Sunday, July 25, 2021

July 25

This past 4th of July holiday was awful. Not to celebrate, mind you, but if you were sadly at work like I was then it was just the worst. We had more traumas and CPRs and critically ill people than I've seen in a long time. Our trauma surgeon on call was fortunately one of our favorites - a generally nice woman, extremely competent, and not prone to getting flustered or yelling at staff. She, however, also had a terrible night.

We had multiple severe traumas all at once, and the surgery department nearly activated a mass casualty incident because of it - a super serious call that wakes up all the hospital administrators, OR backup teams, supervisors, and whatnot. She decided not to activate because fortunately (unfortunately?) two of the traumas were declared deceased fairly quickly. Had they continued to draw large amounts of resources, the MCI would have been activated. Anyway, it was still a terrible night and exhausting and just so bloody and tiring.

As you all may know, I'm a very well known shit magnet at work. So around 4 am (3 hours after my shift ended) I go to leave, and waved goodbye to the rest of the trauma nurses and staff. The trauma doc looks up at me from her computer and goes "OH SHIT. This was YOUR fault! I didn't even put it together until now..." Apparently my black cloud reputation has filtered down to the surgery staff.

RUDE.

So anyway, I'm at work the other day and right around 7pm we activated an incoming trauma. We're all standing in the room waiting for the patient when the trauma doc arrives and she immediately notices me, looks at the clock, and goes "you're leaving right? Please, for the love of god, tell me you're leaving. I'm still traumatized from you being here over the holiday." When I shook my head no, she sighed and goes "Shall I just call time of death now? Or we gonna do this?"

What can I say, y'all. I don't know whether to be offended or take pride in my disastrous little personal black cloud.


1 comment:

Oldfoolrn said...

Don't feel too bad, 4th of July holidays are always disasters and one of the few holidays I remember all too well. Double knit, nylon-like material was very popular for leisure suits back in the 1970s and it looked OK but was flammable. One young man, inebriated of course, came in with severe burns on his legs and the leisure suit pants looked like they were melted into his dermis. He had been lighting sparklers and had set his pants on fire. When we asked him if he had been drinking he replied with the usual couple of beers answer. I heard a little voice in the back of my head say, "liar...liar, pants on fire!"

There is a bright side to being a shit magnet, it keeps everyone on their toes. You should be proud!