A Night in the Trauma Ward

Phew. Yesterday I got a phone call from the principal of the fifteen year-old boy's high-school. There had been an incident where a car ran through a red light and plowed through several students, my son being one of them.

On arriving at the emergency trauma ward, there were six people working on him. He had hit his head on the car, was thrown ten feet or so, and hit his head again on the road. His clothes had been cut off him in the ambulance, and were stuffed into a plastic bag. One of his shoes was in a corner, laces sliced neatly down the middle. The other one was returned later by the investigating police officer, who had found it in the road. The laces were still tied, which meant that the impact knocked it off.

The boy was conscious and in fairly good spirits, despite wearing a cervical collar and lying on a hard backboard. Portable x-ray machines were whirring, he was hooked up to dozens of machines displaying heart and respiration rates, and the like.

After some friendly banter ("Hi, howdja feel?" "Like I just got hit by something big moving fast") I talked to the paramedics and medical personnel about his condition and what they were going to do. Then I spent two minutes registering him at the admissions desk, and back to the boy's side to see what he recalled.

Well, he didn't. He had no recollection of the accident, or the five minutes before it, and only a hazy dream-like recollection of the ambulance.

The friend he had been walking with was also struck, and was in the other half of the trauma room. I wandered over to see how he was doing. His leg was broken in four places, his arm cut by glass, and his nose broken and lacerated in two places. When I told him that the boy had lost consciousness, he called over the partition "Oh, you WIMP!"

Well, to make a long story very short, because I'm tired, the boy was kept overnight after much x-raying and CAT -scanning to monitor some minor bleeding in his brain. I stayed there with him, and this morning he was tested and cleared for discharge. The boy is now home, a bit groggy and with some very sore legs where the car hit them. His friend is having surgery to fix the leg and nose, but should be fine, other than on crutches for six weeks.

Overall, I think we came out lucky with this one. Could have been much worse.

And the boy said on the way home, "Well, now I know not to get hit by cars."

Oh, and the third student hit was tagged by the car's rear-view side mirror, and wasn't taken to hospital.