Yeah Ummm No Thanks

As we have established in previous posts we see patients from all walks of life, ages, and areas. Sometimes we get patients that are very young and through major abuses of their bodies are dealing with health problems that people 3 times their age deal with.
The patient I will talk about today was a gentleman in his early adulthood who looked to be in his early 50's. He was a chronic drug abuser(cocaine), alcoholic, and had a history of tracheal cancer. Due to the cancer he had a tracheostomy(hole in the neck through which he breathed) and a g-tube(a tube that goes directly into the stomach since he could no longer eat by mouth). I had actually caught him many times smoking cigarettes through his trach. I went to visit him one day and he was pouring beer down his g-tube. I proceeded to give him a long lecture about why he should not be putting alcohol down his g-tube due to the large amounts of medications he was on and the dangers of mixing those medications with alcohol. He listened intently for a few minutes, then calmly said "Well I was going to ask you if you wanted to get high with me, I guess that is out of the question?".