January 16, 2012
st. vitus trauma
Had our annual med school formal this weekend, titled St. Vitus Dance. This name is both apt and quite medically nerdy. When we looked up the etymology of the word last year, we found out that Saint Vitus is known as the patron saint of actors, dancers, and epileptics. Interestingly enough, there’s also a medical condition called St. Vitus dance (aka Sydenham chorea), one of the key diagnostic symptoms of rheumatic fever. I’m sure many people who observe modern-day dancing would say its not so far from an epileptic fit.
Anyway, not much to report on the dance itself. Sorry, no (good) pictures to prove I was actually there. Rather, all the excitement happened post-dance at the after party, and unfortunately at the ER. I heard this all second hand, as I was actually passed out (as in asleep, not blacked out) in the hotel room in an alcohol-induced stupor. So one of my friends JLC decided she wanted to ride the mechanical bull at the bar where the after party was taking place. (First of all, WHY would anyone decide to put a mechanical bull in a place where people are crazy drunk and bound to make poor decisions!??) She fell off, as everyone does, but in an attempt to hang on, she got smacked in the face by the bull. My other friend, ST, was there with her and thought she would be ok — no loss of consciousness, vision was ok, no obvious signs of damage. But head trauma can be pretty serious, so they went to the ER anyway. On CT, they found she had fractured THREE facial bones! And there was blood in her maxillary sinus. That’s serious stuff for real. When the rest of us heard about it, we were of course super worried, but I think we show our stripes as med students by the fact that after we finished our chorus of “omg, will she be ok??”, our next question was “so which bones did she break??” Like I even remember all the bones in the face…pshhh. Plus, I can only imagine the almost farcical situation of a group of medical students hobbling into the ER of the hospital where WE will be taking care of patients next year, with the chief complaint that one of said med students got smashed in the face by a bull while drunk at the med school formal. What’s that they say about first impressions? Oops… Oh dear future colleagues, please don’t hold this against us.
So, lesson learned from this situation: don’t ride a mechanical bull. Or if one must, at least do it sober.
