First Day in Radiology

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?

Fig. A

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.