Life spiel

First night shift with the X-ray techs.

   Mon, March 24, 2008 - 9:48 PM
Just finished my 1st evening shift with patients. The night crew is way different then the day crew. Night time X-ray tech guys are totally irreverent but super efficient. We had a drunk lady with a fractured wrist, good thing she was drunk because her wrist was all crunchified ulna fractured with loose chunks and little bits of scaphoid lunate and triquetral floating around. Good thing she was drunk because when we moved her wrist you could feel and hear stuff crunching. Then we had a super skinny black dude who was a junky crack head who needed a chest x ray to see if the I V in his neck was properly placed. All his veins in his arms and legs had collapsed so they had to put one in his Aorta. His heart was supper tiny and way elongated. Then finally had a Latino roofer who had a propane tank fall two stories onto his head. A miracle that his skull was not fractured but he had a nasty laceration and a good deal of blood. We did a cervical series of 5 x-rays to see if his neck was OK. He spoke very little English so my construction Spanish came in handy. All this in just two and half hours It was so much fun and a total information overload. I gota come down now.



9 Comments

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Mon, March 24, 2008 - 10:07 PM
so frickin' cool!
Mon, March 24, 2008 - 10:47 PM
wow, that's some interesting dramas to witness.
Mon, March 24, 2008 - 10:47 PM
dang...
action packed!
Mon, March 24, 2008 - 11:00 PM
> her wrist was all crunchified ulna fractured with loose chunks and little bits of scaphoid lunate and triquetral floating around <

You're so sexy when you talk scaphoid lunate.
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 12:38 AM
sounds really interesting!

>Then finally had a Latino roofer who had a propane tank fall two stories onto his head.

what, is this guy part of burning man dpw or something?
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 7:49 AM
Wow. Pretty amazing stuff. I'm very glad that you are following through with this Marc.
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 9:46 AM
They really drop you at the deep end of the pool eh? My sister did part of her residency in the emergency room of a hospital in the suburbs of São Paulo. She had similar stories to yours, but hers had more bullets. Where are you doing your shift?
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 9:48 AM
Oh btw, did the crackhead had an iPod with him? If I ever catch the crackhead who broke into my car and stole my iPod, boy howdy, it will be a bad day for crackheads I tell you.
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 9:58 PM
Kiko, I'm working at St Luke's right here in the neighborhood and no the junkie had no IPod just three I.V.'s in his neck.