'Tis the Season for the Hospital ER

Dec. 15--PANAMA CITY -- Christmas in the ER may not be as exciting as television depicts, but local hospital veterans say the holiday comes with its own set of sometimes bizarre emergencies.

Gulf Coast Medical Center nurse Kay Taylor has been working in emergency departments for 21 years, and she has a few Christmas tales to tell.

Taylor recalled a father who was admitted to Gulf Coast last year after his children made him breakfast in bed complete with a poinsettia leaf sandwich.

"They put the poinsettia leaf on it like a piece of lettuce," she said, adding that the man ended up spending a few days in the hospital following an allergic reaction.

Christmas ornaments also have proven perilous. Taylor remembered a kid who tried, unsuccessfully, to eat a glass decoration.

The damage was minor, Taylor said, but the girl had to get stitches in her tongue.

Roof falls and other decorating injuries usually occur before Christmas. Tami Grice, the emergency department manager at Bay Medical Center, said gifts are sometimes responsible for injuries later in the season.

"It's after Christmas when you open your power tools that you might get into trouble," she said. "You might need an ER physician."

On a more serious note, Grice said the holidays always bring in more patients with depression. Taylor said panic and anxiety attacks are common.

"Just patients who have had family that died during this time of year, and it's hard for them," she said.

When he was working in Atlanta, Bay Medical Center Dr. Christopher Geertz said, more victims of violence came in around the holidays. Geertz said he has not noticed the same trend in Bay County.

Snowbirds, he said, are probably the reason for increased volume as the winter season starts. Many of the migratory northerners are hospitalized with blood clots or other sometimes age-related conditions after long trips south, he said.

So far, Bay Medical's emergency department has been relatively quiet this December by Geertz's measurement. Still, he said, the department is, for the most part, busy year-round with the exception of a few weeks after Spring Break and the lull after summer and before the Snowbirds' arrival.

Bay Medical's Dr. David Heape, who also works in the emergency department, said the patient load usually surges at the start of January.

Outside of hospital emergency departments, inpatient activity fluctuates over the holidays, sometimes jumping in the weeks before Christmas and then dropping off as patients are discharged before Christmas Day.

"I think people want to be home at Christmas," said Wes Fountain, Gulf Coast's chief financial officer.

Unless patients are really sick, in many cases, they go home and elective surgeries are held off, he said.

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