Status Dramaticus

1915 Thursday night: 23 year old female presents with abdominal pain. Moaning, thrashing around in the wheelchair, hyperventilating. "Honey, you need to slow down your breathing." "I can't! The pain! Can't you get me something for the pain?" Fast forward 6 hours. Patient discharged without narcotics script due to the fact that ALL OF HER TESTS WERE DEAD NORMAL. Labs, CT, Xrays, everything. She did, however, receive enough Dialudid to knock me unconscious for a month.

0630 Friday morning: 23 year old female presents with abdominal pain. Moaning, thrashing around in the wheelchair, hyperventilating. Yup. Same girl. "Honey, you need to slow down your breathing." "I can't! The pain! They didn't do anything to fix the pain! Can't you get me something for the pain?" Fast forward 3 hours. Patient discharged again, because EVERYTHING IS STILL DEAD NORMAL!

0130 Saturday morning: 23 year old female presents with abdominal pain. Walks in, moaning, leaning against the check in counter, hyperventilating. Hey, we've done this before, haven't we? Yup. Maybe third time's a charm. "Honey, you need to slow down your breathing." "Stop telling me that! You're always telling me that! Can't you understand I'm in pain?" I give up. Fast forward 4 hours. Patient is stoned and pain free, all of her tests are STILL dead normal, and she's going home again. This time she's got a script for Lortab.

Moral of the story? If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!