Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.

For the last few weeks, I have been researching Emergency Medicine at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor.  For that reason, it is highly unlikely I will have pictures to post: my apologies. 

With about an hour left in my four-hour shift, a sharply tanned man in tall, brown cowboy boots and a five-o’clock shadow was rushed into the Emergency Department (E.D.); his right shoulder and upper right arm had been crushed by the 2000-pound rear hoof of a full-grown bull.  His skin and bones resembled something more like pizza toppings rather than an appendage.  But, having one’s shoulder crushed by a steer is not a life-threatening injury – not strictly speaking.  However, repeated hoof strikes, which fracture one’s ribs and puncture one’s right lung, well… that is life threatening.  Experiences of that caliber and severity are always unnerving irrespective of how much time one has spent with patients in the back of ambulances or in the E.R.  Those experiences have a way of humbling everyone involved, of reminding us that irrespective of the marvels of we modern apes, that nature always has the upper hand against we small, fragile things.

As I walked out of the E.R. for the evening, the man was in undergoing surgery to rebuild his flesh and bones; to my knowledge his shoulder, arm, ribs and lungs are now well on their way to being fully functional.  I doubt he’ll be riding bulls in the very near future, but only time can tell if he lived his life all the way up.