Inspiring Stories: Life in the Emergency Room

Inspirational Story: Life in the Emergency Room

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After working as a teacher in medical school for five years, I applied for graduate school because I wanted to be a doctor.

Why do you want to be a doctor? I went to the hospital for internship in the 1980s. I saw many people suffering from illness, and doctors can relieve the pain of patients. I think the profession of doctor is very sacred.

A few years later, after I graduated from graduate school, I entered a tertiary A hospital in Hangzhou and became a hematologist as I wished. In order to lay a solid foundation for becoming a doctor, I studied for a PhD, specializing in hematology. Later, the hospital transferred me to the emergency department as the department director.

I work hard in the emergency department, but I have received a lot of recognition. I have won? The top ten medical youths in Hangzhou? The Hangzhou May 4th Youth Medal? I’m embarrassed to say it, but in fact I am very simple, I just want to be a good doctor.

It can save lives, but not hearts.

The emergency room is only a few hundred square meters in size. Here, the reversal of life and death is sometimes just a matter of seconds. Life and death are staged here, and everything that happens is strange. Great sorrow or great joy both face human nature and reflect the microcosm of a large society.

One day a taxi brought an old man who had suffered a cardiovascular and cerebrovascular accident and stopped breathing and heartbeat. Accompanying the old man is his old wife. We are busy here opening the airway, performing chest compressions, opening infusion lines, and conducting intensive rescue operations. The old wife is making demands, asking us to ensure that the patient can work as usual while resuscitating the patient. At that time, we thought, we have never seen anyone make such a request at such a time when our lives are at stake.

Both the old couple are senior engineers. The man has been working since his retirement. He is over 70 years old and has never had a day off. On the morning of the incident, he went out as usual. As soon as he walked to the gate, he felt chest tightness and shortness of breath. He fell down before he could walk home.

After rescue, the old man’s vital signs were basically stable, but his consciousness was unclear. The next day, their daughter was called back from Shanghai. She told us that she had to go to work and could not take care of her father. The old lady also said to us, "I can't take care of him." ?

We didn’t know what they meant, so we told them that the old man’s condition was stable for the time being, but he needed to be hospitalized. The old lady proposed to remove all kinds of rescue intubations. It is rare to see a family member resolutely giving up on a 70-year-old man like this. This may have something to do with the concept, and I can't fault it.

But what the old lady said next shocked me. ?He lives like this, he is in pain, and so am I. Besides, since he can’t work, isn’t that useless?

In the eyes of his relatives, the value of his life is just to work. I feel sad for the patient.

People are really different. There was an old woman who accompanied her husband to the emergency department every year. My wife is now over 80 years old. He had a stroke 16 years ago and has been paralyzed in bed for a long time. He is hunched over, unable to speak, unconscious, incontinent, unable to eat, and has to grind food into paste and rely on a stick. A gastric tube was inserted.

The old lady has been serving him for 16 years. She was afraid that his long-term catheterization would cause infection, so she hand-sewed a diaper bag for him. The cloth strap was soft and would not hurt him or stain his body. In her eyes, the old man just couldn't speak, he knew everything in his heart.

There is delicious food at home, and she wants him to taste it every time. The old lady said that what a human being experiences is the sweet, sour, bitter and spicy taste of three meals a day. When she was feeding him, she always said: "Eat and see, eat and see!" She thought that the world was full of fresh food, and the old man could always taste it. However, most of the time, the old man could not swallow the food and would choke in his lungs. At least he would choke for a while, or at worst, he would develop aspiration pneumonia and be sent to the hospital for emergency treatment.

Every time we told the old lady not to feed food from the mouth in the future, the old lady always said: "He had a hard time when he was young. When our children have just made their fortunes and our lives get better, he will suffer." This disease. ?

The story of the old woman and her wife continues. I am afraid that people today cannot learn this kind of relationship between husband and wife.

People are different, and the weight of fate in different people’s hearts is also different. Being a doctor can save lives, but not hearts.

The Lightness of Life

There is no turning back in life. No matter how advanced medical science is, life, old age, illness and death will have their own natural laws, and it is not something that a doctor with great ability will definitely be able to save. Some patients only see a doctor once in their lifetime, and there is only one page in the medical record book, and this page is the death record. If we can save our lives, what could be more proud than this?

On a hot day three years ago, when the ambulance arrived, the patient had no breathing and no heartbeat. The doctor on board said there were no vital signs when they arrived. For such patients, we usually still have to rescue them, not for anything else, but for the one percent or less hope of survival, and for the sake of morality.

After 40 minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, this young man from Anhui Province regained his heartbeat and started breathing weakly. What is cardiopulmonary resuscitation? It means continuous external chest compressions, combined with advanced life support and mechanical ventilation. Especially during external chest compression, a young and strong doctor will be covered in sweat within 15 minutes. The force of pressing should not be too heavy, nor too light. If it is too hard, the ribs will be broken. If it is too light, the heart will not beat.

In the evening, our three doctors and three nurses guarded the hospital all night long. In the second half of the night, the young man's breathing and heartbeat suddenly stopped twice, but we rescued him in time. He is young and we have high hopes. Throughout the night, we didn't dare to be careless because the breathing curve on the monitor was always unstable, coming and going, which always made us feel uneasy.

At 9 o'clock the next morning, a full 15 hours had passed. Just when it seemed stable, the young man's breathing and heartbeat suddenly stopped again. This time, no matter how we rescued him, his heart He couldn't even jump up again.

Looking at the hoarse family members and our exhausted doctors and nurses, I just felt sad and about to shed tears. This rarely happens to me, and there is an element of grievance, because all our hard work and efforts have not been rewarded at all, and the life has gone away lightly.

Although these lives only have one page in the medical record, they have left a deep mark on my heart.

I remember a scientist said, "Medicine is a science without truth." I will think about the lingering cases that remain in my heart, hoping to find more individualized and appropriate solutions, such as rescue plans, dosages of medication, and other details. If I were bolder, could their lives be saved?

Doctors must be calm and rational.

Some people say that doctors are hard-hearted. Little do they know that acting emotionally is a taboo for doctors. Faced with a sudden Category 12 typhoon, the doctor is the general in the eye of the storm and must be calm and rational.

Most of the patients brought by ambulances are patients whose lives hang on a thread. Life and death can be a matter of an instant. Patients often have difficulty speaking. What we see with the naked eye are only superficial symptoms. We must go through the symptoms and peel off the cocoons. Sometimes the doctor is left with only 10 or 20 seconds to think. The doctor has to make a relatively accurate preliminary diagnosis and carry out emergency treatment in a very short time.

At this time, our faces are usually expressionless, but our hearts are full of turmoil.

The patient was only 36 years old and came from Guizhou to work. He knew that he was dying, so he called his family the day before and asked them to set up a mourning hall for him to wait for his return.

Early the next morning, before I had time to buy tickets, people here were exhausted. An ambulance arrived, and after a short examination we confirmed that the patient had respiratory failure caused by severe tuberculosis.

We performed a tracheotomy, intubation, established intravenous access, stabilized vital signs, stabilized blood pressure, and quickly rehydrated him on the spot. We quickly invited doctors from relevant departments for consultation, quickly formulated a treatment plan, and monitored him 24 hours a day.

Since we started rescuing him, his wife has been kneeling there.

They have two sons. The eldest is 10 years old. The younger one was pushed into a pond and drowned while playing. Because of their sadness, the couple left their hometown to work. Most of the part-time jobs were manual labor. The man was sick, so it was very difficult to find a job. He traveled to many cities and finally arrived in Hangzhou. He couldn't find a job in Hangzhou, but his illness became worse and worse, and he only had 40 yuan left on him.

Faced with such a patient, each of us feels heavy in our hearts. The medical expenses and critical illness weigh the family down so much that they cannot lift their heads. I told my colleagues that we must find a way to revive him, or at least let him go home alive.

By the third day, not to mention the cost of treatment, they even had a problem eating. First, our head nurse brought food to them from our own home, but this was not a long-term solution. After discussion, we decided to initiate donations in the department. Donations like this are common for us and no one would think it inappropriate. Later, the scope of donations expanded to the entire hospital, and later through the media, people from society also came to donate.

After the patient’s family gets the money, they give it to the hospital for treatment expenses. I was touched by their simplicity, because we have encountered such a thing. Some people immediately put the donations into their own pockets, delaying medical expenses as long as they can.

Twelve days later, the patient’s tracheal intubation was successfully removed, he was able to eat, and his spirit improved significantly. At the time of discharge settlement, after excluding medical expenses, there is still more than 10,000 yuan left for them to take home. This gave me some relief.

On the 15th day, I asked my colleagues to buy them tickets back to Guizhou, bought snacks for them on the way, and sent them on the train.

But I know that this patient’s future is not good. If he doesn’t have money for follow-up treatment, he will just wait to die if he goes back.

How many lives can I save in this life?

One day the year before last, I had just had dinner at home, and my phone rang, asking me to go to the hospital quickly, saying that the situation was difficult. . Here, I would like to add that all the doctors and nurses in our emergency room are the same. Their mobile phones are turned on around the clock. If they make a phone call, they will immediately rush to the hospital to participate in first aid. Whether it is the first half of the night or the second half of the night, they have to go to work as usual the next day. This is always the case. . I leave all the family matters to my wife. She is an ophthalmologist, so she still understands me.

When I rushed to Cory, I found that there was no patient on the emergency bed. When I asked, the patient was sitting calmly. He was an old man in his 70s and his mental state was okay. When I asked him, he felt no discomfort.

When I saw it, his lips were very purple, not ordinary purple. It should be severe hypoxia, the oxygen saturation test was only less than 90. If this state of hypoxemia continues, it will cause systemic hypoxia, multiple organ failure, and death.

The doctor is already giving him oxygen, but the blood oxygen saturation has not improved at all. This is not child's play. We have seen too many people who can take a life and leave at a moment's notice.

The reason is unknown, and doctors dare not use medicine. There are some symptomatic drugs, but the drugs themselves are toxic. If used incorrectly, they will not only be ineffective for the patient, but will make things worse.

The doctor asked over and over again but could not find the cause. According to experience, the elderly should be suffering from nitrite poisoning. The poison usually comes from food. For example, pickled and moldy things may cause food poisoning. But both the old man and his wife categorically denied eating such food.

After questioning to no avail, I started to look through the old man’s medical records, page by page, and found that the old man went to the surgery for cholecystitis in the first half of the year. The medical records showed that the old man refused surgery and took traditional Chinese medicine instead. I thought about it and asked the old man if there were any Chinese medicines in the prescription that needed to be taken separately. The old man thought for a moment and said yes, there was a packet of white powder in a separate packet that needed to be taken. ?What kind of saltpeter is it? ?That's it!? I screamed.

I told the doctors and nurses on the side that all monitoring would be removed and methylene blue would be injected intravenously. After 15 minutes, the old man could go home.

Everything was as I expected. After injecting the drug, the oxygen saturation quickly rose to 100, and the old man’s lip color returned to normal. Our young doctors and nurses said: "Director, you are so awesome!" Actually, I am a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. When I heard the elderly taking traditional Chinese medicine, I thought of saltpeter, which is a commonly used medicine in traditional Chinese medicine to treat cholecystitis. The component of saltpeter is fire saltpeter, and the nitrite content is extremely high, which may cause poisoning.

That day I stood at the door of the department and watched the old couple walk out of the hospital. I felt a sense of calm satisfaction. The thought came to my mind again: How many lives can I save in this life?

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I still want to be a good doctor

Our doctors in the emergency department deal with people who suffer from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, fall injuries, stab wounds, trauma, drowning, and suicide by taking poison every day. Although we are accustomed to those things that ordinary people think are extremely sensitive, they still have a negative impact on our hearts.

Most of us don’t sleep well, but we have to check the time when we take sleeping pills. We can’t just take them casually. For example, if we have to be on duty in the second half of the night, do we dare to take them in the first half of the night? No.

Everyone knows that in the current medical environment, the relationship between doctors and patients is tense, and there are too many factors from society. It is not caused unilaterally by doctors, but has its social roots. In particular, the crisis of trust between doctors and patients has hindered doctors' innovation in treating patients. We must communicate with family members at any time and repeatedly seek opinions. From a certain perspective, we have lost the initiative we should have in rescuing patients.

We once rescued a patient with coronary heart disease and massive myocardial infarction. When it was delivered, the breath seemed to be gone, but it was saved. The next step was to perform a stent implantation surgery as soon as possible, but the patient's family just didn't trust us and asked to be transferred to another hospital.

Later, when he arrived at the provincial hospital, after the operation was successful, the patient sent a banner to the doctor. The doctor told them that our successful operation was thanks to the first aid provided by the hospital in front of us. Their cardiopulmonary resuscitation was quite successful and they had the opportunity to allow us to perform the operation. You should go and thank the doctor from that hospital. Later, the patient did come and said these words when delivering the banner.

Sometimes, I really want to tell the patients’ families that no matter what the society thinks of doctors, no matter what rumors there are, among the entire group of doctors, good doctors must account for the majority. Which doctor doesn't want to cure a patient? Curing a disease is almost every doctor's ultimate wish. I know no one may want to hear this right now, but it's the truth. Especially when rescuing patients, patients and their families should stand together with doctors and trust doctors. This is good for both patients and doctors.

Everyone knows how hard and busy doctors are. Let’s put it aside for now. I don’t like to complain, because as a doctor, you must be able to withstand certain things.

Being a doctor is difficult, but being a good doctor is even harder. But as long as I can bring patients back from the brink of death every day, that sense of accomplishment is enough to support me to continue to be a doctor, and to be a good doctor. ;