Community Concerns, Safety and Security
Submitted by Dr. Gwenn Is In
Some patients you never forget as a physician. A few years ago around the 4th of July, I was working in an Emergency Room here in the BayState when a teenager was brought in by his dad for a burn on his leg from a fireworks accident. It turns out this teen had a few bottle rockets in his pocket up north and they went off as he walked by a camp fire they had one evening. They had the leg looked at by a local ER that evening then came to us the following day. We sent him quickly to the Shriner’s Hospital in Boston on heavy duty pain medications.
A few years before that, a relative gave my toddler nephew a sparkler to hold and it burned all the way down to the end, while my nephew was still holding it! The relative had walked away and failed to realize how quickly those things burned down. Perhaps he thought the sparkler just sparkled without burning down. My nephew had quite the burn on his little hand for a long while.
A few years after that, we were visiting relatives in Connecticut where camp fires were being set up all up and down the beach with fireworks being set off just on the side by people who were drinking too much while their kids were sitting near by. We quickly took our kids away from the beach and back to the house of our relatives.
Fireworks are like playing with gigantic exploding matches. They are admittedly beautiful and awe-inspiring at times but we have to have a healthy respect for the power of the punch they pack. There have been lives lost from even professionals working with fireworks. Amateurs working with fireworks ups the danger risk even more.
Here’s some information to keep your family safe this 4th of July – and all summer long!
