No math skills, eh?

by Sandra Bellezza

I was consulted down to the ER last night while on-call.  Apparently a 24 year old male came in complaining of “the worst headache of his life”.  The ER doctor ordered a Cat Scan, all his blood work came back fine.  The only thing was his blood pressure, it was slightly high, and that correlates to pain.  As I started my Neuro work-up I asking him:

“Sir, On a scale of zero to ten, with zero representing no pain, and ten representing the worst more excruciating pain in your life, what would you say your pain level is right now?”

He just shook his head and said “Hun I have no idea, I’m not good at math!”