People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by Dr. Mauricio Heilbron, a Long Beach-born-and-raised  general, trauma, vascular and aesthetic surgeon who practices in Long Beach and Los Alamitos, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

I love fireworks.

I love the brilliant colors, that delayed sonic “thump” you feel in your chest, the collective oooooh’s and aaaaahhh’s from the crowd, our necks craned up toward the heavens.

I love when they are synchronized with music, like they are at Dodger games and Disneyland. For some reason that makes the whole experience more magical…more communal.

I’m not so fond of street fireworks.

They tend to be random. A sudden pop here. The screech of a whistle there.

No satisfying thump. No rousing music.

Every once in a while, there’s one pop that is significantly louder than the others, causing anxiety and concern in that, perhaps, someone’s lawn or roof will shortly be on fire.

Because of their intermittent nature, I spend an inordinate amount of time and energy sitting waiting for the “last one.”

You know…as in “was that the last one of the evening?”

It’s unsettling.

As a trauma surgeon, I’ve been on call during the July 4th holidays a few times over the years, and as such, I’ve seen some things related to those particular type of fireworks…and none of them good.

First of all, that intermittent popping sound, easily heard from the call room at my hospital, is similar (at least in my head) to gunfire.

So there’s THAT.

Second, there’s usually a small parade of minor injuries…usually burn patients that saunter into the ER for treatment, but they’re usually not of the severity where they need to notify a trauma surgeon.

Then…usually about once or twice a night…someone rolls in where they DO need someone like me.

And given my “set of skills”…as a general, trauma and vascular surgeon…if you NEED me, it’s not going to be good.

At all.

Body parts are usually lacerated or missing.

A case that’s impossible to forget: a man holding a firecracker arrived with all five fingers blown off. When his reconstructions were done, he was left with a thick, fleshy spatula, that flexed at the wrist.

So yeah, you could say I have a love/hate relationship with fireworks.

A widely quoted study from the Consumer Product Safety Commission analyzed all the fireworks-related injuries in the US for the year 2016.

To their best estimate, there were 11,000 injuries related to fireworks; surprisingly 32 percent were not in any way related to the July 4 holidays, which the study designated as the time period two weeks before and two weeks after.

This number of injuries is apparently about the same as it’s been for the last 15 years. No trend up or down.

Only four deaths total.

Is four deaths “good,” like “it could have been so much more than that”?

Or is it “bad,” like “four people DIED just trying to entertain their kids”?

This is the hard part of trying to interpret medical data sometimes.

Only 7 percent of the cases required hospital admission. But that’s still one large number.

Thirty-one percent of the injuries were in kids younger than 15 years old.

Burns were the most common injuries, and it was the most common type of injury to every part of the body (hands, fingers, legs, chest, face) except the eyes.

Eyes were injured 9 percent of the time, and those were mostly lacerations and “foreign bodies” stuck in the eyeball.

(Just typing that is making my eyes blink reflexively and water uncontrollably.)

Finally, the commission said “most injuries were associated with misuse or malfunctions of fireworks,” which seems somewhat obvious.

I had to laugh when they clarified that under their definition of “misuse” was:

“Placing and lighting fireworks inside one’s body part…”

In all likelihood, what you are thinking about right now while reading that sentence probably happened.

More than once.

So the takeaway from this, is, if you choose to purchase and enjoy fireworks for home use, please refrain from placing them inside you and then setting them off.

Trust me…you’ll thank me later.