night float

ok.
i'm back to blogging.
we'll see how long this lasts.

i'm PGY-4 now, and have finished transplant surgery, vascular surgery, and wake med (trauma at the community hospital) rotations.

now i'm on the night float service. i come to work at 5pm and stay until 6am. all surgery consults go through me: peds surgery, vascular surgery, general surgery, etc. there are tons of trips to the emergency room at 4 am.

speaking of 4am, one of the craziest cases i did was on a wed morning at 4am. a guy came in with three bullet holes in his legs and two bullet holes in his abdomen and an xray with a bullet in his femur. one bullet went through and through his abd wall (but a graze wound) and one bullet when through his left leg (missing his femur) and lodged inthe right leg femur.

we took him to the OR and did an angiogram which was negative for injury, and washed out his abdomen. we rolled him back to the SICU intubated and noticed his right leg was bleeding. i held pressure and when we got him back to the room i took a look at the leg. blood was *pouring* out. i've never done this before, but i climbed back up on the bed and held pressure while we rolled the patient back to the OR (with me still on the bed.) we had to filet open his leg to find a bleeding vein at the base of the gunshot wound.