Biking Fall
I was once walking home from the grocery store with some ice cream and streamers because it was my roommate’s birthday. I’m a med student and I also work in a hospital. In high school, I worked as a junior EMT on our rescue squad.
Skiing can cause some nasty accidents by the way, so ALWAYS wear a helmet. Anyway, I was walking home and I saw this kid, maybe nine or ten years old, biking down the street with his friend. His friend told him to stop and go into the store they just passed.
The kid whipped his head around, not paying attention, and the front wheel of his bike slipped off the curb. He started losing speed, and the back wheel just fishtailed and slid out.
The kid tried to jump clear of the bike, but he pushed the pedal one way and made the bike slide on top of him. His arm subsequently got twisted around the handlebars. I ran over and did the regular checks. He was responsive, conscious, and seemed clear-headed.
I pulled the bike off of him and asked him what hurt, if he thought he was bleeding, etc. He says, no and braced his hand against the ground. The moment his hand touched the pavement, he screamed in agony. He instantly lost consciousness after that.
I gently took his arm, after making sure he was breathing and started to carefully examine it. It felt broken near the elbow and I could tell that his shoulder was dislocated.
Again, I was an EMT and, while I could pop the shoulder back in, I didn’t feel qualified to just do it on this kid. I could have, but I’d only ever relocated wrists. I didn’t want a lawsuit on my hands if something went wrong, and I was not sure if it would even work.
I also didn’t want to take the risk of injuring the kid further, especially as it would be tricky with his broken elbow. While he was still unconscious, I took the streamers, which are a terrible substitute for ace bandages, and I immobilized his arm with them.
I also tried to keep the swelling down with the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that just became really useful. He came to his sense and whimpered again. I’m not sure how he didn’t feel it until he put weight on the arm, but it obviously hurt him.
I told him that I immobilized his arm and that he had a dislocated shoulder with a possible broken elbow. He nodded, and meanwhile, his slightly hysterical friend had called an ambulance.
The ambulance pulled up in a few more minutes. I told the paramedic what I did and then sighed because now I had to go back to the store and buy more streamers and ice cream. Story Credit: Reddit/valentine_girl214