Got enough sleep yesterday... well, it's never really enough. Adequate, that's the word. Enough so that I could do my work.
And again, there was lots of work. Happily, I did have help until 23:00... she was scheduled 'til then, anyway... at 22:55 we got word from ED that there had been a fatality three-car crash, and that we were getting at least two of the ten people involved.
Dawn (the other tech) volunteered to stay over, bless her little heart.
And the x-ray tube is shot on the main machine that I use to do traumas with... it's been going out since last Tuesday, but the engineers ordered the wrong tube, dammit... and last night it went down completely. This meant that we had to do all of the studies on the trauma people with a portable machine. Do-able, but not easy or fun at all.
Anyway, I called in the CT tech, knowing that there would be multiple CTs too. Then Dawn and I went outside to watch the chopper land. I love watching them suckers, but no way would I ever get in one.
Which reminds me of a story... when I went into the army (volunteered for the draft in 1966) they made a helicopter medic out of me. Not really something that I wanted to be, so when I finished my training in Texas and Sam Houston and they shipped me to Ft. Stewart, GA for the chopper part, I immediately went to the hospital and talked to the radiologist there. He was very happy to see a civilian-trained x-ray tech, and took me over to the general's office and changed my MOS... no choppers for me! And I've never been in one, but I've seen a couple crash... very impressive.
So, returning to the subject at hand, we were doing films on one of the victims when he started seizing (head injury) and I grabbed his arms to keep him from going off of the cart, and twisted my damned back. I didn't really notice it until all of the excitement dies down, but it's getting pretty painful now.
Broke my watch band too. People are really strong when they're seizing...
The rest of the night really wasn't too bad, considering that I had about three hours of paperwork to catch up on... I was only a half-hour late getting out of there.
It's supposed to turn really cold this afternoon, winter storm watch and all that stuff, I heard. I need to check the weather and verify that... well, I won't bother, it doesn't really matter, I guess. I need to be back to work at 19:00 and start all over again...
More tomorrow.