The Book of Brett: April 2013

About a month ago I was tasked to attend CSTARS (Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills) in Baltimore, MD. Why Baltimore, you ask, well it happens to be the home of the largest Shock Trauma Center in the United States and the place where more shootings happen per capita than any other state. I arrived on Sunday night and made my way to the Holiday Inn at the Baltimore's Inner Harbor. I met my roommate an Air Force PA stationed at Vandenburg AFB, CA. Monday morning we took a tour of the hospital which is really more like a small city and covers an entire city block.

The hospital is part of the University of Maryland Medical Center but the Shock Trauma Center is its own entity. The hospital is enormous and is comprised of several huge buildings that at one time were independent freestanding buildings but were later covered with a huge glass roof making it into one giant building. On the inside you can still see the original buildings standing there. Above is a picture of one such building complete with window planter boxes, it is hard to appreciate the glass ceiling in the photo but it is there.

One unfortunate thing about the Shock Trauma Center is that everyone that works there has to wear pastel pink scrubs. It is uber manly.

Me hanging on my bed in my pick scrubs.

Sweet!

This is Davidge Hall and is right across the street from the hospital. It is the oldest medical school building still in use in the US.

This is the Chemistry Hall. Since 1812 it has been the site of many famous medical discoveries.

The physicians had tunnels constructed connecting this building to the cemetery where they would rob graves and cut the bodies up for anatomy lectures. There were multiple anesthesia discoveries that occurred in this room including the use of paralytic medications.

A clipper ship in the inner harbor.

This is a 15 star flag on top of Federal Hill

This is Federal Hill off in the distance.

More Baltimore photos.

This street is one block from my hotel.

This is a picture of me in my pink uniform waiting for a case.

These are the blood products we used on one trauma case, there are over twenty bags. This case was a vehicle ejection where the patient had massive internal injuries and mangled right arm. Later on that night I also responded to a stabbing case that came in at about one in the morning. A young waiter had just gotten off of work and was mugged and stabbed under the right clavicle severing his subclavian artery and vein. He bled to death in just a few minutes. The EMS team was doing CPR on him when he arrived and I quickly intubated him but he was declared dead about a minute later. This was my first real fatality and it shook me up pretty good. It is hard to imagine what God thinks about the violence His children commit against each other. On a more miraculous note, the night before a 17 year old kid was coming out of his house when a van pulled up and the door opened. A gunman shot the kid four times and speed away. None of the bullets caused any serious damage. The first passed through the center of his palm missing all tendons, bones and vessels. The second passed through the muscle on the side of his neck without any significant damage . The third and fourth bullets hit a love handle and the side of his calf muscle which were rinsed out and sewed closed and he was sent to the police station. Pretty amazing.

My roomate and I traveled to Little Italy for some Italian food one night. It was a refreshing nice side of town but the food was mediocre. Nothing like Little Italy in Boston, now that was tasty but they only take cash if you ever go there.

This is a shot down on of the streets in Little Italy, very clean and nice unlike pretty much all of the rest of Baltimore.

This is the stadium for the Baltimore Orioles it is three blocks from our hotel. Opening game was last Friday.

I had a day off today (Tuesday) and so decided to take the train into Washington DC. I have been there two other times but had heard that the cherry blossoms were out and thought I would go and have a look see. It was nice to go there and be able to spend as long or as little as I wanted looking at museums and monuments. This is in the Air and Space museum.

So is this.

I looked out the window and what did I see! These cherry trees are everywhere. It was worth the trip, they smelled incredible.

These are huge magnolia trees, they also smelled incredible.

This quote is on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. I wonder when we as a people stopped think like this.

Thomas Jefferson

Blossoms everywhere, people were everywhere too.

There is scaffolding half way up the Washington Monument in the background.

The trees surround the Tidal Basin of the Potomac.

Me and honest Abe. The little girl over my shoulder is reaching for some juice her mom was handing her. She started to shake it up before she realized the cap was not on. I shudder to think what my reaction would have been if it were one of my kids. Her mom did not handle it very well either.

It was a beautiful day at our nation's capital.

Today I went out to Fort McHenry. When I went to Washington DC I saw the actual flag that was flying at the fort when Francis Scott Key penned those famous lines. It was enormous more than 40 feet long.