Shot twice? No big deal.

June 5

A kid came in today, probably about fourteen. A car had run his left leg over, ripping the skin and fascia off his rectus femoris muscle and exposing about half of it. He was absolutely hysterical, and then the nursing students who are volunteering in the hospital decided to irrigate the wound by putting saline on gauze and dabbing his exposed muscle. Just then the surgical team walked in to see what they’d be operating on and started screaming at the nursing students. What exactly they said I don’t know but I’m sure it was along the lines of “don’t you think there’s a reason he’s flying off the table?”

Later on, right before I left the ER, a guy came in who’d been shot in both legs, maybe three inches above the ankle. The wounds were from a very low caliber gun, small and not bleeding much. It wasn’t from the Israelis, it was another “quarrel case”. I’m sure he’d been given an analgesic of some kind before he got to us, but he was totally calm, talking on his cell phone. Imagine the conversation: “Hey, I won’t be able to make it to that meeting ‘cause I just got shot. Yeah. Yeah I’m in the ER right now; I think they’re gonna do surgery or something, I dunno I wasn’t paying attention.”