why I will never climb a fence ever again (work overshare inside. guys, you REALLY don't want to read this)
Posted by
dogbert
Oct 10 '09, 17:20
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I got a heads up call about a patient I was getting with a chief complaint of "copious blood from the scrotum". he gets brought back in a wheelchair and they weren't kidding, his pants were soaked. he was at home finishing up garden chores for the year and slipped while climbing over a fence landing directly his groin. I get him out of his pants and try to get the blood out of the way so I can see what we're dealing with. there is a laceration about 3-4 inches long to his scrotum and as I'm clearing out the blood I notice that something that at first looked like a really big clot dangling down wasn't a clot after all. I've never passed out by seeing things at work, but for a brief moment I felt a jolt.
the guy looks down and says "is that what I think it is?" (this is the first time he had his pants off since the accident.
I said to him "if you are thinking it's your testicle, then yes, it's what you think it is"
I get the doc in and she wraps it quickly with some gauze and goes out to call a surgeon in. while this is happening I do all my busy work getting him ready to go (IVs, labs, ekg, etc). I call the doc back in because the bleeding isn't stopping and I need a set of hands. she wrapped the testicle with two pieces of gauze so I'm slowly unwraping it to not cause the poor guy any pain. the first one comes off kind easy, but the second one just didn't want to unravel. all of a sudden I notice that there is nothing in between the patient and the gauze anymore and I internally freak out because I'm thinking his testicle has just gotten removed from his body. I look up at the doc and she has the same look on her face that I'm feeling. she moves his thigh back a little and thankfully it had just slid under there and was still connected (I will never in my life be as happy to see a guys balls as I did then) turns out what we saw in the gauze was another big clot that just resembled what we were searching for.
fast forward to when the surgeon gets to the unit, he stretches the laceration and I pack it with gauze to stop the bleeding (is anyone still reading this? I wouldn't have blamed you if you stopped a long time ago), and we get moist gauze around the testicle to give it a good chance to be viable and returned. my boss kept making fun of me the rest of the day because she saw me and the doc at this point and said we looked hilarious with how gingerly we were handling him "it's like when you see people on tv defusing a bomb".
so that was what I did today, how was your day?
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Responses:
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This is so much scarier than The Blair Witch Project. -- nm
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David
Oct 10, 17:52
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holy jeebus. -- nm
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loosilu
Oct 10, 17:45
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This just totally heebie jeebies me out. -- nm
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Callisto
Oct 10, 17:45
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I wasted the entire day ... but sweet jesusfuck, I am so glad I didn't climb a fence today. :) -- nm
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Beryllium
Oct 10, 17:31
1
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Wow. That's one of those stories that you can't stop reading even though that's the only thing you want to do.
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psilotum
Oct 10, 17:30
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Picket fence? Iron? What? -- nm
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mara
Oct 10, 17:25
2
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*crosses legs*
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Beaker
Oct 10, 17:24
4
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*crosses his legs* -- nm
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znufrii
Oct 10, 17:24
1
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I'm laughing, but I think it's so I don't cry in sympathy. -- nm
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TWuG
Oct 10, 17:23
1
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