A NIGHT TO REMEMBER.

...no no, i did not have one of those surreal romantic nights if the title suggests that....i just had a one hell of a night in ems..
having already completed 2 months of ems duties in kem,i thought i had seen the worst and heaviest of days..how wrong i was!
it started with me taking over from previous batch for next 10 hours of my duty, i got quite a few patients directed towards me,that's not unusual,but it was just a pointer of things that were going to come..
..we had ems full of patients all demanding to be seen at that very moment,besides that there were patients on some 15 odd trollies lying around(...we being only 5 doctors or so..).despite sending many patients for ecg and xray's(...a trick we quite often use to dissipate the crowd in ems,it takes atleast half an hour for those patients to come back.;-)..there were no signs of crowd dwindling(..without exaggeration i think i was shuffling around with histories and examination of 4 patients at a time!!!!)
Then we had 3 transfers from cooper hosp.,2 of them being critical... 1 having diarrhoea with renal failure,one having complete heart block ..had to leave everything and attend to them...
.....had a female who collapsed on seeing some blood...(had to use some ether...well inhumane but only way to get best result in 2 seconds)...
....a young chap with such range of implausible movements defying all laws of neurology(...and in aggreement with all laws of psychiatry;-)..but relatives failing to understand that,creating a commotion that he gets attended first among all those critical patients requiring our immediate attention...
....had a patient with past history of intubation coming in with stridor...with no relatives,were unable to intubate..severely stenosed larynx..made to run around to mobilise ent surgeons,sanctioning a tracheostomy tube, getting consent from medical officer...ultimately assisting in tracheostomy(my 1st one..)....alll these in 15 minutes flat..(proud of that feat)..pt ultimately saved...
..had to put in 3 central lines..one patient suddenly gasped while i was introducing line..had to leave that and immediately intubate and resuscitate..patient did not survive:-(
....had 3 poisonings... one of them an opc,extremely difficult intubation,knocked 1 of her teeths off during intubation..
...personally transferred 3 patients to micu..
...shocked 1 patient who had v.tach...
...and in addition to all these filling a death certf, putting notes,monitoring of patients in ems icu,seeing those patients with non specific complaints....phew..just thinkin about this night makes me feel tired.
I just hope i dont have such a day again,now that only few days of my ems duties are remaining.