Neuroscience ICU

I was in NSICU last night, which basically consisted of all the major head injury patients. The patient that stood out the most was a 16 year old young man who had mutiple trauma due to a drunk driving accident. He was the passenger in his friend's SUV who was driving insane according to the other friend who was in the back seat. They were driving like 90 mph, the driver and the other friend were totally trashed, and the passenger was as sober as a judge. I still don't know why he wasn't the one driving, but my guess is the driver was the leader of the little crew. As is the case most of the time, the two drunk kids walked away from the accident with a head a laceration and a sprained ankle bt the two of them. The sober kid in the passenger side had his seatbelt on, but was on the side where the tree had crushed into the vehicle. The firemen used the jaws of life to get him out and he was just destroyed, but alive. He suffered from a subdural hematoma, and an epidural hematoma thus causing his intracranial pressure to go through the roof. His ribs on both sides were shattered and he had two collapsed lungs, which of course also included pulmonary contusions, and heart contusions which resulted in cardiac tamponade. So this kid had bilateral chest tubes put in, a catheter put into his skull to drain out excess cerebral spinal fluid to decrease the intracranial pressure, and he had a pelvic fracture and femur fracture on his right side along with a broken arm. Miraculously there are no abdominal injuries. I helped monitor this kid last night and he was constantly on the brink of "coding". I'll be surprised if he is still alive when I get back on shift tonight, but nurses there say they've seen a couple like him make it before bc he is so young, and a younger body is able to fight longer and harder. The worst was seeing family come in and then watching the attending doctors from trauma and neuro fighting over how to treat him. It was a mess. It seems like there isn't a clear protocol on who is in charge in the hospital, and it sucks to see that affect the treatment of the patient. We always refer to these doctors who come in only for major stuff in the trauma ER as the "Greek Gods and Goddesses who come down from Mt. Olympus". It's good when one comes down, but two God-complexes in one room is a disaster. That's all I got for now, tonight I'll be in Surgical Trauma ICU, and then I'll probably try to make my way down to the ER again bc it's more exciting down there in general. -Jake out