Just Another Typical Day

A day like any other..

2007-07-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

Sad to say, nothing exciting the past few duty days. Stupidity is the norm. We did just go out on a "detail" to pick a poor older lady up off the floor and put her back in a recliner. We get those calls every once and a while, people get down on the floor from a fall, or just slid out of their chair. She wasn't hurt, just couldn't get up. She's a regular, we probably go out to pick her up once a month or so. Odd thing is she's always baby sitting for her grand kids that range in age from 1 year to six. We decided we're not too sure who's baby sitting who. Luckily the older kid knows how to dial 911.

We have several older regulars that either call us when they need help up, or when they're sick, need meds, ect... Some I'm sure are quite capable of living on their own, but some should be in a home if nothing else for their own safety. We just had a guy last day that calls frequently. He's late 60's, weights at least 350, looks like Santa Clause after a 3 week bender. I guess normally he is able to drive, witch is scary on its own. When he calls, it's usually trouble breathing, (COPD), and he's out of his meds. It's always the same story, that his Dr has somehow messed up getting his prescription to the drug store. Anyway, the sad thing about this guy is the way he lives. His house is filthy inside, usually old food containers and leftover food laying all around the kitchen or the chair he sits on in the living room. His clothes look like he's had them on since the last time we were at his house. He has a colostomy bag, that is always leaking. He urinates in his chair/clothes. Without getting too gross, he sits in the same chair all day, and spits. Always the same direction, at the same wall, to the point that the carpet and wall in that one area are covered with phlegm. Every time one of our units goes out to pick him up, they file a Social Services evaluation form on him. The hospital also follows up with a Social Services form. I got a call from the Social Services director from the hospital that we took him to last day, I think because she didn't want us to think they weren't trying. So far, they say he's alert and oriented, he chooses to live the lifestyle that he lives in, doesn't want any type of outside help, and their hands are tied. Just because we feel he's a danger to himself because of the filth he lives in, or that his mental status is questionable because of how he lives, is no reason to intervene . Legally there's nothing they can do. He's not the first guy we've seen where that's the case, nor will he be the last I'm sure. I'm sure that in his mind, if he chose some sort of outside help, it would be the beginning of the end of his independence. So, the cycle goes on... we'll keep picking him up until one day, they'll find him stuck to his chair, dead.

Crazy Never Sleeps

2007-07-06T19:31:00.000-04:00

So Mark, my partner, and I are driving back to the station at 2 in the morning. We had just left the hospital after taking in the city's latest shooting victim. We pull up to a stop light and there's a 30's year old guy standing on the corner. He starts waving us through the intersection, telling us to go ahead and drive through, even though the lights red. We tell him we'll go as soon as the light turns green, and he goes into a huge rant about how then it'll be too late because he's waiting on the corner for the "beings" to pick him up and they won't come to get him if we're there.
As we pull away, I look at Mark and say something about how odd it is that someone like that able to be roaming around the streets at 2 in the morning... He looks at me and says "Hey, crazy never sleeps"
When I write my memoirs, that's going to be the title.

So our latest shooting victim was a 19 y/o boy. Shot thru the upper left arm and into his chest, right in the arm pit. Even though there were powder burns around the wound, he says he didn't ever see who shot him.
He's stable, so we get IV's in him and head to the hospital. Once in the trauma room, they do all their x-rays and stuff and find the bullet still lodged in his lung. The area of your chest where your lungs are is surrounded by a "sack" for lack of a better term, and if outside ait is introduced, or your lungs bleed, blood and air build up in this space and can cause the lung to deflate. Since he'd been shot, he had both blood and air built up and the trauma Dr decided to place a chest tube. A chest tube is about as big around as your thumb, goes into your chest about nipple height in your side, and hurts like no other.

2007-06-20T06:13:00.000-04:00

I'm back after a few days off...
The day started a little exciting. Our medic was called to stage at @ 6:50 am for a multi-jurisdictional drug task force to serve a warrant on a house that was known to contain drugs, dogs and guns. They also said that there was a 90+ year old grandmother that lived with the guy and they were a little worried about her. Thankfully, nothing happened and we were released soon after they stormed the house.
Then a few minor auto accidents...
A few minor medical runs...
Then a call for an overdose. It said on our computer that a female had taken some pills. We got to the house and walked inside to find our patient laying on the couch, crying softly.
"What did you take?"
"I don't know, stuff in the medicine cabinet"
As we walked in I noticed a cute little girl standing in the doorway leading to another room. She's maybe 2 1/2. As we're talking to our patient I glance around and see a bag with a baby bottle in a pocket on the side. Then it hit me...
"You have a baby in here?"
"Yes"
She also has a 8 month old baby in the next room.
So we find the prescription bottles that she had taken the medicine from, @ 20 pills total she told us. As we stand her up to help her to the medic, she was complaining about her stomach hurting. I glance down to her abdomen and notice that it is unusually distended.
"Are you pregnant?"
"Yes, 6 months"
"How old are you?"
"19"
She said that she was tired of taking care of the kids by herself, so she wanted to kill herself.
If that was the case, why did she call someone after she took the pills?
Drama.....
I hope she gets help. I hope that she didn't hurt the baby she's carrying. I hope she learns what causes pregnancy.

On a lighter note... today, 6/20/07, is my 20th wedding anniversary. My wife doesn't know yet but I sent her 40 roses, 20 red and 20 yellow. The note says "20 yellow roses for 20 years of being my friend, 20 red roses for 20 years of being my wife". She'll get it at work in front of all the girls she works with. The flowers will make it ok that this morning, on my anniversary, I'm playing golf.

It is now officially summer....

2007-05-26T13:26:00.000-04:00

My captain says that it's not officially summer until you see the first girl in a tank top, barefoot, drunk, with a baby on her hip on a run... It's now summer.

We were pounded Wednesday. 18 runs in 24 hours. If you figure a minimum of 1 hour per run, that doesn't leave a lot of time. Of those 18 runs, 3 were actual "I need a medic" runs. The other 15 were things that most people would handle different.

Ass whippings were being handed out one after another, and I'd guess at least 6 or 7 of our runs were assaults of some kind. One guys "old lady" stabbed him with a broken beer bottle. He had a few scrapes and a couple punctures but nothing serious. It was hot, he'd been drinking, she'd been drinking and the next thing you know she's chasing him around with a broken beer bottle. I'm sure you've all seen it before in your neighborhoods. Same ole story. The last thing he told me as we were pulling into the hospital parking lot was "But you know, I still love the bitch".
Another guy was in a bar and "for no reason at all", some guy sucker punched him in the mouth. Split his upper lip clean up to his nose. Now this guy easily stood 6', and probably weighed 220. He wanted me to tell the police that he fell off his bike. That way he could go back to the bar and "take care of business". I told him that from the looks of him, he may want to keep away from that other fella cause I didn't want to pick him up for another ride to the hospital again. I wasn't too keen about doing it this time... What ever happened to the day when you took your ass whipping like a man and just went home afterward and put a bag of frozen vegetables on it? All he could say was he didn't have a bag of frozen vegetables.

My first run of the day was an actual 911 run. A poor little old lady was having trouble breathing. You cold hear her gurgling when she'd breathe from the front door. This is usually CHF, (congestive heart failure). Your heart doesn't pump well and fluid begins to back up into the lungs. It's almost like a slow drowning. By the time you can hear audible gurgling, they need to get to the hospital. These poor people are tired from trying so hard to breathe, it puts stress on their heart. I've actually had people ask me to put a tube down their nose to help them breathe. Nasotracheal intubation is not fun for the patient at all. First, if they've had it done to them before, you know that they are prone to needing it again. Second, if they've been through it before, and are asking for it again, you know they're in trouble.
In her case, we gave her some drugs, lots of O2, and got her to the hospital before she needed to be intubated.

My second actual emergency run was on a guy that was at work and co-workers called a medic for him because he was acting lethargic and confused. He had a history of diabetes, and had eaten lunch but not taken his insulin yet for the day. We tested his blood sugar and it was 356 which is high, but not high enough to make someone act strange. (Normal is 80 - 120). He could stand, walk, acted a little dizzy on his feet. He understood questions, but when it came to answering questions he had problems. You could tell that he understood the question, but couldn't form the words to answer. We ran him to the ER, and gave the ER doctor the story. Just as we got him into their bed, he had a huge seizure. For an epileptic, a seizure is like hitting the re-boot button on your computer. Their brain shuts down, then slowly comes back "on line". That's why they're so groggy after. This guy was seizing, but would try to look at you if you talked to him during the seizure. The only thing was that his gaze was up and to the right. He was having a massive bleed in the right side of his brain. I haven't heard yet what his outcome is. That run kind of bothered me because during the whole run, he didn't care about taking anything with him except for a stack of about 30 envelopes. They were invitations for his daughters graduation and he was supposed to mail them out.

My third true emergency of the day was at 1 am. It was a guy that while riding his bicycle was hit from behind by a speeding car. A witness said that the guy and his bike were both knocked thru the air and into the ditch. He estimated the cars speed at about 45. The car never stopped. My patient was pretty lucky. I think that he got off with just a broken collar bone and leg. Lots of gravel rash on his face and body. The biggest obstacle on the run was that my patient was a deaf mute. It's hard to find out what hurts a person when they can't talk. I'll give the guy some credit, if it were me and I'd just been hit by a car and I wasn't able to convey to my caregivers what hurts, I'd probably be a basket case. He was calm, and of course quiet, throughout the whole run.

Beef. It's what's for dinner.

2007-05-05T16:00:00.000-04:00

Marinated London Broil
Buttered Corn
Twice Baked Potatoes
Salad
Bread

*Sigh*
We rotate cooking, driving and other assorted duties here at the station monthly. This'll be my month to cook. The one benefit to cooking is you usually fix what you like. The hardest part to cooking for a station full of firefighters is trying to decide what to fix. Sure, everyone has their specialties, but you can only spring those once a rotation or they soon become not-so-special. Our crew has some great cooks on it, and some not so great ones.
Mark is our out of the box guy. "Cook and serve" means easy-to-make for him. One of the funniest meals I ever had at the firehouse was the day he had pork loin slices, white rice and corn. What made it funny was the look on the guys faces when they each took a bite of corn. I knew what it was, so it didn't take me by suprise, but Mark had never heard of hominy. He just looked at the label on the can and figured it was "king size" corn. So he just fixed it like a can of corn...
Sean is a good cook, he likes to put some effort into his meals. He makes an awesome lasagna.
Roscoe likes to try new things, some from recipies, some off the top of his head. He's the type that'll throw chicken breasts, mushrooms, cheese, wine and rice in a skillet and throw it in the oven to cook. Some of his creations are good, some are better.
Rick's menu consists of just a few things. Taco salad, lunch meat, hamburgers and pizza pie. If he gets a wild hair and tries something different, well, lets just say you're really pushing your luck.
I'm the meat-and-potatoes guy. My mom is an excellent cook, we didn't eat fancy things... I guess a kind of southern type cook. I cook like her, (or try to).
So... it's gonna be beef tonight for dinner.
It was simple, easy chicken salad for lunch.

2007-05-03T21:22:00.000-04:00

Dont worry, I'm not dissappearing again... Just nothing exciting. I work again Saturday, I'm sure there'll be something noteworthy then.

What? Me bitter?

2007-04-23T20:42:00.000-04:00

I've decided that after reading back on some of my posts that I could be misconstrued as a tired, crabby, burnt out medic. I just want to set the record straight. That's not the case at all. I still love my job! Some nights it gets old getting up in the middle of the night for the same old "bull shit" runs, but all in all, I still like it.

I still like mentals, you can mess with them and they don't even know it...

Nothing gets your blood pumping like a good ole trauma run...

And a few runs, where you know you've done something right, and done it well, still make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We had a 53 y/o male the other day that called because of chest pain. Now, probably 7 out of 10 chest pain runs we go on turn out to be nothing. A couple of the rest may be cardiac related, but still nothing serious. But then, every once and a while, you get on the scene and take one look at the patient and just know that this one's going down the tubes.
This guy was one of those. Pale, sweaty, clutching his chest.
Where I work, we have a system in place with the local hospitals where a medic can call in and request a "Cardiac Alert". What that does is alert a cardiac team that's on stand-by at the hospital that a patient is coming in that needs to go directly to the cath lab. Now if I call the ER Dr and request a cardiac alert, but don't convince him that either it's needed or that I'm smart enough to know what I'm talking about, he'll just tell me to "come on in and we'll see you when you get here". That means that he isn't convinced that the patient is having an MI, (heart attack), or is a candidate for the cath lab.
This guy was a walking "Cardiac Alert". I called the ER Doc and told him about ST elevation in V1, V2 and V3, with reciprocal changes in Lead II and AVF, narrow QRS waves, blah, blah, blah... All stuff relating to a 12 lead EKG. Anyway, I must have convinced him, because he went ahead and called the alert.
Now what this alert also does is save time in what they call "door to cath" time. On an average, if a person comes into a hospital ER with chest pain, it takes 140 minutes to make it to a cath table. They have to run tests, do an EKG, gather the cardiac team, get a bed, so on and so forth. On average, if a patient comes in via medic with a cardiac alert called, it takes less than 100 minutes. The record in the city I work in is 12 minutes from door to cath.
This guy didn't make it there in 12 minutes, but was there quick. Turns out he had 3 blockages, had 3 stints placed, and now is doing ok. On the way to the hospital, he began saying "I don't want to die, don't let me die". It's a fact that 70% of people having a heart attack that start saying "I'm going to die" die. The ER Dr told us that we made a good call with this guy. Turns out he's the same Dr that taught my last 12 lead EKG class.
So, that was a good run. All warm and fuzzy... Guy was dying, we intervened, and now the guy is alive and well. He can call 911 at 3 am some other night...
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Well, you see... I'm having severe back pain.... It's been going on for the past 6 weeks, but I just can't stand it anymore."
"OK sir, the medics are on their way...."

Back to the reason for this post, I'm not bitter, I still love my job. I just started this blog because people I talked to, such as friends & family, couldn't believe some of the stupid things people called medics for. So, that's the kind of things I try to tell in here. No one wants to hear about the everyday stuff, just the dramatic, bloody, gory and ridiculous.

2007-04-23T20:26:00.000-04:00

Today's been slow, which is sometimes a good thing. I'm on the ladder today instead of a medic, so even if we get called out for a medic assist, we don't have to go all the way to the hospital with them. Unless it's an honest to goodness medical emergency... we haven't had one of those today. Our medic has been busy. They've been out on a couple auto accidents, a few sicks. We went with them for a lady with "severe" abdominal pain. We of course go screaming out there in 750 thousand dollars worth of equipment because she called 911, only to learn that she has had this pain for about 6 months and decided that she should probably get it checked out. Our medic has also gone out today for a splinter in a finger. Yep, that's right, a splinter in a finger.
We've had our drill for the day. We've been to the garage to have some work done to the ladder. We've done our house duties... We've even gone out and checked hydrants. It's not like we haven't been busy, just not dealing with sick people.
Tonight we fly helicopters... At least 'till the "big one" comes in.

"I'm not good with numbers"

2007-04-22T12:27:00.000-04:00

Drama, it's a killer. People have nothing better to do that sit around and stare at each other, that is until they can't stand the sight of each other anymore, then there's drama.

Picture this... it's you, your baby's momma/daddy, and 2 other screaming/baggy diapered kids. Nothing to watch on TV because you didn't pay the cable bill. You could do laundry, but nah, that would mean going from room to room picking up the piles of clothes. Oh, and I like this, "Sorry the house is a mess, we're getting ready to move". Even if you did pick up the clothes, then you'd have to pick through em to sort out the beer cans/cigarette butts/Ho Ho wrappers.

I was at this apt. the other day, at 3am, and this is what this guy decided to do. He had a seizure. There are different kinds of seizures, petite mal, grand mal... seizures that last a few seconds to seizures that can last minutes and repeat several times. That's a bad thing. During a bad seizure you don't breathe well and you become hypoxic. During a seizure you have no purposeful movement, no reflex. You could aspirate, even cause brain damage.

So this poor guy had a seizure. His poor girl friend/baby's momma/significant other, who he's been arguing with all night, calls 911 because she's so worried. And here we come to save the day.

We get there and this guy's laying in bed, unconscious. We try to get him to respond, but he's out like a light, or so he wants us/her to think. You see, like I said before, if you're truly out, you have no reflexive movements. If someone raises your hand above your face, then drops it, you'll smack yourself in the face. This guys hand fell off to the side. If you're truly out, and someone brushes your eyelashes, there's no response. This guys eyes fluttered, he can't help it, it's involuntary. We used to do sternal rubs. That's when you rub your knuckles hard on a persons sternum. Hurts like the dickens. When we didn't do a sternal rub on this guy, he suddenly became conscious again, and pissed. Another little fact about seizures is that after one, you have a post-ichtal phase. You're tired, your brain is tired, and it's probably still a little hypoxic. People tend to be aggravated at this time because you can ask them questions and they don't understand, or they do understand but they can't form answers. This guy went from 0 to 60 in no time flat.

So, needless to say, being the observant type medics we are, we quickly determined he is faking. And that's when my job gets fun.
I figure that if you call me out at 3 in the morning, for nothing, I get to have my way with you.
What's your name?
"John Doe"
Do you know where you are right now?
"Yes"
Where?
"Home"
What's the address?
"### Some DR., Apt###"
Why are you faking a seizure?
"Fu*k you, I'm not faking."
So we explained that this isn't the first time we've ever been on a seizure, we're not new medics, and we know he didn't really have a seizure. We explained about hypoxia, post-ichtal phases and such...
So why are you faking? Fighting with your girlfriend?
"Man, I'm not faking.. I have seizures sometimes."
Been seen by a Dr. for your seizures?
"Yes"
Take any meds?
"No, he said they weren't that bad..."
What's you're SS#?
Now, since he's full of new information, he's suddenly post-ichtal....
"I can't remember right now... give me a minute"
We give him a minute...
Can you tell me your SS# yet?
"Hold on, I'm not good with numbers"
So by this time, we've had enough. He doesn't need to go to the hospital, and I'm tired of being in his dirty little apartment.
Not good with numbers huh? I don't need you to add em all together. I just need your SS# for my report. My report that says that you've faked a seizure, and you're not going to the hospital.
I didn't think you were good with numbers because if you were you'd be an engineer, have a job, and not call me out here at 3 in the morning for a little drama in your boring life.
Oh, and I need you to sign this refusal form....

Boys and their toys

2007-04-17T12:14:00.000-04:00

Luckily last Saturday wasn't a busy day, because we had much better things to do. A couple of the guys at the station and I decided to order Havoc Helies...

They're stupid, simple little micro RC helicopters, and damn are they fun! We were way too busy to save lives or anything like that.

We would charge them for 30 minutes, get our 10 minutes of flight time, (that's all they fly before they need to be recharged), then fly some more. We buzzed all around the apparatus room all day. Of the 3 of us that got em, mine's the only one that's still alive. The other 2 have fried. It's kind of funny because of the 3 mine looks the worst. First thing I did was modify it, rip it's little stickers off and jam a paper clip in the nose of it to make it fly foreward faster. Of the 3, mine definitely looks the worse for wear, but hey, it's still flying and theirs isn't.

Today, (Tuesday), I'm on the medic and it probably won't be quite as slow of a day. Our first run involved a guy that was assaulted with a baseball bat on his way to work. We got him to the hospital and they asked what we had.

Us "Assault, beat with a baseball bat"

Nurse "Another one?"

We had the third person brought in this morning. Seems that a group of kids were driving around, looking for people to beat. They got 5 people in 3 towns before the police got em. I know of at least 1 of their victims that had to have surgery. Cop told me later that the sad thing is the guy we brought in was a concealed weapon permit holder, and had a gun in his car. He just couldn't make it to the glove box before passing out. Those guys don'y know how lucky they were.

Click Here

2007-04-11T21:59:00.000-04:00

Today has been a banner day, if you like rain. Although it's been busy, it's been a lot of the same old stuff.
Little old ladies fall down.
We had a patient today that had a triple by-pass on the 3rd of this month, was sent home yesterday, and called 911 today because her chest hurt. Well no shit! You just had your chest cracked open a week ago!
We also had a guy today that somehow managed to poke himself in the face with a rake. A garden rake. Not one of the big leaf rakes that can get out of control, but a garden rake... with the little short steel tines. He managed to run one of those tines thru the bridge of his nose into his sinus cavity. Luckily it missed his eye, and missed the tear drop tattoo's at the corner of his eye. Hate to see that artwork messed up. When asked about any medical history, he admitted to a previous stabbing, and a previous shooting. I've had several with one or the other, not many with both. Now he can add a "raking" to his list.
And the latest, a double overdose. Mom took 20 Ativan, son took 19 Xanax. I have no idea what the story is behind it... I can only imagine the conversation before hand. "I'll see your 19 and raise you 20!"

It's been a little while...

2007-04-04T22:44:00.000-04:00

I decided to try to resurrect my blog after a short hiatus. It's just been a break of say... almost 2 years. Not a lot has changed, lots of stupid runs, a few exciting ones, and even a couple odd balls.

We had one guy at the station that no one really cared for, and he has since retired. That makes work a lot nicer. It's amazing how one guy can change the mood of a whole engine house.

There are still the same drug overdoses, the same assaults, the same regular customers. Still shootings, stabbings and auto accidents. And still the same old "I've felt this way for about 4 or 5 days, but I just can't take it any more", even though it's now 4:30 in the morning and they've been drinking all night.

And just when I think I've seen everything... Boom! Something really off the wall happens. And that's the reason I started this blog.

But that's for another day.

Shame on me....

2005-06-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

I know, I know.. I've been bad about posting on here. No excuses really, we've had all kinds of stuff going on. Our regular goofs are still keeping us running. We've still had our stabbings, shootings and beatings. We even had a 7 story apartment building fire that went to 4 alarms. I've just been busy with other things.

Went to visit with the in-laws for a few days...
Overtime has finally picked up a little...
I'm lazy...
There's all kinds of excuses.

It's also gone from "Colder than usual" tempratures to a heat wave in a matter of 2 weeks. It's already been over 90 here, and it's barely June. I'll bet it didn't get over 90 more than 3 or 4 times all last summer. I hate hot weather.

I promise to start back on here again soon, maybe tomorrow I'll have a story. For now, I'm going to sleep.

4 and 1/2 gallons of water...

2005-05-13T21:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I was the cook.
There are some benefits to cooking...
* You get to leave for a little while. Whenever we decide who's cooking, (this usually takes a little bit of time at roll call, sitting around, shooting the shit, drinking coffee, ect...), they collect the money and it's off to the store. Our mess is $10 a person. There are 6 of us at my station, so we eat on $60 a day. That's for 2 meals, lunch and dinner. This is also a time to do an errand or two if you want. Stop back by the house. Whatever. No one really keeps track of how long you're gone. There's kind of an un-written rule of no more than 3 hours. One guy, one day, a long time ago.. took off for the store, did his shopping, and then went over to visit a girl he knew. I guess this was a common thing for him to do. Evidently his "friends" husband worked during the day. While this guy was "visiting", the girls husband pulled in the driveway. So, the guy takes off for the basement to hide. Well, 3 hours later he managed to find a phone in the basement and call his engine house to let them know he was a little "detained". He had to spill the beans when they asked him why he was whispering. He did manage to escape, un-noticed. I believe he ended up with a few days suspension with the fire dept.
* You get out of house work for the day. Every day except Sundays we have some sort of housework that has to be done. Mondays and Tuesdays are for apparatus, batteries, chassis. Mondays are also inventory, where we go over everything that is supposed to be carried on the apparatus to make sure it's there. Wednesdays are "outside" day. Mowing, trim, ect. Thursdays are tools and ladders, cleaning of, that is. Fridays are cleaning the stove, refridge, and windows. Saturdays are outside if it wasn't done earlier, brass and floors.

There are also some "pains" to cooking.
* "I don't like that" You can't please everyone. I have a Captain that won't eat pork, a firefighter that doesn't like anything green and a paramedic that breaks out if she eats tomatoes. It's taken me a long time to learn, but too bad! You pay your money, you take your chances. One thing's for sure, if I'm cooking, it's something I like.
* planning a menu. "Hmmmm, what do I fix today?" Some days, I'll ask for suggestions. Usually I'll just go to the store and see what's on sale. You'd be surprised how often pork is on sale...

Yesterday we had;
LUNCH
Meatball subs
French fries
Salad

SUPPER
Chicken and dumplings
Mashed potatoes
Roasted green beans
Biscuits
Salad

Oh, and a strawberry, cream cake

Now the reason for the title. One of the guys we work with, lets see... I'll call him Andy, he cooks just so he doesn't have to do anything else. He has 3 recipes that he uses over, and over, and over again. Usually it starts with 4 and 1/2 gallons of water, dip a chicken in it and call it soup. Or, it's 4 and 1/2 gallons of water, dip some beef in it and call it stew. Or, it's empty a plastic bag of frozen vegetables into a skillet, flash fry em and call it stir fry. That's about the extent of his meals. It wouldn't be so bad, until he sits down to eat and says something like "Mmmmm, this is good shit". My next day is Sunday. "Andy" won't be there, so I won't have to worry about eating his biscuits and gravy. He makes his gravy with 4 and 1/2 gallons of water....

Update....

2005-05-04T09:56:00.000-04:00

Turns out a friend of mine on the dept's wife is a nurse and had our patient, (the elderly guy in full arrest), as her patient. There's a new procedure that they're doing for patients that have been hypoxic if they can be treated within 3 hours of the event. They ice them down to lower their body temperature and slowly bring them back up to normal. This was tried on our guy, but doesn't appear to have helped. The guy is still on a vent, and doesn't appear to have much brain activity. The sad thing is that his sons, which both live with him in the trailer, depend on his Social Security check as income so they wont do anything else but leave him on life support.

In another twist on this run, which was on 4/22/05... My crew and I got a call at the station from one of our EMS supervisors on 4/30/05 stating that the hospital had just informed him that our full arrest guy has bacterial meningitis. They assured us that we were probably safe, because symptom's should have started within 3-4 days if we were infected. That's comforting 8 days after the fact. They said we were safe, but to come to the ER immediately for prophylactic antibiotics. So we all strolled into the hospital, were checked in, examined and given our miracle 500 mg of Cipro. There were 6 of us in there at the same time, and after all our jokes, taunts and running from room to room pushing nurse call buttons, I think they were glad to see us go. At one time, the nurse walked into the room of one of they guys just as he had his pants down to his knees "mooning" another guy across the hall. The nurse stopped, and without missing a beat, the guy looked at her and said "They told me this was going to be a suppository".

It was big news here a couple months ago about a lady that had pulled into a gas station in the middle of the night in her van, and just sat at the gas pumps. The attendant finally meandered out to see what was up, and found the lady in the middle of child birth. They played the tape on the news and the lady's screaming at the guy as he's calling 911, "I'm having my baby!!" Well, the little guy finally comes out, and instead of waiting for an ambulance, the lady looks at the guy and tells him she has to get to a hospital. Off she drives. The guy called 911 again, tells them she's taken off for the hospital and gives the dispatcher the license plate # and a description of the van. Unfortunately, he gives a wrong plate # and the van comes back as stolen. So as this lady speeds off to the hospital, the police find her, pull her over, and with guns drawn, make her step out of the van. The lady gets out, holding the baby, covered in blood, screaming about how she's just had a baby and needs to get to the hospital. The police decided that maybe she should go to the hospital, and escort her the rest of the way... Turns out the van wasn't stolen. All the news stations caught wind of this series of events and made this lady a hero. "Super Mom Gives Birth And Drives Self To Hospital". Yeah, well... the rest of the story is that the baby tested positive for cocaine and went through withdrawls after birth, the mom had warrants for forgery, drug trafficing and now is charged with child endangering. So guess what... "Super Mom" is now in jail.

I said before that some days have "themes". All but one run yesterday was for traffic accidents, and most of them were up on the highway. It was nice yesterday, but no one could drive worth a shit. One poor guy that was driving a semi loaded with half a Lowes store on it lost it going around a curve, the truck tipped over and spread his load all over the highway. As we left that accident, we came across another that had just happened. A lady had zipped out from behind a truck to pass on the right, and plowed into the rear end of a guy that was attempting to merge on to the highway. Totaled both cars, but luckily no one was hurt. She was screaming at the guy as we pulled up about how it wasn't her fault because he was "parked" in the middle of the highway. Well, she was screaming in between cell phone calls to each and everyone of her relatives. The funny part was that she was driving a rental car, because her car was in the body shop being repaired from another accident. She then told us that the witnesses who all said she was "flying" down the highway when she rear ended the guy were lying because "I don't never speed, not after all the accidents I've been in...". She was still pleading her case to the cops as we pulled away...

Score one for the good guys!

2005-04-22T08:57:00.000-04:00

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.

Nothing extraordinary

2005-04-14T13:44:00.000-04:00

Well, the past few days at work have been pretty quiet. It must be the nice weather. We did get called out on a a report of a guy, laying next to a ladder , by the road, with wires down all around him. Sounded like it had potential for a good run, but it ended up being a false alarm. Someone out there has a good imagination.

Brenda and I did get to see Alison Krauss and Union Station in concert at Taft Theater in Cincinnati. I know she's not for everyone, but damn it was a great concert.

I'm on EDO tomorrow, and we're supposed to have great weather this weekend. Maybe I'll get a chance to get the yard in order.

I Love My Job!!

2005-04-07T09:35:00.000-04:00

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.

It's all fun and games,

2005-04-04T10:06:00.000-04:00

until someone gets an eye poked out.. Isn't that what they say? I haven't seen a poked out eye yet, but we do manage to have a good time around the engine house. I've seen Backdraft and Ladder 49, and even Rescue Me on tv. Backdraft was a little over the top They'd all be dead by now running into burning buildings with no masks, turnout coats flapping in the breeze. Rescue Me was somewhat realistic in the fact that most of the stuff they talk about has probably happened in an engine house somewhere, sometime. Ladder 49 is as far as I'm concerned, pretty much dead on, except for inside the fires. Although, I understand that because it would be a pretty boring movie if they ran in a house and the screen went black because you can't see through the smoke. The scene where Joaquin Phoenix has his first fire gave me goosebumps because of the way they captured it. Scared but wanting to do everything right so bad in front of the other guys that you just tear in, all jumpy and rushing, trying to get the job done. That was an excellent scene. The other thing that the movie nailed was the practical jokes around the engine house. THAT happens constantly.

My first day at the firehouse, I was warned to always bring a couple changes in uniform. It is a common practice for somebody to be lurking on the roof with a 5 gal bucket full of water, waiting for someone to walk underneath. Let me tell you, it'll almost drop you to your knees if they hit you good.
I've seen guys hit with mashed potatoes, cake frosting and biscuits. I saw one guys roasted chicken turned the prettiest shade of blue, which wouldn't have been half as funny except he was so upset that he locked himself in the watch office to sulk for a while. I think the chicken still tasted fine...
We had a guy spend the night cutting 4x4's to length so he could jack up cars in the parking lot and set them so their tires were just off the ground. He worked all night on that one, only to be discovered at the last minute.
One guy was such a pain in the ass to everyone else, that he ended up with a dead fish stuck in the heater duct of his car. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, except he drove it home in the morning, parked it, then left for a 2 week summer vacation. He called when he got home begging for the location of the fish. His wife never rode in the car again.
It was common to tell an explorer or another firehouse visitor that spent the night with us that it was his "job" to wake up the district chief at midnight and remind him to take his medicine. The chief was pretty good natured about it, one explorer was so upset when he found out that the chief didn't take medicine that he never came back.
Plastic tumblers make a God awful sound when they're thrown into the bedroom in the middle of the night. So do china plates when they're spun on edge on a tile floor with the PA mike laying next to em. They'll spin for a long time...
Firecrackers thrown into a bathroom while you're on the toilet will literally scare the shit out of you.
There have been guys duct taped to a chair and set in the front yard under a sprinkler...
"Blue Boy" magazine subscriptions that no one signed up for, at least that's what they say.
The list goes on and on.
The only thing off limits in an engine house is our bunker gear. The guys like to play hard, but when the time comes, it's all serious. Everyone goes home at the end of the shift.

.. minding my own business...

2005-04-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Never, and I mean never just sit around or walk down the street minding your own business. Evidently there are a group of evil, nasty guys out there that hate that and will shoot you for it. I don't know how many runs I've been on when I was told that "I was just sitting there minding my own business when a guy jumped out and shot me". Last night was no exemption. There was a poor guy sitting in his own, pay by the hour, motel room "minding his own business" when two unknown guys stormed his motel room and shot him in the head. For no reason at all! Maybe they thought he'd be loaded with money so they thought he'd be an easy mark... But wait, this was in a kind'a seedy part of town. The guy didn't even have a wallet, not even a shirt on his back. The motel is a rat hole. Known drug and prostitution area... I think if I was robbing easy marks, I'd head up to the ritzy hotel @ a mile up the road. The poor guy evidently didn't have enough money to eat well because he was about 5' 10", 130 lbs, bone skinny. He did evidently have enough money for the 4o oz beers that he'd been drinking that night.

I know I write this tongue in cheek, but it does amaze me how many times I've heard this. Maybe I'm profiling, but I doubt this guy was just spending a quiet evening at home. Either he tried to short a prostitue or drug dealer. Lucky for him, they must have been trying to hit him in the brains.. I think he may have been a little short there, or they had bad aim. The bullet entered @ 1" in front of his left ear, and exited right above his right cheek bone. This dude was awake and talking when we arrived. It looked to us like the bullet passed through his sinus cavity and out the other side. He was bleeding out his mouth and nose, and at one point tried to blow his nose to get the blood out which would have been ok, except he blew blood out of the hole in the side of his head. We asked him not to do that anymore.He even complained about how rough the medic rode while going to the hospital. I told him that most people that have been shot through the head don't have a chance to complain about the ride. He quieted down some after that.

His tattoo/teeth death index was high. I'd have to say a good 8 of 10, lots of tattoo's, few teeth.

Sorry for the lag in posting, my last duty day before this one was pretty boring. Just more cold and flu sprinkled with diabetics. Prior to that I was at Disney for vacation, but hell, you knew that, you were probably there... the rest of the entire world was.

Just 2 beers....

2005-03-20T09:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was pretty uneventful, until the bars closed. A girl driving her boyfriend in a Cavalier thought they were on a highway on-ramp. Turns out they weren't, but they didn't figure that out until they hit the dead end @ 70 mph. Went into a city park via a metal gate that had been chained and padlocked shut. Luckily, neither one was hurt very bad. It was around 2:30 am, (last call in the bars). Of course, when we asked either one of them if they'd had anything to drink, we got the typical "just 2 beers" answer. You could smell the alcohol before sticking your head in the car...
Then I asked her if she had her seat belt on. "Yes, I always do" she said. I pointed out that usually the steering wheel doesn't get bent and there usually isn't a "face print" in the windshield when they have their seat belt on... "Well I thought I'd put it on..."
I know accidents are traumatic events for people, and the more traumatic they are, the less people think straight. Firefighters/medics aren't cops, we only ask questions like that to determine medical care. The police can't give a ticket because we write in our report that the patient admits to drinking or not wearing a seatbelt.

OK, enough with that rant. Now I'm on vacation until a week from tomorrow and will be out of town, so no posts for a little while.

Thanks for reading!!

"What a nice day...

2005-03-17T10:04:00.001-05:00

I think I'll spend it at the emergency room"
That has to be what people are thinking. It was sunny outside yesterday, one of the nicest days we've had for a while. I knew we'd be busy on the medic. Yesterday was diabetic/seizure day. Out of the 16 runs we had yesterday, probably half of them were diabetic related, or seizure. Our first run of the day came in @ 0710, and was both. A guy was found below an overpass, face down in the dirt, unconscious and unresponsive. You could tell that he was hypothermic and had probably been there most of the night. He was drooling, and had blood in his sputum like he'd been seizing. Got him in the medic, gave him narcan and dextrose, (that's our uncon/unresponsive protocol), and he started to come around. When we got him to the hospital, turns out the police were looking for him because they had found his car into a pole the night before, but couldn't find him. At the time we found him, his blood sugar level was 15, normal is 80-120. It appears that his blood sugar dropped while he was driving, he hit the pole, got out and began wandering around. He traveled across a highway, and got to the section he was found in. It was surrounded by a chain link fence that he evidently couldn't manage to get over in his condition. As his blood sugar dropped lower, he seized and that's how we found him. Lucky for him, he had several tattoos and just a few teeth, so he'll end up being fine.

Our remaining runs were the typical, "Yeah, I have a seizure disorder but I haven't taken my meds because I ran out", or people trying to regulate their diabetes. A few cold and flu pt's. Just typical stuff.

One of the other medics did have an interesting run. A girl decided she wanted to end it all so she went upstairs to the bath tub and stabbed herself in the stomach with an 8" butcher knife. One of our cops arrived and began talking to her, she got frustrated at him and pulled the knife out of her stomach and proceeded to wave it at him. He stepped back, drew his gun. She looked at him and turned the knife around and stuck it back in her stomach. Medics arrived, stabilized the knife and took her in to the hospital. She went right up to surgery, and she'll probably make it. She must have LOTS of tattoos and VERY few teeth...

"Linda, This is God"

2005-03-12T20:37:00.000-05:00

I'm changing the names in this, well, just cause it seems like that's the thing to do... So we'll call her "Linda".

Any given day, all the EMS runs seem to be all the same. There are the real emergencies
sprinkled in every now and then, but for the most part, they're all the same. But, I've learned not to say "I've seen it all". Of all the runs we go on, I have my favorites. Sure, all the medics look forward to the traumas, you know, GSWs, stabbings or the big car wrecks. I also like the OD's, I just feel like they kind'a deserve whatever treatment they get. (I know the hospitals feel the same way, they get too big of a kick out of pushing a nasty charcoal substance into people and pumping their stomachs.) Another of my favorites are "mentals". Sometimes people just kind of drop off the deep end, because of something they were born with or just for no reason at all. You can mess with them, and they usually don't realize it. "Linda" was one of these people.

The way we were dispatched on the run was for a "sick" person. Sick can mean anything, "I just don't feel good" or in this case, a mental. We have MDT's in the medics and ambulances. They are like little computer monitors that dispatch sends info to. Run location, type and any special info they might have on the run. This time it said "Mental. Female, nude, throwing things into front yard". Police were also in route, along with an engine crew. As we all pulled up in front of the house, there was Linda. Linda weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 - 450 lbs. She was naked. At the time we arrived, she was ripping the storm door off the front of the house and throwing it into a pile of other stuff in front of the house. She'd disappear into the house, come out with another armload of stuff, and throw it on the pile. All the time she's doing this, she was laughing, singing church hymns at the top of her lungs. Linda's husband, who weighed maybe 90 lbs soaking wet told us that Linda hadn't been taking her medication and suddenly went nuts. So there we were, 2 firefighters on an ambulance, 4 firefighters on an engine and 2 cops looking at each other waiting to see what the others would do. Linda kept throwing books, magazines, furniture... on the pile singing gospel at the top of her lungs, giggling like a little girl. Finally, the cops started for the door, with us firefighters behind. 10 minutes later, we finally had Linda on the floor, handcuffed. Believe me when I tell you, it's not any fun wrestling with an naked,obese, crazy woman. No mater what you're into. She wasn't giggling anymore, now she was just plain mad. We had to pull our cot out of the medic unit and put it on top of the engine. We put 2 reeves stretchers side by side and strap Linda to those. A reeves stretcher is a flexible stretcher, most people can fit on 1, we needed 2 for Linda. We backed the medic into the hill in front of the house, and carried/slid Linda across the front yard and onto the floor of the medic. Linda started singing hymns again as we put her in the medic, and even giggled again when my partner Andy tickled her feet before we closed the doors. Now Linda's strapped face down on the stretchers, handcuffed, on the floor of the medic. We take off for the hospital with me driving the ambulance, Andy in back with Linda, the cops following in their cruisers and the engine last with our cot on top of their hose load. As we were heading down the road, Andy suddenly yelled up to me that maybe we should try to hurry because Linda was struggling and had almost kicked free of the straps. I don't think Andy was looking forward to wrestling with Linda by himself. Linda was still singing about Jesus and God at the top of her lungs, and I suddenly decided to try to have a little fun. We have a little dash mounted intercom that goes to the back of the ambulance, and I pushed the button and said "Linda, this is God". Andy said that at this point, Linda snapped her head up and said "Yes God?" I said "Linda, these people are here to help you, and I want you to lay still and be nice to them". Linda said "Oh God! I will. I promise."" From that point on, Linda was good, still singing, but not struggling. We pulled up to the hospital, slid her out of the medic on to a hospital bed, and the last I ever saw of Linda was her being wheeled of to a room, singing hymns at the top of her lungs.

I'm not sure what caused this episode, and we were never called back to her house for another. I later found out that "Linda" had died some time later from another ailment.

And so on...

2005-03-09T21:58:00.000-05:00

I once had a run where a guy chewed on a morphine patch. He was at a homeless clinic, out cold in the waiting room. He was blue, breathing a couple times a minute, pinpoint pupils. We gave him some Narcan and of course he came right out of it. I started right in on him, "How much Heroin did you do?"
"None" he said, "I don't do that kind of stuff".
"Don't lie to me, you think I just started this job?" I even went into the speech about how the drug we gave him only counteracts narcotics.. blah blah blah.
"I don't do that stuff" he insisted.
I told him "Fine, it'll all come out in the autopsy".
Well, turns out he was standing there that morning and another guy gave him this patch and told him to just pop it in his mouth and chew on it, it'd give him a buzz. I guess that's not a good idea cause buzz him it did, right into a Morphine OD. He didn't know what it was, or what it'd do. Let that be a lesson to you, don't just pop any old skin patch into your mouth and chew on it. Besides, I wouldn't think it'd taste good...

A few other lesson's I've learned...
The more tattoos you have, the harder it is to kill you.
The fewer teeth you have, the harder it is to kill you.
The drunker you are, the harder it is to kill you.
The less you work, the harder it is to kill you.
Now I'm not saying that if you have a lot of tattoos, just a few teeth, a good binge going and are out of work you'll live forever. Chances are that you'll die from some illness at an early age, but, it'll make you like a cockroach, hard to kill. I've had patients in the medic, treating them for GSW's, see a scar across their belly and ask em what that scar is from. "Oh, that's there from the last time I was shot".

Another lesson...
Don't go to a large town, drive into a government funded, low income housing project and ask for directions.
I'll bet I've personally been on 6 runs where we'll have a young kid in a nice car, windows shot out, GSW to the back. I'll ask em what they're doing over in the projects. "I just stopped and asked a group of guys for directions cause I'm lost and they just started shooting at me". "Riiighht... did I mention it's my first day?"

Good Drugs For Bad Drugs

2005-03-08T11:28:00.000-05:00

It was back to work yesterday, back on the medic and more of the same. I'll be glad when the flu and upper respiratory season is over. I don't know what it is that make people that feel miserable want to go sit in the waiting room of an ER for 6 hrs just to have the Dr advise them to go home, drink lots of fluids and rest. I try to tell them that for a lot less money. It actually wouldn't have been too bad of a shift except for a Chlorine gas leak that turned into a full-fledged Haz-Mat incident. Kept us out from 2am till end of shift.

The drug bags that we carry on our ALS, (Advanced Life Support), units contain 26 drugs that we are tested on once a year in order to administer them if needed. We go through standing orders testing to prove that we know what drug to give for whatever ails ya'. We carry the basic ones like Epinephrine, Lidocaine, Atropine for cardiac emergencies. We have Morphine for pain, or cardiac. Tetracaine for eye injuries. Lasix to make you pee a lot. Vallium or Versed for seizures. At one time, they were going to give us a couple new drugs to use for rapid sequence intubations. That is for a patient that needs intubated, but wants to fight about it. One of these drugs was going to be Succinylcholine, which paralyzes you, but your still awake and aware of what's going on around you. That would just plain suck wouldn't it? You can't move, talk or breathe, but you're still awake.. Or at least until you become hypoxic and pass out. Would have been a great drug for gags at the firehouse.
Of all the drugs we carry, I personally have a favorite 3. This is just because they are the ones that I see the fastest/best reactions from.
*Dextrose.. I know a lot of people are diabetics, and even if you take your meds or insulin religiously problems can occur, but a lot of our "clients" don't take their meds correctly. A lot of diabetics become combative when their blood sugar drops. I've seen it enough to not take it personally. I had a run a couple months ago where an 80's y/o lady was flat kicking the shit out of the first responding engine crew when we arrived. It took all 4 of them, my partner and I to hold her down long enough to get a line started so we could give her dextrose. 5 minutes later she was the sweetest little old lady you'd ever want to meet. Turns out she was going in for medical tests the next day and was fasting, her blood sugar bottomed out. She even apologized to the firefighter that she kicked in the nuts.
*Adenosine.. This is a way cool drug. Some people have a heart condition that causes their heart rate to speed up. It can get up to over 200 beats per minute. If they are unstable, such as not alert, chest pain or short of breath, then we try to alter their heart rate electrically. That means using pads and zapping 'em. You know... "Charging..... Clear!" That's cool in itself, but sucks for the patient if they're still awake. If the patient is stable, we give them Adenosine. Adenosine is a short acting drug that chemically "re-boots" the electrical system of your heart. It actually stops your heart for 6-9 seconds, then when it starts back up, hopefully it's at a regular rate. We can try this up to 3 times before we have to resort to more invasive measures.
*Narcan.. This is my favorite of all the drugs we carry. I have had patients not breathing on arrival, walk to our medic 5 minutes later. Narcotics, if overdone, can depress the respiratory system. That means that if a person overdoses on Morphine, Vicodin or Heroin to name a few of the more popular narcotics, they could quit breathing. Their heart keeps beating until it arrests due to the lack of oxygen. If you've ever seen Bringing Out The Dead with Nicholas Cage, there is a scene where they go to a bar on an overdose and his partner has all the people hold hands and pray for the girl not breathing on the floor. Cage gives her something and a few seconds later she's awake and everyone thinks it's a miracle. That's Narcan. Heroin overdoses are great patients if you have a medic student with you. The patient will be out cold, breathing 4 times a minutes if at all. Students can take as many tries as needed to get an IV. Students can even intubate. Hit the patient with Narcan and boom, within 1-2 minutes the patient is awake and sometimes pissed as hell because we took their buzz away. Narcan only works on narcotics, I could shoot myself with a dose of Narcan and it wouldn't affect me at all. That makes it a little odd when you come across a person that is uncon/unresponsive, give em Narcan, and they wake right up to tell you that they haven't taken any drugs. I've had patients found with a belt wrapped around their arm and a syringe still stuck in their vein swear to me that they haven't taken anything. Better yet are the ones that admit to shooting up with Heroin, "but it was my first time". I'll ask them where they shot it at and they'll tell me "between my toes". Yep... That'd be my first spot to try it too.