saw some pretty sad cases today.

first patient we saw when we started our shift was a gentleman in his forties who was run over by a forklift and so suffered a near amputation of his left ankle. ortho came down to have a look, and apparently the decision was made to perform a BKA. i haven't done my ortho posting yet, but i can't help but think that it's a rather depressing job to have to amputate people's limbs.

next was a 12 year old boy who fell from the second story while playing hide and seek. landed on concrete ground and sustained multiple skull fractures. the last i know, his GCS was 5. they intubated him (but not before he puked out his lunch in the resus area) and sent him off to paediatric surgery. will have to follow up on him, but i sure hope he'll eventually get better.

third case was a 25 year old lady who swallowed half a bottle of shower gel in a suicide attempt. it's not the first time she's done this, and it's quite likely she'll do it again. she seldom returns home and sleeps out in the open with a male friend. she's on psych followup here at the western hospital, but has stopped taking her antidepressants because she doesn't like to take medicine. her hair was oily and her fingernails and toenails had all sort of grime trapped under them, and there was this stench around her from her vomit. she looked so alone and lost in the sea of trolleys and activity in the p2 area, and i wished i could have talked to her longer, but the doc came to look at her and we were called away to look at scans. not sure how she reacted during the pysch consult.

just got word of some sad news about someone. life is unpredictable, no? so it doesn't matter what happens to my pharmaco test, or any exam for that matter, because it's the people around you that matter.