Life is so fragile

I think that sometimes we have the belief that because we are young nothing is going to happen to us and we can do anything. I was sadly reminded of how precious life is and that it truly does not matter at what age we are, but when God deems it our time to go there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop it. A couple weeks ago Eric and I ran a call for a 16 year old that was killed in an unexpected accident. The medical personnel did all they could, but still our patient did not make it. I thought to myself, "What is the purpose of this?" It makes me realize that my skills are a gift that God allows me to use and if He wants to bless them or not it is His choice. I was watching a play recently and in a scene there was a man laying in a hospital bed and though the Doctors were doing everything they could the man was dying. In the play, Jesus came in to the room as the Doctors were working. Jesus touched him and the flat line on the heart monitor jumped back to normal. It made me think how many times this happens. I know it has happened to me personally many times as I have been working on my patient and when nothing seems to help I start praying for them and their condition turns around. "Live everyday as it is your last," is one of my favorite sayings because no matter how old you are you never know how many more days God is going to bless you with and you should treasure the time you have. 

The effects of alcohol.

Wow I haven't posted in so long and I have so much to say, but one subject weighs more heavily on my heart than any other right now. I want to talk about the effects of alcohol. Now, whatever your beliefs may be on the subject this is a very serious matter that people take very lightly. Over the past month or so we have had several EMS calls that have really made me think. Whether or not you believe in drinking is not the issue, but how people handle themselves when they do is. In only a short time my crew and I have run 3 extremely serious and life threatening calls that would never have happened without the use of alcohol. 

Our first call was for a 17 year old boy that drank so much that when we got on scene he was unconscious and not responding. When we got him to the hospital we came to find that he had such a severe case of alcohol poisoning that some of his organs had started to shut down. It was heart wrenching to see his family have to go through that ordeal. It was SO senseless!

Our second call was for a 48 year old man that was in a constant state of drunkenness. This poor man had come to the point that he no longer liked the taste of anything except for alcohol and would vomit anything else that he tried to consume. His loved ones begged him to stop, but he couldn't bring himself to break his addiction and will no doubt shorten his life drastically because of it.

And the third call we recently ran involving the effects of alcohol was one of the hardest and saddest yet...Two young women that had drank over four times the legal limit were driving home after a party when then swerved over into the median going airborne and lading on a minivan carrying a mother and three small children. Thankfully, the mother and children were not critically injured, but the two ladies in the car were both critically wounded and had to be flown to the nearest hospital. I do not know if either of them survived.

Hard time of year.

I hope this post finds all of you happy, healthy, and excited about the new year having had a wonderful Christmas! I know I certainly did! :) I'm not going to write about one specific call this time because to be honest I don't know which one I would choose. The holiday season can be a very hard time in EMS. It is, believe it or not, the time when we have more deaths/suicides than any other time of the year. That rule has certainly held true this year as I have run more codes this month than I have all year. It is really sad and I'm not sure exactly why this happens. Some ideas that float around are that it is a high stress time of the year, people are sad or depressed that they don't have family around, or even that the diet of the average American is fattening to say the least during the time period of Thanksgiving to New Years. Whatever the case may be it is very sad to see so many people lose their lives in what could be the most happy and exciting time of year as we celebrate the birth of out Savior. 

What a night!

Squad 6 respond for a 78 year old male chief complaint difficulty breathing. My crew and I marked en route and were on our way. We knew this would be a very long call because our patient lived in our 4th due response area. We arrived on scene 40 some minutes later. The patients driveway was so steep that we had to put the ambulance into four wheel drive just to make it to his house. Finally at the top of the driveway we realized that there was no place that we could turn around at, but figured we would go inside and get our patient then figure out how to handle that problem later. After we got our patient loaded and out to the ambulance we marked en route to the hospital with dispatch and our driver began to try to turn around. After a good ten minutes of maneuvering the unit every way possible we finally figured that we would have to back down. It was so scary! The entire time I felt like we were falling off the edge of a cliff. We were running over things and clanging and screeching all the way down. When we finally got down to the bottom we realized that something was very wrong with the medic unit. We could not get out of four wheel drive no matter how hard we tried! Our patient was having a harder time breathing as every minute passed. Finally on our way the truck made a loud clunking noise and stopped in the middle of the road. After some checking the guys figured that the only way to continue on was to keep in in four wheel drive making it difficult to go more than ten miles an hour. We decided to call for another crew to come pick up our patient and we would call a tow truck. We didn't want to have to drive the medic unit any further for fear of severely damaging it. A few short minutes later the other ambulance pulls up. I started getting ready to transfer our patient and asked the driver of the ambulance that had just arrived what level they were to make sure I wasn't downgrading care by handing over my patient to a crew that was not Advanced Life Support (ALS). He proceeded to say, "Oh no it's just me. I will drive and your crew can ride with me." Oh wow could this night get any worse? So we did what we had to do. Eric and I climbed into the back of the other medic unit and began patient care out of a completely different truck. Once at the hospital (after an hour and a half ordeal) we wrote our report then sat there and waited on our driver to get the ambulance taken care of then drive to the hospital to pick us up. It was quite an evening! We were extremely tired after it all, but in the end the outcome was the same as any other call...you do what you have to for your patient. 

Miracles still happen!

It was the day after Thanksgiving and Eric and I and another crew member were on call 6pm-midnight. Nothing had gotten toned out all day and we were beginning to think we were not going to get a call that shift. We had just sat down to eat when we heard the tones drop for a 61 year old male that was unconscious and not breathing and that CPR instructions were being given to the family members on scene. The residence was right down the road so we jumped in the medic unit and headed down the road lights flashing and sirens screaming. When we got there we already had another member on scene that had taken over CPR for the family. We got a quick report of what was going on then set to work alternating CPR rotations, inserting a breathing tube, getting an IO established, placing the patient on a cardiac monitor, and starting the rounds of drugs that we would give. In no time at all we had 10 people on scene working tirelessly to bring this man back. After 25 minutes of working on him the Paramedic got up to talk to the family and tell this man's wife that we were going to have to call his death because there was nothing else that could be done. I was so disappointed! We had so many people on scene and circumstances could not have gotten any better. I started praying for this man and his family; pleading with God to give us a pulse back. Just as the Paramedic came back into the room to tell us that we could discontinue treatment I heard Eric say, "We got a pulse!" Praise God! We all knew that the likelihood of us getting this man back after 25 minutes was very small, but I also knew that God still works miracles and am so thankful that he chose to bless us with one that day! As of today this man is doing fine!

It could have been so much worse!

A rush of adrenaline...this doesn't sound good! I listen intently as the tones drop for our neighboring rescue squad. "Aplha Response! Respond for nursing home on fire, approximately 50 residents to be evacuated." Normally when the tones drop for another squad you wait until your squad gets toned out before responding because it is not technically your call. When I heard this dispatch I didn't hesitate in marking our Advanced Life Support crew en route to the scene to help out. I asked for more information from dispatch while I was on the way and was told that there was indeed already smoke in the residence halls and the staff was getting all the people out into the parking lot as quickly as possible. "Great! If the smoke doesn't get them they will freeze to death outside!" I was glad that we had gotten en route so quickly because half way there I heard dispatch begin to tone out for multiple squads all across the county to come out and help. This was a nursing home. It wasn't like we could announce to the residents to please exit the building and wait outside. Most of these people were in wheel chairs and could not be left alone anyway. We arrived on scene to find the small amount of staff that was working at 10:00 at night trying to take care of almost 50 residents that were cold and scarred out in the parking lot. Fire alarms were sounding and people were running everywhere.With the help of multiple different rescue squads we were able to get the people over to another building with minimal problems. Thankfully after the whole escapade we only ended up having three patients one suffering from smoke inhalation, one that had injuries from a fall, and one that was unresponsive from a condition that had nothing to do with the fire. All in all everything turned out very good considering what could have happened and it was great to see the community coming together to help us in our efforts. Some of the neighbors even came out and helped us calm the residents down and help in any ways that they could. After only about an hour and a half we cleared from the scene and were back in service with the residents back in their beds and all the rescue personnel very thankful that everything had turned out so well. It could have been so much worse!

The Small Details Count

My crew and I recently responded to a call for an allergic reaction. We had a small crew that night with only Eric, a student, and me. Eric was driving so it was just me and the student in the back. We arrived on scene to find a female that was basically "out of it". I asked her daughter what had happened and she said that she had taken an antibiotic that had been prescribed to her and she thought that she was having a reaction to it. In the case of an allergic reaction time is very important and getting medication into your patient to combat the reaction as soon as possible is very important because often times the airway is the first thing to be affected. We quickly brought in our equipment and loaded her onto the stretcher. Before leaving I asked the lady's daughter what all of her known allergies were. She replied and I repeated them back to her so as to make certain I had heard right. Asking a patient or close family member about allergies is a very important thing that is done with each and every patient encounter. We loaded our patient into the back of the medic unit and marked en route to the hospital. Once en route I started an IV and administered a medication to combat the allergic reaction. She seemed to be somewhat better by the time we got to the hospital so I was very much relieved. As we were unloading our patient and getting ready to take her inside the hospital her daughter came up to me and asked how she was doing? I told her what I had done and that she was doing a little better. The look of shock on this woman's face told me something was very wrong. She stated that she was very sorry, but she had forgotten to tell me that her mother was severely allergic to the medication that I had given her.I couldn't believe it! Wow how could you forget something like that! Praise God that nothing had happened and the medication had actually helped her like it was supposed to. There was no way I could have known that the lady was allergic to the medication, but I sure was happy that God had been with me in the back of that ambulance and that everything went ok!