Hey, remember when I told you that, if you ever showed up in my hospital, the best thing I could do for you would be to get you transferred out hellafast? Well, I've decided we can keep you if you come in with a knife in your chest.
I am in awe of what 2 of our surgeons (and I should include the ER doc) just did, and I say that as the son of a surgeon. We had this guy come in thru ER the other nite. Don't know all the whys and wherefores, but this guy chugged a bottle of wine, (cuz his wife didn't feel like a glass, I think). Then, he went into the kitchen, got a big knife, and went outside. Proceeded to stab his elf several times. (Elf died, but that wasn't good enuf for him.) We heard, that, at the end, he simply left the knife in his bod, and then began to bang himself against a wall.
OK, so he comes into ER with this knife sticking out of his breastbone. Gets whipped off to OR really fast; I'm not even sure they bothered with X-rays. They open his belly to visualize the knife, and than with extreme caution, got it out, without starting any new bleeding. Then they started on his belly, but, once they got the blood sucked out, couldn't find a source for the flowing blood, so they cracked the chest. At first, just looked like the pericardium, the sac around the heart, was filled with blood, so they cut a window in it to drain it. (Unchecked, by itself, with no other events going on, cardiac tamponade can kill.The sac is so filled with blood that the heart gets squeezed, and blood flow both in and out gets impaired).
Uh, oh. Squirt squirt...the heart had a 10mmcut. So, one doc plays Dutch Boy at the Dike, and the other sews up the hole. May have been 2. Now, this was all done with a beating heart. We don't have a bypass machine; they couldn't stop the heart to work. And, I'll bet neither has worked on a heart since they were residents. They bring honor to their profession. Ain't a hospital in the country that could have done any better. |
