He looked at us wide-eyed with horror. "I thought I was going to die!!"
He's nine. And he had almost passed out in the shower. And dripping wet, with the water still running at full blast, he ran to tell his parents that he had almost died. His parents appropriately freaked out and drove him straight to the emergency room.
We were worried about presyncope. Maybe an arrhythmia. Maybe his electrolytes were off. Because fainting? In little kids? That's worrisome.
And then we heard his story. He had a normal day of playing outside with his friends, playing basketball and riding bicycles. He came home stinking of little boy body odor, so his mom had ordered him straight to the showers. Everything was like it's always been, except - and these are his words - "my little bird started to fly!!"
Then, he said, "And everything started to spin around, and I felt like I couldn't breathe anymore! My heart started feeling like it was going to jump out of my chest! And everything got really blurry, and I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE!!"
My senior resident and I looked at each other and tried to suppress our laughter. My senior resident smiled at our patient and told him that everything was fine. And that when he was older, he would like those feelings. He looked at us in disbelief, "I'm going to like dying??? NO THANK YOU. I don't even drink SODA cause it makes my stomach feel funny!"
We didn't know how to tell him, nor did we know what to tell the parents, but we're pretty sure our patient just had his first erection.
But just in case, we gave him a bolus of IV fluids.
3 years ago
