I Love My Job!!
How many people can say that? I love my job! Sure, there are days when I love it a little less than others, but for the most part it's pretty cool.
I'd like to say that I chose being a firefighter/paramedic because I want to help people, maybe give a little back to society. Nah.. that's not it at all. I like finding people in predicaments that they've put themselves in, mostly through stupidity. I used to catch a show on tv every once and a while, it was one of those real "life in the ER" type shows. One of the ER docs said it best when he was asked how he deals with the stuff he sees every day. He said that 99% of the people he treats are there because they've done it to themselves. Either by drinking and jumping on a motorcycle, drug deals gone bad, or just plain being stupid. They've somehow, someway put themselves in a bad way.
I know I've talked about how most days are the same over and over. Picking up the same people, for the same reasons. "I'm having chest pain" How long has this been going on? "A couple of weeks, but it's 3:00 in the morning and I just can't deal with it anymore". Every once and a while, we get a day where every run has just a little twist to it to make it different. Yesterday was one of those days... I 'll tell you about a few of them.
We started off with an elderly lady that called 911 because she was tachycardic, (rapid heart beat). Everyone has at some time felt their heart flutter before, most people don't call 911. Turns out this lady was a retired OR nurse and knew what she was talking about. Her rate was @ 170 bpm. She had a couple previous procedures done for this before, the last was in 1999. I talked in a previous post about "fun" drugs to give people, one of them is Adenocard. What it does is stop your heart for 6-9 seconds, and when it starts back up, hopefully it's at a normal rate. You can imagine how odd you'd feel if all the sudden your heart stops beating. We had to dose this poor lady twice, but we got her converted on the second try. Turns out, at the ER she went back into her rapid heart rate. She may end up with a pacemaker.
Next we were called out for a "trauma". Turns out that the police witnessed a crack deal going down, and had to taser the dealer to get him in custody. Our city cops can pull out the darts on their own, but these were county deputies, and they have to have a paramedic pull em. So we yanked the darts out of the guy and they stuffed him in a cruiser and took him off to jail. Tasers are awesome...
Then we were called out for an unconscious woman. We follow a protocol for treatment, and if we run across an uncon/unknown, we give them Narcan, (In case of drugs), and Dextrose, (In case of low blood sugar). It turns out that this lady was both an insulin dependent diabetic, and she had a prescription for Oxycontin, (narcotic). This is what we pieced together. Looks like this lady took Oxycontin the night before and passed out in bed, unfortunately for her, she had about 5 pillows under her head which tilted her head too far forward, cutting down her air supply. She laid there all night and became hypoxic, which caused her to become tachycardic. That then threw her into Congestive Heart Failure causing her lungs to fill with fluid. After we gave her the Narcan, she became more aware, but then became anxious because she couldn't breathe, (because of the CHF). We did all the right stuff for her, but before we left the hospital, they had her on knocked out and on a vent.
The best run of the day though was this one. We had a lady that was sitting in her car, watching a fist fight between an ex-husband and her boyfriend. Don't know what started the fight, but here she is watching it from her car... Oh yeah, she also had her 8 and 10 year old kids in the car with her, one of whom is the ex-husbands kid too. At some time in the fight, the ex stood up, pulled a gun, and shot. He missed the boyfriend, but hit the lady in the car right smack dab in the side of the neck. She realizes she's hit and takes off for the hospital, with her kids still in the car. She got within a mile of the hospital and hit a pick-up parked along side the road, then hit another car, and then almost hit some poor guy mowing his lawn. Both kids and the lady managed to get off with just a few bumps and bruises from the wreck, but you should have heard the phone call I had to make to the ER to let them know we were coming in with 3 patients.
"Hi, this is Medic 11 and I'm just letting you know we're coming in with 3 patients from a MVA. I have 2 children, minor injuries, blah.. blah.. blah.. Oh! and I have one female with a GSW to the neck."
"Did you say a gun shot wound to the neck? From a MVA?"
We got her into the trauma room, they wisked her off to surgery, I heard later that she'll be just fine.
She told us several times while we were on our way to the hospital "I've never been shot before" and all I could tell her was "Nope, me either". Today, only one of us can still say that.
I'd like to say that I chose being a firefighter/paramedic because I want to help people, maybe give a little back to society. Nah.. that's not it at all. I like finding people in predicaments that they've put themselves in, mostly through stupidity. I used to catch a show on tv every once and a while, it was one of those real "life in the ER" type shows. One of the ER docs said it best when he was asked how he deals with the stuff he sees every day. He said that 99% of the people he treats are there because they've done it to themselves. Either by drinking and jumping on a motorcycle, drug deals gone bad, or just plain being stupid. They've somehow, someway put themselves in a bad way.
I know I've talked about how most days are the same over and over. Picking up the same people, for the same reasons. "I'm having chest pain" How long has this been going on? "A couple of weeks, but it's 3:00 in the morning and I just can't deal with it anymore". Every once and a while, we get a day where every run has just a little twist to it to make it different. Yesterday was one of those days... I 'll tell you about a few of them.
We started off with an elderly lady that called 911 because she was tachycardic, (rapid heart beat). Everyone has at some time felt their heart flutter before, most people don't call 911. Turns out this lady was a retired OR nurse and knew what she was talking about. Her rate was @ 170 bpm. She had a couple previous procedures done for this before, the last was in 1999. I talked in a previous post about "fun" drugs to give people, one of them is Adenocard. What it does is stop your heart for 6-9 seconds, and when it starts back up, hopefully it's at a normal rate. You can imagine how odd you'd feel if all the sudden your heart stops beating. We had to dose this poor lady twice, but we got her converted on the second try. Turns out, at the ER she went back into her rapid heart rate. She may end up with a pacemaker.
Next we were called out for a "trauma". Turns out that the police witnessed a crack deal going down, and had to taser the dealer to get him in custody. Our city cops can pull out the darts on their own, but these were county deputies, and they have to have a paramedic pull em. So we yanked the darts out of the guy and they stuffed him in a cruiser and took him off to jail. Tasers are awesome...
Then we were called out for an unconscious woman. We follow a protocol for treatment, and if we run across an uncon/unknown, we give them Narcan, (In case of drugs), and Dextrose, (In case of low blood sugar). It turns out that this lady was both an insulin dependent diabetic, and she had a prescription for Oxycontin, (narcotic). This is what we pieced together. Looks like this lady took Oxycontin the night before and passed out in bed, unfortunately for her, she had about 5 pillows under her head which tilted her head too far forward, cutting down her air supply. She laid there all night and became hypoxic, which caused her to become tachycardic. That then threw her into Congestive Heart Failure causing her lungs to fill with fluid. After we gave her the Narcan, she became more aware, but then became anxious because she couldn't breathe, (because of the CHF). We did all the right stuff for her, but before we left the hospital, they had her on knocked out and on a vent.
The best run of the day though was this one. We had a lady that was sitting in her car, watching a fist fight between an ex-husband and her boyfriend. Don't know what started the fight, but here she is watching it from her car... Oh yeah, she also had her 8 and 10 year old kids in the car with her, one of whom is the ex-husbands kid too. At some time in the fight, the ex stood up, pulled a gun, and shot. He missed the boyfriend, but hit the lady in the car right smack dab in the side of the neck. She realizes she's hit and takes off for the hospital, with her kids still in the car. She got within a mile of the hospital and hit a pick-up parked along side the road, then hit another car, and then almost hit some poor guy mowing his lawn. Both kids and the lady managed to get off with just a few bumps and bruises from the wreck, but you should have heard the phone call I had to make to the ER to let them know we were coming in with 3 patients.
"Hi, this is Medic 11 and I'm just letting you know we're coming in with 3 patients from a MVA. I have 2 children, minor injuries, blah.. blah.. blah.. Oh! and I have one female with a GSW to the neck."
"Did you say a gun shot wound to the neck? From a MVA?"
We got her into the trauma room, they wisked her off to surgery, I heard later that she'll be just fine.
She told us several times while we were on our way to the hospital "I've never been shot before" and all I could tell her was "Nope, me either". Today, only one of us can still say that.
posted by Bill at 9:35 AM
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Trying again. (Damn html code!) I saw this site and it reminded me of your comment on .
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