I know that it sounds terrible to someone that is not in EMS, Fire or Police, but I wanted a trauma! It’s not that I wished something terrible happening to someone…but I knew that terrible things did happen, and I wanted to be the person that responded!
I was working weekend nights in the city. I was sure to see some action! (Yes, I am well aware of how morbid all of this sounds, but bare with me!) Night after night, I was running medical calls and transfers, but what I wanted was my first gunshot wound. I knew they happened…other medics were bringing them in to the hospitals. I was starting to get a little nervous because I wasn’t getting any experience with critical calls (i.e. cardiac arrests, child births, traumas). I was afraid my fresh-out-of-school knowledge would get rusty.
BEEP. BEEP. “Unit 101…Respond to a Shooting at the convenience store. Scene is secure.” WOO HOO! The sirens were loud in the nighttime as we traveled down the road, and the lights reflected off the windows of the dark houses. It seemed to take forever to get to the scene, but it gave me enough time to go through the trauma treatment steps in my head. With a trauma, we had ten minutes to get on scene, assess the patient, load the patient into the rig, and get going to the hospital.
“Unit 101 is on scene!”…I think I may have shouted that into the mic. Oops, sorry! The parking lot was full of police cars, a paddy wagon, and a fire truck. I bounded out of the ambulance, grabbed the trauma bag, and looked around for the patient lying on the ground. Uh…no body on the pavement. Maybe the patient was inside the store. I stopped the firefighter walking by, and asked where our trauma was located. He pointed to a fifty-something, homeless-looking man walking around holding his backside. Surely that wasn’t my patient.
“I’ve been shot in the ass!” He kept shouting over and over as he walked around holding the right side of his rear. I walked over to him. “Sir, could you tell me when this happened? And we need to take a look at your injuries,” I said in my most professional voice, even though I (yes, it is disturbing) was disappointed. The patient informed me that this happened an hour prior to our arrival, and he had been walking around since he was shot. We put him on the cot in the rig. I cut his jeans, and he did have a small bullet hole in the right buttocks with very little blood at the site of the wound. I took his vital signs, started an I.V., and we headed for the Trauma Center. “I have to pee,” he bellowed. I told him we would be at the hospital in a few minutes, and there was no place to go in the ambulance. “I have to pee,” he bellowed again. I informed him, again, he was going to have to wait. He said, “You don’t understand! I have to pee, but I can’t!” Uh oh…
Warning bells began to jingle inside my head. I saw the wound on his rear end, but I didn’t see an exit wound. I looked down at his jeans. I saw a small spot of blood at his zipper…next to a small hole!
I may have moved at warp speed. I pulled out my neon pink trauma shears, and started cutting the front of his jeans. Snip and rip…I exposed where the blood and hole had been on the jeans. “HOLY S*#T!” Yep, I said it out loud. The bullet had traveled straight out the patient’s manhood. No wonder he said he couldn’t pee…he would be urinating like a sprinkler from now on.
I told my partner to drive “a little faster.” I picked up the radio to call in my report to the ER. “This is Unit 101. We are en route with…….” I vapor-locked. The Medical Director had answered the radio, and I was so nervous I couldn’t remember how to give a radio report. “…a 55 year old male patient with a gunshot wound to the right…….butt cheek.” OMG! I said “Butt Cheek” to the the man that ultimately controls my city license! “………With an exit wound out the pen(mumble, mumble). We’ll see you in 3 minutes.” Just kill me now! Three minutes later, I faced the doctor behind the radio. He looked at me with a smirk, and asked me (in front of a full ER Trauma Room) if I had a problem saying certain anatomical terms. My crimson face said it all.
Lesson Learned #1: Be careful what I wish for…I just might get it (when I am not prepared for it).