Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Simon Says
Actually, Simon Kyansi, 27, the man you see lying here, wasn't saying much this morning, but if he were feeling better, I bet he'd be saying "thanks."
Simon came in with a deeply fractured skull - the result of an accident on one of the thousands of motorcycles on the streets here. He was leaking spinal fluid from his nose, so our docs went to work and quickly repaired the damaged bone and stopped the leak. The equipment you see at his bedside came from Duke, and he wouldn't have had access to it had we not come.
Interestingly, he also has a lumbar (lower spine) drain in place. Nurse Jen Bland says it's an extremely difficult procedure to manage and one where a single misstep can be lethal. The technology was brand new to the ICU nurses here, so much of Monday was spent training the staff on how to handle it.