the ER (part 2 of 3)

Looking back, the time I spent in the ER was exhausting.  While Bangkok Hospital is the only hospital in town with ER trained medical staff (the other hospitals in town have a rotation of random medical staff working ER), things are still handed differently than in the states.  My friends fought to get me pain medicine before I was sent to X-Ray, and I was only given 6 milligrams when they finally acquiesced. X-Ray was painful. First I had to agree to let them cut my bra off - I knew there was no way they could get it off without doing so, but it was one of my best bras! Sorry if this is TMI, but I felt so defeated in allowing them to destroy it.

They the proceeded to attempt to get the X-Ray pictures they needed.  I tried so hard to move and then hold the positions asked of me, but I was still in so much pain.  I remember laying there thinking how hard it was to do WITH pain medicine - there was no way I could have held still without it and I was so thankful to have people fighting for me in the ER.

Concerned about spinal damage, my neck was stabilized until
they were sure there was no damage

I guess they could tell from the X-Ray that my scapula (shoulder blade bone) was broken, but wanted to make sure that was all, so I also had a CT scan done.

Because of the size of the scapula, it is rarely broken and takes an incredible amount of force to break it.  As a result, other things in that area (like the shoulder joint, chest/lungs, neck/spine) also sustain damage - hence the CT scan.

Back in ER I finally got hooked up to an IV and maybe received some more morphine.  Within a few moments, the doctor came in with the diagnosis: broken scapula.  Nothing else.  No joint damage, no spine damage. I was "good to go" - though it was pretty strongly advised that I stay in the hospital a few days to help manage the pain.  I was too happy to agree.

Next up before official admission was road burn abrasion cleaning - yay!  While they put something on the abrasions to numb it before cleaning it and pulling gravel out, it was still a painful experience. While the road burn could have been so much worse and deeper, I had abrasions on both forearms and elbows, the tops of both feet and my right shoulder.  Maybe 2 days later we discovered another cut with gravel on my butt - such fun! Even though they missed this in ER, they did do a really good cleaning and dressing all my wounds.