Lots of Boom, Not Much Bang

Ok, so on Wednesday morning, the SMART team was asked to provide medical backup for a Bomb Squad training session. For some reason the photos I had aren't uploading, but there really wasn't much to see other than a pic of the Erie County Sheriff's Bomb Squad van and a small explosive going off. I had to leave to go to work, but my understanding is they set off several more explosions during the afternoon. We were asked to be there in case someone was injured setting up the charges.

Wednesday afternoon I worked and saw only about 6 patients as the board was so "constipated" - nothing moving out so nothing moving in, that we couldn't get patients back to rooms. I would see one patient and then wait forever before the next one could even be brought back. I did see two corneal abrasions, one in a 15 year old who just got a new airgun for his birthday and promptly shot himself in the eye with a pellet. He was lucky and just had a scratch in his eye.

Thursday I spent the entire day in Base Station training. We have to provide "Medical Control" for the EMS units that work in the city. They have written protocols that they follow whenever they go to a run, but sometimes they face situations which are outside of their scope of practice, so they call an MD to get medical direction on how to treat these patients. The majority of our day was learning about the EMS system and the protocols. We then spent the last part of the afternoon running through actual cases and learning how to give medical direction.

Last night I started a 4 day stretch of nights. Again, I came into a "constipated" board and didn't see a patient for the first half hour that I was working. Things did not improve throughout the night. We've been seeing a lot of diarrhea and dehydration lately as it is the Enterovirus season, and a lot of kids are getting it. We make sure they don't have any fevers or other infections, hang a bag of saline and then send them off. We also continue to see a lot of traumas, mostly falls from swings, slide poles, front porches, etc.

We had one unfortunate case tonight of a 5 year old running with a bow and arrow who tripped and had the back end of the arrow go through his eye and straight back. We know he's got a head bleed, he was having seizures, and things do not look well at this time. I will find out later today or tomorrow from my colleague in the ICU how he's doing.

Ok, off to bed for now. It's vampire time for me. The vegetarian thing is going well. Lots of fruits, salads and cheese. The hardest thing is I live in Buffalo where the most common take out order is pizza and wings. Pepperoni pizza. I found a slice that had one piece of pepperoni which my colleague ate for me, and I munched on the often-forgotten celery sticks that accompany the chicken wings. I also can now sympathize with my true vegetarian colleagues who claim they can never find something to eat. Seriously, what's up with a hospital cafeteria that thinks a vegetarian entree is cauliflower with cheese? Oh, and rice milk is sooo much better than soy, or even almond.

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