Firstly, my apologies for the long silence. Microbiology as a block is quite high volume -capable of leaving one with little time for other things.

Now, a funny thing happened some days ago. As my roommate (also a second year medical student) and I left the house to go to the gym we saw someone lying on the side of the road next to a firehydrant. There were two women near him talking excitedly. My roommate, smart man that he is, asked “Was he shot?” Why does asking that question make a difference you ask? Because the first thing they teach you to do in an emergency situation is to make sure your scene is safe. If it isn’t, you leave and wait till it is- since your being in an unsafe scene increases the likelihood of there being two

The women respond that he wasn’t shot, that he had simply fallen over. So we started following our training- which took a few moments to recall. He was breathing, had a pulse and was non responsive. Thankfully by this time the ambulance had arrived. We helped the medics get him on the backboard, and as they’re putting him on the stretcher my roommate and I spitball ideas. Was it some kind of a stroke? Did he have a hemmorhage? Low blood sugar? Brain tumor? (Now you know we were grasping at straws…)
As the paramedics finish putting him on the stretcher and start collecting his items, one of them grabbed a slipper that had fallen. Then, they grab a paper bag none of us had noticed. He glances inside, chuckles derisively and holds it up for us to see. A almost empty bottle of vodka, which suddenly explained why he passed out and fell over.

“When you hear hoofs, think horses not zebras” a doctor once told me. Case in point.