Friday Flashback #2

THIS was my kind of week, chock full of flashbacks back to my fire department days. I mean, here were some of the classes I had this week:

Trauma (neurological)
Personality Disorders
Alcohol/Nicotine/Drug Abuse x2
Toxicology
Legal Issues

I easily saw all of these issues during a single shift. In particular, I saw all of these during one crazy call out to a MVC (motor vehicle collision).

It was really bad. Officers had marked off the scene by the time our bouncy box of flashing lights and sirens had painfully navigated past lines of jammed up traffic. I jumped out with my bags ready to go at the end of the scene closest to me ready to go, but instead of a car all I saw were tire tracks. They kept going for a while, then I saw a row of orange road medians destroyed as if Autobots and Decepticons had a big fight here. Finally off in the distance I saw the car with the wheels in the air, and realized what had happened.

Brakes slammed on at first, then one side of the car used the highway medians as a ramp, and rolled over in the air like a dolphin spiraling through the water as if doing tricks at Seaworld.

Coup, then contra-coup injury, when her car finally crashed into the pavement. It's French, and describes what happens to the soft squishy brain when it gets smacked around in a hard box. Coup- the front gets bashed as the body slams into the steering wheel. Contra-coup- when the BACK of the head rebounds just like a basketball off the edge of the hoop, but into more skull.

Trauma. Check.

I won't bother you too much with the boring stuff. Firefighters using Jaws of Life. Making sure the car would not blow up on us into a nice fireball. Carefully extracted a lady. Maintained c-spine. Quick trauma assessment. Load and go. Lined her up.


What was interesting was what happened in the back of the ambulance, just the two of us, flying towards the nearest trauma center. First, nothing my patient said made any sense at all. She looked like an intelligent, attractive professional, so I thought maybe it was another language. A little slurred. Leaned in and took a sniff. Yep, alcohol.

Alcohol/ Toxicology? Check. (To my med school peeps- brief Wernicke's area disruption too?)

So for the rest of the call, I did my medical thing, and kept checking in on my patient. Slowly, she seemed to come back, through the mist of all the chaos that had just happened. Then it got really strange.

Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-AH WHAT THE F@#$# is HAPPENING TO ME? She kept sobbing in gratitude, but then completely spaz out and open a can of whoop-ass all over me.

The only thing I can think of now that describes that is if she had a borderline personality disorder. I'm still not sure. Maybe it was the stress of, oh I don't know, launching her car into the air, seeing the world spin around her as phone flew through the air.

Personality Disorder? Maybe check.

Anyway, sorry this flashback did not end with a bang like the last post. I've got finals coming up, and I think I'm forgetting old memories to make way for all the stuff I am learning now. I assume we all made it to the hospital okay.

Oh almost forgot, as I was doing the rapid pat-down that is the focused trauma assessment earlier, I peeked into her ear and some plastic fell out. Huh. What's left of a bluetooth set. Too bad a cop was right next to me, and checked her phone. Yep. Texting right around when the crash happened.

Legal. Check.




(Some fictionalization. HIPPA. Duh.)