18.6.12

COTW: Packer's Syndrome


 By Jason

 This is a patient from last week - an otherwise healthy 35-year-old male who presented with the condition pictured below...


He described a relatively acute onset of the symptoms over the past week or so.  The bleeding of his fingers seems come about when he is packing crates such as the one pictured here:




Alas, this is actually my hand.  We are busy packing crates to put on the shipping container to ship to Burundi.  In an effort to use the space to its maximum potential (weight is not really a factor for shipping containers) I find myself stuffing clothes and other things down the sides of the crate and in small cracks, and it hasn't been so good for my hands.  I should have followed John's idea, who is using a screwdriver to stuff as much as he can into the crates.

 My brother was here this weekend and we took the first load of packed crates (22 crates at 250-450 lbs each) to the shipping container.  It required some ingenuity to  maneuver such heavy crates.  Fortunately my brother is an engineer.  We used a lot of levers and ramps and a dolly to budge these boxes.


Here is a picture of the current state of the container...a partial layer of these crates on the floor, lots of medical equipment to be organized and packed, and lots of room to go.


I guess as a surgeon, I should name the disease after myself instead of "Packer's Syndrome"...feel free to refer to this condition as "The Fader Phenomenon."

3 comments:

Rev Steve said...

And here I thought I was going to read something about the Green Bay Packers and how you hoped the season would get here soon! :)

Carrie said...

I saw a sea container traveling its way to the port in Long Beach. It made me think of your family and I said a prayer. Too bad a container can't keep a journal. I'm certain it will have some tales to tell.

asdf said...

So maybe when I saw you at Sears, you were thinking about buying a screw driver?