GP Stories - Pill in the Poo?
Part of my duties is doing rounds
of a local nursing home. I do it weekly and I enjoy the continuity I get with
the patients. The nursing home gives me a list of patients whom they want
reviewed and I spend a morning going round the home seeing everyone. I
therefore get to know most of them well, but I see one resident a lot more.
Dear old Marge is a very anxious lady who is relatively healthy, bar some mild
cognitive deficits. She is put on my list almost every week due to her health
anxiety, she always feels something is going wrong with her, and every time we
check her over and examine her, nothing can ever be found. She is always
grateful to be checked over though, so I never mind seeing her. This time
though, we get an odd note on our list – “Pill in the poo?”.
Saying hello, she tells me that
her antidepressant she is on, has magicked its way through her digestive system
intact and come out whole the other side. I have my doubts but lo and behold,
upon looking in her toilet I see a lone pill floating in the toilet (thankfully
everything else had been conveniently flushed away). I said to Marge that its
remarkable it has made its way through her but it must be a one off. If it
happens again, please let us know. She said she would. I secretly told the nurses
to keep an eye on her in case she is not taking her meds and putting them in
the toilet after.
In
the following few weeks, it would happen every now and again, each time during
my round. I’d pop in to see the lone pill in the toilet. Nurses told me they
had watched her take her medications. It then stopped after a few weeks when
Marge got concerned about her possible thyroid disease. I never did work out if
Marge’s bowels conveniently couldn’t break down her medication or whether she
was secretly pocketing her pills, but either way, I feel it’s a mystery that
will never be solved…
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