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Monday, October 17, 2005

Direct Hit!

Okay, so I'm getting slammed this week. Tests everywhere, quizzes everywhere. So much to worry about and study for.

There's one thing that keeps me going, well, two things. Taking everything day by day for one. "Live to fight another day." The other is that passion for medicine. I don't care that I have to pull all-nighters to study for a test. If it means that I get into med school one day, and get to pursue my dream of becoming a physician then it was worth it.

I also acknowledge that what I have typed may also be incoherent. That's a side effect of fatigue.

In other news, I pulled duty last weekend. Not a whole lot, happened; just one call, which wasn't really bad off. We were dispatched for an "eye injury." Patient had gotten hydrogen peroxide in her eye. I've done this myself (using AOSEPT with my contacts) and let me tell you. It really hurts, you literally have to force your eye open; it's not easy to do because the eyelid goes into spasms that force the eye closed. It takes some real self control to get it back open on your own; I know it took me a while to do it myself before I could rinse it out.

This patient apparently wasn't so lucky. She couldn't open her eye so I had to grab the eyelid and force it open. I know that sounds terrible, but it has to be done, you have to get that stuff out of there. It's only going to do more damage in there. You'd be amazed just how strong the eyelid actually is, it takes a lot of force. I pulled it open and poured a 0.9% NaCl (sodium chloride or 'salt') solution in so that it flushed from the medial part of her eye to the lateral part. After thorough flushing we transported. I spiked an IV bag and hooked it up to a drip set and some IV tubing and used that the rest of the way to flush her eye. Everything turned out well. Not terribly exciting, but oh well. Not everything is.

Well, I have some more studying to do for AP US History and AP Biology.

Goodnight everyone, and remember, stay safe,
Bravomedic.

posted by bravomedic @ 11:44 PM   2 comments

2 Comments:

Good Luck! It will be worth it! :-D

By Blogger Em, at 1:23 PM  

I wear contacts. Sometimes, I'll be lazy on weekends and go about my routine sans the lenses. If I want to go anywhere in public and function at a level higher than legally blind, I need them. I'm talking about not seeing more than about 24" from my face to read anything.

One Saturday, I woke up late and decided that the wintery scene outside my window warranted some Serious chili. This involves a quantity of meats, beans, beer-based tomato sauces, and the exceptional quantity of spices.

As a lover of spicy foods, I don't often respect the terror that can come from them. After cleaning the garlic and slicing the fresh jalapenos, I put everything into the kettle to simmer.

In the bathroom, I took out my contacts and cleaned them in my palm with my fingers. The skin on my hands didn't truthfully declare that they were in fact wholly saturated with police-grade pepper spray residue.

Without delay, when the contact touched my eye the eyelid slammed shut and the most painful burning sensation ravaged my entire face.

The eyelid is quite a ferocious fighter when angered.

The only thing to do here was to pry my eye open with the same pepper-oil-soaked fingers that contaminated the contacts, doing double the damage. I held the lid open with my left hand while digging and scraping the shit out of my eye with the right hand.

Pain for hours. I don't need to be told how pepper spray effects the eyes. I eye-maced myself that afternoon.

For whatever reason, I plopped those contacts back into their little dish. For the next month, I wore a fresh set. But I confused them one day, putting the spicy contacts in my eye. The pain was magnitudes less, but still present despite a month-long soaking.

I tossed them, having made the same stupid mistake twice.

Exam gloves are now used in the processing of peppers in my kitchen. I treat it, and this is not an exaggeration, with the full compliment of BSI precautions. Had I been slicing ebola infected tissue, there would be no difference between that and hot pepper procedures.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:36 AM  

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