This Is Why I Never Could Go to Medical School. Well, That and They Really Stress Math.

[sisabet]

So I just got out of the most painful medical training I have ever attended. Lower Extremities and all that can happen and go wrong and then the treatment needed and prognosis and just...OUCH!!!

Dudes - she got to Compartmental Syndrome and started walking us through slides of a fasciotomy and describing how she had a guy on the table in the ER and they started cutting on his leg without anesthsia, to relieve the pressure and he thanked them for it! *That* is how bad the pain was. And I am telling you all about this because if I have to sit here and be grossed out and kinda concerned every time my calf cramps, so do you.

Of course then I started thinking about what a great injury compartmental syndrome would be in a fic -- expecially if the person in question is, I don't know, on an away mission and too far from the Stargate when the injury takes place. Cause - DAMN - that is drama. Also nasty nasty implications cause you have to leave it open and we are talking granular scars. Seriously - my notes? Beside the CS stuff? In the margins I have in big capital letters: NEVER GET THIS!!!! Which means, of course, I just cannot wait until it happens to a BSO.


But if it is me? Grab the tent Keeneland uses whenever a horse falls in a race and just take care of me quickly. All I ask.

But if anyone is interested in the cause and treatment of Compartmental Syndrome - I am more than willing to share, here.

ETA: Oh yeah and in reading my notes, it appears that I want Darien to suffer from a Lisfranc midfoot fracture because it is sometimes referred to as an "amputation fracture" (only because that was the only method of treatment, like, 300 years ago) and I think it would be funny if he overheard it called that and started freaking out! Right? Funny!

Comments

[eliade.livejournal.com]

That and They Really Stress Math.

They stress math? How weird.

how she had a guy on the table in the ER and they started cutting on his leg without anesthsia, to relieve the pressure and he thanked them for it!

Gah. I'm reading a serial killer novel right now where the killer gives women this paralytic but non-anaesthetic that keeps them conscious and capable of pain while he's slicing them open. I actually want to use that in a story now, horrible as it is.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Yes! See, I am sitting at my table getting nasauous as Martha goes into graphic detail (with SLIDES!) showing how you have to make these "filet" like cuts up the sides of the leg thru the fascia and how the muscle just bulges over and...

All I could think about, after the initial horror, was that this would make an *excellent* element to a story. Hurt/Comfort out the wazzoo. Or even just Man versus the Elements if the BSO was ALONE and had to slice his OWN LEG OPEN in order to be able to even think past the pain.

See, this works better for me than just a straight amputation (trapped and has to cut own arm/leg off) because while there is scarring and complications, he doesn't have to actually *lose* the leg (although that could always be one of the stakes, especially considering infection). So you get all of the drama minus none of the limbs.

They stress math?

Yes, it is terrible. Poor math just wants to be alone and the damned medical students just poke it all the time. I hear math is losing its hair because of this.

[fyrdrakken]

:Shudder: Ever since I read an article about a woman who sued the crap out of a hospital because the anesthesiologist screwed up and gave her the paralytic but hardly any of the actual anesthetic (basically just enough to put her under for a few minutes -- she regained consciousness just as they were beginning the actual surgery and couldn't move or speak or scream or do anything to let them know she could feel the whole thing)... And then running across the passing mention in a British article about hospital safety referring to that kind of anesthesia error happening on more than one occasion.

Well.

[luminosity]

Oh yeah! and OMIGOD, when you get into *brain injuries*. When I first started working for Dr A... Loss of vision, loss of smell, always smelling roses, seeing in black and white, short-term/long-term memory loss, audio/video hallucinations, and that's just the fun stuff. DEATH. Long, lingering or fast, painful. Lots of fic potential for stuff I *never* want happening to anyone in real life. But it does.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I can't handle TBI because of working in rehab in New Orleans -- like all that Short Term memory loss stuff that was just so simple and easy to deal with in Fifty First Dates? Grrr - cause it is devastating and there are no happy endings and I was too involved to handle thinking about it now.

Cause brain injuries are just too final and painful. I just wanna maim em a bit - I don't want to kill them. Maiming is good - helps them develop their Man Pain.

[luminosity]

The set up for 50 First Dates is the stuff of nightmares.

[falzalot.livejournal.com]

What the heck class is this, why are you in it, and please share more details! :->

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh - I am an insurance adjuster, right? And while I no longer handle injury claims, I still keep up with my medical training sessions because eventually I will have to go back to it. Normally, these classes are fairly dry and we cover typical stuff that occurs in car accidents. Neck and Back and head injuries and all that. Every couple of months, our medical coordinator likes to spice it up with a seminar on *other* things that happen and leg (lower extremity) injuries are actually fairly common. I've handled lots of broken ankles, for example.

She gets into the grisly though and so we concentrated on somethings today that we may *possibly* see one day. I think it is just cause she wanted to use her slides and see us squirm. It was great.

Also? sdwolfpup just posted a gazillion links to CSI stuff. I thought of you.

[falzalot.livejournal.com]

Ooookay, now I get it.

And thank you for thinking of me! Darn this whole being at work and too busy to actually LOOK at stuff! :->

[renenet.livejournal.com]

I want Darien to suffer from a Lisfranc midfoot fracture because it is sometimes referred to as an "amputation fracture" (only because that was the only method of treatment, like, 300 years ago) and I think it would be funny if he overheard it called that and started freaking out! Right? Funny!

Okay, so he would probably overhear Claire calling it that, yeah? Or someone else who was going to treat him for it. And Bobby would freak out, too, but he'd also try to be reassuring as they wheeled Darien to get it wrapped or set or operated on or whatever you do for that kind of thing. Cut to Bobby coming in to see Darien post-treatment, asking "are you all right, partner?" and Darien making sad Darien face with floppy hair. He shows Bobby his AMPUTEE STUMP! Bobby is shocked and near tears, but it's a fake-out! Darien un-quicksilvers his foot and laughs and laughs.

Hey, what would quicksilvering do to a set Lisfranc midfoot fracture? Would that be bad? Because if Claire has warned him not to do it he might have to fake Bobby out with his other foot.

[renenet.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also? You are so adorable projecting your medical fascinations and paranoias onto your BSOs that I just want to scoop you up and *squeeze* you! (But not so tightly that I cause any of the above injuries.) It is so unfair that I am missing you by 24 measly hours this weekend!!!

[sexybee.livejournal.com]

Wait, Compartmental Syndrome? *gets all excited* I think that was one of the things Boone was suffering from in Lost before he died. Jack basically said that Boone's leg had been crushed and all the blood they were transfusing into him was pooling in his leg. Does this sound right with what you learned?

Also, Jack was just going to chop off the leg, but it sounds like this wouldn't have actually been the best way to go. Care to share the details? (You can email me at agehanokoi @ hotmail.com if you think it might yuck people out too much.)

[fyrdrakken]

Yes, exactly. And since it wasn't something I'd ever heard of myself before, I was going with the simple layperson's response of, "Um, amputation to treat potentially-fatal hemorrhage? Jack, have you tried putting a damned tourniquet on the leg first?" (Because I actually know enough about obstetrics to have lost all trust in the show's medical advisors with some of the crap they had Jack saying about Claire, but anyway.)

[drdawn.livejournal.com]

Update. I'm bored. Entertain me.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Just did.