Dammit! I hate it when I respond to things on 3 hours of sleep... You're absolutely right, I *MEANT* to say V1s... You'd never hear a V2 coming in (as you said, it was faster than the speed of sound). I've been mixing those two up for a couple of days now. I hate sleep deprivation (It's been cold and wet, and that makes my old cycling injuries hurt like Hell). I'veut i edited the post to correct the error.
Cooolll,
I thought it was an honest "finger on the keyboard mistake*. Yeah, I hate sleep deprivation too. I M.D.'d in my younger days. I know a lot about not getting enough sleep!! Was absolutely the cruelest thing I ever had to go through in life.................
But I did learn a lot in the trauma unit at Cook County. Had to slash open the chest (by criteria) of 7 gunshot guys/gal to do open chest heart massage and actually brought one of them back with a beating heart. He died in the O.R. though. I felt so stupid but here I was trying to bring some guys and one woman back to life. Chicago city life can be hard I tell you if you live in the wrong area (1984 I hear it's worse now). Glad I ended up in a rural area that is in central Illinois that is open to flying rockets and hunters shoot at wild game and not people with large caliber weapons and shotguns.
That was a really life "opening" experience as I did it all by myself and after shocking a guy's heart (after I cross clamped his aorta and stuffed a foley catheter into his right atrium with a purse string suture to hold the foley into the right atrium) "I was standing there thinking, "Now WTF am I supposed to do!" His freaking heart is beating again. The ambulance driver who brought the poor
"bastid" in said, " I haven't seen that happen in 10 years.!"
Mostly folks die after being shot up to hell.
His heart was beating in my hands. That was a big freaking thing to remember in my life. He died though and the bad thing was it didn't freak me out that much as mostly all of them died. If I let all of them weigh on me I'd probably go nuts so I pretty much forgot about them except this one that just about made it. I would have cussed him out big time if he'd survive. "I saved your mother effing ass, I would have told him. Don't effff up your second chance you got at life!"
The second "operating team" grabbed him and took him up to surgery where he died. 45 minutes later another gunshot woman, full cardiac arrest victim came in and she died. She likely had been stone cold dead for a long time as when I tried to hand pump her heart, it was hard as a stone. After slashing open her chest, cross clamping the aorta, stuffing a foley catheter into the right atrium and hand pumping/shocking the heart. It was obvious she was deceased That was the bad old days.
Asked the ambulance guys how long it took them to bring her to County and they said they got stuck in traffic and no one was doing CPR for an hour and a half. I suspect that's a curse for being black/African American but the wound was right through the left ventricle of the heart. Fatal in a few seconds anyways.
So it didn't freak me out. Just a victim to allow me to practice on bringing back to life as is the case in most big cities. Doctors gotta learn how to do it somehow.
It was obvious. Her wound was absolutely mortal anyways. If they got there in a minute, it wouldn't have mattered. She was dead a few seconds after the bullet hit her body.
I got good at slashing people's chests open at that time in my life.
Glad I never had to do that again when I got into primary care.
Even more happier that I'm retired now. No more call.
Gotta fly more rockets!!!!
Kurt
