While you were sleeping....

Last night was the worst call Ever! (or maybe it was the best call ever because I learned a lot about myself and how I handle bad situations). I finished up a 16 hour elective case at 11pm. Meanwhile the traumas just kept rolling in.

I was in the OR constantly for nearly 24 hours. I have chafe marks on my face from where my mask rubbed me. Ouchies!

a brief summary of the highlights:

Some lunatic attorney who robbed a pharmacy for narcotics last week tried to kill himself in jail and was brought to our hospital for treatment. While at our hospital yesterday, he managed to elude his guard and baracade himself inside his room, break the window, and stand on the ledge of the 5th floor for 4 hours (entertaining the media) before he finally did a swan dive off the ledge. Little did he realize he would land on the roof of the 3rd floor, thus making his dive a critical injury rather than a deadly one. We got to add him to our endless list of traumas that came to the OR last night. He was definitely the most interesting one.

I cut my finger on a contaminated knife I had just used to put in a central line on a patient. It's a more high risk cut (more blood involved) than a needle-stick, but thankfully, my patient was a 74 year old lady with ovarian cancer, and not some gang-banger drug addict who probably has hepatitis C. I still can't donate blood for a year, though. I can't believe I did that. There is a small silver lining to this: going to employee health to fill out the paperwork and get blood drawn was the only break I got yesterday.

One case I had was a guy who ruptured his spleen in a car accident. He was white as a ghost but his blood pressure was holding through our OR prep and putting him to sleep. As soon as they opened him up, his blood pressure dropped to 50 and his heart rate went up to 160. I was by myself and about had a litter of kittens right then and there I was so scared. I pushed a bunch of blood into him quickly and he did okay. I snowed him with narcotics before I woke him up so he wouldn't hurt. (hurting sucks!) Good thing I did. I snowed him so hard he didn't wake up for me, but in recovery, when he did wake up, he went apeshit and tried to attack the nurses helping him and had to be tied down.

Oh the things that happen during the night while sane people are fast asleep!