So, I have been working on the orthopedic service, and I am seeing a lot of trauma. Today was a day of accidents of one sort or another:20-something who drank and drove his his car right into the back of a semi. He had a nasty scalp laceration which was fixed by one of the E.D. medical students. I was there because of his broken hand. We casted it and sent him on his merry, albeit under arrest for DUI, way.
40-something who likes to get high and is already on disability for a prior back injury (that's you and me paying for him to stay home and toke up, but I digress), who was fixing a golf cart on a lift. Said cart was in gear when he started it up and it fell off the lift and fell on his leg breaking it. You might remember the backward foot from one of my earlier posts. His leg looked like this but because the lower part of his leg was broken in half. We splinted it, and he was on his way to surgery when I left.
60-something female who was making a shelf. She was using a circular saw to cut some wood. She says she "looked away for just a second." You can guess what happened. Although she properly wrapped and iced her cut fingers, there would be no reattachment for her. The fingers would not survive. We cleaned what remained of her first 2 fingers on her hand and oversewed the exposed bone. She had a great attitude and was already asking when she would be able to go back to work. I'll see if I can follow up with her next week in clinic to see how she's healing, and doing.
That was today... Tuesday we had a patient who crossed the median and ran head on into another car. They're still alive in the ICU but have a broken knee and ankle on one side and a broken leg on the other side; plus, a broken pelvis, broken insides, etc. We'll see how they do.
Back to work tomorrow, and I am on 24 hour hospital call over the weekend. With nice weather headed our way, it's definitely going to be the start of the trauma season... eek!
p.s. click on the picture to see the animation
3 comments:
never a dull moment for sure, Veronica! such a variety of problems in one day; keeps you on your toes for sure. in my raising kids days, we only had one broken bone (son fell off of a train and broke his wrist, I think it was a buckle fracture because he only wore a cast for 3 weeks) but its amazing truly how fast an accident can happen and how sometimes those bones will just break with just a little bit of pressure on them
hope its not a crazy time while you are on call
betty
The weather has been warm here for the past 2 days so we had trauma's one right after another last night. Take's people a while to remember how to play safely.
My stepdad was in the neuro trauma unit a little over a week and I would see other patients when going to his room. It was awful to see the condition of some of those people. I often wondered how a body can survive such injuries.
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