March 2, 2010

“How much blood did he lose? Do you think he’s going to make it?” The nurse asked the doctor. “Let’s see, gunshot to the chest two centimeters from the heart and the bullet appears to be small calibre and still in the body”, the doctor intoned. An X-ray showed the bullet perilously close to the heart and lots of blood loss, but his patient was still breathing. “Get him up to the OR stat, a team is waiting to remove the bullet and sew up this chest wound”, the doctor told the orderly. “And by all means, be careful moving him, if he’s jostled too bad the bullet may move and cause more damage.”

The surgeon looked at the bloody incision in front of him. At that moment, the anaesthesiologist shouted, “blood pressure dropping rapidly”. “More plasma”, yelled the surgeron. He quickly started to put retractors everywhere inside the fileted body in front of him. The blood flow stopped. One by one he removed each retractor until he found leaky vessels and one by one repaired each one. And slowly the patient’s blood pressure rose. Later on as he felt around inside of the body, he found the bullet and pulled it out and put it in a dish to send along to the police. “The cops will want this. Put it in a plastic bag and seal it and mark it with the patient’s name on it and have the Surgical secretary call the police to pick it up”, the surgeon barked. “Okay, let’s close this fellow up.”