Subaqua Sternal Rubs

Yesterday's dreaded 24-hour shift on Halloween wasn't as bad as I had expected… Since there was no one on the schedule other than another EMT, I was afraid we would have only a BLS ambulance, but luckily a medic came in. Otherwise we would have had to request mutual aid from Buffalo (a 5.5 hr drive), since virtually all EMS providers in the entire state of NY were at Vital Signs, the annual EMS conference. We only did 8 calls in 24-hours, and nothing critical. We actually brought the same patient in twice.. Patient was drunk, and was requesting detox, which was at least a weekly occurance for him. The hospital released him drunk with DT's (shaking due to alcohol withdrawal), so back he went to the same hospital….

On another call, we had a elderly female, Down's Syndrome patient. Upon arrival, the home health aid was standing outside, hyperventilating. When asked if she was alright, she proclaimed, "I had to do CPR for 15 minutes, and I saved her!" Naturally, the crew rushes in, to find the first-responding fire department all standing around the patient, doing nothing. The patient was laying on the floor in the bathroom, breathing, with a pulse and conscious/alert to normal. Patient was also having loose bowel movements, and was scheduled for a colonoscopy tomorrow. Now anybody with any clue knows that CPR will not bring someone back from death by itself, despite what you see on TV. It only buys time by keeping tissues oxygenated until you can defibrillate/give medication to correct the electrical/metabolic disturbances which caused the heart to stop in the first place. So what we believe happened was that the patient experienced vaso-vagal syncope (passed out) because of the colononscopy prep. This was further confirmed by my partner, who was telling the medic that the patient had begun to vomit, when he received the patient's gastric contents projectile-vomited into his mouth. The medic had hoped it was only water, but my partner corrected her with, "No, it tastes fruity." (Colonoscopy prep solutions are often made to taste fruity.)

In other news, I brought my cat home from someone who was watching her while everyone was out of the country. Since I was on duty, we had to meet at a gas station at the northern-most border of my ambulance district. As I was trying to transfer her from the woman's pet carrier to mine, she managed to escape my grasp, and bolted. She ran into some woods next to the gas station, and we spent the next twenty minutes trying to find her with flashlights, food, and anything else we thought would help. While she is getting older, she is still quicker than me, especially in brush. We finally cornered her at an adjacent building, and with nowhere to run, I picked her up and held her tight until we could get her back into the pet carrier. She made it home safely after that, but it must have been a workout for her, since she literally attacked the food I put out for her. That was enough excitement for me for a little bit, so she is going to stay inside for a while…

Email to Friend Print