Oh shit, it's arterial.

It had been another one of those thirteen hours days at another music festival filled with people on drugs and who'd been drinking all day and lost control of themselves.
I think we all know the kind of people I'm talking about..
My day had been filled with EtOH OD's, drug OD's, syncopes, assaults, epistaxis and blisters. Oh the never ending blisters that seem to plague my life when I'm on duty at music events!!
The day for us medics, exhausted medics, was finally winding down and we lazily packed up our gear, washing vomit off the sides of our tents, blood off the floors so we could go home to our warm delicious beds.
After a shower to scrub all the grime and muck of the day away ofcourse!!!

I'd just put on a pair of gloves and was about to pick up a stack of vomit stained towels when a young man came walking shyly up to me, his hand wrapped in the ripped off sleeve of his t-shirt which was literally dripping with blood. "I'm so sorry", he said, "but I've cut my hand and I was just wondering if you could take a look for me. I know you're trying to go home..I'm so sorry!!" Everyone else looked at me, the only one in the group wearing gloves. "Sure." I said, not ever one to turn down a patient, " take a seat and tell me what's happened."
The patient explained to me he'd been running to catch a bus and had caught his hand on the mirrored edge of a ridiclous looking sculpture. He said he'd felt a tug but had assumed it was the sleeve of his jersey and kept on running until he felt something flicking into his face. He stopped to wait for his girlfriend to catch up and she started screaming as soon as she saw him. His face, arms, legs and clothes were flecked in huge drops of blood which was streaming out of his hand. Luckily for him he'd realised the cut was bad enough to need attention and so ripped the sleeve off his t-shirt and came to find us. Upon hearing his story I began to get cautious about removing the shirt covering his hand, but I knew I needed to see his wound to decide what kind of treatment he'd need, if it was the sort of thing I could deal with on my own or if it was a job for the doctors in the ER. I slowly, slowly, slowly began peeling back the shirt, as each layer came off more blood dripped onto the ground by my feet. I finally pulled back the last layer.

Blood squirted out, narrowly missing landing on my uniform and face. I caught a quick glimpse of the gash before I grabbed my hands around his and started squeezing as hard as I could, raising his arm above his head. "Mate...it's pretty bad. You're gonna have to go to the hospital." From the split second I saw the cut I could tell it was a surgical one. It started on the palm of his hand, below his middle finger and extended inbetween his middle and pointer fingers, along the top of his pointer finger and back down to his palm inbetween his pointer and thumb. The bones in his finger joint were all completely exposed, the tendons and muscles had all been severed along with the small artert that ran along the back of his hand, which is where the blood had been steadily pulsing out of. I asked for the largest size combine dressing and quick as lightening slid it under my hands, covering the cut, and clamped my hands back down around it. Everything in my sector had been packed up, there was no way I could deal with his injury where I was. I asked my patient to press the call button on the radio I was still wearing and radioed for one of the paramedics to come give me some assistance. Everyones radios but mine had been turned off. No one heard the call.

I was the more senior of the medics in my area and needed to get the patient to our main medical area. "So here's what we're gonna do okay, I have to keep pressure on your hand and keep it raised. We're gonna walk, as slowly as you need, to our other medical tent where there's doctors and nurses." He nodded, looking nervous as we began our awkward trek to the tent.
"Can I get the doctor to have a look at my patient for a consult please?" I called out to the others as we arrived at their tent. "They've all gone home!" Someone said. "A nurse then?" "Sorry, they've all gone too. What's it for??" "My patients got a pretty serious cut to his hand." "Put him in a truck and we'll get someone to look at him." Together, my patient and I manouvered our way into the back of a rig. A few seconds later Patrick arrived at the doors, looking as tired as our felt. He took one look at my blood soaked patient, my blood stained gloves and the gauze I still had tightly around his hand, now starting to drip. "It's a good one Pat!!" His face lit up and he climbed in with us. "Let me have a quick look and I'll see what needs doing." I slowly released my hands as Pat lifted the gauze away. The patient flinched as blood came squirting out.
"Oh shit, it's arterial." Said Pat as I re-applied pressure.

We changed the dressing, which was then tightly bandaged to his damaged hand. I kept the pressure tightly on, with his hand still raised and chatted away to him while we waited for the ambulance to come. "Atleast it was the end of your night away eh buddy!!" He smiled, realising it could have been alot worse than what it was. "And you get a free ride!"