Fading Fast

I am shredded after getting up at 5 every morning so I can be on the road by 6 to make it to work by 7 and then driving the hour home after my 10 hours of work, so I will only be posting one story today.

Truck drivers are a hardy lot.  I like to drive, but I can't imagine being alone for days at a time traveling from place to place.  Luckily my patient today had a dispatcher that was watching out for him when his "oh, it's just a scratch" turned into something potentially more deadly.

His dispatcher called the local sheriff after directing the driver to a parking lot for the night.  The next morning she didn't think he sounded quite right, so that's when she called local authorities.  EMS found him confused and with the following injury:

He had fallen just after New Year's and never got the injury checked out.  Now he's got a raging infection, kidney failure, and the real possibility of losing his limb.  We got him re-hydrated, and he began to make some more sense.  He'll be admitted to the CCU for several days I am sure.  I had to call the sheriff's office to make sure to secure his big rig.

I'll have to admit, I really enjoyed this patient.  Once his confusion began to clear, he had us all laughing with his personality.  He was one of the interesting cases in a day of interesting cases.  But, I will write more tomorrow as I am going to bed early and sleeping in... oh yeah.  Me and the kitties in a big pile on the bed.

Tags: cellulitis, acute renal failure, bullous edema

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