Never a dull moment

It may be a holiday week, but it's been busy! The Hotel is always hopping around the holidays because people want to go home. If they can't get home, we have to take care of what we can before lots of other people take off for the long weekend.

While some of our folks would like to go home, they get sick. One character mentioned that he/she had a transient loss of vision. He/she was worked up, then he had another incidence. Between the opthomologist who said the patient had a fugax and the neurologist who wanted a stat carotid exam, he/she ended up with a quick trip to Washington for an overnight to get all the diagnostics done and issues resolved.

In rehab, it's very rare to have a patient on TPN. In fact, I've yet to see one in any of our units (acute or otherwise) because if you're on TPN, you're usually sick and not a rehab candidate NOTE: this may vary in other settings.

However, if you end up with a chyle, a not uncommon sequela of the infamous triple A, you could need TPN for a while, as one of our recent patients did. Thankfully, no more TPN and patient is working up on the diet list, slowly but surely.

One of my favorite things to do is to read imaging reports. We have lots of rehab patients with CTs, Xrays and many, many MRIs. I follow along in the reports and learned this week about Thornwald cysts which popped up in a patient's report.

Finally, since it's turning to winter here in the northern hemisphere, I also learned about thunderstorm asthma, which was sending people to emergency rooms all over the southern hemisphere recently. Just makes me wonder how many of these sent me to the emergency room as a new asthmatic. My poor mother!

Thanks for following and reading along! May you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving  (or rest of the week) wherever you are!