Ok, so it's been a while.... Funny how some shifts just seem to have a theme. Last night I found out all the different ways that someone could suffer a head injury. It made for an eventful but tedious shift, and also kept the CT scanner burning away. I think we all had radiation exposure since 80 percent of the patients that came in from 11 p.m. onward needed a head and face CT.There was:
- drunk, fell down and smashed head on concrete
- drunk, tripped and fell down hitting face forward on concrete
- drunk, minding own business, and got whacked on head with metal pipe
- drunk, minding own business, and got slammed on head with baseball bat
- drunk, jumped into middle of fight and got hit on head and face with beer bottles
- doing cocaine and got hit by several people's fists across the face
- got drunk, drove without a seatbelt, crashed into several cars, jumped out and ran for about a mile from police that were chasing them, then needed an ambulance for a minor injury and ended up unresponsive with a breathing tube in the E.D.
and then there was the:
- out with family and suddenly collapsed. This patient had a massive brain bleed and ended up dying in the emergency room before the end of my shift. They most likely had a brain aneurysm that ruptured and that was it.
The rest of the patients I had ended up being everything from a cracked skull to facial bruising, and I put the medical student to good use stapling and suturing all the various lacerations. This, of course, kept me free to move onto ordering the next CT.
