Blood
It’s a few weeks before I’m scheduled to fly up North again, and I’m bouncing around our ER, trying to help everyone on a typical busy evening.
“Come look at this CT,” my coworker waves me over to her computer screen to update me on a patient I may need to help with. I can barely read CT scans, but even I can see the massive amount blood that has filled the ventricles of the brain, pushing the hemispheres off their midline.
“Oh shit. What happened?”
“Kind of a freak accident sort of thing. A healthy lady who was doing some strenuous activity, and she must have popped a huge brain aneurysm. By the time the paramedics got there, she was already unresponsive. They intubated her right away.”
My eyes widen. “Are we sending her out for neurosurgery?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The doc says it’s already into the brainstem…there’s probably no salvaging this. This CT was done only an hour after it happened, and look how much blood there already is. It’s probably still bleeding.”
Just an hour. How quickly we can cross from life to death, from going about our daily lives into something that feels like a surreal nightmare. Just a few days ago, an unbelted driver had flown headfirst into his vehicle’s windshield during an accident. He didn’t go through, but the whole panel of glass had become a spiderweb of cracks. Our team tried to resuscitate him for almost an hour, but in the end, there was no salvaging that either. I sat in my triage box that night, watching the throngs of family coming in to see him, shaking, shell-shocked.
I’m back out in triage a few hours later. The lady with the brain bleed has been moved up to the ICU, kept alive by machines and meds until her family can come to terms with what has happened, enough to be ready to withdraw life support. A woman rushes into my partner’s triage box, scrambling, flustered. She takes a deep breath, trying to gather herself. “I’m sorry,” she tells us. “I’m trying to keep it together. But something happened to my sister-in-law…my brother says she’s in the ICU on life support. I need to know how to get there. I don’t know what happened.”
I know, I almost say. We all know.
I offer to walk her up, knowing that the last thing she needs is to get lost in the hospital labyrinth amidst her panic. I stand awkwardly with her in the elevator, unsure of what to say, or whether to say anything at all. She quickly breaks the silence.
“I’m trying so hard to keep it together. I have to be strong for them…but I don’t know what to do. They’ve got two kids at home.”
I look at her, trying to feebly offer something, knowing anything will be woefully inadequate. “It makes a world of a difference for you to just be here for them.”
She swallows, blinks back the tears in her eyes as she reaches out her hand and squeezes mine.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
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It’s been almost exactly a year since I landed up North for the first time, and I’m back for my third contract. I’m sitting in my office with a young man here for vomiting and diarrhea for the past few days. He looks familiar to me, and I check his medical history.
November 2018 – medevac for skidoo accident; spleen and kidney lacerations, self-cauterized
I realize this is the same guy I medevac’d on my first independent on-call shift a year ago. He was the one I knew was internally bleeding, but didn’t know where from. I had prayed desperately that he wouldn’t bleed out and die on me before the plane landed to fly him to the hospital. Something in my heart eases as I see him sitting in my office chair today.
He looks pretty well today. I tell him he likely has a viral gastro which should resolve on its own, and remind him to stay hydrated. As I finish signing off his sick note for work, I glance at him. “Do you remember me? I saw you last year when you had your skidoo accident.”
He smiles slowly. “I thought I recognized you. Yeah, I got banged up pretty bad…it took me a long time to get better. I still feel the pain sometimes when I’m riding my skidoo and it gets bumpy. But I’m much better.
“You gave me quite a scare that night.” I smile at him, “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Me too. Koana,” he thanks me as he beams.
---------------------------------
Life into death. Sometimes grazing death and coming back into life. How often I have watched the dance back and forth across this line, tethered by the fear and hope that surround it. The blood that pulses through us to give us life also spills out and loses it, and we hold our collective breath, hoping, praying for the thrum of a heart that continues to beat.
“Come look at this CT,” my coworker waves me over to her computer screen to update me on a patient I may need to help with. I can barely read CT scans, but even I can see the massive amount blood that has filled the ventricles of the brain, pushing the hemispheres off their midline.
“Oh shit. What happened?”
“Kind of a freak accident sort of thing. A healthy lady who was doing some strenuous activity, and she must have popped a huge brain aneurysm. By the time the paramedics got there, she was already unresponsive. They intubated her right away.”
My eyes widen. “Are we sending her out for neurosurgery?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The doc says it’s already into the brainstem…there’s probably no salvaging this. This CT was done only an hour after it happened, and look how much blood there already is. It’s probably still bleeding.”
Just an hour. How quickly we can cross from life to death, from going about our daily lives into something that feels like a surreal nightmare. Just a few days ago, an unbelted driver had flown headfirst into his vehicle’s windshield during an accident. He didn’t go through, but the whole panel of glass had become a spiderweb of cracks. Our team tried to resuscitate him for almost an hour, but in the end, there was no salvaging that either. I sat in my triage box that night, watching the throngs of family coming in to see him, shaking, shell-shocked.
I’m back out in triage a few hours later. The lady with the brain bleed has been moved up to the ICU, kept alive by machines and meds until her family can come to terms with what has happened, enough to be ready to withdraw life support. A woman rushes into my partner’s triage box, scrambling, flustered. She takes a deep breath, trying to gather herself. “I’m sorry,” she tells us. “I’m trying to keep it together. But something happened to my sister-in-law…my brother says she’s in the ICU on life support. I need to know how to get there. I don’t know what happened.”
I know, I almost say. We all know.
I offer to walk her up, knowing that the last thing she needs is to get lost in the hospital labyrinth amidst her panic. I stand awkwardly with her in the elevator, unsure of what to say, or whether to say anything at all. She quickly breaks the silence.
“I’m trying so hard to keep it together. I have to be strong for them…but I don’t know what to do. They’ve got two kids at home.”
I look at her, trying to feebly offer something, knowing anything will be woefully inadequate. “It makes a world of a difference for you to just be here for them.”
She swallows, blinks back the tears in her eyes as she reaches out her hand and squeezes mine.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
---------------------------------
It’s been almost exactly a year since I landed up North for the first time, and I’m back for my third contract. I’m sitting in my office with a young man here for vomiting and diarrhea for the past few days. He looks familiar to me, and I check his medical history.
November 2018 – medevac for skidoo accident; spleen and kidney lacerations, self-cauterized
I realize this is the same guy I medevac’d on my first independent on-call shift a year ago. He was the one I knew was internally bleeding, but didn’t know where from. I had prayed desperately that he wouldn’t bleed out and die on me before the plane landed to fly him to the hospital. Something in my heart eases as I see him sitting in my office chair today.
He looks pretty well today. I tell him he likely has a viral gastro which should resolve on its own, and remind him to stay hydrated. As I finish signing off his sick note for work, I glance at him. “Do you remember me? I saw you last year when you had your skidoo accident.”
He smiles slowly. “I thought I recognized you. Yeah, I got banged up pretty bad…it took me a long time to get better. I still feel the pain sometimes when I’m riding my skidoo and it gets bumpy. But I’m much better.
“You gave me quite a scare that night.” I smile at him, “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Me too. Koana,” he thanks me as he beams.
---------------------------------
Life into death. Sometimes grazing death and coming back into life. How often I have watched the dance back and forth across this line, tethered by the fear and hope that surround it. The blood that pulses through us to give us life also spills out and loses it, and we hold our collective breath, hoping, praying for the thrum of a heart that continues to beat.
<3 <3 <3
ReplyDeleteYou have so many gifts Gen, and you amaze me time and time again. I love reading your blogs and I think one day you're going to get published. Never stop writing so this world can see your beautiful footprints once you become a saint. I'm calling it. ;)
ReplyDelete(It me your biggest fan Gabby 🙊❤️)
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