"Stupid is...stupid does."

I have come to the conclusion that trauma patients are sometimes the dumbest patients. Here is a sample of some of the geniuses that roll through our doors. Those who attempt suicide and are unsuccessful are notorious for not really thinking it through very thoroughly. We have three patients right now that are failed suicides. One of them jumped from a third story window and hit every balcony on the way down. She didn't die but did break every bone in her body from the femurs down. Another guy shot himself in the face but didn't point the gun at the right angle to do any fatal damage. He shot a hole through his tongue up through the roof of his mouth and out his mastoid (the bone behind your ear). He underwent plastic surgery last night on his tongue to put it back together again. He is now intubated but not because his brain isn't working , it's because his tongue is so swollen that it blocks his airway. Our other suicidal man also shot himself in the head. He put the gun up to his temple and pulled the trigger. He didn't have the correct angle either. This guy blew out his orbit and made a trail under his nasal bone and out above his teeth. All of these long term hospitalizations could have been avoided if they had just studied a little anatomy and physics.

Another one of our overachievers decided to run away from the cops early this morning and they let the dogs loose on him. He found out first hand just how strong the jaws of a German Sheppard are, strong enough to break your tibia and fibula. Now he needs surgery to reassemble his leg. He will heal up just in time to go to the dauphin county prison. Another one of the cities finest citizens decided it would be a good idea to shoot at the SWAT team with whom he was engaged in a standoff. They of course filled his body with 11 bullet holes. Amazingly none of them hit any vital organs and damaged them enough to kill him.

And then of course we have more than our fair share of motorcycle accidents without helmets. I saw a 45 year old woman today who was the passenger on a motorcycle and was not wearing a helmet. By the grace of God she did do any brain damage. She broke her tibia and fibula, her scapula, and 5th metacarpal. That wasn't the bad part. Her face looks like it belongs on the shoulders of a sumo wrestler. Her eyes were so swollen she can't see out of them. Her face was also completely covered in road rash. So now this once pretty woman is going to need skin grafts on her face all because she wouldn't wear a helmet. Stupid, just plain stupid!

This list could go on and on but I'll stop there. Not every trauma patient is there because of something they are responsible for, in fact most of our patients are car accident victims who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So kids, the moral of the story is don't do anything stupid enough to land in the trauma bay because I may appear sympathetic on the outside but in reality I am shaking my head in disbelief at your stupidity.