- I'm an ER nurse and I treated a patient
who thought he could fly and this is that story.
(calm music)
This one day I was working
in the one of the busiest emergency rooms in downtown LA.
Running around, treating my patients
when we had a young boy rushed in
from a nearby university
and he was admitted for a traumatic brain injury.
He'd finished his first year of medical school
and he was throwing a party.
The first year of medical school
is definitely one of the hardest
so it was just natural for him to celebrate his achievement.
He had drank alcohol and he took two 100 milligram pills
of MDMA, which is also known as ecstasy.
Mixing the alcohol with the ecstasy can heighten the effect
of the ecstasy and also increase the time of effect.
In the ER we do see a lot of patients abuse ecstasy
and other hallucinogenics.
I think a lot of nurses and doctors
because they see the effects of it,
they don't try it, they don't go near it.
Ecstasy can sometimes make you believe
that you see or hear things that are not actually there
and he believed that he could fly,
so without hesitation,
he jumped off a seventh floor balcony.
So his friends thought he was joking initially,
when they found out he was being serious
and he'd taken ecstasy and alcohol together,
it was too late to stop him from falling.
Luckily he broke his fall by hitting a tree
while he was coming down,
if that tree wasn't there, I mean,
he could have instantly died.
The tree reduced the force
of which is head hit the concrete.
He was unconscious and he had obvious signs
of traumatic brain injury, irregular breathing,
there was clear fluid that comes out of the nose and ears
which is cerebral spinal fluid.
Also he had a lot of pressure built up in his brain.
It can cause permanent brain damage
if it's not treated promptly.
It can cause seizure, strokes and even sometimes death.
In the ER everyone has to act really fast,
especially when we get a trauma case,
everyone has to be on top of it.
Maybe several nurses come to one patient,
putting in IVs, one nurse is putting in an IV,
one nurse is securing the airway,
making sure the patient's breathing.
(machines beeping)
Everything happens pretty fast in the ER.
Almost just like you see in the Hollywood movies.
The family of our patient is also our patient,
obviously this was a younger patient
so his parents were traumatized, especially his mother
who was initially had heard what happened
and thankfully they were in LA at the time
and she came in and she was just crying hysterically
and I was the first person who saw her
and just I held her hand and told her that, you know,
we were taking care of the situation,
we were doing as much as we can.
All the nurses and the doctors
were doing as much as they can to stabilize her son,
her only son, and hopefully save his life.
Well usually when a coma's induced,
it's because the brain is working so hard
to take care of the trauma.
(calming music)
So when that happens the brain starts to swell up
and it's pushing on the skull
and it can cause permanent damage
so in order to stop the brain from working so much,
a doctor will go in and use medication to induce coma.
Sometimes when patients come off a coma,
not only are they affected by the initial trauma
to the brain but they're affected by the coma
and the medications that they were given.
Some patients get out of a coma
and they stay in a vegetative state
or VS is what we call it,
or sometimes in a minimally conscious state
where they can respond to stimuli
but they're not doing anything else.
So the patient was in an induced coma for two weeks,
finally and thankfully, his pressure in the brain decreased
and his vital signs returned to normal.
So to my surprise when the patient awoke,
he didn't have any changes in his personality,
his mood, he didn't lose any memory,
he was very lucky.
So all the doctors and nurses worked really hard
to get him to where he was at the end of his stay.
He did come back several months later
to thank all the nurses that were still working there,
all the doctors which was so nice,
he brought a box of donuts.
He was young and he had a near death experience
which I'm sure changed his life forever
and the way he looks at life
and the way he treats his patient
because he's gonna be a doctor one day.
Especially as a trauma nurse I do take pride
in taking care of every patient,
even if they just come in for having a bad trip on ecstasy,
you know, even if it's a psychological help,
because we do do that a lot in the ER
is psychologically help patients get better.
It's still taking me time to kind of shut off my brain
after I go home from the ER or the ICU
and not think about the things that I saw that day.
Sometimes just going home and talking to my sister about it,
who's also a healthcare professional
or talking to a friend or anything
and just kinda letting it go
and you just let it go which is hard.