Friday, August 8, 2008

Bleeding nose

Very calm caller "can you come to #####, John has a bleeding nose"
It has been our experience that the calm ones are the hard calls.
We get to site to find a mid 30ish male, unconscious, unresponsive, seizing, semi fowlers, blood gurgling from his mouth and yes, a bit of blood trickling from his nose. I couldn't get in an OPA because he was clenching his teeth, and didn't want to use an NPA because I wasn't sure of the injury behind the trickle of blood from his nose. So we suctioned and bagged him to the clinic. There we intubated and had to bag him for about 6 hours waiting for a plane. The rolling fog was keeping them from landing.
It turns out that his "fall" had driven his nose bone into his frontal lobe!
He is south in a major Hospital and will be there for a while.
It turned out to be quite the bleeding nose call.

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