Down Fall

This patient fell 15 feet from a roof and broke his radius and ulna. Another tech did the x-rays (and hung this first one upside down).

The bones are so crushed that this lateral looks almost like an AP.

Mister Twister

Older man water skiing. Hmmm, ouch?
I know! I know! My lateral sucks! But he wouldn't even let me touch his leg, so I worked with what I had. Next time...more tube angle. And if you don't know what I'm talking about....these pics are perfectly AWESOME!!

Cracked Up

Man vs. Truck.

Truck wins.

I'm pretty proud of my nice cross-table laterals. This was ordered as an ankle, but I decided to do more of a Tib/Fib after I saw how much damage there was on his ankle. In the last pic you can see that there are some spiral fractures. I've seen fractures like that spiral from ankle to knee.

For a 20-something he has horrible bone density. Too much soda? More calcium!

I also did an AP Tib/Fib, but I'm too lazy to copy it.

Doctor Blue

Mr. CP died on Monday. I guess he wasn't one of the 20% that survive.

Two things you should know about my hospital, before I start my story.

• After 8pm we are not allowed to page overhead.
• I've worked here 4 1/2 years and we have had 3 Dr. Blue codes.

So, on Tues. at 10:28, 2 mins. before my shift ends for the night, I heard a frantic page-"Doctor Blue to the ER! Doctor Blue to the ER!"

Yay! something exciting to do. So I hurry to grab a cassette, grid and turn on the portable machine. Rush to the elevator, push the button...wait....wait....wait...ding!...rush into the elevator...wait...wait...ding!..rush out of the elevator into the ER.

There are three disembodied heads peeking out from between the curtains of exam rooms 2,3 and4. The patients are all goggling at the trauma room, so I head in that direction.

I push the portable machine and drag the EKG machine in my wake (this is a skill:driving the port machine and pulling the EKG machine at the same time, I usually end up running over someone or bashing my heels with the EKG machine).

When I get to the trauma room I see: A man in blue jeans, lying on the floor, spread eagle on his back. Nurse Bumknee kneeling by the pt's head trying to get O2 tubing attached to a tank. Dr. Blackjack kneeling and talking to the pt.

Nurse Sunny, who is 9 months pregnant, comes in behind me and grabs supplies to start an IV in the pt's left arm. A couple seconds later, the lab tech arrives and kneels down to take blood out of the pt's right arm. The pt is surrounded, swarmed and I have to straddle the pt. to get the EKG stickers on his chest.

EKG:normal. And five minutes after all the excitement the ER is back to normal too.

It was fun while it lasted!

Groin Shot

An ETOH man came into the ER last fall, during hunting season. He was obviously drunk-slurred speech, stumbling, passing out every few minutes, smelled like a bar floor. He was triaged into a low priority trauma bay.

His friend (also drunk) had driven him to the ER, because the pt had some pain when he tried to go pee. The Dr. looked at him 'down there' and he had a few red bumps on his thighs with visible BB's underneath the skin. She decided to order an abd CT, before she started poking around and pulling out BB's.
I did the CT.
The ER was busy and it was a Sat., so I was all by myself.
This guy was really drunk and really, really heavy. I had to move him from the cart to the CT table (and back again) by myself. It wasn't a problem, while he was passed out (thank you inventor of slider boards!!), but about every 5 min. he would wake-up and try to punch me and drunk-cuss me out.
Did the CT and !!OH MY WORD!! He had BB's throughout his groin and into his abd. It looked like he'd shot himself on purpose in the crotch!!
I can not imagine how this happened - Did he do it to himself? Did his 'friend' do it? Did the gun go off accidently?
We'll never know, because they were drunk.
One BB was in close proximity to his abd aorta (and in many,many other places), so they air-lifted him to a bigger hospital for surg.
But - can you imagine how painful it would be for him to pee? With a groin full of buckshot?