Tuesday, December 04, 2007

God of A&E

Today was a good day. A&E was rammed, and lots of the punters actually had a medical problem. Excellent start.

I began the day in trauma review clinic (always a favourite of mine, as every patients has an x-ray, and you know that imaging makes me all warm and fuzzy inside) with a consultant named Apollo. He took me and the other final year under his wing, and throughout the day kept grabbing us to see 'something interesting', including suturing, steroid injections for plantar fasciitis and aspiration of a reactive knee effusion. All jolly good stuff, but the best was yet to come.

In the middle of sorting blood cultures for a woman with suspected pyelonephritis, he barged in and marched us off to resus. Not very convenient, but we had no choice in the matter. He needed us NOW. And we soon saw why. In resus was a teenage boy, face screwed up in pain, with a very dodgy looking shoulder and a very worried looking mother. Apollo informed us he was going to perform Kocher's manoeuvre with the help of his glamourous assistant, a bewildered paramedic. I was designated hand-squeezee, and I did not expect it back the same shape.

Apollo took hold of his arm, did the required manoeuvre firmly and calmly, and two minutes later that boy's humeral head was sat back where it belonged, and he was gingerly moving it with a look of utter amazement. The relief from his mother was palpable, as the paramedic and us two medical students gazed on in awe and amazement. And my hand was still the same shape.

His mother must have been a true seer.

3 comments:

The Little Medic said...

Im doing A+E as my last placement before finals in May, really looking forward to it.

Anna said...

It's ok... You need a ton of enthusiasm to make it worth while, and I've been finding it difficult to conjure that up what with the freezing weather and the 50 mile round trip to worcester everyday.

The Little Medic said...

Yeah, I did A+E briefly back in 3rd year and it was the same then. Unfortunately I had no enthusiasm and was spending most of my time in Cambridge then anyways.

Hopefully i'll have a bit more motivation with finals hanging over me.

Oh, and I replied to your comment on my blog about finals.