Kids, wear your seat belts.....

Some lessons from trauma....and I already know this from surgery but was feeling extra lax today. Never eat when you are hungry. ALWAYS anticipate that you are not going to eat for another 6 hours. Hunger should not be in your vocabulary, for it is your enemy. I had a "slow" morning and went upstairs to read my trauma book and had some soup. I was feeling tired and nappish, but thought, "Well it is about noon, I better eat." ....rather than napping...a sure-fire way to get a trauma page. Low-and-behold....I get in the elevator and I get a page.....Level one trauma, life flight, ETA 5 min. I think to myself, "that isn't enough time to get lunch." and figure that I will get some food after that. WELL, it is a 5yo with bilateral femur fractures (open) and some head lacs. Things are calming down then the kid's 6 year old sibling comes in with major injuries. 3 hours later (after the initial trauma page) and we are going to surgery. I REALLY want to go but am feeling the tinge of a low blood sugar. Luckily one of the PA's has a cliff bar that I shove in my mouth in like 20 seconds (which is really hard to do).

So we get this girl into the OR and other than a ruptured AAA I have never seen anything quite like it. There were 3 surgical teams mobilizing and doing their thing at the same time.

This poor little girl had an open femur fracture (might have films....which has not yet been fixed). But that was the least of her worries. She had a splenic artery injury....spleen removed. A liver lac - repaired, her pancreas was torn in half - the head removed. Her brain was herniating - craniotomy done.....pupil back to semi-normal after that........etc. This poor little girl has a long road ahead of her. I hope she makes it through the night. We really worked hard to keep her alive. Amd I hope that if she is alive that she has normal brain function.

The hard part was receiving her mom in the ER after we got out of surgery. Mom looks ok. She lost her husband or boyfriend already on scene. Hopefully she won't lose two of her kids too. Really sad. And is it bad that I really can't wait to get back to work tomorrow to see how everyone is? I guess that means that the job is right for me.

Side note - I pulled my first chest tube today. Simple but cool. It's the small victories. Oh and I saw brain surgery. The brain really does look gelatinous.

Exhausted......back at it at 4:30 am!! Night night.