So recently I was working my regular shift with a part time employee. She is a great partner and is always nice. However, all we did that day was putz around in wonderful world of transfers. Not a single priority one. Well, until the very end.
We were on our way to do a very easy but not exactly stimulating transfer from here to there when my partner and I get stuck in traffic. I wasn't paying attention and didn't notice the obvious wreck about a block or two in front of us. I thought it was just someone putting their boat in the water. As it turns out, we just happened to have rolled up onto an MVA. A head on collision, to be exact. I guess it was a good thing that I was not driving. Ha!
So there was A LOT of damage to both vehicles. Apparently they were going about 40-50mphs each as they hit one another. There was so much in fact that neither person was able to self extricate themselves. So one was just as simple as "Hey, why don't you crawl out the passenger door". The other pt wasn't exactly as simple. The steering wheel was about 2 inches from their face and actually touching their chest. Oddly enough, this person was pretty lackadaisical about the whole situation. The one problem was the retrograde amnesia that this person was experiencing. At least they were not really in any pain.
At this point, the fire department showed up as well as the EMS company that normally runs in that area. Fire immediately got into extrication mode and came over to assess the situation. They quickly got suited up and busted out all the tools. It's extrication time! Now, I am currently holding c-spine in the back of this heap of twisted metal and talking with this lady about what was about to happen and asking her questions about the event. Then suddenly we are covered with a blanket. Oh yeah! They kind of have to cut us out of this pile of metal that was once your car. It might get a little noisy for a bit. BOOM/CRASH goes the window! and out come the cutting tools. Which were not as noisy as I remember them to be.
Meanwhile, under the tarp...we hear and feel broken glass landing on top of us and hear the cutting of metal and plastic by hydraulic tools that I am sure the FD was more than happy to employ. After all, they are firemen. They got us out in really no time at all. However, as it turns out we were stuck in the car for about 20+ minutes. And that is not including the time before the FD got there.
Once the B post was removed, we get this pt in full spinal precautions and get them into the waiting ambulance to get the ALS part of the call underway. It was a very smooth extrication and allowed us time to get all of our ducks in a row before hand. As we are going to the truck I ask one of the fire guys where is the closest trauma center and he points us in the direction to the closest super hospital.
So we do the eyes and scissors things, put in a big IV (even though the pt said they were "a hard stick") and got our vitals going. Now it is time to apply some high flow diesel to the situation and start rolling priority one per protocol. The pt was currently stable but chancing it was not the greatest idea. It seemed like most of what was done was with the idea that it was "better safe than sorry". However, I would rather be more aggressive and not have it be that bad than write off a potentially life threatening situation. I don't have a CT scanner or x-ray vision so traveling priority one to the hospital will have to do for now.
I call report enroute, reassess my pt, and help my partner get us there. My partner did an excellent job. I didn't really need to do anything to help. And when I called report I said that we were about 10 minutes out. As it turns out, that was a gross underestimate. We were more like 20 minutes out. It didn't really make the trauma team all that happy, but it could have been much worse. It's funny. The entire time the pt seemed to have this "I don't know what is such a big deal" kind of attitude about the whole situation. It was kind of funny.
Upon our arrival, we give report to the trauma team and hand off patient care. I have to say I always love giving a trauma report because you get to yell over everyone and can even put a big piece of tape on their chest and write stuff on it.
It wasn't a bad call to end out the shift with. However, it did keep us over for about an extra hour or so. Oh well, I could always use the extra overtime. Gotta love a good trauma call when all the players involved work together as a team.
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