The Doc Is In

Михаил Варшавский

The Chinese food arrived and Mike and I dug into it. Laughing while gouging down chow mein and licking sweet and sour sauce off each other's fingers.

But all good things have to end at some point as we cleaned up and got ready for our night shift.

Luckily tonight, Mike and I were both working in the ICU.

The ICU was surprisingly quiet, but never say that out loud in a hospital. You'll regret it.

"Man, it's really quiet..." One resident started

"Shhhhhh!" All of the doctors and nurses and the other residents said, silencing him immediately.

But all that was gone when incoming sirens sounded off in the distance.

Case in point.

We all lined up at the ER awaiting what we were sure would be a wave of emergency patients.

Mike held my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

The senior attending was assigning doctors and residents to patients as they were rolled in.

"Lance and Varshavski, you take the next patient." The senior said and pointed to a first year resident to follow us.

We rushed to bring the patient in and got to work right away.

The patient was bleeding in the leg from a large gash.

The paramedics had told us that there was a terrible accident on Springfield Avenue involving people coming in from a wedding reception.

Way to spend a honeymoon.

The patient was shaking and crying with the intense pain that he was in.

"We can't do anything unless he stops shaking." Mike said and looked towards the resident.

"So what are we gonna have to do?" Mike asked him.

"Um... with a pain like that we're going to need an anaesthesiologist to administer some drugs to the patient." The resident answered while I was paging one at the same time.

Dr. Octavia Cannon rushed into the room with her equipment, administering two milligrams of Ketorolac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that works by blocking the body's production of substances that cause inflammation.

It worked in a matter of minutes and Mike and I got to work on the guy's leg.

Mike used a pair of tweezers to remove the dirt and debris in the wound after which I used saline spray to clear the area of bacteria.

"His leg is still bleeding." Mike said and I picked up some gauze and advised the resident to apply pressure on the wound until the bleeding stops.

But the bleeding didn't stop.

"Quikclot is the last option, it is a hemostatic device that contains kaolin." Mike started.

"Right, which accelerates natural clotting and can stop the bleeding quickly." I added.

"Can you just run up to inventory and grab the kit, you'll see Quikclot marked on the boxes." I said to a nurse that walked into the room.

The resident still had his hands on the wound applying pressure.