Xmas on Ice (Chips)

 

It's Christmas on Trauma and what does Santy have for you? One size large 3rd degree burn from a scalding pot of grease, one malodorous nasty wound infection, one holiday stabbing at the mall, and a paaaartridge in a pear treeeee...!

It's sad when patients are NPO and can't have anything to eat or drink and they literally beg you for ice chips. "I'm sorry", "I wish I could..." (the worst is when you forget and ask them if they've ordered breakfast yet. Ouch. Sorry!)

Even sadder is being a patient hospitalized on Christmas who holds the holidays in very high regard and is alone with no family or friends in the area to visit them. But possibly saddest of all is dying on Christmas at 7:00am. Good morning and good night, and Merry Christmas.

Stop - Drop - Roll

Lesson #57 in fire safety: alcohol is flammable.

Tell that to the patient who catches themself on fire while engaging in a little recreational drug use and then attempts to extinguish said fire with the cocktail they also happen to be drinking. 

This is a kind of one-up to the traditional smoking-while-on-oxygen style of self immolation but doesn't quite top shooting oneself --although CAREFUL: not as a suicide attempt (per patient's report) which made this other self-inflicted injury quite unique.

The day I work with sane patients suffering from banal ailments is the day I die.

Last Day of Clinical

Yesterday was my last day of clinical. I only have to wear my nursing school uniform one last time for about 2 hours and then I can BURN IT!

On my last day I took care of a patient who'd been set on fire by her boyfriend several years back. She was on our floor for another reason though and was hell bent on getting outside to smoke a cigarette. She wouldn't do anything (or in her words, she "wasn't doin shit!!") until someone took her outside to smoke. She was pretty feisty and she could be kind of mean but I really liked her.

Burn Trauma

Last night we got a patient who'd lit up with his oxygen nasal cannula in causing an explosion that caught his face on fire. When he got to the floor his face was covered in dripping blood and the nurse had to carefully wash his face and shave him. She explained to me that patients with facial burns or burns on the head have to be shaved everyday -a rather painful process as you can imagine! I felt so bad for this guy. He was probably the most gruesomely injured patient I've seen so far.