"Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you". - James 1:21*
“Medic-7, hemorrhage! A 38 year-old female with a severe laceration. Caller reports heavy bleeding! Respond Code-3.”My partner and I didn’t need to hear the dispatch twice. We jumped in our truck and drove out of the bay. I pushed some buttons and the ambulance lit up like a Christmas tree, lights flashing, siren wailing—Code-3. Bloody images consumed my thoughts as we raced to the call. Walking onto the scene those images came to life—a raucous crowd filled a room decorated with bloody wallpaper and jagged pieces of clear broken glass. My patient stood in the center of the room with a blood soaked towel wrapped around her wrist. Crimson drops fell from her fingertips and splattered onto the floor.
I reached for her arm to remove the towel.
“No,” someone shouted. “Don’t take it off!”
“Relax,” I said. “I need to see the wound.” But as I removed the last of the towel I realized I had made a big mistake. A bright red stream spurted from the severed artery, shot across the room, and sprayed the far wall with crimson-colored paint. “Quick,” I shouted to my partner. “Hand me a dressing!”
My partner handed me a trauma dressing and a bandage roll, and within seconds I had the wrist tightly wrapped. But the bleeding was far from controlled. Blood continued to drip from her fingertips. Her skin continued to pale.
“I feel dizzy,” she mumbled.
“Let’s go,” I said to my partner. “She’s lost too much blood.”
A moment later we had her in the back of our ambulance with the lights flashing and the siren wailing again—Code-3. I tied the tail of the bandage to the overhead railing hoping that elevating her arm would lessen the flow of blood, but it didn’t. I tried using a pressure point, pressing my fingers against the artery above the wound, but the blood still flowed. I had one more option, a last-ditch effort that needed to work. I wrapped a tourniquet around her arm and tightened it. The bleeding stopped.
After starting a large bore IV and giving her a good fluid bolus I called the ER to notify them of our arrival. And they were waiting for us when we arrived, gloved and gowned in surgical scrubs, ready for business.
“Be careful,” I said, as an eager resident stepped forward. “This thing will shoot across the room if you let it go.”
“Relax,” he said with a chuckle. “I got it.”
“Oh, really?”
I shrugged and watched him remove the tourniquet. The bleeding resumed. He began removing the dressing. I left the room. I couldn’t watch.
I returned a few moments later to find an empty room. But the gurney, the floors, the walls…they were covered with blood.
Hemorrhage. Once it starts it’s hard to stop.
*
We’re hemorrhaging too, you know. Our society. Bleeding. Losing the core values that once made us great. We no longer allow prayer in the classrooms of our schools, for example, and the Pledge of Allegiance has been all but outlawed. And to many people the United States flag has become a personal affront. Imagine! I mean, what’s next, our National Anthem? Our moral values and our devotion to God are at an all time low. So from where I sit, we’re hemorrhaging. We’re becoming pale and dizzy, and in the end, if no one responds, we too, like every great empire before us, will fall.We need to start acting like Christians again, restore our moral values and the guiding principles that made this country great, because sooner or later the bleeding always stops and when it does, the victim dies.
So, America, apply some direct pressure to this ever-increasing problem. Use a tourniquet if you must. But let’s stop the hemorrhage. We must humble ourselves and turn our faces back to God…before it is too late!
