Little Shop of Horrors

Walking into a new shift in the ER, you never know what the night will bring you.

After arriving last night, I wandered into the trauma room to discover the result of "arm vs. industrial equipment." Normally these kinds of incidents result in what can effectively be described as ground beef, but in this case the machinery had removed the skin from the palm to the bicep, exposing a remarkably clean view of muscles, arteries, and tendons all doin' their thing.

Later in the evening, an unfortunate older gentleman arrived via EMS. The patient fell at home, where he lived alone, four days prior and had spent the intervening time unable to get up. Covered in his own excrement, it was the ferociously foul odor that finally tipped off a neighbor to call 911. The smell was so bad it even turned a few seasoned ER stomachs. Of course, tragedies like this have a way of occurring only to the nicest people, and the patient was remarkably pleasant while being thoroughly decontaminated.

And then of course there was the guy brought in by police after being found masturbating on the sidewalk.