Video 1 Transcript
Stressful experiences are always emergencies that pop up. I had one while I was in my fifth year of residency and I was doing my head and neck externship right before my fellowship in Indiana, Indianapolis area and one of the hospitals I was at, I was on call and I only lived about a minute or two away in some housing nearby. He was a patient that had a drain in his neck and went home to a city about an hour away. Well, I got a call from the ER that he was progressively worsening with his breathing. He knew he was going to be there in a few minutes. I hung up the phone and told him I'd be there in a few minutes. So I showed up and I had a room, I ran into a room full of surgeons and nurses and an ER doctor standing at the head of the bed trying to intubate this patient while he was under anesthesia. They gave him a little propofol and when I got there, I looked at his neck and it was swollen and I knew they wouldn't be able to intubate him due to the pressure of the hematoma, which is a collection of blood underneath his, under his incision pushing on his airway. So I yelled to the nurses to get me a staple remover and I grabbed some gloves while they did that, ran over and they had a staple remover within seconds. I popped a couple staples, grabbed the suction, put that into his neck and suctioned out the hematoma. And immediately when the hematoma was evacuated, you could hear that breath being taken. And then the ER doc that was trying to intubate him with the device underneath in his tongue, uh, inside of his mouth, he was able to put the tube down and start breathing for him. Um, so yeah, it was exciting and stressful, but very rewarding.