Shooting

So, yesterday I finally had my first real gun shot victim/patient.  I use the words "finally" and "real", because in the nearly two months now that I have been here, I have been dispatched to many "supposed" shootings, where no patients were found.  This is a good thing, but a little frustrating because every time people hear gun shots they automatically suspect someone has been shot.  The truth is most of the time here, the "gangsters" doing the shooting, don't really know how to use their weapons.  This turns out to be both good and bad, because we don't have as many people being shot, however many times, when someone is finally shot it turns out to be bystanders just as often as it is the intended target.  With our shooting yesterday it looks like that was sadly again the case. 
It was only 5 in the afternoon and we had just arrived at our post when the call came out as a adult male shot and involved in a MVA (motor vehicle accident).  As we headed code to the scene, we heard a second unit being called to another shooting victim, a 57 yr old female, just a couple blocks from where we were headed.  When we arrived on scene we found a middle aged man siting cuffed with his left side covered in blood.  A hundred feet away were two cars that had been crashed into a cement wall.  I quickly went to check out the damage to the two cars and see if any one else was hurt, then I went back to take care of our cuffed patient.  I cut off his shirt and found a small entrance wound in the left forearm and a subsequent more profound exit wound just superior to the elbow.   I checked the bones and joint and found he had full mobility, it was only a soft tissue wound, so we bandaged it and checked vital signs.  I was amazed at how calm the man was the whole time, till when in the ambulance after starting an IV I realized our patient had several scares from previous gun shot wounds.  We also ended up putting him on a backboard because the car accident, but he didn't seem to have anything other the the injury from the bullet.

So, the story is still being pieced together, but from what we were able to get from our patient and the other crew was that our patient was in his car when he came to a stop at a stop sign.  As he was stopped a woman stepped up to his car to beg or warn him or something when another man jumped out and started shooting at our patients car.  Our patient, who I already explained seems to have an interesting story, conveniently had his gun and started shooting back before taking off in his car.  After getting a little ways, he realized he was bleeding pretty bad from his arm and got distracted running another car off the street and ramming them both into a cement wall at the entrance to a park.  Whoever the other man was, he never got hit by any of the shots, or at least he hasn't gone to the hospital yet for his wounds.  The woman, however, who most likely didn't have anything to do with the whole thing, took at least 2 bullets and after coding in the other ambulance was declared dead within the hour at the nearest hospital. 


What a cruel thing is war:  to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.  ~Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864