Sometimes you wish you were a pediatrician; other times you don’t. When you walk into the room and your patient immediately starts crying like you are a scary monster, you gain a new appreciation for your adult patients. But when everything you do elicits a smile or a giggle, you wish all your patients were three years old.

You just heard a great lecture on minimizing radiation exposure from diagnostic testing and your next patient may give you the opportunity to put the lecturer’s plan into practice. The patient is a 19-year-old male who thinks he may have food poisoning due to the fact that he developed abdominal pain last night after eating a burrito at a local “Roach Coach”.

During a busy swing shift, a 45-year-old male presents to the emergency department with two days of worsening right knee pain. He denies any injury, but states that the knee feels warm and swollen and now he can barely walk on it. He had a meniscal injury to the same knee about 8 years prior, and is now using crutches that he has left over from that time.