[LeThanhPhong]

(Quora) As a doctor, have you ever seen anyone outside the hospital who made you think, “You need to go to the hospital now”?

Answered by Julia MacDonald Ogilvie:

I saw a police officer trying to arrest a semi-conscious man for drunkenness. I did not like the color of the man’s face, so I introduced myself to the officer as a doctor and said I thought the drunk might actually be unwell.

As I bent to examine this man, I was almost bowled over by the smell of “acid drops” (ketones) on his breath. It was clear to me that the man was going into a keto-acidotic (diabetic) coma. He needed insulin fast. We arranged for him to be taken to the ER. 

Had he been taken to jail, he could have died.