Fifty Four

CT techs (CAT Scan) can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Mostly though they do their work with the utmost professionalism despite the nutty personalities that sit or stand in their work space.


BTDT CT Tech:

I met this tech and worked with her for nearly a year before her "all knowingness" became obnoxious. She had made her bones in a large inner city Level 1 doing XR then eventually CT. She was competent and did her job well mostly. On occasion she'd get pissy and say shit 'Well at the level 1 I used to work at..." Just a little note to folks here don't say that shit, if you do at least phrase it with out a large dose of conceit.

By the time I made it to this Level 3 hospital I had already worked for a long time in a Level 1 also AND worked on a busy urban ambulance service. I knew a thing or two as well. Naturally working in a dynamic environment such as a ER people butt heads. It was only a matter of time before BTDT CT tech and I had a conflict.

An 18y/o male is driven in by his sister after a skateboarding accident. The was hitting a rail fell off his board backwards landing on his right flank. He had made it past the triage nurse who put him at a low level of acuity. I roomed the kid and his sister and thought his story was pretty good. He was complaining of urinating blood and constant right flank pain. His HR and pressure were fine. I did the usual thing. I started an IV and waited for the nurse of the room to pick him up and do an assessment.

Well it was one of THOSE days where one critical patient was coming in after another and the nurses were being pulled every which way.  I checked with the charge nurse and made sure it was cool if I ordered a CT on this kid because my spidey senses were tingling. Now several minutes later his hr was rising and his BP dropping just a little he was getting a little pale. It had been a few hours since his fall, his sister talked him into coming to our little Level 3.

Charge says it's cool and since most of her nurses are busy with medical patients that I should take this minor trauma on over to the scanner and get him scanned. Which was what I wanted all along. I pop back in on the kid and his HR is over 110 and BP is low 100's systolic. The kid is in a fair amount of pain. I have fluids wide open on him and bring another bag of NS on him just in case, along with a monitor.

I call CT and BTDT is all cranky. No one is on her table with no scans ordered except mine. I'm thinking I can come right over. Nope, she wants to go smoke first. I'm telling her this kid has a good story and I'm on my way. I'm there in like 2 minutes because man, my little oh shit voice is really whispering in my ear.

We get to the room and I get a ear beating in front of the patient by BTDT CT tech. I tell her to scan him he's a trauma and if she's got a problem call the charge nurse. BTDT CT tech tells me she's seen serious trauma before and he ain't one. The CT tech really rakes me over the coals.

Ah, pride before the fall.

I put the kid on the table and run his VS again more tachy more hypotensive. She scans him and lo and behold he has a nice tear in his renal artery with free fluid in the space. Fuck, he's bleeding internally. Now usually we have to wait for the radiologist to read it but this time since the scanner ain't got shit going on the rad calls right up and says get on the fucking stick it's time for bright lights and cold steel for this kid.

Remember this is a level 3 they ain't use to seeing this kinda thing. I'm immediately on the phone to the charge nurse telling her what the rad is saying. The charge says "Fuck, I'm sending a nurse over now and the lab will pull uncrossed O blood..." I over hear her saying to the ward clerk "Get the on call surgeon and the OR we have a good trauma in CT." The other lines start ringing off the hook in the CT scanner because the rad is calling everyone and everyone is calling CT to get a report. It was a cluster fuck for a second there.

The CT tech is burning a hole through my forehead while I'm on the phone with the charge nurse. The nurse is over in no time at all with the kid's older sister then we rush on over to the OR where they give the kid blood and prep him for surgery. Fortunately the on call surgeon was in the hospital doing rounds.

The kid lived and came back to thank us for saving his life a month or so later. Really his sister saved him by insisting he come to the hospital.

After we drop off the kid to OR I make it a point to go back to the CT tech to hear her out. Basically it boiled down to "Well he did not LOOK like a serious trauma" I was not too gentle about it and told her frankly that she has a lot of experience scanning patients and hardly any with patient care. That when medical staff brings a patient to her she is to do her job and not buck on us because she wants to go smoke. I told her I had a good case to get her ass in a lot of trouble but I was not going to bother because we all have off days, if I hear of it happening again then I'll do all I can to see things through. No one worth a shit is going to tell her how to scan patients so just drop the know it all act.

Keep in mind I'm just a dumb ass ER tech with no real juice. Needless to say as far as I heard such a thing never happened again. In fact she was always very pleasant to me every time I saw her afterwards. If she was being a hemorrhoid to someone and I over heard I'd just get on the phone and say hello then the gates would open. Wah La. I can tell you no one likes the taste of humble pie (myself included) because it tastes a lot like how I would imagine how shit tastes. You never forget it or who serves it up to you.

So goes the job in the dynamic ER environment.

I have more CT tech stories as well as doc stories, nurse stories, cop stories, psych stories and dumb ass ER tech stories as well. More in Movember.https://us.movember.com/

Fifty Three

It should have never gotten to this point.

This patient should have lived the rest of their life in relative comfort and joy after surviving a grievous GSW a few years ago. Yes, they lost the use of their limbs and has to shit in a bag. They have family who should have cared for them or in the very least if they were incapable, find another way for them to live the rest of their days as a human being instead of a slowly decomposing organism, food for any number of microbes and insects.

Instead they put him in a room, turned off the lights and closed the door.

Words will do an injustice to this person's condition. Horrible is the best word I suppose. If you did not feel outrage over this extreme case of neglect then I would challenge you to feel emotion ever again.

We threw everything we had at this person's illness including the kitchen sink then we tore out the wall and pulled out the plumbing and threw that in as well. A valiant attempt at saving a life. We spent hours in the room hanging meds, cleaning the patient all while trying to keep the maggots out of our clothes and shoes. It did no good.

The tragedy did not end there.

The patient coded then died of massive sepsis in our emergency room. Then if the sadness of this was not enough the ICU attending decided to dress down the ER nurse in a very public manner in front of the patients room. It was damn shameful the deceased patient was not even in a body bag yet.

It was all a bit hard to swallow. I nearly walked out just to get a shower and a drink. I did not leave, I'm a professional and we were of course up to our eyeballs with sick patients. We all swallowed this and carried on. The rest of the shift passed on slowly and as all shifts do ended.

I stopped by the liquor store on the way home and bought a tall bottle of whiskey then went home took a shower until the hot water ran out, drank whiskey until I could not see straight and watched goofy comedies and laughed until my sides hurt.

I'm so tired of seeing pain and suffering. I need to find a new career.