a Some time ago a woman in her mid-seventies was trapped between the elevator doors of a down town parkade. The doors shut when she tripped as she was entering the elevator and both legs and one arm was pinioned outside the elevator doors as it ran up four floors and then ran down again to ground level without opening.
She was transferred to the Jubilee hospital emergency "in extremis" . All the involved limbs were mutilated. I was working in the operating room at the time as it was my day. The general surgeon in emergency called up and asked if I could " make room now " , and as I was finishing a case, I would bump the next one along ,as this was urgent. We examined her in the operating room . She had multiply fractured long bones in all three involved limbs, grossly shredded open wounds in all three limbs and filled with dirt and ground up with grease. She had a dangerous low blood pressure and a thready pulse but she was receiving fluid and transfusions and was conscious.
Our team suddenly became two anaesthetists, two surgeons and three nurses. Nothing here was salvageable and an ill-informed attempt to do so would be certain death in the face of old kidneys. Immediate removal of irrretrievable sources of contaminated crush products from entering the blood supply of the patient is life saving, She had immediate amputation of all the limbs proximal to the compound fractures and was transferred to the ICU by the anaesthetists.
She never turned a hair and was out of the ICU in three days and was on the ward. Shortly after that she was transferred to the Rehabilitation wing. Her husband and children were incredibly supportive during her stay.
After her transfer to rehab I lost track of her. About a year or so later I was visiting my mother-in-law in a Personal Care Facility with the pianist and we were having lunch in the dining room. A beautiful woman in an electric wheel chair came over to me with her husband and thanked me for looking after her. She was vibrant and her eyes sparkled. She was all there ! Her life had resumed !
Where does the power come from ? Where is the Well that we can draw the strength from to continue to live a real life that is beyond simply existing ? We didn't talk about faith that day but I saw serenity. The Well that we draw from may be beyond definition for some, or defined by the curious faithful , but whatever it is, it is real.
She was transferred to the Jubilee hospital emergency "in extremis" . All the involved limbs were mutilated. I was working in the operating room at the time as it was my day. The general surgeon in emergency called up and asked if I could " make room now " , and as I was finishing a case, I would bump the next one along ,as this was urgent. We examined her in the operating room . She had multiply fractured long bones in all three involved limbs, grossly shredded open wounds in all three limbs and filled with dirt and ground up with grease. She had a dangerous low blood pressure and a thready pulse but she was receiving fluid and transfusions and was conscious.
Our team suddenly became two anaesthetists, two surgeons and three nurses. Nothing here was salvageable and an ill-informed attempt to do so would be certain death in the face of old kidneys. Immediate removal of irrretrievable sources of contaminated crush products from entering the blood supply of the patient is life saving, She had immediate amputation of all the limbs proximal to the compound fractures and was transferred to the ICU by the anaesthetists.
She never turned a hair and was out of the ICU in three days and was on the ward. Shortly after that she was transferred to the Rehabilitation wing. Her husband and children were incredibly supportive during her stay.
After her transfer to rehab I lost track of her. About a year or so later I was visiting my mother-in-law in a Personal Care Facility with the pianist and we were having lunch in the dining room. A beautiful woman in an electric wheel chair came over to me with her husband and thanked me for looking after her. She was vibrant and her eyes sparkled. She was all there ! Her life had resumed !
Where does the power come from ? Where is the Well that we can draw the strength from to continue to live a real life that is beyond simply existing ? We didn't talk about faith that day but I saw serenity. The Well that we draw from may be beyond definition for some, or defined by the curious faithful , but whatever it is, it is real.
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