ER: Eleventh Day

Because I switched shifts with Garrett, I went to work at 9:00 a.m. with Dr. B, with whom I've never worked before. He hasn't been around for the last several days b/c he attended Thursday's inauguration to help out at the first-aid tents, and everyone knew it. Almost every nurse and doctor we passed by asked him his thoughts about the inauguration since he got a front-row seat, and he told us about the different patients who came to his tent before and immediately after the inauguration. Chest pains, head injuries (from falling in the crowd), but mainly hypothermia from the cold. "Some people just don't know how to dress," he said. Too true.

We had several interesting patients today. Two of them had genetic illnesses: one had hereditary angioedema (his bowels can swell and cause nausea and vomiting), and the other had some kind of THR deficiency that makes her prone to PEs and clots (but her main complaint was for nausea and vomiting). One case was defined in triage as, "Hit in eye by bra strap," which puzzled Dr. B and the (male) scribe so I went to talk to the patient. It turns out she was adjusting a strap on a convertible bra when she accidentally yanked the strap too hard forward and it snapped backward and hit her eye like a rubber band. As a result her eyes became extremely sensitive to light, to the point where it hurt just to look at the dials of her cell phone. Dr. B called it "traumatic iritis," and when we later asked if he saw it often, he nodded his head. He also has a habit of ordering pregnancy tests on every female within childbearing years, which turned out to be a good thing b/c one patient who denied the possibility of being pregnant twice was actually 9 weeks pregnant (as confirmed by sono later on). This same patient also had personality issues and was a "bitch" to everyone until her discharge.

The last patient of the day was a sweet woman in her 60s who had a finger lac. I felt bad for her b/c she cried after getting the marcaine injection (which I hope never to get), and afterwards I asked Dr. B if I'd be sewing up her lac. "Sure, I don't want to do it," he replied (he was pretty eager to get out of the ER and had some charts to finish), so I gladly went to the room to sew the lac. Craig, the scribe, came in halfway through the procedure and we chatted with our patient to keep her mind off her finger. Fingers have way too many vessels; she bled more with each additional suture I put in. When I finished, I asked Craig to get Dr. B, and our patient said, "Oh, he's been poking his head in here to check on you." Probably a good thing; Dr. T pretty much let me sew away unsupervised. Dr. B came in and said I did a good job; there was one small tear remaining but he said it would heal fine on its own without sutures. And so concluded my day =)