Score one for the good guys!

Well, my past 2 duty days have been pretty boring for the most part except for 2 runs. Two duty days ago, we were called out to a woman with difficulty breathing at 3:30 in the morning. Of course my first reaction is that this is another stupid run... I mean, who is up at 3:30 in the morning to even know they have problems breathing? It's usually something like "I've been short of breath since last Tuesday and now, (after drinking those 3 40 oz beers), I just can't take it any more". We get to the house and here is this woman, in respiratory distress. OK, so maybe she is having problems, but she's a dialysis patient that hasn't been in 5 days. She's full of fluids and now can't breathe. We get her to the medic and the first thing she asks for is a bag valve mask. My partner and I look at each other and say "Ut oh..". A bag valve mask is one of those things that you see being used on people to help them breathe.. If she's had one used on her before, she goes downhill fast. We give her a nebulized breathing treatment, begin to get her set to nasally intubate her and boom, she arrests on us. We work her all the way to the ER, do all the things that we're supposed to do.. Evidently even did them right. By the time we left the hospital she was back, on a ventilator but back. Good prognosis and everything.

Early this morning we were called out to an unconscious person. On the way, dispatch informed us that the patient was elderly, recently discharged from the hospital, and not breathing. Sure enough, when we arrive we have an old guy in full arrest found by his son in a recliner. Evidently the guy likes to get up early and watch the news. The son heard a moan, went out to check on his dad and found him dead. We got the guy to the floor and began our voodoo. Normally, on a run like this, we do all of our resuscitative stuff. Go thru one or two rounds of drugs and with no response, call a field termination. Unlike on TV, it's rare to find someone dead and get them back. But low and behold, we got a pulse on the guy. By the time he made it to the hospital, he had a good perfusing heart rhythm and a good blood pressure. Looks like he'll live to "wake up dead" another day.