swallowflight

now i finally know what everyone’s talking about.

for much of my orientation, i’ve somehow ended up having relatively relaxed days. people keep warning me that it’s much harder and busier at night. it’s not that i haven’t believed them – i just hadn’t experienced it.

so finally, last night, after a slow but steady shift, the craziness started rolling in. first a woman who was completely out of control of herself, brought in by the police after her son called them, handcuffed to the stretcher but somehow still managing to tear her clothes off and writhe all over the bed, all the while cursing everyone roundly and screaming that she wanted to go the psych ED.  meanwhile another patient was nosing around, shouting out supposedly helpful comments, throwing a bedsheet on the psychotic lady, and looking like she was generally celebrating the mayhem. it took a while, but in the end some pharmacologic interventions put an end to both their fun.

before i’d even had a chance to write the note on her and catch up with my other patients, we got a notification for a car accident… then a second one… and then when the first ambulance arrived, we found out that they were bringing all 6 passengers from a car that had overturned. as soon as we got our first patient stabilized, we moved her out and another took her place – we had three stretchers with everything going in the trauma room, three more waiting in the hallway, all the trauma residents marching around, emts, police, you name it… all while we are sweating away in our plastic gowns… blood everywhere… dirt and glass and leaves from the accident… putting in ivs, giving meds for intubation, hanging sedatives and fluids, watching the vitals, drawing labs, etc…  it had all started about 5:45, so just in time to keep us busy right up til the change of shift.

and to top it all off, who did i see on the train platform on the way home but the nosy lady?? just a little reminder that i am still in community health, after all.