Tuesday

Life is full of doing things over your head.

This past Tuesday in particular.

The first "experience" happened before I even arrived at the hospital where I work. The hospital sits on the corner of two main roads, and "it" happened when I was approaching the intersection of these two roads. Remember that this is in Australia, where we drive on the left side of the road, so all the relative directions are essentially reversed. The "fast lane" is on the right, and it is harder to turn right than left, due to intervening lanes of traffic.

The light was red, and I was slowing with the traffic to a stop. I had to turn right, so I began to pull into the right-hand turn lane and looked at my mobile phone. Just as my eyes left the road, I heard a sort of smushed "crunch" sound. I looked up and didn't see anything at first. It didn't exactly sound like any car wreck I'd heard, so I thought a car might just be having catastrophic engine trouble or something.

Then I noticed a road grader in the leftmost of the two right-hand turn lanes. It was apparently towing a car very slowly towards the still-red intersection. My brain took a few seconds before it finally realized that the crunch was the little car smashing into the back of the grader. There are enormous cast-iron hooks on the bottom of the back of the machine that are used to break up concrete, and the front of the car had flattened up under the hooks and was firmly attached.

I immediately pulled over, as did the girl in front of me and the guy behind me. About that time, the light turned green, and EVERYONE who was stopped at that light just drove off. I could not believe it. How calloused must someone be to witness a car crush full-speed into the back of a construction machine RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, and then say "Oh, the light's green," and drive off?!

Me and the guy behind me yanked the door open and found a little vietnamese lady leaning on the wheel moaning. As soon as people saw us yanking open the door (and as soon as the light was conveniently red aganin) about a zillion people came over and started yelling at each other about what we should do. As is always the case in these situations, suddenly everyone was an expert, and nobody really had any idea what to do. Several of them started trying to push past me and the girl (named Anna, it turns out) to get into the cab and see for themselves what had happened.

About that time, someone noticed "my" hospital on the opposite corner. Someone yelled that we should see if the hospital had an emergency room, and I yelled back that I knew they didn't because I worked there.

Suddenly, with the revelation that I work in a hospital, I was in charge. It didn't matter that I am an orderly in the Operating room; in their minds, I was a nurse or a doctor: I obviously knew what to do.

In all honesty, I did not really know what to do. I looked around for a second at all the expectant faces and the semiconscious lady next to me. Then I pointed at the grader driver and yelled "Call 911!!!" He stared at me blankly.

Oh. Right. "I mean, call 000!!!" The Australian emerggency services number is NOT 911. Little things make all the difference, right?

As he started on that, I waved everyone away and told them "The ambulance is on the way and we need to clear traffic." They all left; I told Anna to stay with me and the grader driver.

I turned to the lady and rubbed her hand to get her attention. "Can you hear me?" She nodded and said "yes i can" in a slightly vietnamese accent, very weakly.

I tried to think back to my CPR training, but unfortunately it was geared more towards campus incidents than car accidents.
"Where do you hurt?"
"My chest and head."
"Does your chest hurt when you breathe or is it constant?"
"Mostly when I breathe."
"So your arms and legs feel alright? Can you move them?" I was worried about having to move her and I could smell petrol. She wiggled all four limbs before collapsing weakly again on the seat.
"Yes."

I took off her seatbelt. Her left eye was bleeding from under the lid, and I asked her if her eyes hurt at all.
"No. My head and my chest hurt a lot."

I told her to follow my finger as I tracked it back and forth and up and down in front of her eyes. She followed it fine and then told me that her head and chest hurt again. I told her that it would be ok and covered her good eye with my hand. "Ok, now follow my finger again," I told her. No movement. She obviously was not seeing out of that eye.

I kept her talking until the ambulance arrived maybe fifteen minutes later. I asked if she remembered what had happened. She said no. I asked if she knew her name. She could. She told me it, but it was really complicated and foreign, so I instantly forgot it. She also told me that she was going to visit her husband, who worked in a nearby feed store.

During this whole time, Anna was taking the lady's hands whenever she'd try to rub her face or sit up, repeating that the ambulance was almost there and that it would be all right. The grader driver was standing at the front of the little car, glaring at the crumpled engine with his tiny fire extinguisher in his hands. He obviously was daring the engine to catch fire so he could extinguish it with his little fire bottle. He would periodically inform me and Anna that there was no smoke or fire and that we were still safe. We thanked him repeatedly.

Finally the ambulance and "fire brigade" arrived. The paramedics took over and I told them what I had done and asked. They asked me if I was a first responder, to which I told them no, I just grew up in an extremely medical family.

The engine started smoking at that point. We heard the grader driver yell "we have smoke!" and then about five seconds of a pathetic little "pfft." His fire bottle, it turned out, only had a few seconds of baking soda spray in it. I felt a little sorry for him as the firemen absolutely blasted the engine with a deluge from their hose truck.

The cops showed up and took down Anna's and my information. After a few more minutes of waiting around and talking to the paramedics and cops, Anna and I were allowed to go.

This concludes event #1.

Event #2 happened essentially as soon as I arrived at work (almost an hour late).
"Thomas," they said. "We don't have enough theatre techs today, so you're going to be acting as a theatre tech in room 1 today."

Great. Theatre techs go to uni for 2 years to learn what they do, and here I am, supposed to learn it all in one day. Ok cool. I can do this.

Fortunately, it really was not that bad. The nurse who helped me through the day was really nice, and the surgeon and Anaesthetist was very understanding.

"Tonsils" was the name of the game today. 8 tonsilectomies. This was actually good for me, because tonsil removals are relatively clean cases, and they all require the same set-up. For one case, I even took over for the scout nurse when he went for a coffee break.

Technically I am not qualified to act as a scout nurse, but as far as I know I did not break any laws, so I think it's probably ok for me to put this online. I did not move or position any patients, and I did not directly influence the operations in any way, so despite my lack of qualifications, it was not illegal. Aren't technicalities wonderful?

The rest of the day was more of the same... I became really proficient at what I needed to do, and the nurses all loved me. It was fantastic.

When I got home, BOY did I have a story to tell...

An Australian guy at the hospital commented that American money looks like monopoly money. I asked him why he thought that when HIS money was all different colors and sizes and American money is all green and the same size. He stammered and said that "It just looks funny."