The Thoughts of a Broken Trauma Nurse.

Day Two

I own a small house in New York, just big enough to abide by my needs. Although I don't have much, I work very hard for a living. I have the day shift at the hospital, sometimes night. I am normally on call as well. I prefer the day shift because you get the interesting cases during that time. Being head of the trauma unit can be very stressing, but it's what I was born to do. Anyways when, I wake up the morning, I do the normal routine as anyone would. The get dressed for work and get some nice hot coffee on the way. This morning my pager woke me up at 4 am. I was being called on because there was a massive pile up of cars on interstate 684 and our hospital is going to get the majority of the patients. My house Is about a 20-minute drive from the hospital but when I got there, everything was chaos. One of the nurses at the nursing station yelled out that the first two ambulances were 2 minutes out. So I grabbed one of my interns and rushed out to the ambulance bay for patient number one. When the ambulance reached the hospital, I ran out to it and threw open the doors. Immediately the emts rush out with the stretcher. One of the emts gave me the girls chart and told me her blood pressure was low. It was ninety over fifty. This girl was going to die if I didn't help her soon. Seeing that she was basically unconscious, I had my one of my interns bring her to trauma room one. I ordered a nurse to page plastics, and neurology so they could check on the girl in bed one. While my intern, Nick looked over the girl to figure out what to do next I rushed out to get the patient from ambulance two. This one was a thirty-year-old man with glass sticking out of his head and arms. I did a quick neuro check to see if his brain was still okay, and it was. The emts then rushed the man in to trauma room two. He was in a worse condition than the girl. He had massive trauma to the head and his abdomen was ridged indicating he may or may not need surgery. Normally the patient would cringe in pain if I pushed on their stomach and something was wrong. Since he is basically unconscious I have to go by what I see on the ultra sound and what I feel. I called to the nurse in the hallway to get a head CT and an abdomen CT. Hopefully we can save his life in time. After he was sent for a CT, I went to check for more traumas from the crash and sure enough the beds were full. So I took a quick look around to see who would need my attention first. I knew immediately that the laying bed six needed me first because she had bone sticking out of her leg. I called for a nurse to page Ortho. Only minutes later did Riley appear in the room. She said she would need surgery to put rods in there to stabilize the bone. After I called down to have them prep an O.R for the bone surgery, I heard a commotion. A man was seizing on one of the beds so I had a nurse inject him with lorazepam to stop it. (If it was not stopped, he could have permanent brain damage)I then proceeded to turn him onto his side to keep him from losing his airway. I then intubated him so he could keep breathing. Once he was stable I sent him to CT. Bed three had some minor cuts that would need stitches, so I sent my intern Kate over to do them. Doing those stitches is great practice for when she is on her own at some point. The next thing I knew while I was deep in thought, I was being called to the ambulance bay. Two more ambulances were coming in with two more young kids. Both had massive internal injuries when they got here, so I looked them over quickly and brought them to the O.R. I took the first boy and my other general surgeon, Bailey took the second. I took a ten blade scalpel and began to cut into the abdomen. Blood then started pouring out of there like it was nothing. Once I stopped most of the bleeding, I noticed a majority was coming from his spleen so I took it out. After that I had Kate stitch him back up completely. I had a scrub nurse look over her while I went back to the trauma unit. She was to page me if something was to go wrong, but I had a feeling Kate was going to do just fine. After that I went to check all my patients charts and they were all fine. By the time I went home I just collapsed onto the bed. It was a rough day but a great day to save lives.