Just Another Day at The Office

I now started on Brins right leg which was a different ball geme all together. His lower leg was at a right angle to the rest of his leg and was tangled in amongst all the bushes and branches. About half way down his lower leg the angle turned back on itself and went skywards. As I got just below his knee I could see that the skin had been peeled back and there was massive trauma. His lower right leg looked like it had exploded on impact and the only thing holding it together was his trousers. As I cut away I found myself wondering which bit to cut next. Where the branches had broken as Brin landed in the bush, they had gone up his trouser leg and worked there way into the open wound. Beacause of the initial blood loss everything was tinged with blood including the bush. I slowly cut away what appeared to be bush hoping I didn't make a mistake and cut a disguised tendon or ligament. The more I cut away the more unstable Brin's lower leg became. I decided to stop at this point. "Al we're gonna need a splint before we go any further mate"

"Ok, do you want a spinal board as well?"

"Yeah sound mate" (its normal practice within the service that if someone has had a big impact like Brin and has picked up major injuries. We always treat for spinal injuries. Research has shown that because major trauma brings on a lot of pain it can mask any neck pain that may be present. Net result is if we don't treat for a neck injury and there's one present all the movement could cause obvious paralysis)

"The problem is Al that we need to ease him out of the bush. But we can't do that because that bloody shrub's in the way" and pointed to the shrub up at Brin's head.

"I'll soon have that out of the way"

"You got a mini digger in ya back pocket then?!" Al looked at the shrub and looked at the area where the car had come through the hedge. With that he got his six-foot-plus frame up and put his arms around the shrub and then lifted it out of the ground and dumped it some distance away. He then continued to the ambulance to get the rest of the kit. I was impressed.

"Right Brin my colleague has gone to get some splints and bits. What we intend to do is strap you to a borad to completely immobilize you. But first, we need to get your legs out of the hedge and into leg splints"

"Ok dude you know best" does this man feel no pain at all! He was as cool as a cucumber. Al returned with all our various splints and between us we supported Brin's right leg and cut away what appeared to be bracken, slowly moving the splint in place. Once Brin's leg was supported we slid him onto the spinal borad and strapped him down. It was just a short walk to the ambulance and once we were inside, we had our first chance to get a good look at Brin's injuries and get some decent observation's on him. Al changed the oxygen over to the main flow and got a BP (blood pressure) while I started to take a closer look at Brin's injuries. As I opened the splint up it was complete chaos from his right knee down. There were bits of bracken all caught up within blood vessels, muscles, tendons and ligaments. The actual bones were smashed beyond recognition. I did what I could to clean out the wound but my thoughts were that this was beyond repair but with Brin's age it seemed all that much worse.

Al gave me Brin's BP which, as expected, was low. Also with Brin starting to warm through he had started to feel the pain kick in. We elected to put some fluids up and give Brin some I/V analgesia. Al cannulated and I ran the fluids through ready for connection. Once Al had finished I handed him one end of the giving set to connect up and I went to hang the bag of fluids on the hook. As I let go of the fluids i realized, that actually, I had missed the hook! The bag came crashing down and hit Brin straight in the knackers. Al and me looked at each other with one eye squinted and faces looking like pain. "Arh you ******* amatures" came the yell from the stretcher!! Three things sprang to mind, first, he was right! second, never unestimate how painful a kick in the knackers is! and third, Brin was really having a bad day!