Wednesday, April 7, 2010

"I'll Show You!!"

A 31 year old female and her husband were in an argument while driving on the highway. Things got a little out of control. At one point, she threatened to jump out of the car. The husband didn't believe her, she shouted "I'll show you!" and jumped out of the car. Well...that's the story we got from the husband. I wouldn't doubt if she was pushed out.

She was intubated on scene. Unfortunately she had a large head bleed and a pneumothorax discovered by XRay in the ER. Somehow the XRay was read as normal by the astute radiology resident, but we put the chest tube in anyways.












(Not images of this actual patient. Images "borrowed" from google).



She made it up to the ICU alive, and that's the last I heard of her. Sad part is that was the 2nd case we had that week of the same story. The last patient, though, didn't make it to the ICU.

-ER Doc

3 comments:

StorytellERdoc said...

How was that pneumo missed? Sad case...a job well done by your ER team and the prehospital team, getting her to the unit alive.

Medical Mojave said...

Um wow. So sad.

By the way, I've enjoyed your blog for a long time. Never commented. But I started a patient blog and wanted to let you know I put you in my blog roll.

M

Anonymous said...

That's awful! We had a pt last year that 'lived' with us for about 5 months. The guy found out his girl was going to break up with him so he decided to take both of their lives. She walked away fine. He on the other hand, had head trauma, PEG tube, left sided paralysis, ect. He got stronger and went to outpatient rehab.