I remember someone once asking me to keep an eye out for eligible young men while I was working as a consular officer at an Australian Embassy. I asked them how many times they had required consular assistance and they said never. So... I suggested that they looked elsewhere for their soul mate since the kind of person who came to my attention was fairly often pathologically unable to take responsibility for themselves.

Dr B has been working nights in a large rural hospital's Emergency Department and some of his stories took me back...

A little girl of six years old had fallen off the bars at school and had started vomiting during the night so her father took her into the ED where she clung silently to him, her wide brown eyes declaring her fear. Her father clearly doted on her and she on him. Dr B later discovered that she had been fostered into this man's care for just five months. In five short months she had placed all her trust in her new father. But her father was tortured because what she didn't know was that she could be taken from him at any time to be returned to her dysfunctional family or adopted out or just moved on to another foster family. And after one or two more moves her trust would not be so easily won.

Still pondering the child welfare system Dr B was confronted by another side of the equation. A young woman suffering from bipolar affective disorder and chronically unable to cope with life had a long-standing drug habit. When she was sixteen she had had her first child and out of her seven children three were still in the welfare system being fostered out to various families while the other four had left home as soon as they were old enough. Now Dr B began to ponder the uncontested right to have children.

Next was a sixteen year old girl flanked by her older brother and boyfriend, all three of them in a high-pitched state of frenzy. After Dr B asked them to reduce their number by one he learned that the girl had been the victim of drink-spiking. Further discussion revealed that the patient had drunk about 15 glasses of champagne ? but could handle her drink - so her last drink must have been spiked as she had suddenly begun to act very strangely.

Strangely looked to Dr B like intoxicated so he left the young couple to flap about amongst themselves for a few hours while he attended to other emergencies. The nurses quietly advised Dr B against giving intravenous fluids because it would reduce the girl's hangover and in their opinion a serious hangover would be the best motivation to wise up once she had sobered up. Otherwise, they warned, she could find herself in the same situation as the woman with seven children cycling through the welfare system.

Hoping for a simple cold Dr B was faced instead with another drama queen. This one was a young man ? toast of the town for winning the regional championships in a manly and exhilerating adventure sport. He had a sore knee that had been strapped up and he hobbled around on crutches while it healed. But what had brought him into the ED at two o'clock in the morning was tingly toes. Dr B thought he might have misheard. Tingly toes. Dr B asked if the young man had taken his sock off before this episode of tingling. The young man had. Dr B suggested that his toes may have been cold. It is winter in Australia. The young man snorted. Dr B prescribed a blanket over the tingly toes. The young man was outraged, did Dr B know who he was? No, Dr B didn't. Dr B was not a fan of above mentioned adventure sport nor was he from this town. Perhaps the young man could also massage his toes. The young man snapped out an order to his fawning girlfriend who immediately began to massage the sacred cold tingly toes.

While Dr B was dealing with another patient he heard the young man yell at one of the nurses. It was something along the lines of being treated in a manner beneath his lofty station. He stormed out saying he would go to another hospital. Apparently he never made it, choosing istead to go back home to bed, where his foot warmed up and the tingling stopped. He was scheduled to see his tingly toe specialist the following day so has now no doubt got to the bottom of his vexing emergency.

Finally, and possibly most entertaining of all, was the less dramatic but more manipulative man who had cut himself. He had a history of cutting himself but had been seeing a therapist for years. Therapy apparently didn't help him with the enormous stress of having his wife return to work and leaving him to look after their baby for about an hour each evening after childcare had finished.

So he had stormed off after an argument and come back with an impressive amount of blood on display. Dr B noticed he had skillfully avoided damaging any arteries or nerves on either wrist and that the wife was now most apologetic, considering all kinds of changes to her life that she had previously thought unnecessary. The baby was asleep in a pram beside them, it was almost five in the morning by now, and Dr B wondered why, if the man had been capable of taking himself off to purchase razors and cut himself without telling his wife, he had been unable to make his own way to the ED without disturbing wife and baby.

Dr B set about sewing up the cuts. At this point the man began to scream and cry ? Oh Doctor have you put in enough local anaesthetic? It HURTS!!

Note to readers: do not cut yourself. Slashing your skin with cheap disposable razors apparently does not hurt but being sewn up afterwards really kills.

Yes yes there were real emergencies but really, how many of us have ever fallen from a ladder at four o'clock on a winter morning? Which is why I would never advise anyone to seek their life partner in a consular office or an emergency department. Look instead for someone who can organise themselves, take care of themselves and take responsibility for themselves. Even when things go wrong. Especially when things go wrong.

Posted on June 14, 2010 - by