Before I left medicine to write full time, I spent seventeen years working as a paediatrician and paediatric emergency medicine physician. I worked in urban trauma centers, rural community clinics, flew helicopters with LifeFlight, spent hours in the back of ambulances, as well as making house calls. Here are a few things I learned during my career.
C J Lyons
1. Kids will stuff anything into any orifice of their bodies. This includes: toy cars shoved up noses, hair beads stuck in ears, swallowing anything that will fit in their mouth, along with other orifices ripe for discovery by curious minds…2. Teens will try to stuff or pierce anything into any orifice or barren area of skin on their bodies…you'd think they'd know better by this age, but wow, the places and things they inserted led to a very interesting collection of X-rays we kept in our staff lounge. The one most commented on was the rather large, still intact light bulb that required a proctologist to remove…
3. While police and paramedics are fun to have around-especially for their stories-firefighters bake. Yes! Because of the way shifts at the firehouse work, they often have time to bake and cook, and when they do, they do it in large quantities. We love, love, loved when the firefighters would stop by to ply us with their home baked cookies, cakes, and brownies!
4. Weird things happen in life…Take the five-year-old I saw for a skull fracture. The only story we could get from the boy or his dad was that while the kid was washing "the puppy," the dog wagged his tail and hit the kid on the side of the head. No fall, no other injury. How the heck could that cause a depressed skull fracture that landed the kid in the ICU? At first my nurses wanted to call social services to evaluate the family for possible abuse, but then I asked the dad if he had a picture of the puppy…it was a Lab, nine months old, close to a hundred pounds-probably at least twice the size of the skinny five-year-old!
5. The absolute best training I had to survive life in the ER? Being a waitress in a busy family restaurant. I learned how to prioritise (in the ER we call this triage); how to multi-task; how to play nice with others, no matter how rude and obnoxious they were; how to read my own indecipherable handwriting; how to connect with people in a high-pressure situation without making them feel rushed; how to remove a variety of stains from my clothing; and how not to panic when absolutely everything goes wrong.
6. Best rules for surviving life that came from my time in the ER? Trust no one, assume nothing…look twice, think twice, act once…check your own pulse before you check your patient's…and all bleeding stops eventually (think about it). When in doubt, go back to rule #1.
7. And the best thing I learned from life in the ER: heroes are born everyday. From the paramedics and transport staff that let me shanghai them in the middle of one of the worst storms in history to take me to a rural hospital where a critically ill baby was, to the indefatigable nurses who advocate for their patients, to the families who rise to the occasion during the worst moments of their lives: the ER is a true crucible revealing the best humanity has to offer. I feel very privileged to have witnessed these everyday acts of courage.
Last Light by CJ Lyons is published on 3rd May by Canelo, price £3.99 in eBook.