9.15.2009

A What Scratched You?


I officially have a new favorite chief complaint by ambulance. Mouse scratch.

Paged out as such, I didn't know what to expect but at 3 am I was ready for the worst...not really. I was ready for what I got.

There were tons of mice in my house, one ran over the covers or over the bed, I freaked out, and while I was scrubbing myself down with alcohol solution and soap my leg stung and I noticed this tiny l'il scratch about 5 cm long that barely broke the skin. Oh yeah, I'm wearing a finger splint with a sharp edge on it. But I was worried it was the mouse that got me and maybe I need rabies or tetanus.

Um, tetanus OK. Rabies no. More importantly, since it's three in the morning and you're the only to be seen, how many mice exactly?

Mice on the curtains, mice in the kitchen, in the closet, in the bedroom, kids screamin', can't do their homework, traps out catch ten at a time. OK, so, um, you don't really need me. You need some dude with bad chemicals that has to wear rubber gloves that'll fix your problem. Needing a tetanus shot is, well, the least of your very disturbing, disgusting worries.

Third world at home, folks. Third world at home. Instead of the taxpayers picking up the am-boo-lance ride, perhaps we should pay for the exterminator.

FYI, CDC tetanus recs: booster if more than five years from past tetanus booster. Immune globulin for those who have not received their normal immunizations, or who are unknown. So-called 'clean, minor wounds' can wait up to 10 years and should never get immune globulin, but I rarely see that happening.

CDC recs for rabies are more compliated. First, what animal. If a dog, cat, or ferret--i.e., pets--no treatment is needed unless the pet is thought to be rabid, so if you have the pet, you can watch it. If wild--i.e., scary furry critters like racoons, skunks, foxes, or, notably, bats--immunize as below. If livestock, call public health. Gerbils are probably OK.

Treatment is irrigation with povidone-iodine or the like, rabies immune globulin at the site of the wound AND at a distant site if you can't infiltrate all of it, in addition to the rabies vaccine at 0, 3, 7, 14, and 28 days, in the shoulder, not in the tummy like I was afraid of when I was a kid. Apparently according to another blogger this just changed with ACIP but not with CDC; perhaps we'll be able to skip the last dose.

photo credit

9.11.2009

Thanks

Multi-Tasking


Finally, got a real night shift.

At one point, I was gowned up holding direct pressure on a spurting radial artery wound after some dude had punched his way through a window. My headset (yes, we wear headsets, and they're only slightly metrosexual) goes off asking me to come to the trauma bay to supervise an airway as we do for any trauma during our second year. I get someone to take over for me and walk down towards the bay, talking on the phone to hand surgery. I don't even know the name of the radial artery bleed, only the room, since I walked in on the heels of EMS. I re-gown for the airway, check the tube and end-tidal CO2, manage vent settings, and while I'm placing an OG tube the radiologist calls me, also on my headset, to tell me about a new cerebellar stroke found on the patient right next to the radial artery bleed.

Despite myself, I smile. This is EM. I realize deep down that it all makes sense. It was the right choice.

Also ran my first PNB over the EMS radio and tubed a drunk lady with a huge laceration of her posterior while wading through the headaches and abdominal pains and two decompensated cirrhotics.

picture credit, an interesting blog on communication found by an image search for 'multitasking'.