I volunteer at the local hospital and I recently changed
from the Mother/Baby ward to the Radiology department (the place where I wanted
to be when I first came on as a volunteer).
Last night was my training/shadowing/first night on the job.
For those of you who don’t know much about radiology, the
term is used to cover pretty much all body scans. Some of those include ultrasound imaging,
x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans. I’ll be
working with the CT scan staff. CT
machines are pretty darn amazing (well, all the technology is amazing, if you
think about it). You lay down on a slab
and are run back and forth through a giant donut-shaped machine, which takes
images of your body in tiny transverse slivers (see fig. A below). These images are sent to a computer, which
compiles them and creates a 3D image of your body. CT machines can also do contrast scans, where
Barium is injected into your bloodstream, making the images of your vessels
extremely clear (see fig. B below) and allowing for the technicians to see if
you have an aneurysm (bulgy spot, basically) or a clot. Very cool, right?
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| Fig. A |
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| Fig. B |
The first hour and a half of training was pretty routine; I
helped a few patients on and off the slab, transferred them back to the ER,
stocked some cupboards, and watched a few scans from the control room. I discovered that I’m actually pretty good at
determining which organs are being shown on the images, which was a happy
surprise. It was all going swimmingly
and I was excited for the constant moving/learning, which I hadn’t had
volunteering in Mother/Baby. Then the
control room received a call about a trauma patient being life-flighted in; a
motorbike accident.
Internal organ scans can be vital for trauma patients. They help the surgeons know exactly what needs
to be operated on and what they’re going to see when they get in there. Because of this, most trauma patients that
come in to the CT room are pretty fresh from the accident. This means blood.
I kind of knew what I was getting into with the transfer to
radiology. I knew I was going to see
people from the ER. I knew some of them
would be trauma patients. I also knew
about my reaction to other people’s blood and pain - I’ve always been
squeamish. One time at girls’ camp we
did a first-aid training where the older girls applied make-up to recreate
injuries like a nail through the hand, an arm fracture where the bone pierced
the skin, and more. I had to be escorted
back to the cabin so I could calm down.
It’s not that I scream or anything; I just stare in shock and horror and
my insides twist up in sympathetic pain.
I even get that way when hearing stories about injuries; I get it from
my dad. It’s actually the biggest reason
I went into teaching instead of medicine.
I wanted to be a physical trainer for a while in high school, all the
way up until the day we had a PT as a guest speaker and he brought in pictures
of some of the injuries he’d seen.
Anyways. Back to the
story. So they got the call that this
young man was being life-flighted in. No
known name, but they guessed he was about 22.
I quietly started hoping that I would be gone and done with training
before he came in, but my luck had run out.
The story’s about to get a little graphic. If you get queasy like I do, now might be a
good time to skip down a few paragraphs.
When he was wheeled in to the room he had a whole team with
him: two surgeons, a respiratory doctor, four RNs, a PCT (patient care
technician), and a pharmacologist [?].
One of the CT technicians rushed in to help with set-up, as did my
trainer. She motioned that I should stay
where I was in the control room. During
the scanning I really couldn’t see much, except that he had bled through the
blanket in several places and the PCT had fresh blood on his scrubs when he entered
the control room. I could see his foot sticking out of the blanket – it was swollen and
yellow.
As I sat in the control room I listened in on what the
doctors where saying about his condition: I heard hypotension and tachycardia
(low blood pressure and fast heart rate), which signal a lot of blood
loss. The scans showed internal
bleeding, at least one severed ureter (the tube that leads from the kidney to
the bladder), several broken bones, and more.
The young man was not in good condition.
When the scans where done, my trainer motioned for me to follow the
procession back to the ER, so my first good look at the patient was in the
hallway. It’s only been a few hours, but
every time I close my eyes I can see it.
He had been wearing a helmet, so the top of his head looked relatively
unhurt, but the injuries started at his jaw and covered his entire body. Let’s just say there was a lot of blood.
Okay, the graphic part is over. You can start reading again.
Suffice it to say that it was an interesting night. While working in Mother/Baby I finally
started getting excited about my own little poop machine coming soon. The few hours I’ve spent in Radiology have
made me terrified to lose him or his dad.
That 22-year-old might not have made it through the night; I’ll probably
never know. I do know that when I saw
The Man after my shift I didn’t want to do anything but hold him close. I know that when Stormageddon ninja-kicked me
at 3:40 this morning I hugged my belly as best I could and prayed that he’d
never ride a motorbike. I know that I’ve
been extremely blessed because my parents, brothers, sisters, and husband have
never been seriously injured (The Man likes to joke about that one time as a
kid when he almost got stung by a bee).
So in a way, I’m really grateful for this experience for reminding me of
how much I love my family. It’s just
making it hard to sleep. Hello, 5 am.
Update: So I'm posting this way after writing it because I don't have internet at home. I'm not nearly as traumatized now as I was last night/this morning. So that's good.
