Well, malaria, what the heck is malaria?
Malaria is a mosquito-borne transmitted illness
that is a parasite and it is quite common,
especially where mosquitoes are,
pretty much around the world,
and it's quite common to actually have malaria
in these areas.
Treatment for malaria is medications,
you can use Malarone, different types of antibiotics
and a whole slew of other types of medications
that are quite common that can be used to treat malaria.
Typically people with malaria will get headaches,
fatigues, body aches and fevers, obviously,
and typically we'll do blood smears to diagnose it
to look for abnormalities on the blood.
So if you are going to an area,
make sure that you talk to your doctor before traveling
to make sure you have the appropriate medications
and sometimes you actually take prophylactic medications
in these areas.
The best thing is to talk to a,
basically a tropical travel doctor,
or just a travel doctor,
which will help the different things
that you need to have,
either vaccinations or medications
prior to going to certain areas.
I recently had to be taken to the hospital
for a rabies shot.
Bat flew into my face,
then hit my leg when it fell from my face.
P.S., it hurt like hell.
So yes, so anytime we have bats around,
sometimes there're bites you can't feel
so we do get concerned for rabies.
And rabies vaccination and injections are painful.
So typically if you get exposed
to something that might have rabies and got bitten,
you first would actually get the immunoglobulin,
which is actually like the rabies antibodies,
that hurts.
You have to get it injected all around the site
where you might have had the bite or the wound
and then dispersed throughout your body,
and these are all injections into your tissue.
Very, very, very painful.
And then you get your rabies vaccination.
There is a four-day and there's also a five-day series.
Typically you'd get it over four days and it's spread out
over the next probably two weeks or three weeks,
just depending on the type of series that you're getting.
Wow, thank you so much for sending in your stories.
I appreciate you sharing your stories with us
and allowing us a little insight into the things
that happened to you and that we can all learn from.
I hope that I was able to provide some information
that was beneficial for all of you out there.
If you enjoy this and you wanna see more
let me know in the comments.
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Thank you so much for watching and stay healthy my friends.