If thy limb offends thee....

Hey welcome back. I hope that your winter is over. Mine ain't. Enough is enough.
I have been cold for too long. Speaking of cold......
On to our story:

We received a phone call today asking if we could see a patient with a "cold foot".
We were all like,"yeah...". Cold foot refers to interrupted blood flow from the heart to the foot or feet. Its bad. You could lose your foot within a two days or so if left untreated. The skin will swell like a sausage casing and takes on a purple-ish look. Gross as hell.
Back to cold foot man. He started having foot pain on a Sunday. He had some surgery about ten years ago by one of our Drs. The patient lives in Vermont. I work in NY. This man was willing to drive from Vermont to NY just to see this particular Dr. That's about a five hour drive and he drove it alone. Just so that he could used the same Dr. from ten years ago. Helpful hint: If you EVER have a cold foot. GET TO THE NEAREST ER!!! Do not go on a road trip for the sake of loyalty. So we get him on the angio table. Our Doc gets into his femoral artery. Takes some pictures. Ready here it comes.........Clot clot and more clot. From his mid-thigh to his foot. All the way down. Nicely organized clot by the way...which is almost impossible to remove, break up or dissolve. We hooked him up to a special catheter that will drip "clot buster" into the artery over night. The plan was to check him again in the morning. Hoping for some progress. Imagine a drainage pipe with a really long hair plug in it. What do you do? Drain-o right?
Same thing here. Only this clot has had time to solidify. The hopes of saving his foot were not very high. Had he not waited two days to get treatment he would have increased his chances of keeping his foot dramatically. So sure enough by Thursday the surgeons were using a pull start chainsaw to lop off his leg just below the knee.

I asked him why he didn't just go to the ER in Vermont on Sunday instead of coming to NY. He gave me some lame ass excuse but he and I knew that he didn't have a leg to stand on.

Put your health first. Or it will kill you.

I love you all well, most of you.
Gonzo