And I can feel my eyes welling up

Sunday was a long day.

‘Kathy’ was a lovely 68 year old lady that was brought in by ambulance on Sunday morning. She was standing at the top of her stairs with a glass in her hand when her dog ran past and got under her feet. She fell down the full flight of stairs. The glass that was in her hand was smashed into her face and she had a gaping laceration that covered her chin and had also cut her left eye quite badly. She was bruised all over. This happened on Saturday night and she hadn’t told anyone until Sunday morning. She couldn’t see out of her left eye, but said she thought that was just because it was bruised. When she woke up on Sunday morning she walked into a small walk-in centre out of town to have her eye looked at, where they immediately rang an ambulance and brought her into A&E. She started crying when she came in. ‘I feel like such a fool, if I hadn’t had the glass in my hand I would have just got up and walked away’. Her daughter came in and she was horrified. Kathy had told her she’d fell over and scratched her chin, a dramatic understatement. She just didn’t want to bother anyone, and she apologised over and over again for coming in. I wanted to tell her off for not coming in as soon as it happened! I got her a cup of tea, thought it might help to calm her down a little. It turns out that the glass had lacerated her cornea and her iris had sunken, which is why she couldn’t see out of it. She was sent to theatre that night to have her eye operated on and the maxillofacial doctor agreed to fix her chin at the same time.

We had a bit of a tearjerker in a bit later, but this time it wasn’t an unfortunate accident, it was an avoidable act of inhumanity.

'Wayne' was brought into majors by ambulance, I hadn't heard the handover, just went to do a quick set of obs. The story slowly unfolded over the next few minutes, and I'm still heartbroken. He was breathing very rapidly (resps 40), but otherwise obs were ok. I could see that he was in agony, but he was very silent. He didn't complain at all. I could see that he had a head injury and bandages covering most of his torso. I went to take his blood pressure on his right arm, when I noticed it was nearly black from bruising. I asked 'Would it be better for me to do this on your other arm?' He said no, he had a cut on his left arm. As he turned to face me, I could see that the left side of his face was badly burned. I wondered what on earth had happened to him. I didn’t like the look of it, something was telling me he needed to be prioritised, and soon enough he was wheeled into resus. Two of his neighbours were with him, so as he was took into resus I showed them to the relatives room. I explained that he was going to be seen by a doctor straight away and not to worry because he was in the best possible place.

I was a little confused, I still had no clue what had happened to him. Katie, one of the nurses, was stood looking at the doors to resuscitation with tears in her eyes. She’d taken the handover from the paramedic. This is what happened to Wayne.

Wayne was in his late 50s/early 60s, lived alone in a flat in a rough area. His neighbours told me that they looked after each other and were close friends. During the early hours of Sunday morning some burglars broke into Wayne’s flat, while he was inside. The burglars had beaten Wayne. They’d smashed a glass bottle over his head. They found a razor and used it to cut his left arm. Not just once though, the whole of his arm from shoulder to wrist was cut. But the burglars didn’t stop at beating him, smashing a bottle over his head and cutting him. They found Wayne’s iron and they used it to burn his stomach, chest, arms and face.

There must have been about a hundred lacerations on his arm, which took about an hour to suture. The burns on his torso and face looked like partial thickness burns to me, but I don’t know for sure. They definitely weren’t superficial. He had morphine and was blued to a specialist burns unit at another hospital.

I have never cried in front of a patient, and I maintain that I never will, but sometimes I get close to it. I get a lump in my throat and find it difficult to find words, I walk away, take a couple of deep breaths, then carry on working. Just another one of those things I guess. I'm glad that I can feel these emotions for patients, I feel that it helps me do my job. If I care about a patient then it makes me want to do everything I can for them, which is a good thing right? I've come to realise that this is more than a job to me, it is part of my life and I could not go back to any of my old jobs serving customers or behind a desk. Sometimes it takes something bad to happen for you to see the good things.