May 7th - Infant Resus.

This week we learned the disadvantage to kids having bendy bones. Little people spend the first six or eight years of their life pouring calcium into their bones, hardening and stiffening them. When kids fall, they bounce, because the bones just don't break.

We got taught in our trauma lesson that they do break, but that instead of viewing a paediatric break as "Nothing heavy, their bones bend, don't you know?" we should be thinking "Shit, they've suffered enough of an impact to break bones that aren't meant to."

Equally, we were taught that a child's springy, bouncy chest can transfer almost all the forces it suffers to the internal organs, then sproing back into its old position, with minimal visible fractures and bruising.

But underneath? Their hearts and lungs are pummeled and sheared to pieces.

The information we're being given this week is sobering, but I'm loving every minute of it.

At the end of the day we're given the Child Protection (NAI) lecture that shook me up so wholeheartedly on my Technician course. I was interested in my response to the same data; with nearly two years 'road time' on my hip, I wasn't nearly as disgusted or horrified as I had been when I first looked at such pictures. My response had changed to one of sadness, resignation and fatalism - bad things happen, we try to fix them when they do, but all too frequently we're unable to stop them from happening in the first place.