Saturday, July 19, 2008

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll have to try rice milk; thanks for the tip; funny thing is my husband worked a long time ago for a Seventh Day Adventist hospital (and they are vegetarian); he was always going out on his lunch break to the fast food places around there to grab something else to eat because the food in the cafeteria was not appealing to him (if I remember correctly; lots of starches and he wanted to avoid pastas, rice dishes, things like that - so what did he eat? french fries; go figure)

I'm proud of you though for keeping on with your goal; even with pizza and all the other temptations around

hoping your vampire stretch goes as well as it can

betty

Anonymous said...

Good luck on the vegitarian thingy, I know I couldn't do it!  De ;)

Anonymous said...

Ha  Someone sent this journal to my ex(who is very adhd, but says it is "nothing." ;-), & he forwarded it to me. I do SO love the title.
I was a vegetarian for over 10 years, stopped for a few & now am back to it. It works best for me. I think the cauliflower & cheese is better than my friends who think vegetarians eat fish & try to feed me shrimp salad or crab cakes because: Mary is a vegetarian(they almost whisper lol) to other guests.
~Mary