A middle-aged man and his wife and his mother came into the ER. The wife said he came into their bedroom at 2 AM, sat on the bed and fell over. She talked to him and shook him, and although he was breathing comfortably, he wouldn’t wake up. She called an ambulance to take him to the hospital.
He was awake, but groggy when Mike saw him. Mike asked them if he had drunk any alcohol that evening. They said no. Mike asked if the guy EVER drank alcohol. His wife answered that he did not. Mike asked if he had taken any drugs. They said no.
Mike started ordering tests. He ordered blood work, a urine sample and a CT scan of the brain.
The urine had barbituates and benzodiazepines-both sedatives, and the blood contained alcohol.
Mike returned to the room and excused man’s wife and mother. He told the guy there were drugs in his urine. He said he had taken Donatol for his stomach and Ambien (a strong sleeping drug). Then he had gone in his garage to work on his motorcycles.
Okay folks. First of all, it’s wise to lie down after taking a drug like Ambien because it makes your body go to sleep. It also cause your brain to be amnestic, which means you can’t think or remember things. People do crazy things on this stuff. They don’t remember a thing. Older people sometimes take this stuff and end up behind the wheel. It can be quite dangerous.
Mike told the guy that his blood alcohol was close to the legal limit. The guy said he couldn’t remember anything.
Mike asked, “Did you drink tonight?”
“I may have.”
“Do you have alcohol in your garage?’
“Yes.” He lowered his head a little.
“Do you drink it sometimes?”
“Yes.”
So this guy had taken the sleeping drug, gone out to the garage for some tinkering, fallen asleep on his feet, drank some alcohol out of his hidden stash in the garage while he was “semi-conscious”, and then returned to his bedroom to pass out heavily and scare his wife to death, without remembering a thing.
Nice.
A considerable amount of money was wasted on tests.
Moral of the story: If you go to the ER, make sure you tell the physician what drugs you’re taking, and if you take Ambien, go to bed not to work.
