EMS Week

Happy EMS Week!

Just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who is working in EMS. Your hard work does not go unnoticed. Thank you for doing what you do - I know from doing it myself, that it's not always easy. You are very much appreciated!

I recently celebrated my birthday. And with it came one of the worst days of work yet. Go figure! Hahah.

If only I could just stop thinking, and stop doubting myself and everything I did, I might get some sleep this week.

Stuck

Had a call this week. It was quite exciting. Though tragic in the end.

I don't feel like I can write about it on here. But I can't get the picture out of my mind.

Anyone else have this problem with some calls?

Question for all you medics out there... if you knew you were going to be working a shift with a brand new EMT, what would you want them to know? If said EMT asked you to show them how to spike a bag and set up the monitor, would you willingly show them or expect them to already know?

Dinner Time

Had another code this week. The man was in his late fifties. It happened suddenly at the dinner table as he sat with his wife and two children. Driving away lights and sirens blaring I could still see his family standing in the yard. The two young girls cried while the mother stood motionless, unaware of the cop talking to her.

As we pulled into the ED the patient had a pulse. Thready, but it was there.

A couple hours later we were back in the ED for a discharge. The nurse informed us that the man had not made it.

It wasn't a messy call. The house was well kept. The chicken that they had been eating smelled really good. I couldn't stop thinking about how hungry I was. After the call my partner and I got chinese food.

Is that weird?

Yeah. Sorry for the lack of posting. Been doing a lot of overtime on top of some schedule changes. I don't like the overnights. But they do give me a lot more 911s.

Stop time

I had a 96 year old patient today tell me that she prayed I would drop dead. And die a horrible death. Because we were taking her back home. Haha.

Poor thing had such severe dementia. She was strong, though. Seriously. She just about gave my partner a black eye, too, as we transported her from the hospital back to the nursing home.

When we finally arrived at her room, there were pictures all over the wall of her and her husband on their wedding day. She was so young. So beautiful, and full of life. Now she's 96, widowed, and unable to trust anyone. She's convinced that everyone is trying to drug her and steal her money and her dentures. She has one book that she takes with her everywhere but can't see the words to read it anymore.

I don't want to get old.

Break!

So, I've got 4 days off and no idea what to do with all that time. :)

My First.

It's a little past 3am when the tones go off. I know its for us, since we're the only crew still at base. It came over as a sick call, priority 1 hot. Off we go. Okay, I can do this. Should be simple enough, right? I hope.

We find the address in the map book, figure out where we're headed, and off we go. Less than a minute goes by when dispatch comes over the radio to tell us that our sick call has turned into a cardiac arrest. What if we have to use the AED? One pad on the upper right chest area... Remember to connect the electrodes... What if the patient has a hairy chest and I have to use that little razor? What does it look like when someone actually gets shocked? Now I'm getting nervous!

We arrive in less than 4 minutes. Fire is already on scene. (Can I just ask... how in the world does fire always beat us to the scene?!?) I grab the AED, jump kit, suction and oxygen bag as my partner gets the stretcher. I finally look up at the house to notice there are about 8 steps leading to the front door. Okay, stretcher is staying outside. At least it's not raining.

As soon as the door opens I hear... "Analyzing rhythm. Stand clear." Oh dear.

There is a narrow flight of stairs leading to an already over-crowded bedroom. My mind is already trying to figure out how we're going to get this patient out. The fact that there was a stair lift that cut the stairway in half was going to make things harder.

"No shock advised. Begin CPR." Oh dear.

By this time I have made it to the bedroom to find a ghostly pale woman lying in bed. As the nearby firefighter gave his first compression, dark red (almost brown) gritty looking fluid came spewing out of her mouth.

"Let's get her off the bed." My first words! The 2 other fire guys rushed over and helped move her limp body to the floor. (Why is it that dead weight really does feel heavier??)

Out of nowhere a medic showed up. As soon as he got a feel for what was going on, he started calling the shots.

"I need suction. I can't see a thing." The patient had a massive upper GI bleed. I had not experienced the sight or smell of that before. It wasn't pleasant. My partner took over compressions from the firefighter.

We're gonna need a backboard... Got it. As the patient is being loaded onto the board and the medic tries to intubate her, I talk to the husband and get as much information as I can.

I gotta say, whenever fire is on scene there's not much left for us EMS folk to do. It's like they're all so eager to do something, get some hands on, that they jump at the opportunity. Even if its holding c-spine, doing compressions or lifting and carrying. Thank you. :)

The husband of 38 years told me that just ten minutes ago he was talking to his wife. She had been sick all day, vomiting. Vomiting blood. "We thought it was the flu."

The patient had MS for the past 6 years, and rarely got out of the house, let alone her bed. She was all there in her mind, her body just wouldn't cooperate. She loved cats. She had five of them. There were feces and fur caked onto the bed posts.

"I should have called earlier. But we didn't want to be a bother. We just thought it was the flu."

Somehow fire managed to maneuver the patient down the stairs around the corner and out the door. My partner yelled for me to grab our equipment. So I did. I get back and they're in the ambulance. "Suction!" I'm on it.

The stuff coming out of the patient's mouth looked like coffee grounds and blood. The medic still couldn't get anything other than an OPA in. He tried to start a line, but that was unsuccessful as well.

As I head up front I find the husband sitting in the passengers seat. The window is down and there is a firefighter standing beside the door. Both are silent. As I get in I can feel the ambulance rock ever so slightly with each compression. I almost feel bad breaking the silence to talk to dispatch and let them know where we're headed.

After what seemed like eternity of me sitting in the drivers seat, just itching to be in the back doing compressions and suctioning, the medic finally says that he's ready to go.

"Get me there yesterday and go easy on the bumps." I had yet to drive lights and sirens with a patient in the back. I know every bump we feel up front is exagerated many times over in the back, so I'm not quite sure how to drive fast and yet make it a "smooth" ride. (My driver training consisted of parallel parking a 12 passenger van, driving it around some cones, and backing it into a parking space... haha)

I thought about trying to make conversation with the husband, but nothing seemed important enough to talk about at that point.

At the hospital fire practically had the doors open and the patient out before I even put the ambulance in park. I asked my partner if she needed me to take over compressions but she declined as she hopped onto the side rail of the stretcher and rode it in. Hmm, that looks fun. Though knowing me I'd hurt myself. ;)

I gave my report to the doctor as fire moved the patient onto the bed. Four minutes later he called it. Everyone stopped what they were doing. The husband was just standing by the door. No expression on his face.

As I was walking back to the rig the lady's husband came up to me.

"I should have called earlier. I was just talking with her ten minutes before you showed up... We thought it was the flu. We didn't want to be a bother."

Books.

Over-worked and under-paid.

Tomorrow I do my first overnight. Which happens to be a double as well. It would have been a triple but thankfully I got someone to trade off one of my shifts. I haven't purposefully pulled an all-nighter since sophomore year of college. Ick!!

Today we had a sweet little old lady of 93 years with severe dementia and a shattered pelvis.

The lady's husband (of 67 years) decided that the only way to get his wife from point a to point b was to pick her up by her shirt collar and drag her. During the process he dropped her a few times. Needless to say, that didn't work out in her favor.

When the husband arrived at the hospital behind the ambulance, he proceeded to drive around the parking lot. When he finally made it inside and we asked what he was doing, he stated that he was "driving around trying to figure out where he parked his car." He later forgot why he was even at the hospital.

Oh, and then I had my first ETOH patient. That was fun. :-)

And finally... I am in need of a good book to read. Any suggestions? All are welcome.

Stay safe out there!

Well, that was interesting.

The address for the call came over the speaker at base. Being the new kid, I had no idea what was going on when everyone started laughing and telling me to have fun. Clueless, I drove to scene priority 1 hot. Fire is already there, so my partner and I join them in the tiny upstairs apartment. As I make my way to the back room I walk in to find a 300lb Hispanic female lying on the plush carpeted floor. With a large, and very bright orange mohawk. Okay.

I knelt down to my patient and asked her name. When she said "Matthew Henry Steven James" in a small squeaky voice, a smile nearly escaped me. Matthew's vitals were stable. He stated that he was walking without his braces and tripped on his big feet. He stumbled to the ground, and now had ten out of ten pain in his back, legs, neck and buttocks.

So, of course, we collared and back boarded Matthew - who had no trouble adjusting himself once we had him on the board. Meanwhile, Matthews partner watched from the doorway. Matthew's partner was a tall and skinny Caucasian male with a red beard and blond hair longer than my own. Matthew's partner told me that his name was Suzie. With a "z." And a cane. Because one leg was .25 inches longer than the other.

So, we've got a Hispanic female, 21 years old, who is in the process of becoming a man. With an orange mohawk. Who is on disability for "chronic finger pain, flat feet" (for which she has braces), among countless other things. And then we have Matthew's partner, Suzie. Who is in the beginning stages of her sex reassignment surgery as well. And who, or should I say what, is paying for these surgeries? Hmmm.....

As we're in the back of the rig on the way to the hospital Matthew informs me that he is having trouble staying awake and that his pain is getting severely worse. As he is telling me this he is trying to roll onto his side so he can get out his wallet. He even attempts to undo the straps on his head so he can see out the window. I go to patch into the ED and he somehow manages to pull a cell phone out of his bra and start texting.

There's a group of nurses and docs waiting for us as we roll him into the ED. As we walked by I could hear them laughing and talking about their past expereinces with my patient, who was too busy talking on his cell phone to notice. Meanwhile I'm fumbling as I give my report to the RN, trying to figure out whether I should call my patient a he, as that was what he preferred, or a she, which was what was written on her paperwork.


Uhm... Seriously?

What do you talk about?

We go to pick up our first patient of the day. Being discharged from the local hospital after a little fall earlier this morning. Ended up with a fractured wrist, but nothing that won't heal. We get all our paperwork, look it over, ask a bunch of questions, and off we go. The patient was very insistent that her husband and son were somewhere in the hospital and we couldn't leave without them. Then her focus turned to locating her purse that she swore she brought with her. Five minutes later the only thing she could think about was where she put her lipstick. As we're driving she keeps asking us to pull over and turn around because she wants to go to her sister's house because that's where she lives. It was an interesting drive. Well, we arrive at the nursing home, bring her to her floor, and get her settled in her bed. It was quite the ordeal. Then on our way out the LPN decides to say, "You do know that she is a droplet risk, right?" Uhm... no. No, we did not know that. The hospital did not divulge that information to us, as apparently it was too early in the morning for them and they didn't obtain all the paperwork they needed when she came in to begin with. TB... E. Coli in the sputum... Anyone?


The last patient I had today was great. We walk in to pick her up and she tells us that it was about time we showed up since she'd been waiting three hours. I look at my partner, who happens to be another newer kid, and I can see the brief look of panic on his face. Until he looks back at our patient to find her laughing. She kept coming up with witty remarks, and was just a hoot. As we're pulling into the driveway at our destination I ask her about her Christmas and New Years. She immediately started crying. It was like as soon as the words escaped my lips the tears started flowing.

I'm never quite sure what to talk about with patients. I know that families and holidays can be touchy subjects for people. But you never know how they'll react, so do you just avoid them altogether?

What do you talk about with your patients?

In Remembrance

A retired firefighter with 27 dedicated years of service passed away today at 60 years of age. He died peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones. He was a committed friend, loving father, and devoted husband. Surviving him are his two children, one grandchild, his wife, mother, and sister.

We all know that death is inevitable. But that doesn't make it any easier.



We'll miss you.