Adventures in medicine

Even though I’ve already posted several times this weekend, I need to add one more:

and I were pulling out of a parking lot near the Alewife T, and we heard a loud, steady horn. As we made our way up to the main road, we saw that it was coming from a three way collision: A light truck had rammed a honda from behind, which had in turn slammed into some sort of sedan. As we pulled up, we saw a woman (the driver of the lead car) wrestling a completely limp woman out of the truck, while smoke leaked out around them.

I said “should we stop?” as I started to stop. She said “yes, we should stop” as she was getting out of the (still sorta moving) car. I nudged the car up as close to the side rail as I could, and came to join the action.

The woman from the rear car was still out, but beginning to gasp rapidly (in a very disturbing way) and moan, laying on the shoulder of the road. A small crowd was gathering, and was there in the all-too-familiar role of “first doctor on the scene.” She was feeling around the woman’s neck, collarbones, and ribs, generally looking serious and professional, and starting to ask questions like “what language does she speak?” and “has someone called 911?”

After checking to see that there were no children or other people in her car, I got the woman’s phone and purse out of her car, and turned off the car while I was at it. The smoke turned out to be gas from the airbags. Then I hung back to wait for instructions. Computer geek. Totally out of my depth, but trying to help. Eventually, I went back to our car and got the yoga mat out of the back to make the lady a little more comfortable.

The police showed up, and then the rescue squad. A man who spoke Portuguese happened along and helped out with translation (the woman spoke no english). “Can you move your head?” and so on. The Portuguese speaker used her cell phone to call her husband. In short order, she was bundled up in an ambulance and hurried off someplace. The other folks involved were all shaken up, but fine. We think that she was badly scared, and might have some whiplash in her neck and some nasty bruises from the seatbelt (left collarbone seemed to hurt a lot) but otherwise she was okay.

looked up and said “whose yoga mat is this?” I liked that part.

Everyone at the scene was positive and helpful, but didn’t know what to do. knew what to do. Having seen this movie before, I knew enough to stop the car. I’m so proud of her.

This is my family. We hear sirens and we run towards them. We hear a crash and run up to the accident scene. has it, has it, and I married another one with the propensity.