A Humorous Patient Happening About 20 Years Ago – An Important Lesson I Learned

I was reviewing some old video and saw my patient ‘Joe’ and then remembered a unique event that happened to him, He had some old ‘ugly’ hair transplant plugs and wanted to have me fix him up. So, like many patient who came before him, he presented for the surgery at 7am that morning. He was sedated with our usual cocktail and we left the room for just a few minutes while the medications were taking effect. He was draped for the surgery, with white surgical drapes around his neck. He had a surgical scrub top on, something we always put on the patient for the surgery. Not realizing his sensitivity to the medications or the rapidity of onset in his particular situation (5 minutes), while we went out of the room for just about 2 minutes, he left the operating room and walked out of the office. When I came back to the operating room, I saw the patient was gone. My staff looked all over our facility for the patient, he was clearly not there. Then I heard horns honking outside of the building. I look out the window, and saw an amazing sight. Joe, with his surgical garb on, was in the middle of the busy street directing traffic and made a mess of doing that. I panicked. I went down the three flights of stairs, out the front door of the building and crossed to the center of the street, took Joe by the arm and walked him slowly back to surgery. Everything went well, of course. All he got was 10mgs of Valium and that seemed to trigger this euphoric state. What I learned was to never leave the patient unattended until I discharge the patient from surgery and the medications wear off. I never forgot the ‘Joe’ experience.