Well, I was wrong! Christmas eve was quieter than I anticipated without the run on drink related issues that I was expecting. Last night was also unexpectedly free of family boxing. Not that we were not kept going just that we were not chasing our tails as much as I expected. Quite good nights for us with most jobs being "proper" jobs where an ambulance was required for whatever reason.
The biggest thing I was wrong about though was our last job on Christmas eave. The call came through as "21 year old male fallen in stairwell". Now, I'm a cynic by nature and experience so heading en-route there was a pretty high expectation that we'd be attending someone full of Christmas spirit who had fallen asleep in a stairwell.
Well; as we walked up I did a quick assessment of the scene and thought to myself "bugger, that's got to hurt"! It did. There was this young chap sitting on the bottom stair clutching his thigh. The complete leg was rotated through about 100 deg. and there was another knee up by the top of the femur (long thick leg bone between knee and hip).
In situations like this really anything we do is going to hurt. I gave him some morphine, actually quite a lot of morphine, and we immobilise as best we could the injured leg, this hurt. We then had to get him on to the stretcher. As mentioned he was sitting on some stairs and this is never an easy maneuver. Getting him on to the scoop from this position really hurt. It involved quite a lot of sudden movements as he made the sitting on a stair in pain to lying on a stretcher in even more pain transition.
Once on the trolley we further immobilised the leg trying to make him as comfortable as we could. There was good distal (below the fracture) sensation and piedal pulse. The fluids were up and running and his blood pressure was stable at about 115/70. The swelling was massive, you can bleed up to about half your body's blood into the thigh when there is a nasty break of this bone.
Really that's about all we could do other than get him to A&E as smoothly as possible.
Talking to him through all of this it transpired that he had a prosthetic knee following bone cancer. He'd got the all clear 3 months ago. Despite the pain and us having to lug him around, making everything worse, he didn't even swear. Brave, brave man to my mind.
I apologised to him for the things we had to do and the pain we inflicted. I think he understood but I still feel bad. Sometimes no matter what - you just have to get on with it, even when you know it's going to hurt and sometimes make things a little worse.
I know that this man is waiting on the consultant to make a decision. A big decision. The replacement knee was quite extensive and where the break has occurred means there is not a lot of bone left for them to do anything with. He may loose his leg. He's 21, f***k I hope not.
2 comments:
A sad story for a young man on Christmas Eve. The Twilight Shift was slightly different over Xmas - lots of alcohol, fights, and neighbourly love - one neighbour absolutely thrashing a man and his wife to smitherines - I spent almost three hours trying to clear the C-Spine - called the Orthopods - and despite their concerns, she self discharged.
Merry Xmas,
Liam on the Twilight Shift
http://www.scrubbingup.com/blogs/twilight/blog.asp
Christmas "Eve" not "Eave"
and TOO not to in your blog header.. the extra o implies too much, instead of going to, or the number two. I remember it as there is so much, you need to shove an extra o on the end of to.
Sorry to be pedantic. Love the blog, admire what you do.
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