More Prisoners

So I was on call again last night, and we had a trauma flown in. Now this is not completely unusual, since we are a major referral center, but since the town in relatively suburban, not a lot of violence. Anyway a prisoner apparently had barricaded himself in his room and cut his neck from the middle of the neck to the ear with a razor blade or something. This seems weird to me for several reasons. One, seems like prison is all about being barricaded into places whether you like it or not, so the part where he barricades himself somewhere is weird. Second, I thought you weren't allowed to have razors in prison. Next... you'd have to be pretty determined to slice yourself that wide open. ouch.

Now I understand this guy is a violent criminal, but they bring this guy up to the OR... he's intubated and paralyzed... big wad of bloody bandages on his neck... but despite this fact he still has his arms shackled to his waist. Like he's getting anywhere while he's paralyzed. Then again with the sitting outside the OR while he's under general anesthesia. Oh well. I'm sure the guards are just doing what they're told.

Good news for us, he didn't hit anything too big that we couldn't control the bleeding. (plus they had time to fly him in from up north in the helicopter). Bad news for him... seems like he didn't feel like living anymore.

P.S. I was ending another case with a CRNA and she had only heard part of the story so she only knew we were operating on a self inflicted neck wound. So she said "Life can't be that bad can it?" I then mentioned that he was a prisoner apparently in prison for violent crimes. She then seemed embarrassed "I guess it can be that bad." I chuckled. (proves again -- I'm a bad man)