Emergency Sheet: Fill & Download for Free

I remember old poisoning emergency sheets from the 60s recommending burnt toast, as a substitute for activated charcoal, but this turns out to be a myth. Toast, dry or in warm milk, can be soothing to your tummy if you have food poisoning or just feel queasy, and can't keep anything down. Dry toast and a cup of tea can be comforting if you wake up hungover from the night before. It doesn't have any medicinal properties, it's just easy to swallow and it won't upset your stomach.Burning the toast is contraindicated, as it introduces acrylamides into your system. The jury is still out on whether the amounts of acrylamides introduced into our bodies by starchy foods cooked at high temperatures will have a similar effect to that on rats, which consumed high levels of the compounds over long periods, before showing higher than average rates of cancer. But given that burning your toast has no proven beneficial effects, it's better to eat it browned, not burnt.When we were sick as kids, we used to get soft boiled eggs with buttered toast broken into them to absorb the yolks. I doubt that there was any medical science behind that, but it did make us feel comforted.

I’ve spent 20 years in emergency medicine so I’ve seen a lot of faking. I’ve also seen a lot of people in truly horrific pain. My favorite faking story was this one:A 21-year-old woman came to the emergency room complaining that she was having a miscarriage. When I examined her, there was blood on her clothes and all over the sheets.But there was no blood inside her vagina. When we tested her urine, it showed a shocking amount of sugar but was negative for blood despite being quite red.We then tested her blood sugar, which was normal, so the significant amount of sugar in her urine did not make sense. Her serum pregnancy test was also negative.I went back to speak to the patient and asked the entire family to leave the room. I calmly asked her what was really going on and she maintained her story that she was having a miscarriage.I explained to her that her pregnancy test would not yet be negative if she was having a miscarriage, and that the red stuff all over her clothes and sheets was not blood. I asked her again to tell me the truth.Thankfully I did this with a great deal of compassion.She looked me in the eyes, started crying, and told me the truth.She was a graduate student in theater arts and had accidentally become pregnant by her fiancé. Both of their families were devout Catholics, so pregnancy termination was completely out of the question; if she had an abortion, she would have been disowned by both families. So basically, she faked her own miscarriage complete with theatrical blood. Because she was desperate to finish graduate school before she got pregnant, she went to Planned Parenthood and had a medical abortion two weeks before presenting to the emergency room. She then faked the miscarriage to hide the abortion.She begged me not to give her away, which of course I did not. I also did not lie to her fiancé or family. I simply said that she was no longer pregnant and that some women after miscarriage want to talk about it extensively and spend time at home but other women want to not discuss it and continue with their school or work. I’m grateful that I suspended judgement and learned the truth.

One of my Canadian colleagues was in LA for a work assignment. While there he suffered a heart attack and was in a Los Angeles hospital for just over a week before he was put on a medical flight to bring him home. After his return, he received a FedEX box with a huge bundle of paper detailing his medical expenses from that hospital stay. It was for over $150,000! Not only were the doctor and clinicians expenses detailed, the invoice also included such ridiculous charges as $2 for the box of tissues in his room. Also included were charges for everything he had been using in the hospital from a bedpan to the sheets on his bed. We did not realize that he could have brought home all the hospital room supplies as he had been charged full price for each item.Luckily his provincial healthcare insurance and the optional insurance our company provided to staff who had to travel in the USA covered all of the costs. But we were all horrified at what a medical emergency can cost in The States.