I haven’t been able to tell you guys about this yet, because it is still just so scary and fresh in my mind.
Working in an ER, I see lots of crazy things. Some things make me laugh… like people getting things stuck in places where they have no business being, or when drunk people act a fool and get themselves in funny predicaments. Take Cactus Boy (my name for him), the almost 18-year old drunk kid who was running from the cops, crashed his car and then jumped into a cactus to hide, thinking it was a hedge. I laughed privately when he was wheeled in by the ambulance at the sight of the almost-man who looked like he bear-hugged the cactus and the cactus branches were stuck in ALL areas of his body from feet to neck. But others like the precious 4 year old boy with the gash on his head who was still wearing diapers and was too skinny, who was thrown against the wall by his mother in a fit of rage and then left to fend for himself until his stepfather came home and rushed him to the ER made me cry.
None of this prepared me for the sight I saw last Friday night. We got a “code” patch from the firefighters. A code means the person is on their last leg, about to die and we need to be fully prepared because there’s a possibility he/she could need to be resuscitated. My job as a registrar is to get the run sheet from the firefighters/EMTs as soon as they come in and get the patient put in the computer so we can get a wrist band and stickers for his chart and get him taken care of. This kid came in dead. I ran over to get the info from the firefighters and I knew something was wrong as soon as they came in. Instead of smiling or joking with us, as they usually are, the guys were so somber and had a look of defeat on them. They were hot, sweaty and dirty. The smell was overpowering. It smelled like burnt flesh. Have you ever smelled that? I never had before that night, and I still can’t get the smell out of my head. This kid came in with no info, no name, no date of birth, nothing. We knew he was a male and was in his 20’s. I put him in as a John Doe. I ran back to give the stickers to the nurse and put the wrist band on the patient and stopped short, horrified.
This poor kid was burnt. To a crisp. I’m talking blackened, and skin falling off. His face was bubbly. I can’t get the images out of my mind. My heart seemed to stop for a second. A nurse took the wrist band from me and told me he’d put in on him so I didn’t have to go in there. I didn’t know where the hell they would be able to put the wrist band on him! He was burned all over!
Turns out he was staying the night at a friends house and there were a bunch of kids there. Someone in the middle of the night decide to fry french fries and forgot about the grease which caught fire. They tried to get everyone out, but the boy was stuck one of the bedrooms. The firefighters found him trapped under a fallen dresser. He was unconscious from smoke inhalation. When they brought him in we resuscitated him, and flew him to the county’s burn center where he ended up passing away. His dad came in and saw him before we shipped him out. He dad was a mess, wailing and completely inconsolable. I can’t even begin to pretend to know how he feels, but I imagine if something like that happened to my kids I’d be the same way.
I was reading the news this morning, and it turns out that the kid was not 22, he was only 14. He went to the same high school that my daughter will be going to in a couple years. The fire was just a couple miles away from my house.
It got me thinking, and I’ve talked to my husband about this… we don’t really have a fire plan in our house. How irresponsible is that? We are going to draw up a fire escape plan for the kids and talk to them about fire safety some more. We don’t even have a fire extinguisher.
Do you have a fire safety plan? What have you done to prepare your kids for a fire?
Oh Tiff, this is really horrible honey. Do you have a grief counselor at your work? I can’t even imagine…our prayers are with you, please try not to internalize this, pray for the child and the family, but please don’t think about it anymore than you have to, it will not be healthy for you, or your family. Love and hugs.
[...] not got hot oil all over your skin. Hot oil, left unattended, can also cause fires. (See this link What a Horrible Way to End a Bright Young Life if you don’t remember that heartbreaking story.) Why don’t they [...]