It was a pants shift.
Swine flu everywhere.
Our two isolation room had the ceiling fall in on patients with swine flu.
Psychotic patients biting me while trying to sedate them.
All this I can cope with.
My last job of the shift, helping a crew bring a family in. Mum, massive over dose. Twins, less than ten years old, carrying mums empty drug packets and toys to play with. Me carrying baby in a baby carry chair. Baby who stared at everything with wide brown eyes.
It destroyed me.
So, not blogged for a while.
I use blogging as one of my copeing mechanisms. And my others have been working so I've not felt the need to bore the internet world about my humdrumidity.
So what has the wonderful world of the ED brought to my attention?
I've just finished nights. And well the Solstice brought us the usual bunch of people under the influence.
Four very lucky people.
The first a young man, came of his bike. At middling to high speed. Head first through a brick wall. That is right. Head first through a brick wall. THROUGH. He got to us, battered and bruised. GCS 15, alert and compus mentus. Surprising at that.
His bike helmet was caved in, and I mean a it had a cavernous hole in one side. His leathers cut to shreds by the crew.
After a large dose of radiation, it was discovered he had a scaphoid fracture, a burst fracture to T6 and compression injuries to T5 and T7.
He is going to spend the next few months flat as a pancake. But he will be waling again. The 'bikers in the department, and a few police officers came to look at his helmet. And all vowed to buy that brand in the future. This guy was alive thanks to that helmet. Made by Arai.
The next lot of luck people were the night at the end of my batch.
They had turned there land rover over. An almost impossibility I thought. They managed it. They had taken the top off it as it was a nice day, and went out for a drive. Hence sideways land rover.
All brought in immobilised. All with facial injuries, one worse than the others. The first two were cleared of C-spine injuries. The other had to be x-rayed due to distracting injuries.
Pretty soon they were all clustered round in a little huddle with mums and dad, talking to each other. Spines cleared. Injuries pretty superficial, and maybe a few teeth needing fixing.
A good argument for being 18 when getting into accidents.
You drank so much you soiled yourself
That was a bloody stupid thing to do
So I put you in a nappy and left you to sleep it off.
And you vommed on my shoes too
You ate a pot noodle and started to puke
That was a bloody stupid thing to do
You behaved like a small child
And you called 999 to come and get you too.
You got yourself stabbed in the brain
That was a bloody stupid thing to do
You were an ass to the nurses and a prat to the doc
You ended up with a tube down your throat too
You drove to fast and crashed your van
That was a bloody stupid thing to do
You did not have a seat belt on
You ended with a bleed in the brain too
You drank some domestos
That was a bloody stupid thing to do
'Cause your miss ended your relationship
And you have burned your mouth too
You ended it all in a foul and gruesome way
That was a bloody stupid thing to do
You were found by the police you life gone to nowt
And you ruined my night too.
So far this weekend we have been full of drunken losers.
Memorable ones so far.
Patient who faked GCS 3 so well that she was literally seconds away from being tubed.
She resisted sterna rubs, and all other painful stuff we do to people to wake them up. She did not flinch when large bore needles went into her arm. Why did she wake up? Dr Boots (who has recently returned from ITU) threatened to put her on a life support machine. GCS 15 straight away. Great.
Next ETOH +++ assault. Being a pain in the ass. Patient was log-rolled. And proceeded to grope me. Much to amusement of the other members of the log roll team. He then broke wind and all but cleared resus with the smell.
He then demanded I suck his dick. I did not. Instead I provided him with a convine. He proceeded to be an idiot, until he went down for scan where it turned out he had numerous bleeds. It just shows that you only drunk until you wake up with a hangover.
And I met the most annoying patient ever. COPD and anxious. My tolerance was low. And being told that the patient needed help to move her hand rubbed me the wrong way. Sister Cat concurred.
Apparently we are all going to die.
From Pig flu. Or Bird flu. What about man flu?
That's almost transpandemic already?
We have loads of mask and emergency breathing stuff everywhere in the ED. It's funny watching people trying to nick the mask as they wait in the queue.
Is humanity not great?
I was in resus last night with sister cat.
Her usual night of mayhem and horror did not appear.
Our night trundled slowly by with the usual mix of Chest pains and sepsis.
Sister cats notable contribution to the night was a conversation with a relative who was slightly hard of hearing. Trying to explain where her relative was going to end up.
"AMU"
"ACUTE MEDICAL UNIT"
"Umm, its, Umm, Apple, Money, Umbrella, not Not Apple Nuts Umbrella, MONKEY!"
This carried on for a good five minutes. With much laughter around the resus room.
If someone has come in after taking "loads" of Ketamin. Is it wrong to ask them about big hairy spiders crawling all over them?
Apparently it is unethical. But funny, according to sister.
