“This is normal; this is what we do.”
Excellent article in the NY Times (yes, the NY Times) on the medical response in the first hours after the shooting.
It is hands-on work, as you will see.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
As a doc, I will say the story conveys the medical processes of an acute, multi-person event very well.
I do have a couple of thoughts some will consider snarky:
1) calling in the chief of neurosurgery because the head-shot victim, Giffords, was an admitted political decision. One would suffice for the non-elites.
2) The surgeon who went to Christina’s funeral went in his scrubs and white coat. He wears those as a badge of office in public, at a funeral, quite inappropriately. The first patient funeral he ever attended ???
I see this all the time now, all kinds of hospital and medical office workers out for their lunch breaks in scrubs, dragging who knows what germs back into the workplace on return. The purpose of scrub suits is to be clean, as bug-free as possible; that’s why all personnel put them on before entering an OR.
“yes, the NY Times”
Thanks. I did think the first mention was an error.
The first responders and EMS folks are great!
And I’m not only saying that because I am one.
Our ER people, when it’s a real emergency, are the best. And very comforting: you immediately feel lifted up, carried, tended, with a brisk but warm efficiency. Like a fusion of Super-Nurse and Grandma.
When it’s not a real emergency, the acid sense of humor emerges. I remember being in the ER in downtown New York when a loud young drunkard, roaring obscenities, was decanted into the hospital by bored and unimpressed policemen. The drunken young man kept hollering, “You don’t know who my FATHER is! My FATHER will get all of your sorry asses s***canned!” and on and on. He kept fighting them and trying to escape.
Finally the ER aides, some pretty beefy guys who’d been through September 11th and had the tattoos to commemorate it, strapped the nuisance to a wheelchair. He was cursing them and trying to bite them, and they just told him to put a sock in it. When he threatened them, they just smiled sardonically and said, “You won’t remember jacks**t tomorrow.” Then they left him there to rant and rave for a couple of hours, until he passed out.