Emergency Room

Forgive my absence from these pages, but I recently suffered a dislocated fracture of my ankle while saving a kitten from a speeding car. The bad news is, it required reconstructive surgery and I have to spend the next six weeks on my butt. The good news is, Christina Applegate will be playing me in the Hallmark made-for-TV movie about my heroic self-sacrifice. There is nothing like a broken ankle to help you realize that just about everyone you know has had one. And, like the doctor said after asking me how it happened, broken ankles are boring, but the stories behind them never are. Hence the kitten tale, which I made up. The truth is I slipped on the kitchen floor, but that is too boring to repeat.

ON THE SITE... Top prospects the Ravens may target on Day 2 of NFL Draft : Scroll through a slide show of players the team could be eyeing in the second and third rounds. State issues new safety rules after stabbing of baby : N ew rules give social workers more leeway in deciding whether to have security present at meetings and require more stringent bag checks. 'Hard freeze' possible Saturday : A freeze watch has been issued for northern Maryland counties Friday night into Saturday.

The new John Hopkins Hospital opens this weekend and that means there is a new emergency room for adults and children. Beginning Sunday at 7 a.m., the public, police, ambulance crews and others will need to go to 1800 Orleans Street. The current entrances on East Monument Street will close. The new entrances are next to the front entrance to the new hospital. Patients also are being moved this weekend from the old hospital buildings. A parking garage is directly across the street from the entrance for non-emergency visitors.

The new John Hopkins Hospital opens this weekend and that means there is a new emergency room for adults and children. Beginning Sunday at 7 a.m., the public, police, ambulance crews and others will need to go to 1800 Orleans Street. The current entrances on East Monument Street will close. The new entrances are next to the front entrance to the new hospital. Patients also are being moved this weekend from the old hospital buildings. A parking garage is directly across the street from the entrance for non-emergency visitors.

Crowding appears to be declining at Howard County's only hospital emergency room, and a citizens group is promoting the use of a dozen private urgent-care clinics in the county as a cheaper, more convenient option to help keep that trend going. "Our purpose is to let the people of Howard County know that the providers are here," said Barbara Russell, a Howard County Citizens Association member who serves on the group's three-person committee studying emergency medical care. To that end, the group hosted a meeting Monday night at the Hawthorne Community Center featuring the county's top medical officials.

The emergency room at Carroll County General Hospital, flooded Sunday during a heavy rainstorm, was expected to reopen today, according to hospital officials.Patients in need of emergency medical attention yesterday were sent 50 feet down the hall to the hospital's ambulatory surgery center, where the emergency room staff was temporarily located.The flooding came during a downpour that dumped 3.58 inches of rain on Westminster in about three hours Sunday afternoon. Water leaked through the emergency room ceiling, turning the room into a wading pool several inches deep.

Methane gas from a storm drain under Franklin Square Hospital in Rosedale sickened a nurse in the hospital's emergency room last night and forced the evacuation of about 50 patients, visitors and staff members, according to a Baltimore County Fire Department spokesman.The gas entered the hospital building's ventilation system and caused people in the emergency room to experience breathing difficulties, Battalion Chief Mark Hubbard said.Dr. Julie Casani, director of the hospital's emergency services, said a "code orange" emergency signal was activated, alerting the entire hospital staff and summoning the Fire Department.

The emergency room at Carroll County General Hospital was ranked in the top 10 percent of nearly 300 hospitals nationwide for patient satisfaction during this year's first quarter, according to a survey by a Chicago-based consulting firm.The rating was the result of polling of patients and surveys of emergency rooms among 281 participating hospitals in 41 states. The rating is a composite reflecting such categories as nursing and physician care, testing services, medical outcomes and the admissions process.

West County residents will lose their closest emergency room if Kimbrough Army Community Hospital is downgraded to a clinic, hospital officials told residents yesterday.The Fort Meade hospital, which would be reclassified under a Department of Defense military reduction plan, recorded 22,622 visits to its emergency room last year.Lt. Col. Steven Markelz, the Kimbrough administrator, explained to residents yesterday that national hospital accreditation regulations prohibit an emergency room at a medical facility that does not also provide in-patient care.

Equipment and extra beds aren't the only additions to the new emergency room at Carroll County General Hospital.Susan R. Vittek joined the hospital staff in November as the clinical manager of the emergency department.Mrs. Vittek will play a major role in managing the daily operations of the department, as well as handling budget and staffing issues.For the past eight years, Mrs. Vittek has worked in the emergency department at Northwest Hospital Center in Randallstown.For the past 2 1/2 years, she was nurse manager of the department, which handles 35,000 patients annually.

ELKTON - Cecil County health officials say rabies has been found in a sickly stray cat that scratched five people in downtown Port Deposit. The five people were scratched Friday. The cat was captured and euthanized at a veterinarian's office and tested. The five people have been urged to seek treatment. The cat is described as a small- to medium-sized yellow tabby. Anyone exposed to the animal in the past 10 days should go to an emergency room.

The once financially-troubled Bon Secours Baltimore Health System now contributes $226.3 million to the city's economy, a new analysis has found. The analysis, done by Richard Clinch, director of Economic Research at the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore, looked at the economic impact of the hospital's direct services and indirect effects.  It found that Bon Secours supports 1,532 jobs that provide $94 million in annual compensation.

The conservatives in Congress are taking advantage of a semantic convenience when they insist on "no new taxes for anyone. " It is based on the fact that the poorest Americans are excused from paying federal income tax in the first place, due to their small paychecks and/or disproportionately large obligations. But when tax reductions on the middle class and the rich are balanced by curtailment of government services to the needy, as in the recently passed House Republican budget plan, the tax forgiveness to the better-off comes on the backs of the unemployed, underemployed, elderly and children.

Forgive my absence from these pages, but I recently suffered a dislocated fracture of my ankle while saving a kitten from a speeding car. The bad news is, it required reconstructive surgery and I have to spend the next six weeks on my butt. The good news is, Christina Applegate will be playing me in the Hallmark made-for-TV movie about my heroic self-sacrifice. There is nothing like a broken ankle to help you realize that just about everyone you know has had one. And, like the doctor said after asking me how it happened, broken ankles are boring, but the stories behind them never are. Hence the kitten tale, which I made up. The truth is I slipped on the kitchen floor, but that is too boring to repeat.

A man was shot at a party in Crownsville early Saturday, but details on the incident remain sketchy, Anne Arundel County Police said. Officers went to the Anne Arundel Medical Center emergency room around 3:15 a.m. Saturday to meet the victim and his female friend, both 20, police said. They told police they were at a party at the Summerhill Trailer Park and went outside. There, they heard a loud bang, and quickly left the party along with everyone else, police said. The man told police he realized he had been shot when his back started hurting on the way home.

Dr. Michael L. DeVincentis, a retired Baltimore surgeon who was a pioneer in emergency medicine and a co-founder of Osler Drive Emergency Physicians Associates, died Nov. 11 of congestive heart failure at his Homeland residence. Dr. DeVincentis, who went by the nickname DeVee, was 96. "DeVee was one of the good old boys in medicine. He was a darn good diagnostician, which generally most surgeons aren't," said Dr. Max English, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist, who was a member of Osler Drive Emergency Physicians Associates.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- A second bizarre emergency room incident in which a fuming body felled medical personnel during the Saturday evening rush was probably unrelated to the first case, authorities said yesterday.Nineteen emergency room workers at Mercy Hospital here had to be decontaminated Saturday night after ammonia-like fumes from an unidentified 44-year-old woman caused minor dizziness, headaches and difficulties breathing.Steve McCalley, head of Kern County's environmental health department, said late yesterday that the victim ingested a common household pesticide called Dursban, which is sold over the counter and used to kill ants and other insects.

Elizabeth Ann "Lizann" Donovan, a registered nurse whose career spanned more than 50 years, died Tuesday of multiple organ failure at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. The Chestertown resident was 77. Elizabeth Ann Curtin, the daughter of a chemist and an educator, was born and raised in Syracuse, N.Y. She was a 1950 graduate of Most Holy Rosary High School in Syracuse and earned her nursing degree from the St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing, also in Syracuse.

A man who shot himself in the head outside the emergency room in North Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital on Thursday left a note indicating he chose that locale because he wanted to donate his organs to medicine, according to law enforcement source. Baltimore police reported that the 29-year-old man was severely injured and later transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was in critical condition Thursday night. Officials declined to discuss other details about the note or the motivation, other than to say that homicide detectives are investigating the incident.