Trauma Call is Kicking my Ass right now

A veritable pantheon of medical delights from my most recent call:

The day started off with a brilliant bang: 20 something Hispanic gentleman with stab wounds to the back of his neck, shoulder and lower deltoid. The neck wound was so deep we could see the 11th cranial nerve and probe to one of his vertebrae and the shoulder would was so deep we’re afraid the knife might have entered the joint capsule.

Then some brilliant individual thought it’d be a grand idea to go joyriding on the Kennedy while intoxicated on his way back from the club. Hit some ice, skidded and flipped his car going 60+. He had a good 10-12 cm lac across his brow.

Our final winner for the day was later in the afternoon who somehow flipped out of his bed at the nursing home after getting Ativan and Haldol the night before and cracked his second cervical vertebrae. This is basically the one that lets you turn your head left and right. He cracked it in HALF. Normally, I’d feel bad but this dude decided he didn’t want to listen to us and kept trying to move his head and sit up. It’s a miracle he didn’t sever his fucking cord and buy himself an intubation.

Friday was equally bad starting at 5am:

High speed accident on the Kennedy, but driver was restrained. Somehow when his car crashed his L hand got caught up and he “degloved” the skin on his middle 3 fingers. He basically boned out the end bone in his middle finger (or as I like to say “he popped out the distal phalanx of his 3rd digit”). It was literally missing. No one knows where it went. Surprisingly he didn’t have much else in the way of injury and he had good sensation intact, but we were worried about him losing blood flow to those de-skinned fingers to he got transferred to Loyola where they have slightly better micro-vascular hand surgeons.

Next guy was a bit of a sad case. One of our OB/GYN attendings was crossing the street near his house to get on the Blue Line to go to O’Hare and he tried to run the 6 lanes across Irving Park road. That didn’t work out to well. He got slammed by a hit n run driver. He came in and was completely altered. He got intubated and was in slightly bad shape. My ultrasound exam for trauma showed some possible blood around the liver. CT showed 3 different bleeds in the brain and kidney fracture and possible liver lac. Good thing we decided to intubate when he came in.

Last was a young lady who wasn’t even initially a trauma activation. She came via ambulance to the ER as a regular status-post MVC (motor vehicle collision). But one of my colleagues started talking to her and thought she would rate an activation, ran it by me, and I agreed so off to the trauma bay she went. She was going 60+ down the Kennedy when a car suddenly spun into her and she spun into the wall and all her airbags deployed. Her L arm looked banged up, but all the x-rays were negative and she was in and out in 36 hours. Lucky girl. Could have been much worse.

People really need to be more careful in the winter.  Thankfully no DOAs… yet.