I was working a shift in Queens General Hospital NYC. A homeless man was brought in by ambulance. They found him in one of the tunnels in the New York subway. A lot of the homeless alcoholics find shelter there as it is warmer and drier than outside. Generally you can hide from security guards if you know where. Well, they found this guy because he was howling in pain. Apparently, he had wrapped his legs with plastic garbage bags and cut off the circulation, so he was in excruciating pain. No one has any idea how long this had been going on --probably days. The reason for this is that the garbage cans on the street corners in NYC have plastic garbage bags. Usually the municipal workers keep extras in the garbage can so when they take the full garbage bag out they can easily replace the next one. The homeless know this so if they are cold or wet and need another layer of clothes they will "liberate" several unused trash bags. So this guy had done this and wrapped countless layers around his legs. At some point the bags cut off the circulation to his legs and gangrene set in. Not only did gangrene set in but also quite a few maggots were now eating the dead flesh from his leg. So when he arrived in our ED he was dehydrated, infected and in severe pain, moaning and screaming. The staff in the emergency department had to peel layer after layer of plastic bags --all matted together with blood, pus, urine, feces and fly maggots. It took several hours just to remove this mess; then he was taken to the operating room to have the remaining dead flesh removed. To say the stench was over overwhelming would be putting it mildly. The staff that attended this man, the ones that would, all needed to don hazard material gowns with surgical masks. All the masks were dipped in wintergreen or root beer essence to try to mask the smell. Things were so bad that we needed to close down the entire Emergency Department for a 2 hours period while we aired out the ED. 60-80 patients needed to be moved out, into the halls, the waiting room, and the streets during the process.
Read other answers by Gregory Walter on Quora:
- What are some of the craziest emergency room (ER) stories, as told by the nurses and doctors who work there?
- Where are the major arteries that if severed would cause a person to bleed out?
- What are some OTC drugs that can cause cardiac arrest?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2j6lCvm
No comments:
Post a Comment