Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 26, 1993 TAG: 9312270295
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That is how Clark came to spend much of his Christmas afternoon in the emergency room at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
While his grandparents took care of twin brother Aaron at home on Blenheim Street, parents Mike Houchens and Peggy It's been our experience that people who come in on Christmas are really pretty sick. The vast majority are here because they really need to be. Dr. Richard Surrusco Emergency room physician Balla stopped the bleeding and rushed him to the emergency room.
Clark chose his father as the one parent allowed in the treatment room as Dr. Richard Surrusco sutured the wound.
Balla, director of the Child Health Investment Partnership, and Houchens, a letter carrier, still had to stop by Revco to fill a prescription for antibiotics before heading home to start the turkey.
Christmas dinner obviously was going to be served very late.
Clark was only one in a parade of sick patients forced by illness or injury to spend Christmas in Roanoke Memorial Hospital's emergency room.
An elderly woman was under observation for gastrointestinal bleeding.
A man with a fractured jaw declined surgery on Christmas Day. He went home and was scheduled to return to undergo the procedure this morning.
There were people with flu, severe back pain and nausea. A patient with liver cancer and a person recovering from a stroke came in with problems related to their illnesses.
Dennis Hayes, a communication specialist, monitored the radio as the Life-Guard 10 helicopter flew to Botetourt County where a car had run off the road and hit a bridge.
Surrusco ordered a trauma alert, and specialists assembled from all over the hospital.
The emergency room contributed three nurses. Three surgical residents were summoned from the hospital, along with a respiratory therapist and an X-ray technician.
As the Life-Guard 10 crew brought in the patient, the emergency room team quickly closed around her. Calling her name, they asked her to respond as they gave emergency treatment.
She had, they concluded, suffered a stroke before losing control of her car. The Life-Guard 10 crew said she had been unable even to try to brake the car as it careened into the bridge.
Drs. Scott Seibel, chief surgery resident, and Steve Thies, general surgery resident, were part of the team.
Thies had attended Midnight Mass, then celebrated the holiday before reporting to work at 7 a.m. He would work into the evening.
Surrusco worked in the emergency room from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and again from 6 to 10 p.m. on Christmas Day.
The flow of patients during the holiday was "pretty steady," he said. "Christmas parties are a lot rougher than I remember them."
The holidays brought a lot of trauma cases and upper-respiratory infections, he said.
There were few people with only minor scrapes or sore throats.
"It's been our experience that people who come in on Christmas are really pretty sick," Surrusco said. "The vast majority are here because they really need to be."
Krista Henderson, the nurse in charge of the floor Saturday, led a staff of seven nurses, a nursing assistant, a housekeeper, the communication specialist and two registration clerks.
Skeleton staffs are unknown at emergency rooms, where anything can happen, regardless of the date. The staff was average for a Saturday.
The hospital policy is to give the staff every other Christmas off. Henderson was off last year, so the holiday was hers to work this year.
She had celebrated Christmas with her parents and grandparents the night before. She worked from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and was on call for another eight hours.
Henderson thinks many people wind up in the hospital on Christmas Day because the season is so busy. People put off seeing their doctor and delay taking care of a nagging problem until they are really ill.
Other people, Henderson believes, are victims of the season. During the holidays, they wear themselves out to the point of exhaustion.
Flu and other respiratory infections are also a problem at this time of year, she said.
And since the Roanoke Memorial emergency room specializes in orthopedic work, snow and ice conspire to send in a lot of patients.
The trauma team was on standby for another possible patient, the victim of a self-inflicted bullet wound in Franklin County. But Life-Guard 10 was never called to pick him up from an outlying hospital.
You never know why, Henderson said. Perhaps the person was simply grazed by a bullet. Or maybe he was too sick to travel. Maybe he had died.
"You never know until they roll in," Henderson said.
by CNB