WHAT’S ONE BULLET?
By Van Kerckhove, Michael | |
Proquest LLC |
ONE OF THE FAVORITE QUEStions that my younger patients ask is, "What type of gun did I get shot with?"
And I answer, "I don't know. I just know you have a hole in you. We're going to assume a big gun because the hole in you sure is big!"
They're like, "Oh, did you get the bullet out?"
"Well, I don't know, we'll have to see." And one of the things I like is showing them the X-ray. It's like, "Okay, guess what that is! That's the bullet that's still inside of you!"
And they gasp and are like, "Are you going to get it out?""Mmmm, depends..."
When a young person comes in, we have to physically take care of them. So we need to figure out what's wrong and treat them. Because the goal is to save lives. So number one: Save their life, regardless of what happened before. The second step is getting past those trust barriers. A lot of our patients don't want to tell us what happened, who they are, what's going on, or their medical history-and those are really, really important things that we need to know about while treating them. Sometimes there's the one who walks out, or the one who gets really angry at the staff-but you can tell that anger is not really with us. It's the situation, and you're trying to get them to understand that. And we talk to them always within the confines of the trust-because once you lose trust, that's it.
For young adults, the reason they wind up in the emergency room is usually gang-slash-crime-related. I won't say everybody's in a gang, but a gangrelated crime is usually the background of what's going on. You kinda want them to understand how serious it is, because a lot of our young people, they see these things on TV-people get shot and get up all the time, and then, in the next scene, they're okay. They have this idea that, "I can get shot four or five times and then live, so what's one bullet?" They don't realize that one bullet can cause massive damage to the human body. And, unfortunately, sometimes you have to explain to them, "If your spinal cord's been transected, that's game over for your legs. I'm sorry." Or they'll ask, "Will I be able to have sex or have children?" That all depends because sometimes you lose your testicles, so that's no. They don't like that part. But those are the consequences of your decisions, you know. You went out there, you got shot. Unfortunately, this time it took out your scrotum, so it's a done deal.
A lot of patients, when they find out that they've lost certain body parts, or when you have a patient who becomes quadriplegic or paraplegic, the support system that he thought he had-including his friends or his girlfriend-they tend to drift away before his hospital stay is actually over. And so he's forced to re-evaluate those relationships. And, usually, he'll draw closer to the ones who truly love him, which are the ones who are really actually visiting him-usually a grandparent or parent, aunt, uncle. Sitting in the hospital bed, the only thing you can do is think. Because you can't run the streets, you can't go with your friends, you can't do too much of anything, so you need to re-evaluate what brought you here to the hospital.
I'm hoping that more youth will be involved with education. I'm hoping that they'll understand that you gotta be educated to get out. I tell my gentlemen: Try nursing. I let them know there's something else you can do with your life.
I just try to be a role model for them. When they say, "Well, you don't know my story, you don't know my life," I'm like, "Yeah, I kinda do. I didn't live your life, but I do know what's going on in your life."
I grew up over here on the
There was this one girl I knew-I will always remember this one forever-she played Russian roulette and she lost. I was like 13 when that happened. And it's like, "A: Why are you playing Russian roulette? B: Why are you drinking? C: How did you get access to a gun?" There were just so many questions. And to see so many of my peers-because we were all friendsgoing in a different direction than I did, it was kind of depressing.
I went on to high school. Back when I went-I graduated in 1982-they opened up a program where you could basically go to any high school in the city. So I went to Taft, up on the Northwest Side. Going to Taft as part of the first big group of African-American kids was like going back into the 1950s to civil rights times. We were met with protests. We were met with rioting. We were met with name-calling. People pulled their kids out of school. It was insane.
I went to college, and then, once I graduated, I came back to the
I always tell patients, "I'm not here to judge you; I'm just here to fix you. If you choose not to change, you know that's on you. If you know the things that can happen to you-jail, death, permanent disability-then you have the opportunities. If this is the life you're choosing, then I'm just here to try and put you back together again."
We take care of some of the worst injuries, some of the worst of the worst. But there are patients who you would think would never survive who actually survive-and it's just amazing. It's amazing. I just told a patient the other day, "I work in a land of miracles."
We do have patients die, of course. You don't get used to it. Young people have so much potential and when you talk to them, you realize, "You've got so many other gifts that you could use, that you could contribute to the world." And then to kinda see that just ebb away, and you think about the people in their lives that it's going to affect because that person is gone. But for every 10 that we lose, maybe there's two that'll turn around and actually succeed and change their lives. And who knows? From that, maybe they could change the world. *
Adapted with permission from How Long Will I Cry: Voices of Youth Violence, edited by
UNFORTUNATELY, SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO THEM, 'IF YOUR SPINAL CORD'S BEEN TRANSECTED, THAT'S GAME OVER FOR YOUR LEGS. I'M SORRY.'
Copyright: | (c) 2014 Institute for Public Affairs, Inc. |
Wordcount: | 1398 |
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