Welcome to the Jungle

My professor was proceeding to explain the obligatory relationship leaf cutter ants have to fungus when some very loud rustling followed by the sounds of a dropped computer and a very panicked student started happening across LSA 191.

This rustling was followed a moment later with a very loud and panicked "What the FRENCH?!" (I might have edited that slightly. I've gotta keep things PG here.)

Mr. French then proceeded to jump up, freak out and start trying to get something off of him. People around him, completely clueless as to what was happening, started running away and screaming as well. (Ah, mob mentality.)

Then the girl sitting next to Mr. French, ran up to him, grabbed whatever was on him and ran out the door.

All of this happened in about 20 seconds.

"Um, what was that?" my very alarmed and puzzled professor asked.

"It was a snake," a bunch of girls said.

"No it was definitely a bird," one guy yelled out.

"Actually I think it was a rat," another girl stated.

With that, the tattooed 5'11 Mr. French replied, in a very emotional tone, "It was some kind of animal!"

Then the guy sitting behind Mr. French said, "Dude, I think it was a sugar glider."

Sure enough, my professor pulled up a google pic of a sugar glider on the projection screen and Mr. French confirmed his attacker's identity.

Well ASU, that's definitely a new one.

Elements Combined

It would be impossible for me to make a list of everything I learned and saw during my ten 12-hour emergency department shifts. But, I've been attempting to mentally review my time there now that I have officially completed my 120 hours. So, here are some lessons learned and things remembered.

1. Do NOT under any circumstance make the nurses mad/annoyed. Or remind them they are hungry.
2. If you walk around purposefully, people will think you have a purpose.
3. Drunk people are exponentially more dumb in a hospital.
4. Drunk patients are the worst.
5. Never step on the chest saw cord.
6. Doctors are people.
7. Pitbulls may be dangerous, but they make for some very anatomically educational injuries.
8. In most cases of broken bottles v. frat boy faces, frat boy faces lose.
9. Dumb people should not carry 38's.
10. Those same dumb people should not smoke weed while attempting to handle 38's that "aren't theirs."
11. Patients are people.
12. Teach your children how to dial 911.
13. If you have made the decision to drink all day, make the decision NOT to continue drinking on a poorly gated third story balcony.
14. Its unrealistic to wear Converse shoes while riding a motorcycle and expect to escape an accident with all of your toes.
15. When a trauma surgeon tells you it's time for surgery, it's time for surgery.
16. Sometimes broken necklaces can look like bullets in an X-ray.
17. The ED is a cold place. Wear layers.
18. 97 years old is too old to be jumping on a couch.
19. Neurosurgeons stand out. They just do.
    
20. Scrubs are not flattering.
21. Sometimes the Emergency Department is exactly like ER.
22. Most of the time the Emergency Department is nothing like ER.
23. Defibrillators really do make that Hollywood "charging" sound AND people really do say "clear!"
24. Anesthesiologists have it MADE.
25. XXL wheel chairs are not easy to maneuver.
26. Sometimes miracles do happen.
27. Putting on sterile gloves is SO much harder than they make it look on Grey's.
28. Po-go sticks are good precursors to broken noses.
29. Elmer's glue + gauze = an effective way to remove cactus spines.
    
30. The human body has some very "interesting" smells.
    
31. Chaplains can bring more comfort than doctors and pain meds.
32. 12 hours is a long time.
    

43

“Morgan, will you please hold the phone for him?” the nurse asked me. I quickly took her place and held a clunky white hospital phone up to a middle-aged man’s bloody ear. A ground level fall patient, he had been brought in half an hour earlier after being found collapsed outside of a local Petco where he worked. I stood there, trying to hold the phone to his ear, though he was in a neck collar. I quietly listened to him comfort his wife, telling her that he was fine and to go back to sleep, that she could come in later that morning after she had rested, rather than make the 20 minute drive to the hospital at 3:30 in the morning. After listening to them exchange “I love you’s,” I hung up the phone and finished assisting the nurse drawing blood and running iStats.

An hour later, he was intubated, cathed and sedated awaiting his bed in the ICU. His CT scan had shown a massive brain bleed and no one, including neurosurgery, was hopeful he would wake up. I listened to the nurses and doctors refer to him as 43, his bed number, while I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I had witnessed the last moments of his conscious life. I had held the phone the last time he told his wife he loved her. I had awkwardly patted his shoulder and mumbled reassurances while he unknowingly tried to fight the restraints holding him to the bed. And now he would go up to the ICU, sedated with a plastic tube down his throat, while his wife and son were on their way to say goodbye in a cold and sterile room.

When you work a 12 hour shift, inevitably all the hours begin to run together until nothing in particular sticks out. But patient 43 stuck with me. Maybe it was the randomly tragic nature of the situation or maybe it was something in the way he told his wife he loved her. By the time I returned to the hospital later that week I was still thinking about 43 and how his life had ended so abruptly. Mid shift, on my way back from the lab I heard a familiar voice. “Morgan!” I turned around to see patient 43’s nurse form the shift before. We briefly exchanged “how are you’s” and I asked her if she had any interesting patients. As I turned to walk away she called back, “Hey remember the patient from last week with the bad brain bleed?” I felt my stomach start to sink a little. Here it comes. She went on, “He got better and went home on Thursday.” “Seriously?” I replied, stunned. “Yep.” We both started walking away when she jokingly called back over her shoulder, “Hey, sometimes miracles happen.”

And I know she was joking. But whenever I walk by room 43 I can’t help but think of someone who got better. Someone who went home. And someone who I will always remember as the first miracle I witnessed in medicine.