Friday, July 06, 2007

Crazy Never Sleeps

So Mark, my partner, and I are driving back to the station at 2 in the morning. We had just left the hospital after taking in the city's latest shooting victim. We pull up to a stop light and there's a 30's year old guy standing on the corner. He starts waving us through the intersection, telling us to go ahead and drive through, even though the lights red. We tell him we'll go as soon as the light turns green, and he goes into a huge rant about how then it'll be too late because he's waiting on the corner for the "beings" to pick him up and they won't come to get him if we're there.
As we pull away, I look at Mark and say something about how odd it is that someone like that able to be roaming around the streets at 2 in the morning... He looks at me and says "Hey, crazy never sleeps"
When I write my memoirs, that's going to be the title.

So our latest shooting victim was a 19 y/o boy. Shot thru the upper left arm and into his chest, right in the arm pit. Even though there were powder burns around the wound, he says he didn't ever see who shot him.
He's stable, so we get IV's in him and head to the hospital. Once in the trauma room, they do all their x-rays and stuff and find the bullet still lodged in his lung. The area of your chest where your lungs are is surrounded by a "sack" for lack of a better term, and if outside ait is introduced, or your lungs bleed, blood and air build up in this space and can cause the lung to deflate. Since he'd been shot, he had both blood and air built up and the trauma Dr decided to place a chest tube. A chest tube is about as big around as your thumb, goes into your chest about nipple height in your side, and hurts like no other.

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