Nothing going on lately, no good calls, nothing too interesting to report about. I was sent to one of the slowest stations in my department last shift. Big suprise, nothing happened- at least not until I got sent back to my home station that night. We got a call 10 minutes before shift change. We finally made it back from the hospital around 0845. I was so happy to get out of there!
take care
Accidents and Arrests just seemed a fitting title after my shift last week. The first 3 calls were for chest pain, some worse than others.
07:07....respond to ____ for a 28YOF chest pain.
Dull call, ECG was unremarkable. She got her sister to drive her so she wouldn't have to worry about her children.
We ran a few errands and made it back to the station around 09:30 or so (I think).
(A couple minutes later...) Respond to_____ for a 42YOF chest pain. Will be in green SUV in locations parking lot.
Mom and daughter are in the car, mom's chest was hurting for almost a week and she was waiting until the weekend to get checked out (This all happened Friday) . We move her to the back of the rescue and do another 12-lead ECG. The strip says "biatrial enlargement", but nothing can be confirmed or ruled out without going to the hospital or seeing a specialist. She also was having the pain when she would move a certain way or touch the spot...A sign that the pain could simply be a pulled muscle. She allowed us to call for a BLS or basic transport, ETA about 20 minutes.
We come to find out she has another daughter at the high school a mile away and wants to go pick her up before going in the ambulance. After doing most of our paperwork while waiting on the BLS unit, mom decides she'll go on her own.
"Radio, cancel the basic transport coming to this location."
As my partner is getting the refusals and witness info signed, she wanted to move the car. I'm walking around the unit to see if I can help her get out of the parking space without having to move the ambulance. I don't know if she slipped, but she sped up and hit the corner of the ambulance. She also managed to hit my elbow and knee, it would've been worse if I hadn't jumped backwards when I did. I was lucky I wasn't really hurt, no bruises, but I was riding high on adrenalin for a few hours.
We went out of service and called for PD and for a Battalion Chief to make reports and take pictures. No damage to the rescue other than a little paint. We had to go back to the station to write letters and do more paperwork, then to the body shop for an estimate. It was after 1330 before we went back in service.
Right as we pull into the station... respond to ___ for a 57YOM chest pain, difficulty breathing. Will be at ___(Insurance provider's office)
Onscene, Dr. gives the guy's complaints...He had a syncopal episode (passed out) at the barber shop, and drove here. He's been diaphoretic (sweaty) and keeps saying his chest hurts. Given 1 nitro spray, 1 81mg asprin, and his last set of vitals were 125/85. They also had a small IV started in one hand and were giving him half saline (.45%).
My partner goes to the guys head and asks the favorite question "How you doing today?"
Meanwhile, we've hooked him up to our monitor and find that he's in second-degree heart block. Very bad sign so we go ahead and put the shock pads on him just in case.
The guy responds "Not so good, my chest feels funny."
Looking away to get his penlight and saying "Let me check your pupils," by the time he turned back-BOOM!! The guy's pupils are dialating, I'm starting to move because I saw him stop breathing...Our guy is now in full cardiac arrest. We started scrambling to get the BVM out and the Dr. was told to start compressions. He does 1, looks around a moment, does 2 more, looks around again, 1 more compression and our patient gasps for air.
We immediatly noticed that he was now in third-degree block and kept trying to brady out (his heart kept slowing down). Switching to pacer mode, we cranked it up to 30mA at 70 bpm (beats per minute) to keep him from arresting again. We got a large-bore IV started and got him loaded, one of the guys from the engine was in back also. I volunteered to drive and was met with a very serious direct order "Don't touch the brakes."
Who knew a reserve truck with 144,000 miles could still do 90mph?!
At the hospital, his underlying pulse was 46 with the pacer making his heartbeat 70. He had been given Morphine enroute to ease the pain from the pacer. Even the hospital had a rough time getting a good capture with their pacer, the timing has to be good and his timing was horrible.
I don't know how he's doing now but he was alive and talking when we left the hospital. They were talking about transferring him to a more specialized hospital, he desperately needed an internal pacemaker.
I've read that cardiac arrests only make up 2% of EMS calls. Most of those patients are in full arrest when we get there and have a poor outlook. This guy was one of the few lucky ones, he not only arrested at his Doctor's office, but the Paramedics, EMT's, and Firefighters were watching and ready.
Take care
Not too much has been going on lately. A couple interesting calls but mostly dumb stuff.
I DO have some very good news. The next class of rookies came out of training, and we got one of them. This may seem asanine or irrevellant to you, but it's not. In fact, it's huge! I am still a rookie, but no longer "the" rookie. I got to pass off some of my chores to him last shift. He took it all in stride, it'll all be easier with both of us working.
Since I haven't had any good calls lately, or posted recently, here's one from a while back.
Every now and then, we get a call where dispatch won't tell us anything other than person down. We can usually get a little more information from the KDT in our trucks. Scrolling down the call info my partner read it aloud "possible 22." (demented person) OK, so this guy could be nuts. We beat the engine crew out of the station and got to the street quickly. Turning onto it and coming down the hill, I saw it.
"Uh, this is gonna be fun..."
"Why?"
"2 PD cars onscene."
OK, nobody said anything about PD even being enroute. Stepping out of the truck we can hear someone screaming. Not an occasional yell, but using every breath to yell. We walk inside to find 3 officers sitting on the patient, his dad holding one of his arms, and his big brother trying to help. We later learned that big bro works for our county PD and was just off-duty.
We learned he started screaming about 15 minutes before PD arrived, it was another 15 minutes until we got there. We tried talking to him but nothing worked. There was no chance he'd taken any drugs, legal or otherwise, he didn't have or do anything that would explain his behavior. So we did the only thing we could- restrained him to a backboard. We tied the soft medical restraints to him, strapped him to the board, and buckled him down for the ride. Dad rode in to the hospital with us.
Once inside the back of the rescue, he quieted down a lot. I don't know if it was getting away from his family that helped or not. He tried to work himself back up enroute, but my partner warned him if he didn't slow his breathing and calm down his head would keep hurting and he'd eventually pass out. Dad thought maybe his girlfriend had broken up with him or something like that. I hate to think all of that happened over a girl, but you never know.
We got him to the ER and unloaded him under the watchful eye of security. They were called to the ER in case we needed help, certainly nice to have another pair of hands. (Security is called down for different types of problems- psych, obese, respiratory diseases, and whenever PD brings one in...to name a few reasons)
We never did find out why he got so upset. We've been on many calls on his street since then, it's tempting to knock on his door to see how he's doing. Sometimes I wish we had a way to follow-up on certain patients, see how they're doing.
Take care
Life's been a bit hectic lately, I've been sent to other stations the past few shifts and haven't had much free time. I should get back to some resemblance of a normal life soon, and I promise to write more entries when I do.
Until next time....
Not much to write about from last shift, although we did have a third rider from the EMT class at the academy. I kinda felt bad for him, "third rider syndrome" struck.
A couple weeks before taking National Registry, EMT students have to do their clinical rotations, for this class it was 16 hours in the ER and 24 on the box. We only ran 4 calls all shift. One was around 1530, the other 3 stacked on us just as we were sitting down to eat dinner. He had to go on a crash-course of learning how to inhale your food instead of eating it.
At shift change he seemed a little disappointed. We tried to explain about third riders jinxing us to run fewer calls, and that the calls he went on were normal- bs calls (and, no, I don't mean basic service...at least on most of them).
Well, I got a bunch of chores to get done before work tomorrow... Take care
I've just now caught up on enough sleep and patience to sit down and write this entry. Saturday was absolutely wild! We had a lovely ice storm roll through starting late Friday night. Luckily, my car is front-wheel drive so navigating icy roads was a little easier for me than it was for others. Salt trucks were struggling to keep 2 lanes flowing traffic in each direction on the expressways, side streets were out of the question. I drove the 30+ miles to the station without ever going over 35mph.
It turns out the off-going shift got hammered as the storm rolled in. There were accidents everywhere and cars abandoned on the side of the roads...some upside down because the tow trucks couldn't get enough traction to flip the car so they could load it.
Being a Saturday and therefore, house day, I put my gear on the engine, checked my SCBA, and went to work cleaning the station. I think it was after 0900 before we got our first call. Now, although we ran 18 calls, most weren't the least bit interesting. Somewhere between 1400 and 1500, the EMS gods decided they would start sending trucks to check out "lines down" and "transformer on fire" type calls. Oh fun. I decided it was too cold out so I put on my bunker pants...Hey, so I'm a wuss, it was 26 out with a wind chill of 16- those pants are warm.
1745 or so...
Power goes out, no problem, we have a generator. We fought the generator for who knows how long. It would start up and run easy, it just wouldn't put out any power... Not good considering the bay doors are power operated. Now, if you have automatic garage doors, you may know about the red cord you can pull that releases the door from the chain, allowing you to manually lift the door- bay doors are very large and extremely heavy. Our only escape was the back door which had a chain that could be used to raise and lower the door...slowly.
Call the Battalion Chief, manufacturer, and maintenance man.
Fast forward a bit to around 2000...
Both engine and rescue were dispatched to an EMS call, rescue got a big jump on us getting out of the station. Keep in mind, the roads are nearly frozen over and, being in a reserve engine, we didn't have snow chains so we had to drive slowly and take our sweet time. All day we had avoided incident going to and from calls, only spun the tires on one or two icy hills. Yeah, well, that changed. The rescue was already onscene and cancelled us just as we're about to go down this gentle hill to a stop sign. (turn left and the call was 3 or 4 houses away) Right at that very moment, I'm looking to my right, out my window...and suddenly I'm starting to see more of the road ahead of us- including the stop sign and the house across the street.
**If you haven't figured it out, the engine was sliding almost completely sideways down the hill.**
OK, my pucker factor just went WAY UP!!!
Looking back, I guess it was lucky the back of the engine bounced off a tree or something and straightened us out, we also regained enough traction to stop (thank God) without even going through the stop sign.
Those 2 goofballs picked on me for hours after that, but I'd never been in any vehicle and slid sideways, much less a 45,000 lb fire truck!
Somewhere around 2100, the power came back on as the maintenance man was leaving with our generator (whatever problem can only be fixed back at his shop).
For the next few hours, call after call came in. Lines down, EMS calls, tree fell on my car, 103yr old needs ride to hospital because she's cold... We were able to sleep 10-20 minutes between each call. At 0600, we had just made it back to the station and I was waiting for the driver to finish the paperwork so I could go to bed. Apparently I looked the part because the seat man (aka officer on the engine) told me it was OK and to go lay down.
0615...call for a house fire in our neighboring territory.
Keep in mind, I'm so used to either false calls or the fire being out, I waited to packout or put on my SCBA. As we're coming around the corner to get onscene, I see it....There she is, in all her glory, the entire backside of the house was a wall of flames.
Switching gears, I jump across and into the seat that has my SCBA and quickly snap the buckle arounds my waist, snatching the straps to tighten it around my waist and shoulders. Now onscene, I jump off and wait for orders. Moments later I'm told to ""find the nearest hydrant"
Right across the street.
OK, set me up a 5" line.
Can't, we don't have any on this reserve truck.
Dammit, well set up everything you can.
Switching gears again, I grabbed both lines off the back of the engine and rush over to the hydrant. Moving quickly back to the engine to retrieve the hydrant bag. Using the wrench, I had to break the ice off before I could unscrew the caps and make the connections. About this time the next unit shows up and it's driver comes over to help. I pass the wrench to him and, letting him know it's all ready to go, he released me to go find another job to do from my officer.
As the moments pass, more units are arriving and I've completely lost my sense of time...bear with me as everything else is in order (at least).
Both crosslays have already been pulled and are at the front door of the house, and by this time the front of the house is rolling as well. My next assignment was to get another line set up to guard exposures. I managed to get my line in place and the driver just finished hooking it up as Command called for the lines to be charged.
I'm told by my officer to just sit tight until someone comes and gets the line, then he'll make sure and get me "in some heat."
I sat on my line and watched as other crews grabbed the lines at the front door and headed inside. As time passed, Command tried to get the interior crew to back out before part of the roof collapsed but they refused. As I continued to wait, my officer joined me and directed me to aim for a couple places on the roof that were burning. Shortly after, one of the battalion chief's aides was sent over to me. He told me Command was mad at the crews inside, and, since they won't come out, dump 'em. I'll admit, I was grinning like a cheshire cat as I opened the line and arced the stream up so it would fall into the second-story where the roof had now burned through. I kept it open and moved it around some to get full coverage on my "target."
Soon, the fire was deemed under control and a large fan was placed at the front door to clear out some of the smoke. I continued to stand by with my line (now aimed at the house) until my relief finally came. Unfortunatly, it was in the form of the oncoming shift from my station. I grabbed my facepiece and regulator off the air pack, handing it and the line over, and walked away alongside my officer. Both of us madder than I care to decsribe.
On a normal fire scene, the first crew to arrive does the attack on the fire, second due gets water supply, and so-on. We got shitted on (pardon my french). The county has a heavy rescue team that is great at what they do...I've now decided that they're also a bunch of Jakes that want every fire. They were probably 4th or 5th to arrive and decided to grab the lines and run in, the whole time Command was screaming at them to stop and then to back out because of the roof. These guys may be the best trained in the county for confined spaces, search and rescue, entrapment, and everything else- but they are a haughty bunch of assholes in my opinion. Yes, I'm pissed. We finally got a real fire and I had to sit on a stinking exposure line while they went inside and had all the fun. As I was walking to the unit that was going to take us back to the station, a friend called me over. He had been inside and was covered in ash and whatever else. He asked me what I thought and if I'd been inside.
"Nope, I had to sit on the exposure line the whole time. Since 24 decided to take it over I didn't get to go in at all. Figures, we finally got a real fire down here and I get stuck outside the whole time."
He agreed that it sucked being on that line and offered to make sure I went in on the next one. Funny thing is, 24's crew was standing right behind him and watched from the moment he called me over... They didn't look too happy. I guess I wouldn't be happy either knowing a rookie figured out they would've finally had their first fire if another crew would simply do what they were supposed to.
In a few hours another nightmare will come true...
It has nothing to do with work or any of the patients....
It has nothing to do with much of anything....
Curious yet?
How 'bout now?
ok ok......
I have to go out in public
wearing
a DRESS!!! nooooooooooooo!!!
sorry, I hate dresses, I'm not a girly girl. The only time I wear a dress or a skirt is when Mom makes me or friends offer money...I earned $30 one day in high school by wearing a skirt.
Before you ask, I'm going to do my damndest to get out of going to this meeting- I don't really want to go anyways. C'mon, who wants to go sit around in a formal gown for 3 hours with a group of back-stabbers you thought were your friends?
NOT ME
On a lighter note... I'll be back to work tomorrow and should have some good calls to write about, if not, I've got some from a few weeks ago that are pretty interesting.
Take care
