Friday, August 15, 2008

My mom said to just shake it off

The centre finger is broken in the mid palm area. The baby finger is an old injury where mom told the young man to just shake it off.
Mom is with EMS.

3 comments:

Rookie Bebe said...

Just found you. Love your writing style. But...can you explain the story of the hand x-ray?

Jessie said...

The baby finger was a few years old. The patient had come home after a basketball game with a sore finger and hand, mom, an EMS worker had a look, iced it and said that it would be fine.
I think that sometimes, we in EMS may not take things as seriously as they should be when we are off duty. We tend to recalibrate what "serious" is. I know that I am careful not to be guilty of this but I can't be sure.

Boris said...

In my early teens I slipped on the ice on the way to school ( went horizontal in the air and landed on my elbow, on concrete) Within the hour the joint had swollen and was about 9 or 10 on the pain scale. Went to class thinking I could 'shake it off'. Pain and swelling suggested otherwise so I excused myself and went to the office to call parents. There happened to be an EMT in the office who looked at my arm, yanked it around until I thought I was going to pass out with pain and told me to go back to class because "it was fine." I then went to the ED and X-ray showed a fracture. Almost 20 years later the joint doesn't lock properly and sometimes gets sore.