Why doctors treated a dying chicken before a dangerously ill patient
An unusual pecking order: the man refused urgent surgery until his doctors cared for the beloved pet he had smuggled into the hospital
Doctors are reporting the spectacularly unique case of a patient who refused life-saving care until medical staff attended to his dying pet chicken, which he had secreted into a UK hospital.
The Monty Python-esque events unfolded two days after the 52-year-old man was admitted to the hospital’s high dependency unit with an upper GI bleed, when he had another significant bleed.
As the medical team prepared the patient for an urgent gastroscopy, a nurse asked why his bag was moving.
It was soon established that the bag contained a chicken that “had seen better days”, according to anaesthesiologists from the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, in London.
