Trauma in CT

I was actually looking forward to posting that I had my first lovely week of vomit-free, drama free, steady paced work this week, as it was mine and Chad’s first week in CT. Unfortunately, I am unable to say that.

After going through 3 years of classes taught by good ol’ Rich Carson – Mr. CT man at OIT - I have to say that I was not especially looking forward to this modality. I now attribute this mostly to the fact that I was just burned out on much of everything by the time this last June came around.

I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that I was enjoying myself after the first few days. I felt like I was learning more than I had during our term-long class even, and the patients were rather steady – there was no exorbitant down times like you seem to encounter everywhere else. I was in CT Room 1, which deals with in-patients and ED work, and Chad was rostered in CT Room 2, which deals with all the outpatients and Private (insured) patients.

Then came the later part of the week, where I encountered my first “Emergency Situation” and had some of the more emotional and stressful experiences of the job. I spent a half-hour holding a patients hand and wiping their tears away while they had a cancerous cyst drained – something that was incredibly hard to watch the patient experience, obviously painful. And then I witnessed the much-discussed (in our CT class no doubt) “Stroke Protocol” in action, for the first time, on a young kid.

If you have never witnessed this, the Stoke Protocol in action is something to behold. A massive influx of people and doctors – and nothing will make your blood pulse more than witnessing it all happen with a young kid. The same patient began seizing during an exam, and ‘THE BUTTON” – the ‘Code’ button, calling in emergency response team – was pushed, compounding the excessive crowd.

This also happens to be when vomit was involved, and I got to see a patient intubated on the spot. If you can witness a situation like this, and you have young siblings, and it fails to affect you, I would find it difficult to believe you have a soul.

Needless to say, it took me some time to come down that night, and the following few were a bit difficult.

Good news came at the end of the week, however, when we were informed that next Thursday we begin training for A REAL JOB! By “real” I mean “paid” because what we do everyday is REAL work, too, we just don’t get that little reinforcement check twice a month. Chad and I are going to be “Gazunga drivers”! Ok, so this is not the wording that will go on our CV (resume): PSA is – Patient Service Attendant. We will be the people who retrieve the patients from their wards and bring them to the imaging department. Gazungas are the machines that are used to enable a single person to “drive” the bed. I do not believe they have these in the states.

With this also comes some – in my opinion well earned – vacation time. We are taking advantage of a few days off to head East (or South, however you want to look at it) and explore the Limestone Coast. We’ll do our best to snap some pics as we lap up the smooth blue ocean water and soak up some Vitamin D in the warm sun!!