So I happen to be attending med school in the same city I grew up in. There's a lot of advantages to the situation: I know the area really well, the city "feels" like home, I'm close to friends and family, in-state tuition, etc. There's also the annoyances that come from returning to your hometown. Namely, running into old acquaintances, especially high school classmates, everywhere from the deodorant aisle at Safeway to the self-help section at Borders (you to!?!). Now, these aren't the good friends from the old days - those I've actually kept in touch with over the years and still make plans with from time to time. These are the people you see in a crowd, recognize the face and try to place their name, and before you can think of it they jump you with with the "Heeeeyyyy how are yoooouuuuu? What are you uppppp to? *awkward pause*" before you can make a quick getaway. At first these spontaneous encounters were kind of fun, namely because my younger self got to pull the "I'm in medical school card" (Yeah. I know. You don't have to tell me.) But after a while it becomes an annoyance more than anything. That being said, there's one place I never expected to bump into an old high school friend.
I was on trauma call on Friday night and going through my usual routine. Which means I was in the cafeteria at 10 at night, justifying to myself that I should get the ham and cheese sandwich and fries instead of the halibut and grilled veggies because "You deserve it. You're on call." Before I could contribute to my future coronary artery disease, the trauma pager goes off and I hand the delicious ham and cheese sandwich back to the cook and shrug, mumbling "Sorry. Trauma." I do my best doctor walk (you know, the walk where you don't look like you're running but you're tearing down the hallway on pace for a 4.0 40) down to the ER and work my way over to Trauma Bay 3. Ten minutes later the action starts as the paramedics wheel in the patient in a c-collar. My role is the lower extremity exam so I work on peeling away the patient's trauma-sheered pant legs, feeling for pulses, checking capillary refill, etc. The presentation of the patient begins.
"25 year old male was swimming with friends in the river. Dove off a rock and misjudged the depth of the water. Landed head first into shallow depth and immediately lost use of all extremities."
I examine the legs in front of me for lacerations, abrasions and such. The ED resident begins to talk to the patient.
"Sir, can you hear me?"
"Yeah," the patient replies.
"Can you tell me your name?"
"Mike." The appointed scribe sets out her form and begins to write in the elucidated info. "What's your last name, Mike?"
"Jergens."
Mike Jergens*. The two names snap together in my mind and I immediately glance up to the patient's face poking out above the c-collar. He had a beard now, but there was no mistaking his face. This was the same Mike I sweat and bled with during countless hours of football practice back in high school. He was a linebacker, I was a cornerback, and we spent more than a few hours shooting the sh*t in the huddle back in the day. I think back to my last vivid memory of him - also a Friday night, 7 years ago. We were walking off the football field my senior year, knocked out of the state playoffs in the quarterfinals in a royal butt-kicking from our local rival. He had cried that night in the locker room. I suddenly had the urge to cry myself.
I somehow pull myself together enough to help finish the triage and he is sent off to imaging. It would find that he had a C6-7 fracture dislocation. His cord was compromised. He was taken to the OR the next day.
Mike would eventually regain some motor use of his upper extremities. He had a long hospital stay with a rocky course including a ventilator-associated pneumonia. He was eventually discharged home 4 weeks later with a trach, facing a long road ahead I cannot even begin to fathom.
I never let him know I was there in that trauma bay. I tried to muster the courage several times to go visit him in his ICU bed, but the best I could do was to post a message on the website that had been erected for friends to send well-wishes and prayers. I still don't know what kept me from stepping into that room, but I carry a certain amount of guilt knowing that we now face such divergent paths in life. If anything, it has certainly helped me to gain perspective on how precipitous our lives can be and how quickly they can change. The minor annoyances in life, such as being "forced" to make small talk with an old acquaintance, are suddenly seen as blessings instead. An opportunity to see and know that that person is well. It's a strange world we live in.
As if to emphasize this point, the next night on trauma a patient in his early twenties was life-flighted in with nearly the exact same injury. He had dove into the river off a large boulder. Misjudged the depth. Landed head first in shallow water. But he escaped with only a hairline skull fracture.
It's a strange, strange world we live in.
* = Name obviously changed to protect his identity.
No comments:
Post a Comment