Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Unidentified Male

Patch came in for a traumatic cardiac arrest, unknown downtime.  EMS arrived shortly thereafter, delivering a middle-aged male with paramedics performing knowingly futile compressions.  I helped transfer him to our stretcher before attaching leads to the pale body.  Fingers were too cold for the sat probe to get a reading, monitor showed asystole on two leads.  Pupils fixed and dilated.  Ultrasound revealed no cardiac activity.  The trauma team pronounced him, and everyone left the room while a nurse and I stayed behind to clean up the body.

He had been found underneath a third floor balcony; when we removed the collar his head rolled around independently from the rest of his neck below the break.  Remarkably there didn't seem to be any other injuries.  

No ID on the body, no family followed him in.  Never learned what happened.

2 comments:

Recovering Grady Addict said...

Tragic what the holidays can do to folks. I just got the feeling that his injury was self inflicted. :-(

Anonymous said...

Bummer. Deaths around the holidays are always sad...had a suicide a few years ago who shot himself in the chest with a shotgun in front of his family on December 20. I'll never forget that.