Well, crap...
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Actually, that was yesterday afternoon. But it's Sunday and I am here, handing out blood like candy canes (4 GI bleeders on the floor and a surgeon chomping at the bit).
Nope, yesterday afternoon it was a case of motorcycle on highway meeting car who turned into highway, with the driver of the car swearing she never saw him. Guy was catapulted off the bike and through the windshield. Girlfriend on the back of bike became a hood ornament on the car, breaking multiple bones in the process. Driver and passengers in the car all sustained injuries when the motorcyclist landed in the car's interior.
Motorcyclist was wearing helmet, which split and broke on impact. Guy was son of local judge (I went to school with the judge, so I kinda know the family), so they gave it the old college try in Trauma, but he was pronounced in twenty minutes. Because of where the accident occurred and the proximity to ambulances and this hospital, they were transported here almost immediately after the wreck. Girlfriend was choppered out immediately to a Level II Trauma Center as soon as the bird got here, car driver was choppered to a different facility south of here.
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@George-K said in Well, crap...:
I hate trauma.
Just hate it.
True story...
The hospital I retired from was known for trauma care. Even though it was only a 185-bedder, practice makes perfect and we got lots of practice. MVA's, stabbings and GSW's were kinda ho-hum, just another day at the ranch, especially on the weekends. Maybe it was because back in those days, we were the teaching hospital for this part of the state, so we always had docs either in the building or over in the doctor's quarters. You could get your hands on whatever service you needed in just minutes.
Some guys love that kind of stuff. It's like racehorses at the starting gate. I got my fill of it real early one night when I was stuck in the blood bank.
22, fresh out of school, with the ink not dry on my license and I'm working my first evening shift after my two week employee orientation. Dude presents to the ED with multiple shrapnel wounds and burns over much of his body. He had been drinking and thought it would be a good idea to light a wood-burning heater with gasoline. Heater blew up. Everybody gets into the act as the ambulance pulls in... docs, nurses, lab rats, x-raiders and the snot suckers. All hands on deck and the waltz begins as everybody does their job.
Fifty. Six. Units. That shift, on that patient. Don't even remember how much FFP, platelets and cryo I set up and issued.
Would you believe it, that sucker made it? For almost a month, after which he came down with a heckuva infection and had the audacity to die on us.
