Adventures in Medical School

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Last Monday night.
by fiona

I haven't written about this experience yet, mostly because I haven't had the time, but partly because I wasn't sure if I could do justice to what was probably one of the most intense things to happen to me in recent memory.

"Intense" has become such a meaningless word, but that's what it was. Intense.

Last Monday night I went to bed pleasantly exhausted after a lovely bike around the lakes, a get together with my new intern peeps (who, by the way, are very awesome) and a downtown minneapolis roof-top viewing of Litte Miss Sunshine. Nice way to end the day. Then I was awoken at 2:10 in the morning by the horrific sound of breaks screaching followed by a heavy metal crunch. The kind of gut-wrenching, univerally identifiable sound that you recognize, even in your sleep, as an awful awful car crash. Which is what it was. Kind of.

My first thought was that, based on the sound of the impact, there was a good chance that somebody was really hurt. And that if so, there was an even better chance that I would be the most qualified person to help. I threw on some clothes, took a seemingly endless amount of time to find my sandals, and ran outside of my building. A very large crowd of people were gathered around a car, and wedged under the front of the car was a young man, unconscious, bleeding from his head. All I could do was verify that 911 had been called, and ensure that he was breathing and had a pulse, which he was.

Apparently this guy had been attempting to stop someone from stealing his car, which he had left running while he walked his sister to her apartment. He ended up halfway inside of the drivers side window being drug down the street, smashed against cars, and eventually flung under a parked car. He did not look good. At all.

Within a couple minutes the ambulence was there, and they were able to pry the car up, strap him to a board, and take him away to HCMC, where my colleagues attended to him. But as I walked back to my apartment, literally shaking, I could not stop analyzing my role in the whole thing. I went over the scenario again and again in my head. Was there anything else I should have done? Why didn't I take charge of the situation? Why didn't I remember that I was a doctor?

I announced to people that I was a medical student. I literally forgot that I was a doctor.

There was one moment when I didn't find a pulse in his left arm, and had the instantaneous thought that I was going to have to do something- NOW. Fortunately, he had a very strong pulse in his right arm, so I deferred on my plan to command the help of the crowd to extract him from his position under the car in order to begin CPR. But I think I would have done it without hesitation if I needed to. I think I would have.

The whole experience left me shaken and, for some reason, kind of disappointed in myself. I sat on my balcony with a beer for a long while, until all the police vehicles had departed, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. What an amazing welcome to Minneapolis, I thought. Seriously, I move here one week ago and already someone almost dies in a car jacking outside of my apartment? What an incredible introduction to Emergency Medicine. Regardless of whether or not my response to the situation was ideal, it confirmed for me that I am going into the right field. Inspite of the chaos of the situation, of my own insecurity about my abilities, it felt right for me to be there, kneeling on the road, feeling the pulse of someone who, on an incredibly basic human level, just needed a doctor. Someday I hope that doctor will be me.

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