An early morning at the Santa Casa
An empty emergency room, an ambulance, a young woman in severe abdominal pain and the speed an emergency demands.
“In an empty ER, at two in the morning...”
Pedro Moretti Guedes · Reminiscências de um Médico
Two in the morning, an empty emergency room at the Santa Casa de São Paulo. An ambulance arrives with a young woman in severe abdominal pain. There is no time to wait for slow tests: it is an acute abdomen, and the decision must be made on what the physical examination shows.
The case was quickly sent to the operating theatre. Pedro told it as an example of the unpredictability of medical practice: the silence of the small hours can turn into an emergency in a minute, and that is what one is there for.
This text is an editorial adaptation of an account preserved in the family compilation "Reminiscências de um Médico" (2008). It is autobiographical memory, not a medical record or medical advice.