Help me with my personal statement!

So, this is a selfish post. I finished writing my personal statement for residency and I would like some feedback. I need to turn it in within the next week or so, so any help you could give me before then would be awesome!

It was the last night of my surgical sub-internship and my team was scheduled to be on call. Although I was expected to drop off my pager and parking card in the afternoon, I wanted to stay for the full night. It was a Friday and I looked forward to witnessing at least a few more interesting trauma cases before my rotation was finished.
The day had gone by slowly for a weekend and I was sitting with the interns in the surgery lounge eating dinner and watching the Minnesota Twins game. Earlier in the day, I was able to use my limited Spanish to communicate with a patient about his abdominal pain, and by this time our attending, chief resident, and PGY2 were in the OR removing his gallbladder. The trauma pager went off and I glanced down to look at the all important number after the dash. If it was a one, you had to drop everything and run to the emergency room. A two meant that while you still needed to reach the emergency room quickly, the patient was stable enough that you didn’t need to run. It was a one. My dinner would have to wait.
I ran down the hallway towards the elevators leading to the emergency room and on my way past the OR, I met the PGY2. We had to hurry. He had heard word about this patient earlier and things didn’t look good. Although I never would wish significant injury on another person, it made me excited to learn that this promised to be one of those interesting trauma cases that I had stayed to see. I secretly wondered if there was something wrong with me for wishing that this patient would be akin to the frantic resuscitations that seemed to only be on television.
When we reached the trauma bay, the paramedics were wheeling her in and sliding her off of their stretcher. Weaving in between the numerous people in the room, I grabbed a trauma history and physical form and slid it onto a clipboard. It was my job to record all information that I could obtain about this patient. I strained to hear the paramedics as they shouted the details. Unknown female involved in a motor vehicle accident. Driver t-boned on her side of the car by a delivery truck. Prolonged extraction. Lost consciousness at the scene. Estimated age of 21. Attempts had been made to locate her family.
I turned back to the table where the residents were working diligently to obtain intravenous access. They had already cut off her lime bikini and shorts which were thrown in a heap in the corner of the room. I was taken aback by how young she appeared. Her strawberry blonde hair sticky with blood, mottled purple body, she couldn’t have been a day over 18. I got closer to the action and started to scribe. GCS of three. Pupils fixed and dilated. Open comminuted fracture of the left humerus. Positive FAST exam for blood in Morrison’s pouch. As I was writing, I could hear the beeping of the monitor start to slow. Her heart rate was dropping rapidly until it finally stopped. It all happened so quickly. My mind was telling me that the doctors on Grey’s Anatomy would’ve tried to shock her heart at this point, but we all knew that this was simply television magic because you can’t shock asystole. Before I knew it, the chief resident of the emergency department had cracked her chest open. Blood gushed onto the floor. Each time he forcefully pumped her heart, more blood added to the growing puddle. Within seconds, her heart was beating on its own again. We got in touch with our attending upstairs and told him that we were on our way up. There wasn’t much time to stop her from bleeding to death.
The PGY2 firmly held a cross-clamp on her descending aorta as we took the elevators to the fourth floor and wheeled our still unnamed patient to the OR. We helped slide her onto the bed and the nurses took over in preparing her for surgery while the PGY2 still compressed the aorta to attempt to direct blood flow to her vital organs. The attending and chief resident had finished the lap chole just as we had arrived and they joined me in scrubbing. After putting on my gown and gloves, I grabbed the cross-clamp from my resident so that he could leave the room to scrub. This patient was prepped and draped faster than any other patient that I had seen and we were ready.
A midline incision was made in her abdomen and once the peritoneum was entered we all expected to see a pool of blood. There was nothing. No fluid anywhere. I stood on my tiptoes to see for myself. How could that be? Her FAST exam was positive and her abdomen was distended. They fished around to check for bleeding. The spleen was intact. No liver lacerations. Once we were satisfied that her abdomen was benign, attention was drawn to her thoracic cavity.
With every beat of her heart, more blood was being forced onto the floor. She was still exsanguinating. The chief and PGY2 focused on closing her abdomen while the attending slid his hand through the thoracotomy incision in attempt to identify her source of bleeding. I asked him to check and see if I still had the clamp in the proper position because I was too nervous to put my hand in uncharted territories and check for myself. I watched in awe, and with a hint of jealousy, as my attending ran his fingers along her aorta and heart. He had pushed her lung up slightly and I noticed an extensive laceration of her lower lobe that seemed to be contributing to her bleeding. Since he could feel no other lesions, it was presumed that this was the source of the enlarging puddle on the floor and it was decided to place a chest tube, close her up, and hope for the best. He asked for a knife and placed it in my hand. Really? You wanted me to put in the chest tube? Nobody had ever let me do that before. I reached for the knife with hesitancy and listened closely as he told me where to place the incision. With surprisingly stable hands, I used the scalpel to nick her skin. Then I used a Kelly to spread the muscle between her ribs. I had no idea how difficult it would actually be to enter her thoracic cavity. After much effort, I finally succeeded and he handed me the chest tube so that I could pull it through the incision.
This whole time that we were so focused on our unknown female’s thorax and abdomen, the neurosurgeons were on the other side of the table attempting to assess her head injuries. Although we weren’t able to take her to the CT scanner before this point, we all had strong suspicions at this point that her head injury was the most significant injury that she had sustained. Just as I was stitching the chest tube into place, the neurosurgery attending peaked his head above the drape and announced that he had inserted a ventriculostomy. All that was returning was frank blood. She was still fixed and dilated. Things didn’t look good.
Although the surgical attending took a step back from the table, I wasn’t one to be defeated. I continued to stitch as if my placement of the chest tube would save this poor girl’s life. I was extremely focused on my work, but I could faintly hear the attendings discussing if we were ready to give up. The neurosurgery attending was convinced that she had herniated. My surgery attending was convinced that she had lost too much blood and although the anesthesia team was running blood and saline wide open, he just didn’t think it would be enough. Almost on cue, her heart started to slow again. Her blood pressure continued to drop. Everyone stepped back from the table and although all I could think of was how much I wanted to stick my hand in her chest and pump her heart for her again, I took cue from the others and stepped back as well. That was it. We took a few seconds convincing one another that we did all we could. Right? What else was there to do? The time of death was called and we slowly removed the drape. Her chest was closed and we wrapped her mangled arm in an ace wrap as last efforts at restoring some of her dignity. We all stood in the operating room a little bit longer without saying a word. Still covered in our blood-soaked gowns, we weren’t ready to disrobe and admit that we were done. Finally, one by one the gowns came off and were thrown into the trash. The residents helped the nurses slide her into a body bag while I stood back and watched. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to be a part of that piece of the case.
As we walked out of the room, someone told us that her family was in the waiting room. I was invited to accompany the attending and chief resident as they informed the family of the passing of one of their members. As we entered the waiting room, five adults eagerly glanced up at us waiting for good news as they continued to wipe the tears from their cheeks. I made a point of keeping a close eye on how the attending and chief resident acted. I had never been in this situation before and didn’t really know how to handle myself. Was I allowed to cry with them? Was it okay if I wanted to hug them? Although these were the thoughts running through my mind, I had to follow the cues of my superiors to see what was acceptable. It was at this point that we heard the real story.
The whole family had been driving to the cabin for the weekend. The boys were in the front car and the girls were in the back car. The mom had let the daughter drive. As they set off down the road, the boys drove over a hill and kept their eye on the rearview mirror to make sure that the girls were still following. They couldn’t see them but figured that the girls had just gotten slowed down by a traffic light. After a minute had passed and the girls still had not appeared, the boys turned their car around and happened upon the accident. The father told us that the car was barely recognizable. They had all been there, including the sisters who had been able to exit the car on their own, as the mother and daughter were extracted from the car.
The attending seemed somewhat comforted by the fact that they were aware of how serious the injuries had been. But as I looked into their eyes, it was clear that they still held out hope that she would be fine and it would only be a matter of minutes before we took them to the PACU to see her. The hospital course was shared with the family, from her heart stopping and the ER thoracotomy to the lack of abdominal injury to the discovery of blood within her brain. It was finally announced that we had done all that we could but unfortunately she couldn’t overcome her injuries. The hope that the family so dearly held had been shattered. They seemed to be collectively holding their breath until word that she was okay, but with hearing of her passing, they all burst into tears. I wanted to cry. I needed to cry. But I looked at the attending and chief who were dry-eyed. I tried my best to hold it in, but a few tears rolled down my cheeks. The family was informed that once the nurses had finished cleaning her up, the family would be escorted to see her if they desired. Once again, we expressed that we were sorry, and we got up and exited the room. Although probably inappropriate, I thanked the attending for allowing me to experience a part of medicine that medical students rarely had the opportunity to see. I needed to let him know that I was glad that I he treated me as part of the team from start to finish. He headed back to his call room and I went back to the lounge to finish my cold dinner.
I sat down on the couch and it hit me. I wouldn’t be happy in any other field. I always knew that I wanted to be a surgeon, but it seemed that everyone who knew my choice tried to discourage me. Why would you put yourself through that residency? Isn’t there anything else you would enjoy? Don’t you want to have a family? I had listened to their concerns and started to doubt my desire to enter the field of surgery until that Friday night. This unknown female had impacted me in such a way that I knew that my place was in the operating room. I had shown myself that I could work with a team, under direction, and pay attention to details. I liked being able to search for a problem that could potentially be fixed within hours. Even though we couldn’t save this girl, I couldn’t help but think of what it would’ve felt like if the outcome were different. What if we could’ve gone into that waiting room and told the family that she had pulled through? How would it feel to talk to someone who was on the brink of death and who was now alive because of your actions? I can’t wait to figure it out.