Trauma Team.

On my current surgical rotation, sometimes I carry the trauma pager. That means that if a trauma arrives at the hospital, I go down to Emergency and become part of the team who deals with whatever comes through the door.

My first trauma was a young guy (15) who had fallen off the back of his friend's motorcycle. He was wearing a helmet (thank GOD!) so his major injuries were a distinct loss of skin and multiple fractures in his hands. This was a good trauma.

Yesterday we had another young patient. At 2 in the afternoon, she was crossing the street in front of her house and was hit by a car going 40kph. She was thrown through a fence and knocked unconscious at the scene. I was cutting her clothes off (to expose any hidden injuries) as they assessed her pupils; both blown. The CT scan showed a massive intra-cranial bleed. We put in a chest tube, then sent her up with the neurosurgeons to have her brain drained. I don't know for sure, but the consensus was that she would not live. This is a bad trauma.

I am loving this job; long hours melt away when you feel that you are doing valuable work. And when you are involved in these high-tension situations, every nerve comes alive and you function at a higher level than you knew possible. However.

However.

I was lying on my bed last night, reading trashy comics, when I closed my eyes. The sight of trauma 2's broken body appeared in my head. I had to call the people I love to make sure that they hadn't been hit by cars. I dreamed about the push of forcep & tube into the chest wall.

There are some drawbacks to this career path.

2 weeks till babies. Perhaps that will be less traumatic.