To the Big City!

The view for about the first fifteen minutes was beyond amazing... The river was snaking back and forth below us, swathed by luscious dark and bright green trees. The mountains in the distance were beautifully white capped, and there were patches of snow beneath us too. Then we hit the clouds. After enduring the dull gray for a few minutes we burst forth into... more gray. Which at the time was rather boring, but it got worse. Once we got through the next layer of clouds there was nothing between me and the bright, blistering sun. Just lots of white fluff reflecting it back. I did manage to get a minor sunburn on the way down.

Flying to the Big City, we go higher than when we just go to Little City, so we were at 14k feet instead of 8k. Now, I didn't realize it, but I probably should have been on oxygen flying down (I certainly was on the way back up). I got a headache and kept falling asleep, but the EMT in the plane seemed perfectly fine, so I thought it was just because I hadn't really slept well the night before. Oops. On a related note, nasal canula are kind of uncomfortable. It basically blows oxygen right up your nose, so exhaling feels weird and of course you have two short tubes going up your nostrils.


BEWARE THE DANGERS OF SMALL CHILDREN. Seriously. Our patient got kneed in the eye by a four year old. I don't know how it happened, and frankly, I don't want to know how it happened. What I do know is that she's probably lost the eye by now. I saw it for about two seconds (I was looking over the provider's shoulder when she took a quick peek) and the orb looked deflated. Also, lots of blood, but that wasn't the important part. Not fun. Of course, with eye injuries, you need to cover both eyes. If you just cover the injured eye, the patient will continue to look around, and the eyes track together, even if one is closed. This is bad. So the poor patient was blinded for most of the time in our ER, the entire transport, and presumably she will remain that way in the Big City's ER/hospital until this is all resolved.

All things considered though, the patient was really nice. Polite and quiet. The only thing which wasn't agreeable was that I had to hold the patient's hand whenever the flight became turbulent. Part of this whole 'compassion' thing, and making the patient as comfortable as possible. I understand why she wanted the contact though. Going from a sighted world to suddenly not being able to see anything, being brought into a strange environment, and then feeling like the plane is going to shake apart can be a little unnerving.


I've decided to play it even safer, just to avoid any HIPAA related complications, so I'm removing all locations from the blog. From here on out (and in previous posts) you'll now just be seeing Home, Little City, and Big City whenever patients are involved. (And since all patients are coming from Home, I'll be taking the name completely off the blog.)