A Dark Place

I realize I haven't published anything substantial in a while. Part of it is that this rotation at the Children's hospital has given me a lot of depressing things to think about. And it being the Christmas season, I didn't want to bring everyone else down. Actually, I didn't want to bring myself down. Some of the things that I have experienced, I just didn't want to rehash. I just wanted to come home and hang out with my kids and forget about the sadness of the hospital. But the other day was really bad.

It has been unusually warm here for December. I don't know if it's the warm weather or the holiday season, or both, but the crime rate spiked yesterday. Two traumas came in- one was in-operable. His siblings didn't even make it to the hospital after his father shot him, his mother, his siblings, then himself.

Later, a 2 week old came to the OR after she had been stabbed in the head several times, apparently by an uncle. I don't think I have ever worked so hard in my life to help keep this baby alive. It seemed like we were in the OR for 10 hours, but we really were there for about 1.5. We gave her several liters of blood products, while she continued to bleed from her head. The neurosurgeon had a tough time controlling all the bleeding because she wouldn't clot -probably DIC. Despite the very emotional circumstances surrounding this patient, the whole team -surgeons, scrubs techs, circulators, anesthesiologists- just focused on the job at hand -saving the baby. The baby made it through the surgery, but eventually died. Those of us involved were bonded by something so powerful that we couldn't really talk about it. I mean, what do you say? We later passed each other in the hallway, and asked each other how the other was doing- asked with that knowing look in our eyes, and the sadness furrowed in our brows. There was no easy response. Some were seasoned veterans, while others were newbies, like myself. All of us agreed that these were the worst traumas that we have experienced -the causes, the evil, the darkness that permeated each of these events. We couldn't begin to understand what was going through each of the perpetrators' minds, nor did we want to.