Ladders and Seniors Don't Mix

When I was 10 tears old my dad went up on the roof to hang a banner. I guess he decided that the ladder was the slow way to get off the roof. Ever since then he was banned (by my mother) from getting back on the roof. IT became my responsibility. Evidently my patients wife had not banned her husband from the use of ladders...yet.

We were toned out for a fall with injuries. We arrived on scene at an apartment to find the patient laying on the floor in the kitchen. The 88 year old man was using a ladder on the linoleum floor to reach the light. The ladder kicked out from under him and he fell from the second rung. The problem, he tried to catch his weight with his left arm, dislocating his shoulder and bruising his ribs. We quickly triaged his injuries and started treating him. We had to put him in C-Spine precautions because of his distracting injury (an injury that causes enough pain so as to possibly mask head, neck or back pain). We also started a line and gave him some morphine to take the edge off the pain. We then, with the help of the AMR crew, set up an elaborate splint to hold his arm in place. Then we loaded him up to go to the hospital.