Date Night 1

Date night 1

8pm on a Saturday night:

“Dear…would you come up and help me with a kid who has a skull fracture?”  I heard my dear husband ask me.  

“No thanks,” I say, “They never live anyways if they are that bad off.”

The kids weren’t ready for bed.  They were running around the house like crazy hoodlums.  Screaming, yelling…

On second thought, “let’s go!”

After some more hassling from my dear husband, I decide to go assist him with the skull fracture.  

Olen’s dad, Kermit, AKA Gampa, had been here for a few weeks, and it was his last night with the kids.  So, we left him to put the kids to bed.  

Olen and I head out the door in our finest clothes for date night, scrubs.  This is becoming a recurring theme since Mom and Dad left.  Put the kids to bed, head out of the house to the hospital.  

Olen brings the kid he had examined earlier into the OR.  I don’t get too involved.  I’m just there to assist.  I sit against the floor in the OR, waiting for Olen to tell me when he needs me.  

Olen knows me.  In the OR, it’s hard to JUST assist.   It’s hard for me to not get involved with the family.  I wish I could just be a machine sometimes.  Just operate.  Don’t get involved.  

“Dear, this kid is actively dying.”  I say.  “Does the family know how bad he is?”  I don’t want them to think that we are killing him in here.  This 14 year old boy is gasping for air.  I’ve seen it many times just before someone dies.  He has wet lungs and could die at any second.  

I ask a nurse to bring in a family member.  

The boy’s father comes in.  Olen had already met and discussed things with him, but I wanted him to see the boy actively dying so that he wouldn’t say that we were the ones who killed him.  

I explain to him that he might die before we start, during, or after.  He had a high chance of dying.  

It was the look of desperation that I will never forget.  His eyes were pleading that we try something.  He told me that the boy’s mother had died when he was little.  He understood that his child may die, but he wanted us to try something.  It was his only chance.  

I told him okay.  

This 14 year old boy had fallen from a mango tree.

I’ve never made a burr hole before.  I’ve never elevated a depressed skull fracture before.  I know how to stop bleeding on the skin with suturing.  So… we’ll give it a go.  

I slice into his skull where we thought the biggest impact was.  I made a large cruciate incision.  I palpate and find a large skull fracture.  It wasn’t depressed, but it was certainly large.  Next I used a kelly to pry under the skull fracture and chip out 2 places for makeshift “burr” holes, minus the burr.  

Old dark blood began to ooze satisfyingly from compressing this child’s brain.  

After packing him and bandaging up his head, we knew we had done all we could do.  

We head home, thinking it was a lost cause.  

The next day I was surprised to see that this kid was NOT DEAD!  What??? He was so close to death last night.  

Maybe we should be doing more of these skull fractures?

Later in the day the family told me he had actually gotten up to urinate.  What???  He still wasn’t making perfect sense, but he was performing motor skills.  

The next day, he could talk and was acting normal.  It was a MIRACLE.  

After several days of dressing changes, the father brought his kid back into the same OR.  The same OR where I thought for sure our work was a lost cause.  Now we exchanged looks (sometimes that’s all you can do with the language barrier) of happiness.  No more pity look.  No more desperation look.  It was pure joy.  Pure thankfulness for the MIRACLE that God performed. 

This time I wasn’t telling him that his son was likely going to die.  I was suturing up the healing scalp incision to hurry him up on his road to recovery.  

I had written this kid off as dead.  Olen made me go on a date to help save a kid’s life.  Can’t think of many better things to do on a Saturday night!  

We discharged him in perfect health.  

A week later I was able to see the boy and his father in the same place (where I usually am, in the OR).  The teenager was dressed in his finest clothes.  A suit that was clearly too small.  But he was the happiest boy I have seen in a long time.  Grinning from ear to ear.  He was so proud to be coming in in his nice clothes.  

But I have never see a happier person than his father.  Pure happiness was etched on his face.  We understood each other.  We were there together when this child had no idea that we thought he was not going to make it.  Our prayers went up, and God heard our prayer.  And for that, we are thankful.