Saturday, November 17, 2007

Bones of Contention

For every patient who makes you get a little too involved, there’s always another one who will want wo convince you that patients are assholes.

We had this polytrauma case in the Orthopaedics casualty (my last one, by the way), a guy in his late teens who had the incredible luck to get hit by a bus. I think he didn’t break his little toe on his right foot, the rest of his limbs were a mangled mass of injuries. He had no head injury, so he was conscious and oriented throughout. His left leg was a sight to behold. I'm not sure how much skin he had left on it, and pieces of bone were surveying the world through numerous bleeding wounds. He had had massive haemorrhage, and we requested the blood bank to send 3 units of blood, stat. He was going into shock, and my friend and I were asked to check his BP. He was lying on a trolley, so we need two people to check blood pressure- one to hold the apparatus, and another to do the actual measuring. I held the manometer, and my friend tied the cuff round his arm. He was having fluid infused into him through every vein on his arms, so I was turning off the fluid supply so that inflating the cuff wouldn’t send blood into the fluid bag. And then my friend screamed and ran out.

Everyone stared at her, and asked her what happened, but she smiled (which looked like it was pasted on her face) and shrugged. The guy’s arm was stretched put of the trolley, and he had a leer on his bloody lips. It took me a moment to figure it out. The fucking bastard had tried to grope her. There he was, guaranteed to die without medical attention, with a good chance of becoming handicapped for life even with the best of care. No one wants his bloody gratitude, why can't he just let us do our job if he didn't want to lie in a ditch and die?

Am I supposed to feel happy about the fact that he may never walk again? Should I be ecstatic his arm will never regain complete function? Upset because he didn’t have a head injury to complicate his condition? Miserable because there was no blunt trauma to the abdomen to cause more haemorrhage? Would it make me any less a doctor if I felt any of this, or less of a woman if I did not?

I suppose I have to hold a farewell party for my humanity soon. I went to comfort my friend only after I finished checking the bastard's blood pressure. And satisfied when it started rising to near normal levels.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

unbelievable

the stygian sailor said...

quite a sad thing!
there was a girl in my batch who was supposed to examine a hernia case for an internal,5 minutes through, she just came out and copied the case from the case sheet and refused to go back to the patient. she didn say why. when the next fellow went we found out taht the man had ejaculated while she examined him.

Keshi said...

** Should I be ecstatic his arm will never regain complete function? Upset because he didn’t have a head injury to complicate his condition? Miserable because there was no blunt trauma to the abdomen to cause more haemorrhage? Would it make me any less a doctor if I felt any of this, or less of a woman if I did not? I suppose I have to hold a farewell party for my humanity soon.


LOL Adorbale hahahaha! I love ur wicked sense of humor :):)


Keshi.

Sirpy said...

Dunno what to say. I can only tell you to be prepared. There are freaks and holes-in-the-rear in every part of the world. You can't differentiate and can't allow to do it even. Even men are not spared. So whatever you think is justified. Dont worry.. :)

Spunky Monkey said...

Ew. Disgusting. The Sailor's story, even more so.
Look what we have to put up with in order to be called Doctors. And I don't even know if it's worth all the effort. That could just be me.

You are a very good writer.

Parul said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Parul said...

OMG,
Speechless me.

I like your dedication. Nice blog.

aMus said...

i hope he gets his just desserts....how do you keep your sanity among such wackos!!!

i like the black humor here...

Tys on Ice said...

u serious, arent u?...jeez!

iam for the first time, speechless...now, tht takes the cake in being a perveted arsehole...wht next? rape while the docs are sewing back his member that his wife chopped off?

hey, ap, hang in there buddy..

Unknown said...

oh eff. I changed my mind about Blank Noise now. Down with the males. Eeeyuck.

Hey, nice blog :), came here from Spunky's.

Sairekha said...

ewwww!! I guess its this weird cyclic karma thingy.. he, the hapless pervert... he, the now invalid?? What goes around, comes around.

I remember something graphically grotesque from a very crowded local bus in Poona. The bus was jam-packed n it didnt afford passengers much leeway for movement. A perv used this to his advantage n rubbed himself against a woman's rear amongst shocked bystanders till he.... (yeah, that only!)... n no one did a thing! We should've been an arabic country...

Hey Tys, do your sheikhs lynch these bastards??

aMus said...

so did the bastard survive? hope he rots...

Compassion Unlimitted said...

Hmm..A first timer here from Ziahs blog..
Hyperactivity of an insane guy in the hospital seems to have cast a long shadow,as long as that perverted guy could stretch his hand !
Perhaps that ass... thought he was in his last minutes of his Goddamn life and wanted to have one last go or is it (....)
or perhaps he really had a head injury (during accident or long before )and had gone mad !!

Y to think for him..all that you should have done is inject and permanently keep the BP to near ZERO..
TC
CU

Anonymous said...

now that is simply sick. to the core.

Adorable Pancreas said...

@obelix:
Yeah, I know.

@the stygian sailor:
I've heard that's very common with hernia and hydrocoele patients. Shit.

@keshi:
:)

@sirpy:
Thanks, chimp. I sure will be a Boy Scout. :)

@spunky monkey:
You're not alone.
And thank you very much.

@parul:
Thankks, parul. I don't like me very much right now. Nice to know somebody does.

@thinking aloud:
I didn't check back on him. I'm not quite as crazy as that yet. :)

@tys on ice:
Chakkara tys. :)

@siri:
Now I feel like a missionary. :)
Thanks a bunch.

@ziah:
This is why we need to wear stilettos. We can at least hurt him a lot.

@thinking aloud:
He was in a pretty bad state, so I don't think he's still gracing the earth with his presence. That was my last day in Orthopaedics, and haven't gone back since.

@compassion unlimitted:
I really wanted to do that, but everyone was trying so hard to keep his BP up, I didn't have the heart.

@sreejith:
Yes, it is.

Anonymous said...

by jove, one doesn't have such problems when dealing with kids... u'r pediatric posting will be sooo much better!!! and thankfully, in our country, peds deals with <12yr olds... u nearly die when a kid dies, but u never ever have a prob like this to face!!!

Tea N. Crumpet said...

Is the sexual response the last to go? What gives? I worked at a nursing home and I had old men trying to make moves on me and flirt.

Sometimes it was cute-- one older black gentleman who was a musician was always trying to get me to bring him whiskey and said we should drink together. He was missing two limbs and was blind and those were the start of his problems. One day he made everyone laugh (I was his favorite victim) as he said, "When you gonna bring me some whiskey and make music with me, Woman?" I said, "You could go to jail! I'm too young to drink!" (I was 25.) He said, "You aint that young! Now bring me some whiskey, Woman!"

(I never did bring him the whiskey!)

Some were just awful. One young-ish guy (30's with a degenerative disease) was always trying to get me to help him in the bathroom which I never did. Another man had to be helped by two of us-- no one would go in alone with him, male or female.

For some reason it was funny when one of the older ladies scammed on one of the young aids-- she tried chasing him in her wheel chair and he'd always escort her to physical therapy.