Each day among the patients I see there are those who didn’t need to come to the hospital and those who should have come yesterday or a month ago. This kid fit into the month ago group. We saw him back in January for an infection in his bone, which he had already had for a number of months at that point. In January, the X-ray showed that it was time for him to have an operation to have the dead, infected bone removed. So we wrote a referral to his local hospital, where he was from and where they have a surgeon trained in orthopedics, to have the operation. He never went. Yesterday he shows up in my room complaining of arm pain, and then he removes his shirt and I find his humerus on the wrong side of the skin (which is bad, for those non medical folks who read this.) God made our bodies very smart and somehow our body knows that it has to get rid of the infection, and so it works itself out of the body in an attempt to get rid of it, saying if you won’t go to the doctor to do it, I will do it for you. Thankfully not only does our body remove the bad bone, but it also regrows new bone at the same time. I don’t always understand why people wait as long as they do to come and see us. There really is nothing subtle…
Source: <a href=Waited a bit too long title=Waited a bit too long target=”_blank”>Waited a bit too long