When Dr. Kohler rushed into the trauma bay and was told I had abdominal pain, low blood pressure, pallor, and had been in and out of consciousness, he knew that a massive abdominal hemorrhage was one of the few things that checked all those boxes. Maybe I had a bleeding ulcer, maybe I had a ruptured aorta, maybe I had a tumor that had finally eaten through an artery wall, but the first thing they had to do was find the bleed and stop it. If I’d been shot or stabbed, they would have known where to start looking, but internal hemorrhage can be almost anywhere, which makes it particularly deadly.
