Young men and other idiots

It is not too often that you come across young men or teenagers in a general medical or general surgical ward, but it does happen, and it usually happens for quite different reasons than those of a more mature age.

If you are between the age of sixteen and twenty eight, male and in hospital, then there is a good chance that you're an idiot. If you are between the age of sixteen and twenty eight, male and in hospital on a Saturday night, then you are definitely an idiot. It wouldn't surprise me that one day scientists discovered a gene for male stupidity in the hospital environment. Most times this seeming inborn idiocy is a great source of humour for hospital staff, but unfortunately these outbursts of idocitic behaviour are not always humorous because sometimes they cause harm.

As a general rule most people don’t really know exactly what to expect when they end up in hospital, and teenagers, and slightly older but still young males, are no exception. The lads don't really have a clue what to think as they sit in their bed surrounded by veterans from world war two. They even look slightly out of place. But it is sometimes nice to have a young patient in your care, as they do tend to be much more independent and mobile, and do not have the often heavy needs of an elderly patient. But they still need to be watched carefully, as they pose their own unique hazards.

Shaun was eighteen years old and had presented to the emergency room with generalised abdominal pain. He had a fever and as time went by the pain gradually became more severe and it also done something rather strange; it moved to the lower right side of his abdomen. At this stage a diagnosis was pretty easy to make and anyone with even a little medical knowledge should know what was wrong. At ten-o'clock that same night Shaun was taken to surgery where the surgeon opened him up and snipped out snipped out some innards. The surgeon said he was a very lucky young man as his appendix was very close to rupturing.

I first met Shaun at seven o'clock the morning after his surgery. It was a Saturday and the ward was quiet, it looked like it was going to be a nice shift. When I saw Shaun he looked to be in pretty good shape as he was nibbling at something light for breakfast and keen to get moving. He seemed to have had no lasting side affects from his anaesthetic, in particular any nausea, and his pain seemed under control. This was a good sign, it's always good to get patients moving early, but I did warn Shaun to take it easy.

“Take it easy? The sooner I get out of here the better.” Shaun was determined to get out this damn place because it was “full of depressing old people.” I couldn’t do much about the fact that he was sharing a room with three older men, but it wasn’t so bad. Sure one of them had a touch of night time dementia and kept getting up during the night calling out for his long dead wife, but at least he wasn’t in the women’s room. Any time anyone walked into the women’s room Mrs Stewart, the 85 year old nun on prescribed bed-rest because of leg ulcers, kept on calling for us to stop touching her in naughty places.

The first thing that Shaun wanted to do that morning was to have a shower. “No problem Shaun” I told him, “but are you sure you are up to it? Why don’t you wait until a bit later in the day, you’ve only just come out of theatre?” Shaun was not going to wait. I then suggested that he use the large shower room that has a chair in it that he can use, but he would have to wait half an hour as other patients were booked in first. Of course Shaun was not willing to wait; he was determined to use the normal size shower with no seat inside. I suggested to Shaun that this was perhaps not the best idea as the shower is hot, steamy, cramped and with no ventilation, he would probably pass out. Shaun seemed to think that he knew what was best for his body and ignored my advice, he was oblivious to reason.

From past experience I knew to wait outside Shaun's shower cubicle. Five minutes later I heard a ‘thump’ followed by a squealing sound that comes when skin rubs against wet plastic. These were the sounds of Shaun first hitting the wall and then sliding down the wall to lie in a tangled heap on the shower floor. As I helped bring him round I conveniently happened to have a bowl in my hand which Shaun promptly threw up into. I popped him in a shower chair and wheeled him back to bed. He was so pale that he would have made a ghost look tanned and he had broken out into a cold sweat.

As terrible as Shaun looked it was nothing serious although I made sure he hadn’t done any damage to his wound. Thankfully he hadn’t but he was in quite a bit of pain, what a surprise. I didn’t even pretend to feel sympathy for him but did give him some paracetamol.