Poor Choices

It was shocking to see all of that blood. I know it was the ER but still some sights are hard to take and harder to forget. This man’s hair was matted with blood and one eye looked like it had been ripped from the socket. He had blood coming out of one ear and his clothing was covered.

Sometimes things are not nearly as serious as they appear, but I had a feeling that was not the case with this guy. For the sake of this story I will call him Jim.

As Jim's nurse and a couple of others rushed to his side, and Dr. S seemed unsure where to start (which never happens), I knew this would be a case I would remember forever. I noticed a beautiful lady near his bed who had fear covering her face. She seemed lost. I decided she was this patient’s girlfriend. I got her settled into a more private waiting room (we often called it the grief room); I notified the doctor where she was in case they needed to speak to her.

As I stepped into the the Emergency Room that night I could sense the tension in the room. Some shifts are like that. A lot of that has to do with which doctors are on duty and the rest of the staff as well. The patients that walk in or are rolled in, also play a big factor in the tension. All shifts have an ebb and flow about them so I knew that things would relax and then build again as the night progressed. This case was the center of our focus for quite a while.

Meanwhile, a large lady dressed in a big moo-moo type outfit was wheeled in by her daughter. She had fallen on the steps that led to her porch and twisted her ankle. It did look very swollen and some bruising was already visible. Once she was settled into her bed and the doctor saw her, she was whisked off to our radiology department for some X-rays. The daughter remained next to her bed in a small chair. Her eyes darted around the room in amazement. We had many patients at that time and most of them seemed to need attention. Once things slowed a bit, and while her mother was still in X-ray, this lady asked me what happened to the man with all the blood. She had been in the waiting room when he was wheeled in there. I explained that we can’t discuss our patients out of respect for privacy. She said she knows the girl who wheeled him in; they went to high school together. She added, “I doubt she would remember me, but she was a cheerleader and very popular so I remember her well, her name is Jessica, and that is her brother, Jim. He was always in trouble and had even gotten kicked out of school.”

I just gave an awkward smile and said, her mom would be back soon from X-ray. She grabbed my left wrist when I turned to walk away and said that someone in the waiting room, that came with them, said Jim had been seeing a married woman and the husband caught them and beat Jim up. He managed to get away and called his sister who picked him up. I wriggled my wrist free, smiled, said “thanks” and walked over to an elderly lady who was standing at the desk with a lost look on her face.

So, I made an assumption that she was his  girlfriend, when in fact, she was a sister to our bloody, brooding patient. He had a couple of gashes in his head that had to be sewn up, they were so large that all of his hair had to be shaved to gain access to the wounds. He had a severe concussion. Two of his fingers were broken, along with 3 ribs. He had lots of bruising on his face and his upper lip was swollen so much that it distorted his face. Jim had to be admitted to the hospital and his sister remained at his side.

Much later in the shift, Dr. S said that Jim would only say he fell. Knowing that these injuries looked more like a beating, he was questioned further; but that was his story and he was sticking to it.

We all make bad decisions in this life, some worse than others. As I drove home that night, I thought of the sister who was so concerned and I figured that was probably not her first time to be worried about her brother. I thought of the brother and how his decisions had brought him so much pain. I thought of the wife that had been caught with him and wondered was she safe or maybe at another hospital or perhaps no longer alive. My  mind was bouncing around in the mess that was caused by this man and the price he was paying along with the misery he had caused for others involved. I hope he healed well and learned his lesson. We all make mistakes but lessons should be learned to avoid the same pitfalls returning. I was happy he had survived, mostly for his sister’s sake, I could see the pain and frustration in her face.

My shift was over and I was headed home thinking of how we all are free to live our lives as we choose and we sometimes make poor choices.

She had Lovely Bones

She came in screaming in pain, and from the large bandage on her hand, blood fiercely dripped; it was like something out of a horror movie. Of course I had heard screaming often at work and I had seen blood, spit, vomit, urine, fecal matter, anything you could imagine over the years. This time it was unique to me because this woman’s voice touched every nerve in my body and made me want to turn and run with all the strength I had left.

Once she was settled into the gurney in the laceration area of our ER, you would have thought her extreme anxiety would subside or at least diminish. It did not. There was no calming her down.  She was in her early twenties, but it was hard to tell her age; due to the sheer anguish, her face was so squished up from pain that I would have guessed much older. When the bandage was removed and I saw her hand, I was amazed. I knew from the amount of blood loss that it would be rough, but never expected the depth of her injury.

As the story unfolded we learned that she was a bit head-strong and independent minded. Her father nor brother were available to help her with this project she wanted and she had grown impatient about it. Both of the males in her family that had always been there for her in the past, were tied up with work projects and other responsibilities. So she decided, “I will do it myself”.  She had watched them work with this giant table saw in her daddy’s shop, so she had a really good idea about how it worked. 

She took out her tape measure and made the marks where she needed it cut. Then she lifted the wood up and positioned it. Now the blade was turning and she was in business. She started her wood through the blade, everything was going great. Her confidence was through the roof. 

Moments later she was screaming in agony as her hand got into the blade and that blade made a deep tearing slice into her beautiful hand. 

Her mother got her hand wrapped and they headed our way. They only lived a few minutes from our hospital.

She was taken to surgery for repair of her injury. The saw blade had made its way through two of the metacarpal bones in her left hand and scraped on the third.  I could see the pain on her father’s face as he watched his little girl suffer and felt bad that he had not been home to help her.

The bottom line is that she turned out fine. The surgery went well. There was healing and then physical therapy for a long period of time after that, but she was fine.

The lesson from her experience: Patience is Virtue

She had no patience and she paid a big price for it.

I too have been impatient at times and stubbornly took matters into my own hands as this patient had done. I took the chance and things went well, her results turned out differently. This is the chance we take when we take risks without thinking the situation through thoroughly. In the long run I do believe she learned a valuable lesson and that makes it all worthwhile in my book.

                                                                                            

Sometimes you must FIGHT for your life...

I remember that day when I first saw Evelyn. She looked so afraid of everything around her, those blue eyes of hers were darting around like a lamb surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves. I had just walked up to the computer to clock in for the night shift in the ER and something caught my eye…there she was staring at me, then scanning the entire room, then back at me. It was a bit creepy. Once I had a couple of conversations with her, I felt so much pain just oozing from her that she took a piece of my heart and she still holds it today. The pain ran much deeper than physical, though that was enormous, the emotional scarring was devastating.

Evelyn was a young woman who was repeatedly beaten badly by her husband. She returned to our ER several more times when I happened to be on duty and each time my heart was touched by her sad and lonely soul. Evelyn lived in fear and had virtually no one to protect her, not even herself. She lived deep in the back roads of Wilmer and it was miles from a neighbor or paved road. She knew she would be returning to that hell on earth when she left our facility, so she claimed she took another bad fall. According to her, she was a klutz beyond any klutz I had ever known before or since. She, “fell out the door” or “fell down the concrete steps outside”, “tripped over the dog”, “turned too fast and hit her head on the cabinet door”…..it seems that falling was a part of her routine. 

I only got a quick glimpse of her husband as he dropped her off at the ER door each time and left. Though she told of her latest accident in great detail, everyone at her bedside knew it was not true. The physicians had all tried to council her on the availability of help for women in her situation. I could see that she wanted to reach out for help but she was far too afraid. Survival was what she clung to, the pain had become a part of her.

The first time I saw her, she had a black eye, multiple bruises, and a couple of cracked ribs that made breathing painful and labored. It always hurt me to see her as she ducked her head and stared at the floor in defeat. How can you help someone who does not want help and stubbornly denies your offers of help? Evelyn would not even admit help was needed.

I just wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, but I knew that would not be appropriate nor effective.

In all I saw her 4 times in the ER, but my co-workers said she came in quite a few more times when I was not on duty. Evelyn abruptly quit coming in; this made us all wonder about her and her safety.  One night when things slowed down and we grabbed a cup of coffee, and began to talk; someone brought up her name. We all came to the realization that we had not seen her for several months. We thought perhaps they moved away, or she ran away. Perhaps he killed her and buried her in the yard. All sorts of possible scenarios were bounced back and forth in our conversation. None were a good ending to a bad situation. I hope that Evelyn escaped and is safe and happy somewhere that he can’t find her. Yet my gut tells me that is not the case. 

We all face adversities in life, some greater than others. Evelyn was beaten down by a man, she was beaten down by fear and heartbreak and she did not possess the strength to fight, so she chose to do nothing and hope for survival. Oh how I wish I could have convinced her that this was not the best tactic and she deserved so much more from life. Oh how I wish I could have convinced her to FIGHT for her life.