Sad day

Last night turned out to be worse than I imagined, but I didn't truly know how bad it was until this morning. I finally got called back at 945 last evening. I laid down at 935 I think. We got a very bad report from the supervisor so we weren't sure exactly what we were in for until we got there. She got a very little bit of the situation correct. Sadly, that isn't uncommon and we figured it out.

It just took forever to get things going and finished with that surgery. Mostly we just had to clean the poor guy's road rash up. Thank goodness for general anesthetics! But while we were doing this case the Xray tech we had with us showed the surgeon films he had just taken of a child in the ER. Poor little guy needed surgery, but the doctor had to see the little guy and talk to his family. Lucky for us the little guy had pain medicine and had been made comfortable for the rest of the night. He was sound asleep and his parents thought first thing in the morning would be a fine time for surgery. We get this good news but hear there has been a car accident and that we can't leave until we know what is going on with that. We didn't get any information the way we were supposed to be informed so we had to just go find out for ourselves. Good thing we did because no one really cared about us. Funny how they really liked the help when we got there though. We knew the patient and "his buddy" were in an accident and "his buddy" died at the scene. He was flown in and we just needed to know if he needed to come to surgery. The way things happen these days is so fast. You have people before you have stories. You have to try and figure things out as you go. We can get people without names or any information. You wouldn't believe how hard it can be to find a purse, billfold, ID of any sort, vehicle registration, anything at all sometimes. So we work to take care of a person we have in front of us and then the details start coming in as we go.

This patient didn't need surgery, at least at that time, so we got to home. It was 245 in the morning when we clocked out. We started the damn day by 630. We were all so tired and we always feel bad about trauma patients. We knew the patient in the hospital was a teenager. Those of us from my department had figured out that it was a coworker's daughter's boyfriend. We were sad and tired.

This morning I got a call from one of the people there last night. "His buddy" that died was my coworker's fourteen year old daughter. We, those of us there, never even dreamed it could be her daughter. We thought the other person was a guy. I feel terrible for my coworker. Of course I always feel bad when someone loses a family member. It just hit me in a different way this time. I know I am still exhausted so that is part of it, but now I have just an inkling of what it feels like to be a parent. I have yet to meet Jake, but my life would be turned upside down and inside out if he were taken away from me. I haven't even had fourteen years to get to know him and love him. I don't know how you handle something like that, how you care on. I just pray for this poor family. No one should have to do this.