Venting

Hey Everyone!

I debated (for about 20 minutes) sharing the latest training room escapade with you, but I'm still working on getting it out of my system, so you lucky friends and family have been chosen to hear it! :)

So, after a day where we saw 60 kids I had a few down minutes, so I decided to venture out onto the athletic fields (before this, every time I tried to head out, another athlete would come in to see me). I had just driven past the JV Boys' Soccer field, when one of my favorite coaches called me to come back for a kid who pulled his groin. When I got there, he was still on the field, sitting up, with two coaches at his side. After my usual witty banter...they sometimes laugh at my jokes :) ... I bent down to evaluate him. He was sore just to the left of...um...well, the place that makes him essentially different from me :), so I asked the coaches to please watch as I carefully palpated in that area. The 50-cent piece sized lump was a bit of a surprise. I told Athlete the good news was he didn't pull his groin. The bad news was the lump. We were either going to call an ambulance or transport him to the training room and have his parents take him to the ER. One attempt at stablizing his hip and moving him made our decision for us.

When the EMT's began taking care of him, I was having real difficulty biting my tongue. This became increasingly more difficult when the two EMTs were trying to decide between an ortho splint and a spine board. I suggested the board, given his pain with motion. The one EMT put her hand up, dismissed me (and Bill, my boss who had agreed out loud with me) and said she'd like to ask Athlete his choice. When you ask a 15 year-old with no medical idea if he can move his leg, he has no idea you mean lift directly up in the air (one of the many motions hurting him)! Not to mention that you haven't asked HIM what happened (just my account) or even palpated NEAR the area of the lump (of course, she poo-poo'ed me when I told her she was on the outside of his hip, when really it was mid-line groin. She informed me she didn't want to get close...even though there were 4 men standing around to "supervise", one being his father.)!!!!

They brought out the ortho splint. It's a cross between something you've seen on M*A*S*H and salad tongs. They "scoop" the patient in from both sides, snap it together to make a "cot" and secure them onto it. I can't even tell you the series of blunders (including almost snapping his head/hair in the top part as they tried to fasten in up top) I witnesses as they moved him freely to get the splint in place. I was becoming more and more uncomfortable (most of you know my lovely poker face which would lose me every hand I played). This culminated inside of me until the EMTs asked the police officer to help them "with his hips" so they could push the middle of the splint together (in the area of his injury) and he grabed both sides of his t-shirt around his waist and lifted his whole middle into the air. I had to stuff my hands in my mouth so I didn't audibly gasp and I turned away, so the parents and coaches wouldn't see me. I was sick to my stomach.

I had evaluated and palpated the area and wasn't really sure if the lump was soft tissue or bone. There was no way THEY could have known that all that movement wouldn't just hurt him worse, so how do you jusitfy putting someone in pain (he was such a trooper, you never would've known he was in any pain except the tremble in his chin as he bit his bottom lip) and potentially injuring them worse?!?!?! This was the second time one of these EMTs had, in my opinion, created a situation where I was almost positive one of my "patients" (the other was a staff member at the high school) had been injured worse by her actions. Bill has sworn he will talk to her supervisor and I will do everything I can to make sure he remembers to do this. I have even volunteered to go speak to the entire EMT squad to educate them on what we do.

I am trying hard to separate what my medical training tells me about what I saw and my feelings at be so dismissed as insignificant by this particular EMT. This is the second time she has done this....the last time, she breezed in, past Bill, myself and one of our nurses and said "I'm here now, you'll be o.k."...as if we were torturing her to death. IT was so GOOD she was there, as she was going to take a woman with a potentially dislocated shoulder/fractured arm and move her arm straight and to her side WITHOUT A SPLINT. IT was so UNFORTUNATE that I was there refusing to let go of her arm (the one I was stablizing above and below where I thought the injury was) until she had a splint on it. (They swore they didn't have any, so Bill and I accomodated them with one. Her diagnosis? Displaced fracture of the upper arm!)If the EMT hadn't been there, it's easy to see how our staff member wouldn't have been o.k.

I guess it just upsets me so because I feel very protective of "my" athletes. We should be the medical voice of them and in their best interest when they don't know better...and especially when we do. Well, I'll keep you posted on our young gentleman's condition. I just hope he's o.k. And I really can't wait until Bill talks to teh EMT supervisor!

Happy Wednesday everyone! (1 1/2 weeks of pre-season down, 1 1/2 weeks to go!)