It was 10 minutes before my shift would be over, when word reached us that the medics were on their way in with 7 patients from a motor vehicle crash on the libramiento. To make matters worse, many of the patients were reported to be children. Everyone scattered to prepare, somebody asked me to find a pediatric breathing device, my heart was heavy as I began the ominous search. The first ambulance arrived, cut the siren, backed in, and a parade of gurneys with bloody patients strapped to backboards began. Not one of them would have been there if they had been belted. Not one. Instead, five of them got their heads shaved and sewn up.
True to the report, many of them were children most only minimally injured. All were silently sobbing. Alone, and perched on the edge of one big white gurney was a small girl. Terrified, she sobbed inconsolably. Her beautiful round mocha-colored face was dirty, cut, and streaked with blood and tears. She clutched a small fist full of pesos in her left hand. I thought back to the last hour of her life and what it must have been like for her. Someone her size, unbelted, would be tossed around like a rag doll inside an out-of-control rolling vehicle until it finally came to a halt. I stopped what I was doing and put my arm around her. She only slightly leaned into my side and I picked her up.
The doctora was examining her mother, and looked concerned. If the patient was critical, I wondered, what I would do with this little girl if her mother died.
The other siren was getting closer now. I went with one of the nurses out to the bay to wait for it and to try to get the first glimpse of the patients so we could begin mentally triaging them. With trauma patients every single second can count.
The doctors and nurses and I come from different countries but have the language of medicine in common. They have welcomed me and my spoiled American medical ways into their emergency clinic so I can learn how emergency medicine is practiced in Mexico and, hopefully, help them in the process. I’m a California-trained paramedic, lucky enough to be accepted to volunteer my time at the Cruz Roja Mexicana Chapala ER and I love every minute of it! The doctors and nurses are quick and smart and work together without having to talk. That’s a good medical team. I’m also happy to see that the patients are treated with respect and empathy. We weren’t allowed the time for that in the US.
Daniel, Carlos and I laugh and trade gory paramedic stories and I’m amazed to learn that our training and medical protocols are almost the same. As we discuss cardiac arrest saves and losses, I also notice that we share the same feelings. I look away when Daniel tells me he has just lost a patient on a tennis court and nothing he did made a difference. Some days are just like that. In the ambulance the first thing I recognize is the yellow Ferno 4-wheel drive gurney I used to use. Then I notice the same EKG machine, bags, meds, backboards and C collars. We discuss the pros and cons of the digital glucometer and I feel like I’m back at work in the Bay Area.
It’s quiet now and six of us sit around an empty gurney like a quilting bee with an 8 inch stack of gauze squares in the middle while we talk and laugh and fold the squares into 2 X 2 bandages. Jesus takes a couple at a time and carefully folds them into a piece of brown paper then places them in the oven for the prescribed amount of time. They emerge sterile 2 X 2’s. When the stack of gauze is all gone we start folding gloves into brown paper to tape and bake and emerge as sterile gloves. They laugh and ask me if paramedics make bandages in their spare time in the US. Yeah, I think, wouldn’t the unions have a field day with that one. The US with its spiraling medical costs could learn a lot from its sunny southern brother, Mexico. I sure am.
