Knife and Gun Club

When I am working in the Emergency Department, I see the CT scans and X-rays of nearly every injury that comes into the hospital. I am getting really discouraged by the superabundance of some specific injuries:

1. Gunshot wounds to the spine. Way too many teenagers and young adults are forever paralyzed from the neck or mid-chest down as a result of careless or, more likely, malicious people shooting them. I'm not sure what these patients were doing to induce others to shoot them, and I really don't care that much. Although I am sure that a significant proportion of those who are shot were engaged in illegal activities at or shortly before the time they were shot, it doesn't make me feel any better about these patients whose lives are now infinitely harder than they would otherwise have been.
   
   To wit, they will, for the rest of their lives, have no bowel or bladder control. They will need surgery to enable them to put catheters into their own bladders or to divert their urine into a hole on their abdomen so that it can be collected in a bag. They will either need surgery to divert their feces into a colostomy or will need their diapers changed for the rest of their lives.
   
   Of course, they also will be unable to move independently for the rest of their lives.
   
   I am further disgusted that these patients are now wards of the state. You and I, the taxpayers, are and will be paying for the lifelong care of these patients - for both the cost of their surgeries and the salaries of those who change their diapers and roll them around in bed. It sickens me that these patients are only unable to care for themselves because some other person made a rash and/or evil decision to pull the trigger of a gun.
   
   
2. Gunshot wounds in general. Way too many people get shot around here. Gunshot wounds are devastating injuries, shattering bones and organs alike, and causing all kinds of mayhem. While many people survive their injuries, those who get shot in the head tend not to.
   
   
3. Motorcycle accidents. These are a touchy subject for many motorcycle aficionados, but let's get real - every day I see horrible injuries sustained by people who are doing innocuous things on a motorcycle. For example, this man was riding his motorcycle at 10 miles per hour.
   
   
   
   He got clipped by a car, which shattered his left foot. He had to have his leg amputated below the knee.
   
   No matter whose fault it is, a motorcycle accident will always leave the motorcyclist in a world of hurt.
   
   
4. Lung Cancer. This is another subject that gets me somewhat upset. Way, way too many people are dying early because of smoking and its deleterious effects. Take, for example, this woman. An ordinary chest CT would have lungs on both sides of the chest, with the heart on the patient's left.
   
   This woman's heart has been displaced into the right side of the chest by this enormous aggressive mass that replaces pretty much her entire left lung.
   
   
   
   It is also making its way out of the chest cavity by bulging out between the ribs. What a crummy way to die.
   
   
   

Anyway, those are four of the most preventable problems in our society, and we see far too much of them. I wish, like Alma, that I could cry repentance with the voice of thunder, that all men everywhere might repent, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.