Tae 8 - RE: CRONK!!!

Charles Tenney writes: "Hey, Tae, got any good concussion-cum-intoxication stories?"

Tae writes:

You know, Charles, I was just gonna post this:

Working the Fourth of July was hell - but at time-and-a-half who cares?

My overnight shift consisted mainly of driving around, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes - and chasing after the occasional city punks that shoot bottle-rockets at the ambulance. One rocket actually zipped in one window, and out the other, to explode several yards away. Got me startled, that one. Caused me to spill my HOT coffee on my lap. Bastard got away, too.

Around 2 am, we received a call for an 'MVA - sort of.' The quirkiness of the dispatcher that night notwithstanding, the call description was rather vague, and our attempts to get an update while enroute were answered with:

"Paramedic 11, the police are on scene - they're screaming for you."

Cops usually scream for you only when they encounter HEAVY trauma, or one of their guys is injured, so we 'stepped it up,' flying down side-streets the wrong way [which, incidentally is a good way to kill homeless people, not that I ever did] and 'sliding' through red traffic lights. We passed by a bar - some of the patrons had spilled out onto the street, and they cheered our passing-by with raised glasses. I saluted them one finger. A few minutes later, we arrived on scene to find our patient.

Apparently, one female Fourth of July reveler had WAY too much to drink. One of her friends, being the kind soul he was [and pretty ripped himself], offered to drive her home. On the way home, she climbed out of the passenger-side door, and stood on the car window ledge. All was well: she was waving her arm, yelling "Happy Fourth!," - until her friend drove a little too close to a telephone pole, and her forehead caught the end of a lineman's spike. The tip of the spike penetrated the skin on her forehead, but because her head also snapped back at the same time, it _pulled_ her skin back, over her head to about mid-scalp.

When we got to the patient, she was quite agitated, screaming:

"WHAT THE FUCK! I CAN'T FUCKING SEE! HELP ME! I CAN'T FUCKING SEE!"

And so on.

The cops and firefighters looked quite pale - there was a large pool of blood at this woman's feet. I thought it was the bleeding that obscured her vision. I was wrong. Since she'd basically been scalped, the the tissue that consisted of her nose, cheeks, and mouth no longer had anything holding it up. So the tissue slid down, moving her eyelids to about cheek-level, blocking her eyes.

I walked up to her, and with gloved hand, grabbed a little lower scalp tissue, and pulled UP. Viola - she could see! I had to be careful, though, since if I pulled up too much, her cheek tissue would move up to eyeball-level, blinding her - and giving her a toothy, feral grin.

After placing a large dressing on her scalp, and instructing her on how to hold her own face up, we strapped onto a wooden board, and transported her to the hospital. No cervical injuries.

At the hospital, her blood alcohol level was .450! Fifty more points, and she qualified for an endotracheal tube. Two surgical residents were called down to suture her scalp closed. It took them three hours and over two hundred sutures to close her wound. Every so often, she would wake up while they were suturing, and yell:

"Hey - who turned out the lights!"

One resident or the other would lift her face up, she would open her eyes, look around, and fall back asleep.

I don't think they used anesthesia.


(Originally poster on Fri, 8 Jul 1994)