The dumb and the dangerous

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On Saturday I worked a 21 hour shift. It was glorious. I got paged in at 12:30 in the morning, just after I fell asleep. I spent the next 14 hours in Sierra Vista. It was like going to another country. I could see Mexico from the hospital where we recovered. We used to fly down there, back in the day, but now we hire a driver. This is still nice because it allows us to sleep on the way. Somehow we made it down there in just over two-and-a-half hours.Since I was sleeping, I'm not entirely sure of all the laws that were broken to accomplish this amazing feat, but I was grateful all same.

As soon as I made it back to the office, I had two cases waiting for me. We recovered the first in about four hours before we had to head to the medical examiner's office to recover the second. At the M.E.'s our donor was a large 390 pounds! Even though our policies limit us to 350 pounds, we were told to proceed. I voiced my dissent, my team leader voiced her dissent, the other cutter voiced her dissent, and yet we were over-ruled by a higher-up who was sitting at home, completely unaware of the situation and the possible danger it posed. I became a little angry. 

Working on a donor who is approaching 400 pounds is both dangerous and difficult. First, we have to move the donor onto the exam table. Dead weight, despite what physics tells us, is heavier than live weight. This is dangerous for us to do. Not only do we have to move four hundred pounds very delicately and figure out all the nuances involved with that, but if we drop the body, it will be nearly impossible for the four of us on the team to pick the body back up. Then, once we start recovery, working inside a four hundred pound person is rather difficult because of all the fat. It was just a bad situation all around.

There was so much fat that we would cut out large chunks of it (5x5x2 inch sections) just so we could find the muscles and bones. It was absolutely disgusting. We had a dickens of a time disarticulating the femur because the adipose tissue overwhelmed the pelvis. We could barely see anything. It was so frustrating to do this case.

I am in no way try to insult any who is overweight. I am grumbling about a ridiculous decision made by a superior who was unaware of the situation and who chose to put four people into a dangerous situation for no good reason. We have policies for a reason and this person made a poor decision. 

After twenty-one hours on the job, I finally got to go home around 9:45 that night. I can't wait until I can go to med-school so I can get some sleep...