Story
I want to share a story that I heard from my friend K last night. Last Thursday I didn't go to work... and she had to pick up the trauma room in my absence. At around 4am they got one of the top 3 calls that trauma centers don't want... Kid Trauma. (TOP 3: staff member, cops/fire/ems, kids) Its not that we aren't trained to handle it, but it always completely sucks.
Mom was driving along in the county somewhere, drunk as shit. Looses control, goes off the road into a tree. The car is pretty deep in the woods so no passing motorist could see her. She calls 911 because she wrecked her car and her ankle hurts. Fire can't find her, so she ends up walking to a house and they pick her up there. Nobody really knows what time the accident happened because she keeps saying it was 11 o'clock when she was on the road. Let me say that the bitch has yet to mention that her 2 year old was in the car as well!!!
Based on where she walked, the fire department found her car in the woods. The two year old was strapped (lapbelt only) in the front seat. The front passenger side is what impacted the tree. She was unconscious, posturing(thats BAD) with deformities to both legs, obvious (multiple) skull fractures and on ct scan she had multile head bleeds that hae progressed down the brain stem. (aka she is now brain dead)
Mom STILL did not remember that she was in the car.
We deal with these situations all the time. People have asked "Oh my god, how do you do it?" Some nights, I don't even know... you just do. The training kicks in and there are 15+ people giving everything they have to save a child who (for all intents and purposes) is already dead. Thats one of the reasons that I love working in a teaching hospital. The med students don't get to do much with trauma (esp kid trauma) but they are there. They are witness to all that we do and they might not remember names, or faces or even whatthe outcome is.... but something will stuck with them. They will see this again and something about this poor child will still be there and they will take better care of the next one because of that.
When we see things like that... this is how I get through.
Mom was driving along in the county somewhere, drunk as shit. Looses control, goes off the road into a tree. The car is pretty deep in the woods so no passing motorist could see her. She calls 911 because she wrecked her car and her ankle hurts. Fire can't find her, so she ends up walking to a house and they pick her up there. Nobody really knows what time the accident happened because she keeps saying it was 11 o'clock when she was on the road. Let me say that the bitch has yet to mention that her 2 year old was in the car as well!!!
Based on where she walked, the fire department found her car in the woods. The two year old was strapped (lapbelt only) in the front seat. The front passenger side is what impacted the tree. She was unconscious, posturing(thats BAD) with deformities to both legs, obvious (multiple) skull fractures and on ct scan she had multile head bleeds that hae progressed down the brain stem. (aka she is now brain dead)
Mom STILL did not remember that she was in the car.
We deal with these situations all the time. People have asked "Oh my god, how do you do it?" Some nights, I don't even know... you just do. The training kicks in and there are 15+ people giving everything they have to save a child who (for all intents and purposes) is already dead. Thats one of the reasons that I love working in a teaching hospital. The med students don't get to do much with trauma (esp kid trauma) but they are there. They are witness to all that we do and they might not remember names, or faces or even whatthe outcome is.... but something will stuck with them. They will see this again and something about this poor child will still be there and they will take better care of the next one because of that.
When we see things like that... this is how I get through.
posted by jeepgirl at 10:16
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