Firefightin' soccer mom

Not for us to understand...

2011-07-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Dispatched to person sick. Radio advised that we should stage for the sherrif's office at our discretion, as the caller was pretty worked up. After getting more info, we went on into the scene. We were met in the driveway by a man in his late fifties, obviously upset. He said that his mother had been taken to the hospital by ambulance earlier that week, and was presently on life support in the ICU. He called today on behalf of his father. He told us that his father, who had been married over 60 years, hadn't been eating or sleeping since his wife fell ill. We went inside and evaluated the elder family member. He was lying in bed, sick with worry, and had vomited. He was awake, and conversed with us. He explained that he was very worried about his wife, but not in need of emergency services today. We stayed and talked with the entire family while obtaining the necessary information for our report. Hearing the patient talk about his wife it became obvious to everyone that she was his entire world. He was lost without her. We wished them the very best, and hoped for a fast recovery for his wife, and left the home.

The next shift, we were called back to the same address. This time it was for stomach pain. On our way to the call, dispatch came back across the air, telling us that "this call has been upgraded to a person down. Home healthcare provider on scene advises patient collapsed, not breathing, no pulse. CPR in progress." We arrived at the house and found the same elderly man on the floor in cardiac arrest. Family wasn't home, but his aide was there. She said she had gotten him cleaned and dressed. Then she said something that gave us all chills- family wasn't there, and she was getting him ready, because his wife had died. Family was preparing for her funeral, and the aide was to get the elderly man ready to pay his final respects to his wife. She said that he told her his stomach hurt, and then collapsed. We put him on the monitor and were surprised to see asystole. Flatline. He had died getting ready to bury his wife. Since the home healthcare provider witnessed his collapse and immediately started CPR, we had no choice but to continue. We assumed it was futile. He had gone into sudden cardiac arrest. There was no electrical anything in his heart to even work with. We pushed drugs and did compressions, knowing full well that he didn't WANT to be here, he wanted to be with his wife.

We arrived at the hospital and gave them the report. In the ER he had return of spontaneous circulation- his heart started beating again! We all looked at one another in disbelief. It seemed wrong. Not that we ever want anyone to die, but this man wanted to be with his wife. He was being held captive through the miracle of modern medicine. Family was notified, and left the funeral to come check on him, then return to the service for his wife. We cleaned our truck and did the report, checking periodically on him. He was maintaining his own pulse and blood pressure. He had been in arrest over a half hour, yet was holding his own here in the ER. Never before have we felt so bad about "saving" someone. It wasn't supposed to work like this. As bittersweet as it was, he went down when he did for a reason. We finished what we had to do and went back in service. I felt unsettled. We were just going through the motions, not expecting him to "make it". Nobody expected that.

We brought another patient in to the ER later that night, and went up to the ICU to check on him. He was sedated, but the nurses said he had been holding his own blood pressure and pulse, and hadn't gone into arrest any more. They had heard his story, and one looked at me with tears in her eyes, saying "he doesn't want to be here". I agreed. He tried dying of a broken heart and science wouldn't let him.

I wanted to throw up. It wasn't right.

I did see in the newspaper a few days later that he had died. His obituary was there, next to that of his wife. Their dates were only a couple apart. Somehow it was comforting to know that they were again together. A few months went by and I ran into the son who had met us in the driveway at the original call. I offered him my condolences. He shared that although it was difficult to lose them both at the same time, everyone was angry and surprised that his dad hung on as long as he did. He said it was comforting to know that they are together.

Why we do what we do

2011-03-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is taken verbatum from a friend's blog (http://carseatnanny.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-i-do-what-i-do.html), but please take the time to read through it.

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Most of you know I'm carseat crazy. You may even think I'm bordering (or even crossed the border) on carseat insane. But do you know why I do what I do? Because it saves lives. How many times do we see on the news that children, parents, families died in a horrible car crash. My job is to try and prevent those stories. I have a friend, named Anne. Anne is just as carseat crazy as I am. What I am posting below, is her story. She and her family were in a crash a few days ago. They could have easily been one of those stories on the news. But they weren't, because Anne is carseat crazy. Make sure you read the entire thing. Read how many times they crashed and rolled. And read what the (very few) injuries were. Then look at the pictures.

"On our way to Phoenix, just a few miles away, my husband (driving our 2002 Odyssey) hit an obstacle in the road. We don't know what it is, but we all felt the bump, then were airborne, and onto a gravel shoulder. We skidded on the gravel. The van hit a barrier (right at the rear driver's side, where my 4 year old daughter was seated.) It then flipped across the highway. My husband was braking the whole way. (He had just had the tires rotated and pressure checked, and the brakes replaced.) It slowed us considerably. We went into a ditch at an angle and became airborne. We went down on the passenger side of the vehicle, nose first, and then flipped over upside down.

My daughters (the 4 year old, almost 5, and her 2 sisters, 6 almost 7 and 2 almost 3) were screaming. This meant they were alive and I was glad. My husband and I were suspended by our (properly worn) seatbelts. I had significant neck pain. My husband was able to exit the vehicle fairly easily, but I was trapped; I had to be extracted with the Jaws of Life (after fending off a bystander who wanted to cut my belt with a pen knife and pull me out, yelling at him, "Do not cut my seatbelt! Wait until the EMTs arrive to hold c-spine! If you want to do something, get me a jacket and treat me for shock!")

My 4 and 6 year olds were harnessed properly in properly installed and used, tethered seats. (The 6 year old is usually boostered, but because it was a late night trip I didn't want to risk her falling asleep and falling out of position.) My 2 year old was rear-facing. The heavy cargo in the van was all packed tightly down in the bottom of the trunk, compartmentalized behind and under the seat as much as possible before we left. My husband and I had our seatbelts and headrests properly fastened and adjusted and were seated in proper position.

My husband has a mild lung contusion and abrasions from his seatbelt and "road burn." I have a lot of stitches in my arm (which dragged along the ground outside the car-- the trauma surgeon says that the braking slowed us enough to save me from having it ripped off) and on my face and bruising all over. My 6 year old has minor abrasions (more road burn) and bruises. My 4 year old, with the most severe injuries, suffered a severe cut to her foot (aptly and completely repaired by great surgeons) and a broken leg (remember, she was AT the first point of impact, a side impact.) My 2 year old, who was in the rear-facing seat, was completely unharmed. Not a mark on her. Nothing. Despite the fact that we landed on the side of the car she was on (she was behind me, I was in the second row passenger seat, and the forward-facers were second and third row driver's side.)"

Anne said aside from the dirt, the carseats looked perfectly fine. THIS is why you can't buy used carseats, you won't know if it's been in a crash. Even though they look fine, they have done their job and must be replaced.

"I was asked to add to this blog post. It is doing it's job and spreading information. However, some people are turning it into an "anti-booster" message. Anne's 6 year old is usually in a booster, except on a trip where she might fall asleep (and lean out of position). Anne was asked if she would reconsider the booster, and put her daughter into a 5 point harness for all car rides. This is her response:

My view on boosters has not changed. The reason that she was in a harness, was that she was likely to fall asleep, and she sometimes slumps when she does. She will still be boostered for normal use.
My view has always been that boosters are safe for a child who can stay seated properly 100% of the time, and that was not E (6, almost 7) on a long trip, and B (4, almost 5) is no where near it. So they were harnessed. If this same crash had happened and E was in a booster but asleep and slumped, she'd have been more hurt.

I think by 6 most but not all kids are booster ready for most trips, but most are NOT before 5. I think moving from harness to booster is ideally a process where you use the harness less and booster more as the kid gets more ready, until they're ready 100% of the time (even when asleep.)"

Rambling thoughts

2011-02-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

Life goes on. The sun rises and it sets and days pass. You can't speed it up or slow it down, just make the most of it that you can. School is going well. I have a 4.0 GPA and have been invited to the honors program as well as Phi Theta Kappa- another honors program. I don't want to overload myself, but it would be stupid to turn down such opportunities.

Work is going well. I am trying to study for upcoming promotions testing.

Calls have pretty much been the same- some mundane, others quite unusual. I will have to sit down some time soon and put thoughts into written word, as there is a lot to catch up on. Until then, take care. (I'm still having issues with the blogger photo uploader. Images should be clickable to be viewed in their full size if desired.)

Testing

2010-09-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted much of anything lately. It's not that nothing is happening, oh no, there's been plenty to blog about. It's just that the image hosting function of blogspot was down, and that meant you had to save your pictures elsewhere then hotlink them here, and well, that's time consuming. And yeah, I'm lazy. So, this post is just a test to see if the image hosting is working again. (And to show off my newest photography skills- I like this one. What do you think? It's hard to get the exposure right with chrome...)

(Clickable, then clickable again for full size and DOF).

Well- it's putting the picture in there, but it's resizing it and instead of being able to actually see the pic, it's giving me the HTML. That's annoying, but I am fluent enough in HTML to be able to function, so it's workable. Hopefully I can get all my readers caught back up to speed soon. (Warning- a future post *might* show some blood and general ickiness, so if you don't want to see that, then don't scroll down past the thirty-seven obligatory warning I will post before said image.)

Until next time- stay safe and BUCKLE UP! (Someone else in the county had a fatality tonight from an ejection. Accidents happen every day and seldom make the news.)

Say What?

2010-08-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

During another uneventful day, we were called to "stage for sherrif's office on signal 24". Great. A crazy person. Once we were called to the scene, our patient- a man in his thirties- walked to the ambulance and told us his complaint. He seemed calm and sane. Oh how very wrong first impressions can be. Sure, he knew who he was, where he was, what day it was and the like, but as his story unfolded it was all we could do to listen with a straight face. He believed himself to be the son of Elvis Presley. He told us that as a child the FBI had inserted "lojack listening spy bugs" in his ears and head. He says he discovered them in 2003, and has been trying to find a doctor to remove them ever since. He says that the government will randomly control his actions, rendering him unable to communicate clearly. For effect, he begins speaking to us with his tongue pressed to the floor of his mouth, jaw wide open. After a few minutes he stops and speaks normally, saying "see? I told you so!". In looking at his paperwork it becomes apparrent that he has seen numerous doctors and mental health specialists who just don't know what to do for him. He doesn't take any of the medications prescribed to him. One doctor wrote him a prescription to take to the FBI to have the "ear bugs" removed. Another took X-rays and attempted to convince the man there was nothing there. He tells us he has lived in XYZ mental health institution, but left because they wouldn't take the mind control devices out either. He says he found an attorney to represent him so he could sue a neighboring county and their FBI branch. He shows us the court papers- sure enough he is suing them and has everything he claims listed. He wants 3 billion dollars in settlement. He says that today the bugs are making his throat swell. A family member has already taken him to the hospital where he was given a clean bill of health. At least physically. He isn't convinced. He wants us to look in his ears and help him out. We are all bewildered but entranced by the story that just gets more and more strange as it goes on. We offer him a ride to the hospital, but that's not what he wants. He wants us to dig in his ears, and it's just not going to happen. After a while, he decides he will wait until Monday and go see his family doctor. He thanks us for listening, and walks back inside his home. We look at each other, puzzled, and go back in service.

Choices Made

2010-08-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

You were 22 years old. You had probably expiramented here and there with alcohol and drugs. According to the law enforcement officers, you liked to drink. A lot. Mom said we should suspect drugs, but that was hard for mom to choke out as she watched us insert needles and tubes into you, and pump on your chest, in a feeble attempt to reverse what you had done. The monitor remained a straight line. Your heart had taken all it could. It was 3 a.m., and your "friend" frantically ran to wake your little sister. He said to tell your mom you were "sick". Your mom had no idea what when she saw you, your friend would be doing CPR on you. Had no idea that when she called 911, your "friend" would run away as fast as he could. Some friend. You probably had no idea how much your mom loved you, how much your little sister admired you, despite your choices. Your mom wasn't ignorant. She knew you were into a little cocacine, some pills, the booze. She probably worried herself sick that this- her worst nightmare- would happen eventually. How many people have you left hurting in the wake of your choices made?

We all make choices that affect more than just ourselves. Sometimes, we fail to see just how devastating the big picture is. Sometimes, nomatter how badly you wish you could undo it and take it all back, pick a different route, change the past, you just can't unring the bell.

Back to School....

2010-07-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

My kids go back to school in about another two weeks. I can't believe the summer has flown by this quickly! We have had a great time- swimming, biking, hiking, being lazy, and just enjoying each and every day. Way back in the days when my middle daughter (now almost 9) was going to be starting kindergarten, I had planned on returning to college and finishing my degree. Low and behold the baby came along and those plans of me returning to school went right out the window. Well, the "baby" is now three and a half, and after doing some research, getting copies of my transcripts, finding out that I left college with a MUCH better GPA than I remembered, applying for federal and state financial aid, scholarships, and grants.....The kids won't be the only ones going back to school this fall! I feel pretty nervous, but anxious and excited at the same time. It's been 14 years since I took the SAT (and I just learned that your scores expire after 7 years?) so I have to take it again at some point in time. I did really well on it the first time, but now I've had over a decade to forget all of that "when are we ever going to use this" stuff that's on the test. It will be ok. One class at a time, I am finally chipping away at it. I will finish, even if it takes me a long time.

As heard on dispatch...

2010-06-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

"caller states he is at the local gas station, foot was run over by car thief driving off with his car"....That stinks.

"Complaintant advises he hasn't been able to see for two weeks".....

"Caller states there is a rabid squirrel in his yard attacking the birdfeeder"....

"be advised, stage for S.O., caller states patient is now armed with an etch-a-sketch"...

I wish I could be a fly on the wall for all the calls that dispatch doesn't tone out!

Well That's Unusual

2010-06-08T06:41:00.001-07:00

I had an unusual shift. Nothing breathtakingly spectacular happened, but it was weird in the sense that every person I encountered (other responders reading this....get ready....) had an actual emergency! That's almost unheard of!

Lady number one- turned wrong in her kitchen, dislocated her knee, fell to the floor. Knee cap stuck off to the side of her leg and won't go back. She lays on the floor for about a half hour before she's able to get the attention of a neighbor kid to bring her the phone so she can call for help. (Neighbor kid is a sweet, scared, seven year old girl who comes over for horseback lessons and might as well be a surrogate granddaughter. Poor thing was worried sick! We sat with her a minute and made sure she knew we appreciated her being such a big helper, and that she did the right thing and everything was going to be OK.)Anyhow, back to the story. Lady gets phone, calls for help. Doesn't call 911. Calls her husband to come home from work- 45 minutes away! She's still on floor, kneecap still out in left field, when he arrives. He calls 911. We get there and she's been on the floor at least an hour and a half by then. Her leg is cramped up and there's no hope in getting that sucker back where it belongs, so we dosed her up with fentanyl and splinted it in place. The whole way down to the hospital she was apologizing profusely. I felt pretty bad that there wasn't more we could do for her. She was still in excruciating pain even after meds, but she was a trooper and I salute her. (Now if only those 19 year old punks with 83 tattoos and 27 piercings that are "afraid of needles" could see her and take notes...)

On the way back from the hospital, we exited the freeway and headed for our station. Tones dropped and we happened to be right in front of the address so we were included on the call. Dispatch advised that there was a "vehicle fire with a building in danger". It took us a minute to find it, but when we did it became clear that something got lost between the 911 call and dispatch. We pulled up to the back of a new strip shopping center. There was a business with it's back door open, steam and mist pouring from the door. Soot was over the doorway and melted shelves and charred boxes littered the ground. The shop owner said his restaurant was due to open in 3 days. He said that some landscapers had approached him asking for water to put in their sprayer. He hadn't thought twice about allowing them to come in and fill up their canister. When the water hit whatever was in the canister, it reacted violently, igniting and setting fire to the building. The sprinkler system extinguished the fire, limiting damages and loss, but now water spewed from the ceiling and was making a wet mess everywhere. We turned the water off and I noticed the young man on the curb wiping his face. His shirt indicated he was with the landscaping company. I went to ask him what happened and what was in the container. He insisted it was "round up" for weeds, and he kept wiping his face. When he finally moved his hands, I saw that his nose was missing skin and his cheeks were beginning to blister. His hair was melted and singed around his face. We helped him to the ambulance and gave him something for pain along with a ride to the ER to get checked out. He was lucky that the burns didn't involve his airway!

While we were out on his call, another call that would have been ours was dispatched to the next ambulance. Chief complaint? "Caller states he has a zit on his back". Seriously. I can't make this up. I had legitimate calls, and missed the one doozy! The emergency gods were shining down on me today! Thank you thank you thank you! (and yes, they ended up transporting senior grumpy with a back boil who apparrently can't drive. Or walk. Or phone a friend. Go ahead and roll your eyes at that one, I know everyone else that heard it did!)

I had gone through a lot of narcotics (some people are very liberal with the drug box, but I typically tend to be more conservative. The way I figure it, if my patient is awake and talking to me when I find them, and they will be awake and talking to me when I get to the ER, there is no reason to go pushing meds. I only do that when someone's condition forces my hand in the issue. I reserve pain meds for those who really need it- not just those saying "it hurts" while resting comfortable. Knee out of place and face burnt and blistered were both legitimate, painful injuries). I called the supervisor and let him know I only had one bottle left. He said he would meet with me later to restock, and he would keep an ear out in the meantime. Sometimes (well, most times) all of the information isn't available and what dispatch sends us to is drastically different from what actually happened.

"Check code 4 on car versus tree. Caller states occupant is out of the car but sitting down and looks like he might be injured. No bleeding." Arriving on scene we find a pick up truck off the road, driver's side into a small tree. There is an 18 year old walking around and another one sitting on the opposite side of the road in the grass. I ask the upright one if he is OK, he says yes, so I turn my attention to the one on the ground. He is grimacing and says his hips "feel funny". He is sitting up, says he can't get up though. I ask his friend how he got over there if he cant stand up, and his friend recalls the wreck and fills us in. The one on the ground was the driver. He was wearing his seat belt. Friend was passenger, and did not have his seat belt on. Friend says the driver dropped a cell phone and looked down to get it, ran off the roadway to the left, over corrected, and flipped the truck twice. The friend goes on to say that on the first flip, he was thrown out the passenger window, landed on his back, and like something out of "The Matrix", saw the truck flip over him the second time before shearing off a natural gas line and landing upright. The friend says he got up and pulled his buddy from the truck, away from the spewing gas line. I was absolutely dumbfounded. Friend should be dead, and the driver shouldn't be the one hurt!

The truck fared very well for the ride they had been through. They had hit a tree on the driver's side door post and it left about a six inch intrusion, but the rest of the truck looked pretty good. We immobilized out patient and took him to the hospital. His blood pressure was low so I ran a liter of fluids into him. I knew he was bleeding somewhere. His abdomen looked and felt good- no indication of liver or spleen injuries. I suspected his hip was broken, and later called the hospital to find out for sure. They had transferred him to a hospital downtown when they discovered that his hip was stable, but that he had broken his pelvis! That would explain why he said his hips "felt funny"!

Twilight Zone

2010-05-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Come on. You know the theme. Do Dee Do Doo, Do dee Do Doo. Shortly before spring break I had three dead guys all in a row with the same first name. Yesterday, I had two people in a row who cut their hand and passed out. This is getting weird. The first one was a snarky but joyous elderly lady who was out trimming the hedges with an electric hedge trimmer and shaved off the top layer of skin from a knuckle. She went inside, and when she saw herself bleeding, was out cold. Down for the count right there at the kitchen table, per her patient and caring husband. When we arrived at her house, she had regained consciousness and was laughing and making a fuss over all the firefighters parading around her living room. She joking blamed her husband for the whole ordeal, after all- he was the one who purchased the hedge trimmers so by dafault he was to blame. He was soft spoken and very appreciative, even apologetic. She was outspoken and boisterous. She began to brag about a few other firefighters from the station we had come from. She called them by name, and spoke highly of them. She went on to explain that her meek husband had, just a few months prior, gone into cardiac arrest at a red light near the station. A supervisor and his 17 year old son were on scene and pulled him from the car. A sherrifs officer began CPR. The husband had been in complete cardiac arrest and had made a full recovery. He turned red, stared at his feet, fidgeted, and teared up as she boasted and bragged and expressed her gratitude. She continued telling stories. She laughed at her own clumsiness. She said she had hired someone to cut the grass, but that the hedges were driving her crazy. Glancing outside, I offered to finish them for her. There were about six of us in her living room at the time and we could knock it out in no time flat. (Customer service doesn't always fall into the "cats in trees" catergory). About four guys on scene looked at me like I had six heads when I suggested finishing the job, but she honestly had about three bushes left and I didn't want her to go back at it. She seemed just stubborn enough to do it. She insisted that she would hire someone to take care of it. She began giving us all a hard time, and even jokinly referred to someone as a "nitwit". She inquired when her finger would feel better. I couldn't help myself. She had set the mood so without hesitation I replied "when it feels better". She laughed and rolled her eyes. I wish every patient could be in as good spirits as she was.

Later that day we were called to an elderly man who cut his hand and passed out. Pulling into the driveway we saw him, his hand wrapped in a very bloody bath towel. Blood painting the driveway. A circular saw overturned on the ground. He was pale, and even though it was a hot day, he was abnormally sweaty. He looked nauseated. As we exited the truck, he began to unwrap the hand. He had been working, cutting stone for a pathway with his saw. It had fallen onto his hand. His left hand lay gaping open. The saw had cut a nasty angulated gash across the back, just below his first, second, and third knuckle. Bones stuck out at odd angles. Blood seemed heavily and steadily. For now, his fingers were still attached. There was a trauma center that could potentially sew him back up and restore function of the hand about 20 miles away, or there was a hospital over double that distance that had not only a renowned hand reconstruction team, but microvascular surgery specialists as well. Initially, he was stubborn, and asked that we only wrap his hand so his wife could drive him to a local hospital that was a glorified band-aid station. I explained that he was well within his rights to do that, but that he would eventually lose circulation and function of the fingers and they would have to be amputated. He guffawed, and began to protest, but trailed off. He had looked down at his hand again, and began to lose consciousness. Thankfully he was leaning against the tailgate of his pick up truck, and we just lowered him down onto that before transferring him onto the stretcher. He was out cold, and could no longer refuse services. We began the lengthy transport to the hospital with the hand team. He had a history of diabetes, and that will hinder the body's circulation and slow healing so we felt that hospital offered him the best chance at restoring full function to his hand. He awoke shortly and with some fluids, his condition improved. We kept the hand wrapped up. It took a long time to get to the hospital but they greeted us warmly and were very accomodating. That in itself was surprising. I was hoping to get a picture of his hand, but the didn't want to unwrap it again until the surgeon could take a look. I hope they can fix him up and have him back to his stubborn self soon.

Breaking in new gear

2010-05-29T09:02:00.000-07:00

I was issued new gear (yay- get to look like a rookie for a while. Don't get me wrong, I am VERY thankful to have it, it just takes a while to wear the "new" out of it). I ran it through the extractor, and had been doing P.T. in it every shift and it started to soften up and be a bit more flexible. It still smelled new though. It needed to be baptized by fire.

I had picked up an overtime shift and was working on the south end of the county. It had been an uneventful shift. I went to bed around midnight. At 12:30 we were called on a granny tote from the local nursing home. We backed back into the bay ready for bed around 1:30 or so. I was headed to the bathroom when our encoder went off again. Oh well, at least I hadn't fallen back asleep again, that makes it ten times worse. I heard two other tones drop and said aloud to the captain who was up with insomnia "that's something big" thinking it was either a person down or a wreck with entrapment. Nope. Dispatch came across and said "seven first due" with the cross streets. We ran to the truck. The call was about a mile or so away, and I could see the orange glow in the night sky and the violent plume of billowing smoke steadily streaming skyward. I was first on scene. I set up command, gave a brief size up, and jumped out of the truck. The home- a double wide trailer- was already fully involved. I wondered how it wasn't called in sooner. There was a vehicle parked about four feet from the house, and if the home had been equipped with smoke detectors, they burned up long ago and emitted no noise presently. We pulled a cross lay and charged it, attacking the fire from the outside. The walls easily gave way, and the floor sank in. Shortly after beginning our attack, the porch collapsed. Each time we would get the fire knocked down, it would reignite violently. There was a ruptured gas line fueling the blaze. A crew tried to turn the gas off, but the break was on the wrong side of the switch. The gas company had to come out and dig the pipe up.

We worked long and hard after the fire was out. The roof was constructed of about six layers of sheet metal, nailed on top of itself repeatedly, and had collapsed. Given the vehicle so close to the residence, we suspected we were searching for a body. I silently prayed it wouldn't be a little body if there was one here. We dug through the ash and soot and charred wood. We hauled piece after piece after piece after piece of hot sheet metal away from the rubble. As the sun rose, we were all released from the scene, and it was left with the investigators. I went back to my station to get my equipment cleaned up and readied for the oncoming crew. I hosed my gear off. It needed to go in the extractor to be washed, but would have to go in my car first, and it stunk that distinctive stink of sweat smoke and dirt. I later learned on the news that an adult body was found in the remains, and the investigation is still underway. I hope their family is able to heal and find peace after this. My gear is on it's way to being broken in. At least it doesn't smell new any more.

Things To Never Do Before I Die.

2010-05-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

There are certain things I just don't care to try before I die. Call me boring, but I never want to visit Antarctica. I hate being cold. With. A. Passion. I never want to eat glass. Don't sign me up for a position at a chicken plant. I've smelled that and do NOT need to have any better of an idea at how that place functions. I don't want to ride a motorcycle through a barbed wire fence. Sadly, the guy we had last week did just that.

We found him lying in a field, propped up on his right elbow, surprisingly calm. His left leg was badly broken, and the bone was protruding through the skin. I was on the rescue, and the crew on the ambulance was bandaging his leg. His clothing was shredded from armpit to ankle, and his bike had been up righted by one of the helpful law enforcement officers on scene. He jokingly asked if anyone wanted to buy a Harley, as it was now for sale, only wrecked once (though the motorcycle fared extremely well, and had gone down in an overgrown field so had little damage to it). We got him on the backboard and hoisted him up the hill and into the waiting ambulance. While someone else worked to start an IV on him, I cut what was left of his shirt to check for further injuries. He had a large abrasion on his stomach, and a fairly decent laceration in his armpit, dangerously close to his brachial artery. He got very lucky. His pants were hanging on him by threads, and his riding vest had been draped over his lap. I moved the vest and quickly discovered why it had been placed there. His sack was sliced open and a testicle lay in his lap, thankfully still attached. I didn't want to blurt it out and scare the poor guy- as of right now he thought his broken leg was his only real injury, so I wrote "evisceration" on my glove and showed the medic on the ambulance. He read it, and looked at me puzzled. I pointed and he turned green, grimacing in sympathy for the poor guy. (An evisceration is when someone's insides are on the outside- usually happens with abdominal organs and intestines, but it can apply to other body parts as well.) We did what we could for him and the ambulance took him down to the hospital. I wonder if he followed through with selling his bike? If not, I'm sure it will be a long time before he's back in the saddle again!

Bored Teen Renders Five Families Homeless

2010-05-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

My current station is in the middle of nowhere, at the north end of the county. We don't run many calls (hence the infrequent updating here, sorry!) The south end of our county stays very steady and runs most of the fires we get here. Surely enough, tones dropped for a fire on the south end. First arriving units stated the rear of a row of townhouses was burning, and that five units were involved. Each unit was assigned it's own team of firefighters to work on it, and a second alarm was dropped. Before I knew it, my station was being called to assist on a fire twenty miles to the south! Excitedly, I hurried to the truck. I tried not to get my hopes up too much, telling myself "they'll have it all out and cancel us before we even get halfway there" but that wasn't the case. We made it to the scene and were assigned a unit. The incident commander explained that a 15 year old stated he had accidentally burned a pizza and thrown it in the backyard, but that it caught the grass and a grille, then the siding and walls on fire before he could get water on it. It was a dry windy day so nobody doubted it. The commander said our unit still had fire extension in the walls, and in between the floors, and it was up to us to find it and put it out. I happily connected my air pack to my BA and, pike pole in hand, entered the residence.

The carpet was floating a foot off the floor from all the water inside the home. It squished when we stepped on it. We went to the rear of the home and communicated with crews on the outside to get their perspective, before tearing into the walls and ceiling. Opening the ceiling, we saw the rolling orange glow of spreading fire. Opening the nozzle we quickly extinguished it, and moved further along the ceiling of the kitchen. We pulled more and more sheet rock wall and ceiling, checking for extension. We went upstairs and opened a bedroom wall where the outside crews said there was fire. Sure enough, under a windowsill, was more fire spreading in the void space of the wall. Visibility was good, windows were open, and the fire was contained and moving slowly. We had to keep opening wall, spraying water, moving a foot, and repeating. Eventually we felt confident that the fire was out. At least in that wall. We had to check the roof. My partner easily had 120 pounds and at least eight inches in height on me, so I had to climb up into the tight opening of the attic. With my air pack on, it took some contorting and twisting, but I was able to get up into the space and make sure there was no fire up there. I turned my flashlight off, looking for anything glowing. I listened for the crackle. I used the thermal image camera to make sure there were no more hot spots. My straps got hung up a few times trying to come down out of the attic, but I freed myself and we exited the home, confident that we had put a stop to it in out unit. There were other teams accomplishing the same thing in their units, and just like that the fun was over. After we finished all the cleanup, the investigator spoke with the young man and his story changed. It came out that he was bored, and had poured mineral spirits over action figures before setting them ablaze and he got more than he bargained for.

Small Accomplishments

2010-04-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

I signed myself up for a charity challenge event that ended up being a lot of fun. The objective? Raise money for the American Lung Association. The task? Race to the top of this:

50 stories. 1150 steps. Full gear. Fastest time wins. This is an annual event here in Atlanta, and several on my county's team had done it time and time before. It was my first year and my nerves ended up kicking into high gear the night before. The morning of the climb I was high strung and bouncing off the walls. I wanted to finish. More than finish, I wanted to do well. I wanted to be fast!

There were a lot of people signed up for the challenge, and everyone chatted while waiting their turn....

Almost time to go... They let one person start every ten seconds so there wasn't a mad rush at the door. Each racer had a timing chip on their boots that kept track of your individual time.

It was finally my turn. The first ten floors went by quickly. Then my legs started burning. The burn lasted six or eight floors then passed quickly. By floor 22 I was almost halfway up. That was a frustrating place to be. Almost halfway there. By floor 35 everyone had slowed down and was struggling to keep up their personal pace. I had a few people pass me, and passed a few as well. On the 38th floor, I took advantage of a water station they had set up and wet my parched throat before continuing on. I had assumed the worst part of the challenge would be painful knees or sore legs. I never anticipated the lack of oxygen in the stairwell. There had been hundreds of marathon runners ascend the stairs before the firefighters challenge, and at each floor, the doors were closed to any hallways. The air in the stairwell was so dry it burned in your throat and chest. There was such poor airflow and circulation, that the final ten flights were a struggle. On the 46th floor I passed another firefighter lying on the stairs, panting and sweating in exhaustion. I stopped and asked jokingly if he was dying. He said "nah, just keep going". I couldn't just let him lie there, so I said "Come on, we'll finish together. You don't have to go fast just don't stop. We've gone too far to quit now." Groaning, he got up and continued his climb.

As I neared the 50th floor, I could feel an improvement in the air quality, and could hear the crowd of supporters cheering their peers and friends on. It was finally my turn. The timing clock beeped as my boot crossed the doorway. I did it! My time wasn't spectacular, but at least I did it. (And I know what to expect next year!)

2010-03-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you who remember this post http://mommy-medic.blogspot.com/2008/09/life-is-precious.html

Any similarities between it and this video.......
http://www.choa.org/default.aspx?id=9368

may or may not be one great big coincidence :)

I'm glad this was released this week- needed it after all the bad calls. What a reminder that sometimes there are happy endings. (The whole crew was asked to do the interview, but some said "thanks but no thanks" and others were just too camera shy!)

Starting to see a pattern....

2010-03-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

At 4:30 in the morning we were awakened by a call. Dispatch gave us the address and the nature of the call. Person down. Not breathing. Feeling like the grim reaper I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the truck. On our way to the call I made a mental checklist of everything to grab in order to work a cardiac arrest. Oxygen, jump bag, monitor, backboard for CPR, and so on. Dispatch came across with more information. "Caller state's he is cold to the touch. CPR is not in progress". It sounded like he was already too far gone. We got to the house and several family members were huddled on the front porch, sobbing. I somberly entered the house and a sheriff's officer pointed to a chair in the living room. A very large man appeared to be asleep watching TV. His arms and fingers were discolored from pooling blood. I felt for a pulse. He was cold, and rigor had already set in. He had been dead for several hours. I confirmed that there was nothing we could do. His wife poked her head into the room and looked at me with questioning eyebrows, still in disbelief. I shook my head and said simply "I'm sorry". There was no sense in giving her false hope. She knew he was already dead, but needed the confirmation. I really don't like calls like this. I feel so helpless for the families. I gathered the necessary information to complete my report and asked the family if there was anything we could do for them. Of course there wasn't.

I went back to the station to do my report, and something very bizarre occurred to me. I had run three dead people in two shifts, and they all shared the same first name. I'm still scratching my head over that.

.....You lose some

2010-03-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

You win some. You lose some. That's just the nature of this line of work. Yet it can be so incredibly difficult to accept. We go through years of training, learning tricks that we *might* be fortunate enough to use once or twice in a career. We learn skills and procedures that are reserved for last-minute, do-or-die situations, hoping to never have to really do them. We were once again having a slow shift when we were called to "check code-4 on a MVC, complaining of chest pain" (check code 4 usually means everything is pretty much ok, they just want to get checked out.) We went en route to the call. Arriving on scene my partner and I were both impressed by the severity of the wreck. The first car we came to had a large man kneeling next to it, dazed. I checked on him, and he was awake and talking but confused. He would obviously need to go to the hospital. I went to the other vehicle, checked on that driver. He was out walking around and was on his cell phone. He was shaken up but unhurt. I went back to the first driver and he had already gone downhill. He was now very disoriented and kept complaining that he couldn't breathe. By the time we put him on the stretcher, he was ashen and his belly was rapidly doubling in size. His chest was becoming rigid. We got him in the back of the ambulance and I assigned tasks to everyone. Get him a couple IV's, put him on the monitor, put some oxygen on him. I opened the drug box without hesitation and looked for Excalibur- a HUGE IV needle we use for one of those last minute procedures. I palpated his chest and couldn't feel ribs through all the free floating air in his thoracic cavity. I pressed the needle deep into his chest and heard the hiss of air escaping. His breathing eased temporarily. I asked for a helicopter to meet us and we took off down the road. His eyes grew wide as he begged "don't let me die!". He gave me the name and number of his family and asked that they be called. We all worked to take care of his injuries, but also to do our best to calm him down and reassure him that he was going to be ok, that we would fly him to the trauma center and he would be taken care of. He would grow calm, temporarily believing our reassuring words. All the while the bruise in the middle of his swelling abdomen told a different story.

We met the flight crew, and they sedated him and intubated him. His belly was still growing, and was now round and tight. He was rapidly bleeding to death internally. He was loaded onto the helicopter and they got about four feet off the ground, before touching down again and motioning us over. He had gone into cardiac arrest and would have to go to the hospital by ambulance. In a matter of moments he had gone from awake and talking to us, to flatline. We all worked to save him. I pulled out all of those tricks that had been long tucked away. The flight crew rode into the hospital with me and they even resorted to some procedures that are reserved for last-ditch lifesaving measures. The ER did an ultrasound of his abdomen and confirmed what we already knew- it was full of blood. I wish this had a different ending. I want to tell his family that we did absolutely everything we could. I wish those drastic measures had made some miraculous difference in him, but the reality is that from the moment of impact he was dying. I can't stop thinking about it. About the details too graphic for this post. About the sound of his voice, the look in his face. About everyone working like a well oiled machine and his body failing despite our efforts. You win some and you lose some, that's the nature of this line of work. But the ones you lose....... There are no words that do it justice. I did everything I possibly could and that's just not enough.

What could be that bad?

2010-03-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

The morning had been uneventful. The trucks had been checked off. Time was passing slowly. Our tones dropped, and a voice on the radio asked us to head for a house where an elderly man was "bleeding from the head". Assuming he had fallen and gotten scratched up we went to the truck and hit the remote. The bay door opened, and we drove in the direction of the call. I put my foot up on the dash of the truck and watched the trees go by. A mile down the road dispatch asked for out ETA and said he was bleeding badly. Perplexed, my partner pressed down on the gas a little more and the truck picked up speed. We arrived on scene to total chaos. I was directed to the back yard and rounded the corner, jump bag in hand, to find an elderly man lying on the ground in a pool of blood. He had a gunshot wound through his head. He was still breathing. We had no choice but to do everything for him, knowing it was futile. We scooped him up, put him in the ambulance and took off for the hospital. A helicopter had been called but the man went downhill quickly and was soon in cardiac arrest. The flight crew rode with me to the hospital ( CPR can't be done on the helicopter- there isn't room). He was pronounced dead at the hospital. This man had lived his entire life. He had seen the good and the bad. He had been through the ups and the downs life throws at you. What could have possibly been THAT bad that ending his life was the only solution? Nobody will ever know.

Hanging by a thread

2010-03-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

As the shift came to an end tones dropped. Surprisingly, it was our unit that was called to service. Dispatch advised a vehicle had run off the road on the interstate, but the dispatcher stated that she had just come on shift and was unfamiliar if maybe this was an abandoned vehicle that had crashed the night before. We went en route, assuming that someone had consumed a few too many, wrecked, then taken off on foot. We see that a lot- if they don't get caught behind the wheel, then leaving the scene of an accident is a lesser charge than DUI. We had to go north then turn around to get to the advised location, and as we crossed the freeway the radio traffic had a new sense of urgency. Dispatch advised "there is a subject still in the vehicle. Possible 48". (Possibly dead). We arrive and find this:

Can you see the car? He hit the tree on the right, knocking it down, then hit the one that has fallen towards the camera angle, snapping it in half as well. I have never seen a car hit a full grown tree hard enough to knock down not one but two of them. Trees just don't give. If you missed the car, look very closely at the center of the far left side and you can see a smidgen of the tire and undercarriage. When he wrecked his truck, he landed on the passenger side down an embankment and went undetected for 6-8 hours.

Our patient was a 23 year old male. He was pinned by his pelvis in the driver's seat, but his head and torso was hanging upside down. See the firefighter peeking down near the ground in the above photo? He is checking out the patient's head. His forehead was actually outside the vehicle, and because of the positioning we could not simply cut the roof and fold it down to get him out. Being the smallest medic (and the first one in full turnout gear) I grabbed IV supplies and oxygen and climbed into the back of the truck through the broken rear window. My helmet kept getting stuck, but after a few tries I squeezed and contorted myself into the tight space. I attempted to establish an IV on him. He was out cold. His truck was unrecognizable. He was breathing about six times a minute. He was covered in blood and his legs were twisted into an unnatural arrangement that made me nauseated at first sight. I pulled one of his arms free and searched the crook of his elbow for a vein. He still had a faint pulse. His arm was so bloody it kept sliding out of my grasp, like one of those water filled practical joke sausage things that always slide out of your hands. On the third try I finally got bloody flashback in the IV tubing. I taped it down like mad and attempted to get to his airway to at least put oxygen on him. Around me, the crew was breaking glass and cutting metal, trying to peel the vehicle out from around him. Someone handed me a sheet to try to protect him from falling glass, but I had no way of getting it over him. Each time glass rained down on me, I tried to curl over him to at least keep big chunks out of his airway.

One of my guys handed me the cutters. He couldn't cut one of the posts from his angle, so from the inside of the vehicle I had to turn and cut the side of the car, then pass the tools back out to him. I heard the helicopter approaching and land on the freeway. After almost an hour, our patient was finally able to be freed from the vehicle. Because of how his head had landed, we had to put him completely upside down and turn him onto the backboard feet first, face down till we could get him completely clear of the vehicle. Only then did I get a good look at him. He had two softball-sized, smurf blue bruises on his eyes. Blood seeped from his ears and mouth. His hair was matted with dried blood. He was unconscious throughout the entire ordeal. The flight crew took over patient care and loaded him up for transport to our level 1 trauma center. Later I got an update that he had gone straight to the OR from the helicopter, but had crashed once there. At last check he was still alive, but hanging by a thread.

We went back to the junkyard the next shift to get a better look at his vehicle. I was astounded that he hadn't died instantly. He had hit the first tree, then gone airborne and hit the second tree about 15' off the ground (looking closely you can see where it snapped in this pic).

The tree left about a 3' intrusion to his driver door. What astonished me is that normally when someone hits something with the side panel of their vehicle, it will dent the entire panel. He hit with such force that the indention appears perfectly round, as if his vehicle melted around the tree. Note the steering wheel folded in half and moved to the center as well. Imagine the tremendous force needed to do that!!!

And a couple more pics for perspective. What a wreck!!!

Duck.....Duck.....GOOSE!

2010-02-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

It had been a fairly busy day for my slow little station. We had actually transported 3 people and were back at the station when the phone rang. One of my cohorts answered it and tried to stifle giggles as he spoke to the agitated lady on the phone. We could all hear her distress as he spoke to her on the phone, then he said we would come help and hung up. He said that the call had been from the lady working across the street at the heating and air place, and that she was being "attacked by ducks" and couldn't leave the building. They had her hostage. I had just finished doing my p.t. and was still in my sweatpants (and one can't go out into public- even the front driveway- in sweatpants) so I just put my bunker pants on and went to join the guys. The three (one not pictured) guys I was working with all went to go check out the duck attack. The "ducks" turned out to be geese. Two of them, and they were agitated. They were honking and hissing and hoooOOOOOOooonking. One of the guys piped up "Man when those things bite, they pinch on and twist! They don't let go!" That stopped them all in their tracks.

The brown goose wasn't afraid at all- he would come running up hissing and hoooOOOONNking and flapping his wings. the White one kept her distance, but was louder and more than happy to voice her opinion.

Being the only one in protective clothing (and having to constantly prove myself equal in the "bravery" department) I edged forward to nudge the goose away from the building so the lady could get to her car. Mr. Goose hissed and honked and hissed some more, but he didn't back down. I was waiting for his long curvy neck to dart out towards me and grab or peck at me, but he stood his ground. I stuck my foot out and ever so gently nudged him. To everyone's surprise, he nuzzled his head up to my boot.

Then he came in for a better look. "Hey- is that a phone you're taking my picture with? You have an amazing camera but you left it at home and you are taking my mugshot with a phone? "

"Go on, see if he will bite you!" they jeered. "I'm gonna laugh my $#@ off when he gets you!" came the taunts. I figured I would get pecked pretty good and that would be the end of that, but Mr. Goose took a liking to me. The lady in the heating and air place came out and was in complete disbelief. She explained "You don't understand! They were pecking at the glass door. They charged me when I went to my car. I had to run back inside because he was trying to eat me!"

Mr. Goose didn't want to eat anyone. Oh no, he's a lover, not a fighter. And he liked being pet. One of the guys said sarcastically "why don't ya just have a seat and let him climb in your lap?"

He never did, but he did follow me all the way back to the station and into the bay. I have pics of that too but they are so blurry they aren't worth posting. All in all it was really funny, aside from the new nickname "the goose whisperer" and "Mother goose". So much for kittens in trees.....

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night...

2010-01-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

You call 911, we come. Good weather, rain, day or night, even tornadoes ( http://mommy-medic.blogspot.com/2008/05/tornado-long-but-i-will-throw-in-some.html ). Snowstorms are no exception. It may take us a bit longer to get there, but we are on our way. Here in metro Atlanta, snowstorms shut the city down. People rush to Wal-mart to buy milk and bread and eggs and PS3 games and beer and generators in a frenzy. When it snows here, it usually melts and disappears a few hours later. When it snows here it only does it about once a year. I lived in Minnesota for a while. I like the snow that lasts a few hours and is gone, not a few months and is piled 10 feet high at every intersection.

It snowed here recently. Only it didn't melt. It accumulated to around an inch. Then it froze solid overnight. The next day, it started to melt, then refroze to the most slippery, solid, crystalline slick known to mankind. It was a very busy shift. One of our first calls was to shut a road down that had become too slippery to traverse. I was driving the engine. the engine is big, heavy, carrying 1000 gallons of water at a little over 8 pounds per gallon, and has soft brakes. It was very slow going. The ambulance and rescue truck got there first, and parked halfway up the snow covered hill. I parked the engine on level ground at the base of the hill. Four cars had already slid off the roadway and two others were stopped and stuck. A police car was skidding up the hill. I put the wheel chocks down and began the hike up the hill to meet with my crew and formulate a plan for removing the cars and closing the road until they could get some salt down. I was looking down at the ground so as not to slip when my radio came alive with traffic. I couldn't make out what was being said but whoever way saying it was pretty worked up. It sounded strangely familiar, almost as if it were one of my guys. I looked up in time to hear a "pshhhhh....squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak" sound and watched in dumbfounded horror as a liquid propane tanker slid sideways down the hill, missing the ambulance and the rescue by inches. My crew grabbed a lady that had been in a car and they all ran for the ditch. Thankfully the truck driver was able to straighten it out and coast down the hill. I ran and ducked back behind the engine and waited for him to pass. I happened to look to the side of the road and see a makeshift cross and a shredded tire in the snow- signs of previous wrecks and bad omens.

We managed to get the people out of their cars and get the roadway shut down. The county road department came some time later and put down salt and gravel. We had several other calls all day long. No real life threatening emergencies, but a lot of calls for service and help came in. One of the later calls that night was for a man who couldn't get his catheter to drain correctly. In order to get to his house, we had to take a left turn at the top of a 60 foot embankment with no guard rail. The ambulance was first and slowed to a crawl before attempting the turn. the vehicle started out great, then lost all traction in the slick packed ice and began sliding straight for the drop off. My partner in the rescue jumped out, grabbed the wench, and kept the ambulance from falling off the ridge. The ambulance was pulled back to safety, then the guys decided to take the long way around, adding a few miles to the trip but avoiding the hill in the process.

I can't wait for all this to melt and go away again! It was a really long shift and everyone was glad to see the oncoming crew come sliding in to the parking lot the next morning.

Small humor

2010-01-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

I called the orthopaedic today to make an appointment for my 10 year old daughter who recently broke her arm. After going though a zillion voicemail options and pressing 2 sixteen times, I was given a list of doctors.... sorry, but I don't think we'll be seeing "Dr. Pain" any time soon!!!

Talking in circles

2010-01-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes talking to patients seems like talking in circles.

We were called to belly pain. Dispatch said our patient had his gall bladder removed the week before. I commented to my partner on the way to the call "let me guess, he hasn't taken his pain killers and now he's hurting?". Boy do I hate being right sometimes.

Inside the house we question the man. He is making his wife comb his hair so he can look nice for the ride. He and his wife both have a history of some pretty high anxiety issues, so this gets interesting really fast. He tells us a bit of the story, that he was in and out of the hospital then had his gall bladder removed but "doesn't like the way the painkillers make me feel" only now it hurts to breathe. And stand up. And sit. And lie down. (I resisted the urge to ask about rolling over or playing dead).

EMS crew: "So, how long were you in the hospital for?"

Gallbladder Guy: "I wasn't IN the hospital! I was only there for four days!"

Voice in my head: "ummmmmm........ moving right along"

EMS crew: You take (blood pressure medicine). How long have you had a history of hypertension?

Gallbladder guy: "I DON'T have a history of it!!! It just started four years ago!!!" (He says defensively)

Speechless, blank stare. Blink........blink blink. Deep breath.

He climbs onto the stretcher and we buckle him in. We ask what hospital he would like us to transport him to and he answers. His anxious wife watches us raise the stretcher up, then asks nervously, "Are......are you.....taking him?"

Voice in my head: "No lady. We are going out for ice cream and might get some cotton candy on the way back. I heard the circus was in town and he looks like he could use a good laugh. After that, we're gonna go get pedicures and maybe a tattoo."

Actual response: "Yes Ma'am."

We get him into the truck and can tell he's in pain, so we ask more questions to relate to the hospital. (And on a side note, I have absolutely NO idea WHY we bother doing this because 98% of our patients will tell the EMS responders one story, the nurse a different story, the registrar a taller tale, then the doc gets something totally different entirely, but old habits die hard I guess, so we keep on asking.)

I ask if he has eaten any fattier foods since his surgery. He guffaws and retorts "Nope. Just Christmas leftovers. You know, ham, dressing, some cake".

Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep breath............

As my partner releases the brakes to begin our transport, he puts the final straw on the camel's back with "What the heck are we waiting on?"

Sometimes It hurts

2010-01-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it just hurts. We dropped a patient off at the hospital and while doing my report, they got word of a traumatic arrest coming in. I heard sirens approaching and went to help. It was another one of our ambulances. They backed up the ramp. I watched as everyone inside the ambulance scrambled to work on her. A man came running up to me, obviously worried. Inside the ambulance, they stop CPR and check for a pulse. There was blood everywhere. The man asks "Is she stable?" I shake my head no. I wasn't on the call, but if CPR is in progress, no, she's not stable. Several sheriff's officers arrive and pull the man aside. He is the patient's father. I helped unload the girl. There are about a dozen other rescuers solemnly working on her, knowing they are fighting a losing battle. As the stretcher rolls out of the back of the truck, I see her feet. They are pale. They are the color skin turns when the blood stops circulating to it. Her face is beautiful, whats left of it at least. She had done her makeup. Her forehead and temple look like someone took a cheese grater to it, leaving a pile of thick blood, bone, and brain matter on the bed. Blood matted her hair and rand down the stretcher. The medic on the call has intubated her and is breathing for her. They tell the tale of her driving too fast, her boyfriend telling her to slow down from the safety of his seat belt. Sadly she didn't have hers on. She flipped twice, was ejected from the car. The boyfriend walked away with very minor scratches and cuts. They put her into the trauma room and work her. Her heart is young and healthy. It doesn't want to give up. It keeps trying, but there just isn't enough to work with. She is too badly injured, and her time of death is pronounced. Her parents' wails can be heard throughout the entire emergency department. Patients in other rooms, who moments earlier had impatient looks of exasperation, heard the cries and their own expressions softened. For a moment they all understood their place in line. They knew someone had far more serious injuries than their own sore throats or broken toes. They quietly retreated to their rooms, one hugging his own family, another sheepishly looking to the tile floor as the sounds of her family's pain seeped down the hall. Seeing her dad remain speechless before hugging two other young girls, presumably her sisters, then seeing him lose his composure and weep into available shoulders made me tear up. Mom had blood on her shirt from begging and pleading her beautiful young daughter to wake up. Bargaining to turn back the clock. Praying to come back. The boyfriend was somber as tears streamed down his red face. "I asked her to slow down" he repeated. And now it was too late. Their lives forever changed in a brief moment. I took it all in. The relatives. The friends. The phone calls. The cries. The stone faces of the officers as they stood guard. The low voices of those trying to get information for computer systems. The stray drops of blood on the ground. The pieces of bone. The innocent cries of the sisters "Dad? What's going on? Why won't you tell us what's going on? What's wrong?". I took it all in. Even though I didn't run the call, sometimes it still hurts.

Dear Selfish Smoker

2009-12-20T19:15:00.000-08:00

I realize you have been a smoker for probably 45+ years. I know how hard it can be to quit. I realize that when you heard your diagnoses, and that it was untreatable, you took the "why bother quitting now?" approach. I honestly can't say I would do any differently. However, when I went to pick you up at your house because you couldn't breathe, your daughter- also a long time smoker- was sick with worry watching you struggle. Your precious, 4 year old granddaughter wanted me to assure her that you were going to be just fine. I tell her we are going to check you out and help you breathe better. She understands this, but I still see the concern in her huge brown eyes. "I love you Paw-Paw" she says in her high-pitched voice. I do what I can to help you, but it won't change anything. You will light up another one as soon as you can breathe again. You are not mobile enough to step outside, and here, selfish smoker, is what makes me so angry. Not only are you subjecting your precious 4 year old granddaughter to your smoke (that has already yellowed your ceilings and permeated every stick of furniture you own, as well as the children's clothing and bedding), but that now innocent little brown eyes gets the pleasure of watching you die.

The "Eyes" have it....

2009-12-16T18:37:00.000-08:00

Most pediatric classes are now taught with the simple question "Sick or not sick". It's a fairly simple philosophy- A.B.C. Appearance- does the child look sick? In kids, their eyes tell it all. Breathing- are they breathing normally, or are they working to get air in and out. When kids are sick, their respiratory rate increases, and if they are working harder, they will have nasal flaring- their nostrils go in and out. They can also have retractions- when the skin around the ribs and collar bones sucks in as the child inhales. Circulation- are the fingers and lips pink? Pale? Blue? If you pinch a finger does it take a long time for the blanching to go away or is it prompt?

So, if you were to come across the world's sweetest 2 year old princess, but her eyes were devoid of their sparkle like this:

And she wouldn't eat more than one bit here and there. And you have to force fluids down her when she normally begs for juice, milk, water, juice, and more juice all day:

And she sleeps

And sleeps

and sleeps

and wakes every 2 hours in the night for a few nights in a row, and runs a fever of 102, well, then you know this little princess is SICK. According to her phenomenal pediatrician, she has been blessed with bilateral ear infections (yeah, this kid makes up for the other two genetic mutant children that NEVER got ear infections) and pneumonia. That would explain her respiratory rate of about 60 (about twice the normal rate for a toddler, er, I mean princess) and her retractions. She has some Motrin, Tylenol, and bubble-gum flavored "pink stuff" all working to help her highness feel better! Hope to be back soon, but for now- work will have to wait, this patient takes priority.

Beans and Okra

2009-12-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

We were in training. PHTLS. Pre-hospital trauma life support. We had just covered airway management and brain bleeding, and dispatch must have been listening. We left training to respond to a possible stroke. Arriving on scene, the first-in engine asked for our ETA (we just put it in park, so about ten seconds?) and advised our patient was seizing. I tossed the jump bag onto the stretcher and grabbed the Narc box out of the drug box. The narc box hold three medications- Morphine, Versed, and Toradol. Versed helps stop seizures. We entered the house and found our patient on the floor, unconscious, with snoring respirations. One of the experienced guys was pretty worked up and told me "he just had a seizure". "OK." I said "Well, let's get him on the stretcher". It's not my emergency, it's not my place to flip out, but he needs to go and he needs to go now, so there is an air of urgency about the room. The fireman says "no, I mean he just had a SEIZURE" and starts flailing his fists up and down in what appeared to be an imitation of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. I couldn't help but smile, and repeated "OK....let's get him onto the stretcher" which in itself was no easy task. Our patient was pushing 240 lbs, and we grabbed his shirt, pants, belt, arms, legs, feet- all of the above, annd hoisted him onto the gurney.

We are back on the road. We are miles and miles away from civilization. Even though it's foggy and drizzling, I ask dispatch to check availability of an aircraft. Of course nobody is flying. I figured as much, but had to try. Our patient is unresponsive. I check his pupils. His eyes are bloodshot. His gaze is off to the right. His left pupil is tiny and his right one is huge. He is having a stroke. There isn't much we can do right now- we open his airway, put some high flow oxygen on him, attempt basic airway devices but he still has a gag reflex, so out those come for now. We monitor him closely and drive fast. I was in the captains chair at his head. I leaned to the right ant toward him to check his blood pressure again. Over my shoulder I saw his mouth twitch. It looked like someone who burps and lets their cheeks balloon outward. He did that twice. I had asked another fireman to ride in with me in case his condition deteriorated. And it was about to. I told my partner "lookout! Watch him!" and just like that he vomited. We turned his head and removed the oxygen mask to suction out his airway. Navy beans, okra, and what looked like boiled eggs came out- none chewed very well at all. It was disgusting. I had the hot stench stick to my nostrils. I winced, then continued suctioning chunks and liquid out of his mouth and throat. Whole beans hit the floor of the bus. One stuck to his shoulder. After his airway was cleared, I took a towel and wiped his face. Poor guy. I was doing everything I could for him.

As we neared the hospital, his condition took yet another turn. The side of his face drew up, his eye began twitching, and he had another seizure. Only one side of his body seized. Thankfully we were able to stop it, but it didn't change the root cause of his problems. He was having a massive stroke. We took him into the hospital, the ER staff took over patient care, and he was whisked away for a scan to see exactly what was going wrong where. In a stroke, they say you have 3 hours to get the patient to medical care from the exact onset of symptoms. From the time our guy's family called 911, to the time we had him to the hospital (30+ miles away from the middle of smack-dab nowhere) was 46 minutes. We did everything we could. I hope he makes a recovery!

A bit puzzled...

2009-12-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

I had the opportunity to make a little overtime evaluating EMT and Paramedic students taking the hands-on portion of their tests. The station I was participating with involved placing a KED on a patient. The KED is a device that helps secure a seated patient like so:
The straps are color coded, and putting it onto a patient is fairly basic. Apply the device securely without compromising c-spine. Yanking on the patient, twisting them, or failing to actually secure them doesn't cut it though. Knowing that they were being tested today, many of the students were a bit nervous, but blew through this station with the ease and comfort that comes from repeated practice.

But what puzzles me is that more than one person declared "I have never used one of these" or "It's been years since I put my hands on one of these!". Now let me get this straight- you've been going through EMT or paramedic school for what, 4 months minimum, probably closer to a year, and you have had ample time to familiarize yourself with your equipment. You should have practiced and practiced and practiced until you could do all your skills in your sleep. The skills you were being tested on were not randomly drawn from a hat- you KNEW what you would be expected to perform, and yet you announce to the evaluators that you aren't prepared? Don't get me wrong, if you came in and looked at this thing like you were trying to read Arabic then that pretty much gave away that you weren't as prepared as you maybe should have been! I don't understand... Did someone call some of these people and wake them up at 7 this morning saying "Surprise!!! You have your test today!!!"?
In either case- Congrats to those of you who did so well, and to those who had to redo their skills for whatever reason, best of luck to you. Remember- practice makes perfect.

Help! I've fallen, and I can't get up...

2009-12-11T08:01:00.000-08:00

We went to go pick her up. She wasn't hurt, just slid into the floor and couldn't get up. She was elderly- probably in her 80's. Her front door was locked, so we went around to all the other doors. The sliding glass door was locked. The back door was dead bolted. The back kitchen door didn't budge. The door to the back bedroom not only had sagging, rotten wooden stairs with the bottom step missing and iron railing rusted and falling off the side of the house, but the door at the top of the stairs was locked as well. We circled back around to the front of the house, my partner advised dispatch that we may have to force entry. While circling the house I took inventory of the hundreds of potted plants she had in her carport, on her sidewalk, and lining her stairs. Wonder which one had a key hidden underneath it? I went back to the front door and peeked in the window to try talking to the lady. She gave me a thumbs up sign and interlocked her fingers behind her head, getting comfy while waiting. At least she had a sense of humor. She then sat up and her face had an "Aha!" expression. She began making hand motions and pointing upward. I didn't understand at first, then looked up. There, are the top of the door frame, was a nail. Hanging on that nail was the key to the front door. Doh!

The one call I wanted to be there for!!!

2009-12-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

So my sister was pregnant with her second baby. I had jokingly asked her a few months back if I could "catch". She shrugged her shoulders and said "sure, would you pass the ketchup?" and that was the end of that. As it turns out, even the first-due first-responders didn't make it to her home on time!

Congrats Lisa and Stephen!!

http://lifeofasahm-lisa.blogspot.com/

Outside work...

2009-12-08T10:00:00.001-08:00

In order to tie this post anywhere remotely close to work, you'll have to check back here to see the cooking we did at the station http://mommy-medic.blogspot.com/2008/12/random-comments-and-suicide.html. I have been a big fan of "The Pioneer Woman" for a while. I love following her blog and trying the amazing recipes! She released a cookbook (that you need to go get if you like to cook. If you can make toast or chocolate milk, you can probably follow several of her recipes. It's firefighter proof- there are pictures to follow along!)

So, I discovered her blog, followed along, and learned about her brother, Mike: http://thepioneerwoman.com/blog/2008/09/of_mike_and_firemen/. I read about mike and felt compelled to send Mike some souvenirs (as did many other people! I was amazed at the response and love for Mike! http://thepioneerwoman.com/blog/2008/10/nicenesses/ )

Ree, The Pioneer Woman, did a book tour and came to my home town! I was pretty excited (OK, I was REALLY excited) and went to the book store to stand in line. There was a much larger turnout that I expected- I got there shortly after the event started and the book store was giving everyone color coded wrist bands and making people wait according to color and letter. They told us it would be about an hour's wait. An hour came and went. It was getting late and having not eaten, I checked to see how quickly the line was moving. Determining that I had a lot of time still to kill, I went to go eat some sushi and came back. The line still wound through the aisles of books, and my color group had yet to be called.

I sat and watched those who had gone through the line. It was fun to hear all the stories and chatter of the people coming through. Everyone was very pleasant, which is something fairly uncommon in a large group of "general public"- there's usually at least one in every crowd who will be rude or irritating, but I never saw anybody like that last night.

I waited patiently and it was finally my turn! (And I have no clue what blogspot has done to the picture quality here, because it looks NOTHING like this on my photoshop but I can't seem to make it transfer to here correctly- something is going terribly wrong here!)

I got to meet Hyacinth and Betsy too- Ree's friend and sister. Ladies you three were super nice- I don't see how you smiled and were patient and polite for so many hours, but I'm so glad you did the tour and really very thankful that I was able to go! Off to try a new recipe- the cowboy sandwich (Hyacinth I promised) .

Make sure to check the more recent posts too- a lot can happen pretty quickly around here.

Inspired by Nurse K

2009-12-03T19:00:00.001-08:00

*******Edited to say that Nurse K has taken a hiatus, wouldn't ya know it!******

If you scroll down a wee bit on my page and look to the right, there are links to some other blogs I find myself sucked in to. Crass pollination (Nurse K) has a witty dry style that is strangely addicting. I was reading her blog tonight and it reminded me of a lovely patient we picked up once. (They type of patient who makes you want to slap the palm of your hand to your forehead then take a vacation from this line of work and go flip frozen cow parts or deep fry something for a week or two). Anyway, here she was...

I was working another county at the time and we were called to whatever the specific address was. The building was a medical building physically connected to the hospital. It seriously would have taken then staffers at said doctor's office less time to put the patient in a wheelchair and roll her through the halls than it probably did just to explain to dispatch their suite number, location, nature of the call, age of the patient, etc, etc. Anywho, weee-oooooh, weeee-ooooh, here we come. We drag our stretcher up to said suite number, and find our patient lying on a hospital bed in the hallway outside the doctor's office. They had already done the hard part of maneuvering her through the thirty seven doorways inside the office maze. A disinterested girl dressed in scrubs stood in the hallway with the patient, chart in hand, picking at her nails, awaiting our arrival.

We scratched our heads, rolled our eyes, and pushed the patient through the hallway and the rest of the building to get to the ER. Our patient was conscious, alert, oriented, and complaining of (insert random, non-specific, non-life-threatening complaint here) so the three minute walk went by without a hitch. We got to the ER and gave report to the nurse. We handed the chart over to the nurse. The chart was missing basic info (hey- don't shoot the messenger) so the nurse shot us a dirty look, then sighed and asked the patient the name of their primary care doctor. The patient drew a complete blank (seriously, Bambi in the headlights) and said they didn't know. I tried a different approach and asked the patient which doctor they had gone to see today, the one that sent them to the ER. The patient looked at me as if I had four heads and snapped "Well! Don't YOU know where YOU picked me up?" Without missing a beat I replied "yes ma'am....on a bed in a hallway." She didn't like that, but it was the truth.

The nurse moved on to other questions, and each time our patient expected us to know the answers, or consult Sister Cleo or the magic 8 ball or a fortune cookie or something. That got really old really fast. I could tell her nurse had had enough. The nail in the coffin was when the nurse asked our patient if she knew what medications she was on. The patient thought and replied "Well, no, but if you have a list with all the medicines on them I could pick mine out..." The nurse turned on her heels, vanished, and promptly returned with the latest "Physicians Desk Reference" (PDR). It's a giant list of medications. It landed on the bed with a thud. "Here's your list!!!".
Nurse K, that wasn't you, was it?

Insert witty title here....

2009-11-29T17:37:00.000-08:00

I picked up some overtime on a busy truck, and actually got to run a few calls. I really miss being busy. If nothing else, it gave me something to write about.

Our first lucky contestant was seated in a wheelchair at home, minding his own business, when his wife decided that since she knew him best, he just MUST be feeling bad. That, by default, meant he had a urinary tract infection. UTI's can make old people really sick pretty fast. This guy wasn't sick. He didn't feel bad. He was overweight, had poor hygiene, and smoke 3 packs a day, but said he felt fine. His wife insisted he simply MUST be sick, because, well, she just KNOWS him. He has a history of diabetes, and one of his legs has been amputated. In it's place is the slender rod of a prosthetic. His other leg is horribly swollen- a side effect of the diabetes. I assume he's lost the other leg to the disease, but it's never safe to assume, so I ask "lose your leg to the diabetes?" (waiting for a "here's your sign" type response). "Nope" he says, matter of factly "lost it to a train in '62". Wow! His wife talks him into going to the hospital, by ambulance (because her car is low on gas, forget the fact that she's going to have to come pick him up in ten minutes). He hops on the stretcher and we give Mr. I-don't-have-a-complaint a ride to the ER for "he must be sick".

Number two was a little more dramatic. She called for a headache. She was laying sprawled out on the floor in the hallway, with a washcloth over her eyes. She said she had been in and out of the hospital for 5 out of the last 7 days. She said her migraine was a 10 out of 10 for pain, (and hasn't taken any of her prescribed migraine medications) yet rested comfortably on the stretcher, and was even a bit chatty. I sat at her head and did my report, questioning her when necessary and typing as we drove. There was nothing that needed to really be done for her. Her vitals were fine. I checked her purse for her medications, and found a plethora of bottles. Her painkillers had been filled 2 days prior but the bottle was empty. "oh, yeah, those fell down the sink" she says. Yeah, OK. She adds "I was told I'm in heart failure. I used to have to wear a monitor. I went into SVT but they don't know why". SVT and heart failure are very different. SVT in layman's terms means your heart is beating way too fast. In her purse were some "stacker 3" energy supplements, and a bottle of "6 hour power" liquid supplement. She weighs about 250 lbs, and the most exercise she probably sees is going to the mailbox. Think I found the source of your SVT!

Ride of a lifetime!

2009-11-26T06:36:00.000-08:00

I had a little down time on my days off, so I went to our local county airport. There is a rescue helicopter based there and sometimes we utilize them to fly patients out when their condition warrants services not offered at our local hospitals. Trauma centers, burn units, stroke centers, cardiac cath labs- those all take a long time to get to by ground, and sometimes flying saves time and lives. They allowed thrid riders. so I signed up! I had filled out the necessary paperwork, waived myself away, and went to take the prerequisite safety briefing. Then I was allowed to ride along with the flight crew. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. Other helicopters got calls. Other flight crews were dispatched to transports. Not me. The crew I was with might as well have been nailed to the ground. I was a giant anchor- ensuring that as long as I was there, they were not going to get a...n...y...t...h...i...n...g...! The stipulations for riding along included "no third riders after dark" and as the sun began to lower on the horizon, the pilot finally got stir crazy and took us up for an aerial tour of the county. I was so excited! I got my helmet on, and hooked in to their intercom system. (The "cotter/cauter/codder" box? No idea how it's spelled...) I secured my harness, tucked my feet under the seat, and tried to sit back as best I could, but the IV pump and ventilator were at my shoulder. The smell of fuel filled the cockpit as the pilot started the rotors. The aircraft started to shake and rumble, and dust and debris began to swirl around, then we were up in the air! We gained altitude and the pilot started to circle and bank left and right. We tilted and turned, and my stomach sank a bit like a roller coaster during a dip. My cheeks hurt from the stupid grin that I couldn't wipe off my face. It was so incredibly amazing. We headed north and were in the foothills of the mountains.

In under ten minutes we saw a waterfall off in the distance- a waterfall that usually takes about an hour to drive to!

We flew over towns and farms and lakes and reservoirs, quarries and railroads and treetops and houses. I saw the freeway, and the flight crew had me show them where my station was. It was a bit hard to identify from the air- I found a local neighborhood but trying to identify roads and landmarks from the air was challenging.

We tooled around for a little bit and then headed back. The ride was over far too quickly. I was anxious to go again, but it was starting to show signs that dusk was coming. As I was about to head home they finally got a call. "Do you want to come too?" the crew asked. (It wasn't quite dark yet, and they said "hey, if it 'happens' to be dark when we get back....") It wasn't even a valid question as that silly stupid grin was back and I had my helmet in my hands and was out the door in record time.

We all did the walk around inspection of the helicopter. The crew had done the safety presentation with me, and had said that anyone can ground the chopper for any reason. "It takes all of the crew to say 'go' and only one to say 'no' for a flight" they had said. We checked to make sure all the doors were closed and hatches were hatched, and were off. We flew to a local hospital to transfer a patient to a bigger hospital downtown. When we got him there, we transferred him and were back in the air. Our radio popped and someone asked the pilot questions about air alert and flight time. We had another call! A bad car wreck, reports of a patient ejected and another entrapped. The pilot got coordinates and typed them into his instruments. In a few minutes we were circling the wreckage. I could see flashing lights of firetrucks and police cars. I could make out the headlights of one car off the roadway. We circled for a few minutes but ended up getting cancelled. We headed back to our base and I took in the sights of the city all lit up. The sun had gone down, and one of the flight crew pointed out that I was getting a rare ride most third riders don't get to see. I was able to identify some roads and shopping centers as we headed back. The crew tried talking me into coming to work there part time. I have the background and base experience needed. I would have to get my critical care certification, but it's definitely something I'm contemplating. I'm not about to turn in my turn out gear, but flying would be an amazing part time job! I had so much fun and am trying to schedule a day to go back and do it again.

well, we caught a fire... of sorts

2009-11-20T12:28:00.000-08:00

Not really, but it's been so slow around here that any amount of smoke and flames must, by default, count as a fire. I was working on the ambulance and we caught a call in the far end of a neighboring territory. Twenty minutes later we were cancelled. We caught another call even further away, only to be cancelled off of that one as well. Heading back to our station, my partner declares "I think we lost power steering". Well, that can be a pain in the backside, but it's manageable. I am unimpressed and ask him if he still has brakes. I have been in a truck where the serpentine belt burned up and lost power everything- the brakes are a biggie. He checked, and we had brakes. We made the turn onto the street our station is on, and he was really struggling to get the truck maneuvered. I caught his expression as he hit the brakes; they were going out. He grabbed the radio and put us out of service. As we rounded the curve at a whopping three m.p.h., I caught a glance in the side mirror- we were blowing blue smoke behind us. "I think the engine's blown" I said nonchalantly. We limped her off the roadway in front of our station. As we stopped, smoke enveloped the truck. My partner got out and tried to open the hood.

As he did, the engine burst into flames. I got on the radio and notified dispatch that our truck was on fire. My cell phone started ringing off the hook. I saw that it was one of the supervisors- I answered it and said "yes it's really on fire, call ya back!" and hung up on him (sorry!) I grabbed an extinguisher and passed it to my partner who doused the flames. They would go out, then like trick candles, flare back up, taunting us with small flickering fingers. We coated the engine with the extinguisher, and took all the equipment off the truck. Supervisors showed up. A tow truck had to come haul ol' smokey off to the shop. They say she fried the brain of the truck, and is probably down for the count.

It wasn't exactly the "fire" we were looking for.....

Hello.....OnStar?

2009-10-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

This car belonged to an insurance adjuster. Define the irony there. He went to someone's house to file a report on a vehicle, and when he came out his car was gone. He found it here, down a steep hill. It was locked, still in drive, engine running. We read the VIN number and tried to get OnStar to turn it off and open the doors remotely. It took a bit longer than we wanted and the vehicle started smoking, so we had to use the universal key and break the glass. We got it turned off and secured as best as we could. It took two tow trucks to get it out. Thankfully nobody was in it at the time. Weird.

Saved by the seatbelt (and car seat).

2009-10-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

Dispatch spoke quickly. Motor vehicle accident with injuries. And entrapment. Initially another truck was sent, but the caller wasn't positive on their location. Once other people started calling, we were sent. The location was in our zone. It sounded bad. Dump truck versus car, positive entrapment. Two guys from my station were out in the rescue truck, so my partner took the ambulance, I drove the engine. I neared the scene and was struck by the layer of smoke hovering around the tree tops, like our own private low-lying black cloud. My partner had stopped the ambulance seconds before, and was showing me where he wanted the engine parked. I stopped it, put it in pump gear, and ran to get my turnout gear on. The SUV was on it's side, smoking, it's roof collapsed, and entire driver's side caved in, the vehicle was on fire. The acrid smell of hot plastic and burning metal burned my nose. There was a large dump truck up against the bottom of the SUV. One of the guys on scene poked around from the car and yelled "I need patient care!". I tossed my helmet on my head and ran over to assess the driver. She was in the driver's seat, hanging by the seat belt. Her arms dangled in midair, blood ran down her face, down her hanging hair, down her arm. I followed a drop of blood, and noted the pool on the passenger window and roof (the car landed on it's passenger side). I saw the color of her arms. Purple and blotchy. The color of dead. To my surprise she moaned. I tried to get into the vehicle, but one of the guys doing the extrication hollered over the noise "no, I'm about to cut there" so I went in through where the windshield had been as best I could. When my head was inside the car, instead of seeing the patient, I saw the car seat. It was in the back seat, a forward facing toddler seat. Then I saw a little mirror in the seat next to it- the type parents use to look at babies in rear facing car seats. Only there were no kids, no babies. It's never safe to assume, so I spoke to the driver. "Were your kids in the car with you?" She responds. "Yes."

We all glance through the car- there are no children to be seen. No little hands or feet poking out from anywhere, no whimpers, no cries. I ask mom again- "Are you sure your kids were with you- did you drop them off at a sitters?" She stopped to think, and replied "no, my 2 year old stayed with grandma, but the baby was with me. OH GOD WHERE'S THE BABY!?!?!?". A sheriff from another county was on scene, and touched my shoulder. He said in a monotone voice "We have the baby. The baby is fine" It wasn't what he said, but how he said it. I took it to mean he was trying not to freak mom out and there was a dead baby here somewhere. I didn't ask any more about it initially. I did what I could to get mom out. The guys had to cut some on the roof of the car, and spread the metal floorboard to get her foot unstuck, so I pulled the officer out of earshot from mom. Where is this baby? "He's up there, he's fine" he replied, pointing 200 yards up the entrance ramp to the highway. There, standing on the roadway, was a lady holding a baby. Someone had pulled the baby- car seat and all- from the smoldering car. She had held the baby, and he did appear to be ok. A helicopter was on it's way for mom, so I asked for another ambulance for the baby. Appearances are one thing- but if this baby was in the car the dump truck hit, he needed to be transported. Kids are notorious for crashing hard and fast with no warning.

It took us about 15 minutes to free mom from the car. She had two deep lacerations angled across her forehead- perfect angles from the steering wheel. She had hit an artery and the blood kept seeping steadily from her face. Her arm was broken just above her elbow. Her hip and femur were shattered. I didn't detect any internal bleeding or airway problems, and am sure she will make it, but she's going to have a long road to recovery. We loaded her up and began treatment. We tried to slow the bleeding, started fluids, and gave her some morphine. The helicopter landed, and we flew her out. The other ambulance hadn't arrived on scene yet, so I tried to secure the baby on our pedi board, but he was too small for it. The best possible way to secure him was in his car seat. I didn't like doing it, but it was the best choice for him. The infant c-collar was too big for his tiny neck, so we made an old fashioned horseshoe brace out of a towel and secured it around him. It would limit his movement decently. They asked me where I wanted to take him. I made the decision to bypass the closer, smaller hospitals that can treat ear infections and sore throats, and make the 40 something mile trip to the children's hospital downtown. I called them to let them know we were on our way.
The baby miraculously appeared completely unhurt. He was in the back seat, directly behind mom. The driver's side took the impact, and the interior of the car had 2-3 feet of intrusion. The baby's seat had major stress marks from the wreck. Dad showed up on scene, and rode in with the baby. The children's hospital stressed to dad that the car seat had done it's job. They said he would need a new seat to leave the hospital in. Dad explained that he had paid that vehicle off two weeks prior- and had gotten the title yesterday. He said finances were tight, and a new car seat wasn't an option for them that day. I promised dad i would make some phone calls and see what i could do. Our county has a very proactive child safety program, and reduced price car seats are one of the services we offer. I was so very happy that before I had even made it back into county, someone was on their way to take him a new seat from headquarters! It makes me feel so good to be able to help people in more ways that just the immediate emergency needs.

Dad got choked up and started crying. He said "I almost came full circle this morning". My puzzled look must have been obvious, because dad went on to explain that he can trace his family tree all the way back to 1900, and there had never been a male in his family who had lived to see his 16th birthday with a mother alive. The women all died before their sons turned 16. His mother had died when he was 10 in a car accident. His nephew lost both parents the day before he turned 16. His dad's mom had died of cancer when his dad was young. A grandmother died in a freak hunting accident. I guess I still looked puzzled- the baby was 9 months old, and there was a car seat for a 2 year old. Dad spoke up "we also have an 11 year old, and a 15 year old son." I didn't know what to say. Goosebumps arose on my arms. Speechless, I shook dad's hand and asked him to keep us updated on mom's condition. I had to turn and leave- there was nothing else for me to do.

Thinking of your dad

2009-10-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

"A" was my partner for a long time at my previous department. She was fun, funny, and just as moody as I am . How we never killed each other is beyond me. We laughed, we cried, we did goofy stuff for no reason whatsoever, we knew each other pretty darn well. We could go to a call, and she and I would feed off each other and could work like a well oiled machine without ever saying a word. She could tell when I would work on someone with a sense of urgency but not want to alarm bystanders or family. She knew my next move and would pass equipment without being asked, or do her part with no prompting. She was a great partner.

"A"s dad and step mom lived nearby, and we were often invited to dinner or just to visit. We watered their plants when they were out of town (and yes, we hung an empty IV bag over a plant for them to discover once, just for fun). I got to know them really well. Her dad worked at a local grocery store, and would harass us every time we went in. He was in his 70's with a full head of snow white hair, and he would smile and laugh as he picked on us, all in good fun of course. I remember one shift in particular, we got off duty and she went to go visit them, as I got in my car for the 45 minute drive home. Within about ten minutes, my phone rang. It was "A", and she was hysterical. I couldn't understand what she was saying. It was all garbled, until I finally made out "it's daddy!'. I turned around and drove to her parent's house. I didn't bother to knock, the door was open and I went in. Her dad lay there on the floor of the hallway. He was purple. He was growing cool. He was dead. There was one cop there, and the sirens of the ambulance were still growing louder in the distance. I hugged her, the tears fell. My heart hurt. There was nothing I could do. We sat together and cried and cried and cried.

His wife had said he complained of horrible indigestion, so shehad gone to the store to get him some medicine. She arrived back at the house the same time "A" got there. Her dad collapsed where his wife had left him, apparently as soon as she went to the store. He never let on things were as bad as they were. They think it was his heart.

I went to the funeral. I hugged her kids- whom I had met several times before. I hugged her step mom. "A" and I talked. She didn't want to be there. Neither did I. Nobody did. This was part of the line of work we didn't deal with. The pain families and friends feel after a loved one dies is what we avoid at all costs.

"A", if you're reading this- I just wanted you to know I still think about your dad and "S". Give your kids a big hug for me. Hope you're doing well.

Death by ketchup

2009-10-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Listening to the radio today, I had some calls from memory lane come waltzing back to the forefront of the ole memory bank. One in particular stands out. I refer to that call as "death by ketchup".

A few years ago, I was working in a neighboring department and we were toned out to a possible suicide attempt. My partner and I arrived on scene of a newer, middle class home in a nice neighborhood. We parked the truck and headed toward the front door. Immediately I noticed the crime scene tape around the entire outside of the house. The driveway was taped off, the banister, railing, and posts of the front porch had yellow tape around them as well. We ducked under the tape and went to enter the house at the direction of the cops on scene. There are a few general rules we observe when responding to potential crime scenes- Don't become a victim, don't cut clothes where bullet holes are, don't step in blood. I lifted my foot and went to step on the hardwood floor of the entryway. My foot froze midair. I searched for a clean place to step. There was nowhere to step. The ENTIRE floor was covered in blood smears. The white walls had hand prints on them. There was blood smeared everywhere. There were bloody footprints On the white carpet, toes easily identifiable. Our patient had definitely gone for shock factor. The cops directed us to the kitchen, where we found a female, possibly mid thirties, on the floor. She had overdosed the night before, and had cut herself up the full length of her arms and behind both of her knees. Her cuts were long and deep. She wasn't dead yet, but she wasn't far from it. She was cold, ghostly pale, and was only breathing about six times a minute. We put her on a backboard and carried her off to the truck. I remember leaving the house and looking up- there was blood sprayed all over the ceiling of the kitchen and hallway!

We hauled tail to the hospital, and her condition didn't change. The ER took over, tried to stabilize her, and did what they could. To this day I have no idea if she lived or died. I do know that I was mad for a very long time when the cops showed up and informed us that only 50% of the "blood" in the house was really blood- the rest was ketchup. She had tried to go out with a bit of a dramatic flare- and had sprayed the ceiling with ketchup in neat arches and splattered sprays. She had cut herself and crawled around on her hands and knees on the hardwood floor, painting with her bodily fluids. She had eaten bottles of pills and passed out on her kitchen floor.

I remember that scene so vividly. The house was so new and so clean. It was scantily furnished, and there was a mattress on the living room floor. I remember seeing a child's toy there too. I remember the sadness I felt for the possibility that she had children who would suffer the most. I think about that call every once in a while. Mainly when I eat tater tots.

Grim Reaper

2009-10-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

It's a slow Sunday here at my station, but the grim reaper has been making the rounds this morning elsewhere in the county. I heard another crew advise dispatch that they had an "obvious 48" around 8 this morning. Someone was dead, and beyond hope. That's not terribly unusual. What was unusual was that there were two more immediately after that at different locations, as well as a man that went into cardiac arrest while at a red light in traffic. So three dead people and one without a pulse who will probably be dead by the time this story hits the web, all within four hours of the shift starting this morning. That, my friends, is pretty darn strange here.

Edited to add- within six minutes of this bad boy being posted, another cardiac arrest was dispatched! Don't drink the water here today....

Suicide A La Roadkill

2009-10-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Don't worry. Despite the title this story isn't gross. It's not gory. No blood. No entrails. No random teeth strewn about the roadway. Dispatch sent us on our merry little goose chase by telling us that someone had called a state patrol officer via phone to report a "skinny white man" laying down the white stripe of the side of the road "attempting to commit suicide". I'm guessing that laying perpendicular to the flow of traffic might have upped his odds of leaving a greasy spot in the road just a smidgen. We headed for the intersection- a desolate country back road off a lonely country highway- and I couldn't help but giggle at the blank stares a cow gave as we drove by.

We checked said intersection, but found no "skinny white men" laying on the white line. The only object of interest on the side of the road was a mound of fur and a half of a jawbone, bleached from the sun. I'm guessing it used to be an opossum. (or is it "a possum"? I am south of the Mason-Dixon line, so not sure how to be grammatically correct here.) In either case it was unrecognizable.

We headed back for our station and passed a bridge near the landfill, where a young man was laying on the sidewalk. He had his ball cap pulled over his eyes, hands crossed on his belly, and appeared to be taking a siesta. He sat up when the cops gave a little warning chirp with their siren. Apparently he just needed a nap, and had decided that lonely country highway was the perfect spot for his slumber. He was young- maybe 18 or 20, and had a tee shirt six sizes too big on his torso. His lower half was garnished with long baggy basketball shorts at least ten sizes too big. They hung down to his ankles and drooped off his hips, showing his boxers. A price tag dangled from his baseball cap, that was tilted at an angle, thug style. I guess that's how we roll here in cow country.

Well, She's alive....for now

2009-10-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

"Person down" the radio advised. Not much more needs to be said. We know that means someone, somewhere isn't breathing. Seconds tick by, minutes make the difference. We were en route to help her. Dispatch came back saying "language barrier, family attempting CPR". The fire engine called on scene quickly, and we were close behind them. We grabbed handfuls of equipment, slung straps and bags over out shoulders, and hiked up the steep, weathered steps leading to the porch. The home was an old, run down duplex, like all the others on the street. The grass was sparse and brown, and broken glass bits protruded in between the gravel on the path. The homes in the neighborhood had seen better days. If you've seen the movie "Gran Turino" you can picture the general idea. Same situation, much worse conditions. The housing used to be for workers of a local textile mill. The mill has long since been turned into urban loft living, and immigrants have taken over the neighborhood. Nobody for six blocks spoke English. We pushed our way into the humble abode. It was dark and hot inside. Our patient was on the hardwood floor on her back, not breathing. She was on the floor, but one could tell that when she was upright, she was built of short stature. I noticed her hands and feet. Small and delicate, but not afraid of hard work. We rolled her onto the backboard and carried her out so we could work in the truck.

The supervisor had showed up as we were loading her up inside the house, and didn't hesitate to jump in. He grinned like a schoolkid as he sat in the captain's chair in the back of the ambulance. That was the airway seat, and it was his way of saying he wanted the tube. That was fine with me. It was my call, and my patient, but I have intubated enough people that it has lost all of it's novelty. I'm sure the supervisor has as well, but it's probably been a long time since he got one. Someone else started an IV with some fluids on her. I started pushing drugs, and analyzed her heart rhythm on the monitor. Asystole. Flat line with a tiny little squiggle here and there. According to her family she had complained of difficulty breathing then collapsed. She hadn't been down long at all. She still had a fighting chance. Her brown skin was showing signs of discoloration, and purple was peeking through. We pushed a round of drugs and did some CPR. The monitor showed fine v-fib. Probably just the drugs working, but we had to shock it. Surely she would go back into flat line and stay there after that. But she didn't.

The monitor showed a better rhythm but still no pulse with it. We pushed more drugs and did more CPR. We checked her blood sugar and gave her more medications. Her rhythm on the monitor showed more organization, more like it should, but she still had no pulse with it. It only took us three minutes to get to the hospital, and we were met on the ramp by anxious techs, ready to get her into the ER and spread out a bit and work. They took her into a waiting room, and the chaos began. A nurse began writing furiously as we rattled off what happened, how we found her, what we did for her, and what drugs we pushed. Someone felt her neck and another gloved hand palpated her femoral artery. "She's got a pulse" someone announced flatly. It was probably just the drugs. Surely she would code again, and more drugs would be pushed. More CPR would be done. Only she didn't.

Her blood pressure stabilized without the help of dopamine or other pressor drugs. A ventilator breathed for her. Her heart kept beating on it's own. Her ribs were broken. Her body lay in a delicate balance. For now, she's alive. We did what we could.

Need a fire

2009-09-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since we had a fire. A good one. We need one. When too much time passes we get restless. Like ants kicked or bees stirred. We need some good calls. I will probably regret putting this out there, but its been................quiet!

Lazy Sunday

2009-08-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday. That means most people at stations throughout our department are enjoying an easy day. If your station has an ambulance, you order supplies for it. Otherwise you have no weekly duties on Sunday. It's the day of rest.

We decided to do a little training. It started with one guy saying "you know, it's been a while since I did any refreshing on my knots" and evolved from there. We all stood around the kitchen practicing various knots. Then the training escalated to an all day, multi company drill. A nearby station sent two trucks over to train with our four crew members, and we set up a hose evolution in the bay. There were two hose lines- the first one was lengthy and one had to find the nozzle, then find your way out of the building. At each tool or piece of equipment you came to, you had to tie the appropriate knot for hoisting that tool, complete with safety knot. Blindfolded (face piece covered so you couldn't see). In full gear. Breathing air, wet gloves, hoses spraying you, etc. It was quite challenging but honestly very realistic.

The second drill was removing a downed firefighter. The dummy weighs between 180-200 pounds, and without an air pack on is pretty difficult to tie a rope to without having it slip off. We had to be blind, in full gear of course with air and water and soggy wet gloves, water shooting up your pants leg and down your boot. Droplets spraying through your hood and filling your ears. We had to find the nozzle, find our downed firefighter, and get him out. The floor was flooded and slick, but it was possible.

And if you didn't get your knot right, your rope slipped off and got hung under a nearby hose and the dummy stopped moving, you could try pushing him. "Try" being the key word. This doesn't work so well. OK, this doesn't work at all, but I give him an A for effort! (Poor rookie!)

Sometimes the guy trying to get the dummy out crossed paths with the one trying the knots. This poses an interesting challenge, but they figure it out. Neither can let their body come completely off their hose line- it's the only sure fire way out!

I did the dummy drag twice. I wasn't happy with how I did the first time- my knot slipped off and I had to stop and re-tie it. The second time I did much better and had him out in record time. I think I sweat about ten pounds off of me today, but it was a lot of fun. It was a good challenge and I am ready to go again! I love training like this- obstacle courses!

Of course, when not going through the course the guys entertained themselves reviewing their knots to make....... a swing?

Happy Birthday!

2009-08-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Today we had the pleasure of running a young man who has one heck of a story! See, today is his birthday. Not just any birthday, oh no- it's his 21st birthday! Not being overly blessed with an abundance of patience, this young man went out with his buddies last night. He sat at the bar like a big boy, watching the clock and sipping Shirley Temples. I can see it now.... 11:58......11:59......midnight!!! And bring on the booze! According to a friend of our patient's who was able to maintain cognitive function throughout the night's events, our birthday boy (henceforth called simply "bb") drank himself silly. The entire bar was buying him shot after shot. His friends drove him home around 2:30 in the morning. For reasons nobody can explain BB decided to jump from a moving vehicle at about 20 mph (buddy says they slowed to turn into a driveway). BB landed on his head, splitting his melon open and rendering himself unconscious. Not just a temporary lapse either, oh no. Buddy says BB was out cold, bleeding on the ground, snoring, the whole nine yards for about 15 minutes. An ambulance came, scraped him up, and carried him off to the ER where he got 11 staples in his scalp. BB's mom had the pleasure of being awakened, at 2:30 in the morning of her son's 21st birthday, by a police officer knocking at the door. I can only imagine the "OH MY GOD HE'S DEAD" thoughts that instantly went through her head. Mom went to the ER and sat with him as they did a CT of his head and checked him out. Mom drove him home at 6 in the morning and put him to bed. Mom helped when he was ready to get up later that day. And that's where we come in.

He couldn't exactly get up. He could lay flat and get plenty of blood and oxygen to his brain, but if he tried to sit up or stand up he was out cold again. Unconscious. Down for the count. His jaw was severely swollen on the left side just under his ear. He had a huge bruise and some road rash on his back, and was too raw to wear a shirt. We took him down to a different hospital, and I couldn't help but thank him for being responsible enough to not drive inebriated, but the mom in me came out and I did remind him to put himself in his mother's shoes when that officer was at her door. I think he will be just fine, but hope he learned not to jump from moving vehicles!

Training

2009-08-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

I love my job. I absolutely love my job. We have done a lot of training, training, and more training. It all makes us better at the job. Period.

Getting in your gear to do anything and everything makes you more comfortable with the weight, bulkiness, decreased dexterity, and temperature extremes.

We had Hazmat training and got to pull out the Level A suits. I was on the entry team and got to go get the dummy out. Then we had to be "deconned" and get out of our suits. The zipper in my suit got stuck, and after a dozen guys tried to get it open, they finally cut the seam and shipped the suit back to the manufacturer. The guys kept asking if I was ok, and how I was doing on air, etc. I was fine- a bit sweaty- but fine. I did find it a bit funny watching all the guys tug and try to open the zipper. We set up an obstacle course in our bay- we put paper in our facepieces so we couldnt see and set up a drill. We charged about 250' of hose, tangled it all up, and simulated being disoriented and having to find our way out. It was 95 degrees outside and we had just eaten spaghetti. Not the most ideal conditions for crawling around, but it was realistic! The guys were spraying the nozzle a bit, so the humidity quickly fogged up my camera. During the drill we had to follow the tangled hose, making sure not to lose the line, then they would simulate a collapse, then turn your air off. We had to find another firefighter and hook up to the buddy breather. This lets two people share air from one cylinder. It makes things complicated becaue your air lasts half as long and you have to stay within about a foot of each other. It's not easy to get out quickly like that, but its great training!

What can I say?

2009-07-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

There just hasn't been much to write about.

We have run some calls here and there. We had a pretty cool open ankle fracture that was leaking bone marrow and had rocks, gravel, grass and dirt clinging to the stump. That was courtesy of a surprisingly low key car wreck. We had a difficulty breathing here and there. A random chest pain. Nothing to write home about though.

Today we did some cool training. I have been working really hard to get myself in better shape, and have dropped about 40 pounds recently (70 total pounds lost since I got hired on here in this department!). The training we did today really gave me an eye opener. At the station we have a tunnel of corrugated metal (like the ones they use to go under a road when the roadway goes over a small stream or ditch) about 20 feet long. It is just the right size to let you go into it with full gear and an air pack and then promptly get stuck. You have to inch-worm your way out, and it is a slow process. The tunnels have always intimidated me. Confined spaced don't bother me, but the fact that you can't get out quickly bothers the crap out of me! I have avoided the tubes at all costs. Today we put our gear on and hooked up to breathe air. We did random stuff in the heat of the day, to stay comfortable working in gear. We carried the drag dummy, pushed ourselves to see how many push ups we could do with an air pack on our backs (I'm almost to the double digits- go ahead and laugh at me, then YOU try it!), flipped a tractor tire end over end, crawled through a makeshift pallet maze, and carried hose. The tunnel was taunting me. I pushed myself to do other challenges but my mind kept going back to the tunnel. Time to bite the bullet. I asked one of the other guys to hold it steady so it didn't roll down the hill (now THAT would have been blog-worthy!) and dove in. I smoked it! I guess I am a bit smaller now, or was just that determined and not going to let it get to me, but I was really proud of myself. I am glad to see the changes that losing weight and building muscle has done for me. Another perk I noticed is that even though the drag dummy now outweighs me significantly I can move it around and pull it better than ever before! On the down side, I need a new face piece- air is leaking all around my cheeks and chin even with the straps tight. I can't help but smile thinking about it.

Sometimes the calls find you.

2009-07-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an average day. From the time our shift started we only saw our station for about ten minutes till 11 at night. It wasn't that we ran a lot of calls, it was that they were spaced out juuuuuuuuuuust right. We had to take the truck to the shop to get a piece of equipment fixed, and just generally had a great, busy day. We were on our way to the hospital with a little old lady who had fallen, wasn't injured but did take blood thinners and wanted to err on the side of caution, when I felt my partner driving slam on the brakes. The back of the ambulance swerved a tad as we decelerated, and I heard a lot of gravel pelt the truck. We were enveloped in a cloud of dust and as I looked out the side window, I see a U-haul trailer rolling repeatedly into the kudzu on the side of the interstate.

My partner stopped to make sure that nobody was dying. The driver said he wasn't sure what happened, that the trailer might have disconnected. His SUV rolled a few times and landed on it's passenger side, facing oncoming traffic. The U-haul trailer landed on top of his vehicle, perpendicular to it. A bystander pulled the shattered windshield off the frame of the vehicle and the driver climbed out. We had reported the wreck as it happened in front of us, and it took the local police fire and EMS no time at all to get there.

An interesting query

2009-07-09T16:42:00.001-07:00

I have recently polled other EMS bloggers to ask where they draw the line in what they post and what they don't.

HIPAA is always a concern, so let's take a look into the in's and out's of HIPAA:
What is it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountability_Act
The purpose of HIPAA was to put an end to health care fraud. Or to at least curb it's rampant practice. It seems that in the day and age of identity theft, your credit isn't the only thing crooks are after- Aunt Edna's medicare number became a valuable commodity as well. The long and short of it- you can't share any individually identifiable information about anyone. I can't blog about an awesome wreck we ran and tell all you out there in cyberspace that we got called to Mr. Inglebert Humperdink (name used for illustration of a point) at 3198 Santa LouisaMariaHernandez Avenue, with a date of birth of 22/48/37 and a social security number of 463746374836582949. Then again that should just be common sense. Most of what I blog about is already written up on our county website and can be read about there. Wait- I don't say where I work. Let's leave it at that.

Now, since we are looking into an interesting query as well, let's examine the FIRST AMENDMENT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States
This includes but is not limited to the freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and is protected by congress. That doesn't mean common sense should go out the window.

Now of course if you blog about anything, you open yourself up to cyberstalking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
This can be online, but can also extend to text messages, phone calls, blog comments, emails, and other forms of harassment (all traceable).

I have quite a few links off to the right of other medical and EMS blogs. Most of them are tastefully done. Some do include choice language and a bit more venting than I usually do, and others are "just the facts, ma'am". I guess that's what makes blogging so interesting. It makes a great outlet and lets us all bounce ideas off each other. Off to read some more funny, witty, sad, gross, exciting, all-of-the-above stories.

I need to buy a lottery ticket

2009-07-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was working an engine house that is usually fairly slow. It had been a full day of yard work and the like, so we turned in early. We were up within a half hour chasing a car wreck that didn't exist. We went back to bed when we returned to station, and it took a few minutes for us to go back to sleep. As we were all settling down into our beds. I asked the senior crew member if we were done for the night, and he said "yeah I think so" as he climbed into his bunk. I replied "Oh I don't know, I seem to be the queen of weird stuff. Not necessarily bad calls, just weird stuff". At 2:30 that morning I was eating my words as we went to the scene of a motorcycle versus deer on a residential street. The motorcycle won, and the deer got a broken neck in the process.

The next shift we went to training. There was limited parking, and I arrived in my engine just behind the new ladder truck. I asked my partner if we should ask the ladder guys to let us park behind them in case they caught a call during training. "Nah" he said, "we won't be here that long". No sooner had we parked in front of the ladder and walked into the station than three beeps silenced everyone in the building. A fire. On the south end. I'll go move the engine so the ladder can get out.

My "weird calls" streak continued for several shifts, but that may be another post.

Is it a full moon?

2009-06-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Some people have a natural lack of common sense. Take individual number 1. He decided to go to the pool of a super fancy schmancy subdivision, wander on over to the deep end (the really deep end- like 13-14 feet, big high diving boards over there and all deep end, not the 5' no diving here deep end) and remove security tape and markers restricting access to said area. When life guards instructed him to back away and leave it alone, his basic response was a big fat "you can't make me". Probably true, but the lovely officers in brown that showed up have amazing powers of persuasion. Now individual number 1, being of not so sound mind and body, recognizes one of the officers as a foe from a previous encounter, and pretends he wants to speak calmly to him, only to attempt to shove Mr. Officer into the really deep end of the pool. Had he been successful the outcome would have been rough, as the officer had on full vest and duty belt full of heavy stuff and all. Pepper spray ensued and then of course individual number 1 turns into a snotty slimy ball of "I can't see!". Enter the local fire brigade. We show up and wash him off. We are professional and polite, despite his antics. I dunked a towel into our water cooler to drape over his head since it was really hot out and pepper spray stings. Despite playing nice, he wants to see just how many resources he can waste in one day, and begins to hyperventilate. "Slow your breathing down, you'll make yourself pass out" instructs one of the boys in blue. That was exactly what individual number 1 needed to hear, and he began panting like a puppy in August after an hour long game of fetch. Sure enough, he passed out, slumping off the back of the fire truck. Great, now we had to take him to the hospital. Even though we all knew he was playing games, he was doing a little too good of a job and I wasn't about to say he was OK enough to go straight to jail only to get burnt by him when he fell down there and cracked his melon. We loaded him up and transported him to the hospital. He refused to give us any info- no name, no age, no nothing. Now he could hear us just fine, and he could speak well too. He gave the friendly officers a dissertation on what they could shove where, and though it may not be anatomically possible, he proved his airway and cognitive skills patent. I gave up and just monitored his vitals on the way in. He was put into the system as john doe until we can find out who he is. In either case he gets to go to jail for a while.

At 2 a.m. we had the pleasure of being called to individual number 2. Now individual number 2 has a need for attention that is bigger than any rational thought, and he decided to send a suicidal text message to a friend. Well yes, you will be taken seriously when you do something like that, so the full gamut of vehicles with light bars was dispatched his direction. Any time the scene may not be safe we wait for law enforcement to get there first. Dispatch had advised there was a gun in the residence, so we parked it at a local gas station and waited for the all clear. Apparently individual number 2 was diabetic. (When someone is diabetic their body can't process sugars and they must take insulin or other medications to control it. If they don't their sugar will go higher and higher and they can slip into a diabetic coma. This usually takes several days to progress to that stage. If they take too much insulin or don't eat enough, their sugar drops. If this happens it does so rapidly and they can be unconscious in a matter of 10 minutes. All this background info is moderately useful to keep in mind for what dispatch had to say next.) Dispatch came across and informed us that "the patient is a bad diabetic and is threatening to eat sugar until he goes into a sugar coma and dies". I lost it. At 2 a.m. I had tears rolling down my cheeks from laughing so hard. It would be much easier for him to overdose on insulin and be unconscious within minutes, but if you want to gorge on snickers and pepsi have at it. We never had the joy of meeting individual number 2, they told us we could go back in service, we weren't needed there. I laughed all the way back to station, imagining someone holding a ho-ho to his mouth, threatening "don't make me do it!"

You win some, you lose some

2009-06-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

The call initially went out as "unknown trouble" and was changed to "49 year old male possibly fell down stairs". It was a sunny afternoon. We assumed it was either more heat exhaustion (it was over 95 and we had already ran one heat exhaustion) or maybe one too many on a pretty weekend. We neared the house and saw a kid about 12 or 13 jumping up and down, waving his arms. We parked the truck and my partner grabbed the jump bag as I got a backboard. The kid was frantic and pale. "please hurry!" he begged. I tried to calm him down and asked him what was going on as we headed into the house. He said his dad had been working in the yard all day and now couldn't get up. I made it into the house and saw the dad laying on the living room floor. He made eye contact with us, then took two breaths, and died. My partner had been getting the equipment out to check a blood pressure, but when I walked in and saw that this man was purple from the collar bone up, I said "just get him on the backboard". We put him on a backboard and carried him to the truck, and started CPR. His wife had asked if she could ride along, but I don't usually let family ride during a full arrest. Experts and researchers have said that for families to witness a loved one being "worked" it can help them find closure, and accept the reality of death. Experts and researchers haven't been in the back of an ambulance when a previously calm family member freaks out and hinders your attempts at patient care.

There were only two guys on the engine that responded that day, I took one with me, but could really use an extra set of hands (and the other had to stay with the engine to drive it back). I yelled up front to my partner driving to notify the closest station- we were coming in hot. We drove through their bay, another firefighter jumped in, and we took off for the hospital. We secured an airway on our patient, got IV access, pushed epinephrine, atropine, sodium bicarb, some D50, more epi and atropine, did CPR, and ran the full gamut of treatments. It wasn't changing his condition. I didn't expect it to. Usually when someone turns that color from the nipple-line up, they have a blood clot. The tiniest of clots can get into the wrong blood vessel and end your life in a hurry. They can stop the flow of blood to the heart, lungs, or brain, among other vital organs. We got our guy to the hospital and the trauma team took over. We stayed in the room and helped with CPR, and watched as a room full of doctors, nurses, and specialists tried in vain to restore blood flow to organs that were resisting. They worked and worked on him. Everyone did CPR so effectively that he even tried to breathe on his own around the tube a few times. His heart remained in a rhythm that had electrical activity, but no actual physical movement with it. An ultrasound technician came down and looked at the man's heart- he confirmed it had stopped. Usually we will work a cardiac arrest for 20-25 minutes before exhausting all possibilities. As they called time of death for him, it had been an hour and 15 minutes.

They disconnected the tubes, covered him with a blanket to make him appear to be peacefully sleeping, and let his wife come in to say goodbye. She already knew he was dead. She had known he wouldn't make it from the time we rolled him onto the backboard. She came in and saw him laying there and her world crumbled around her. She ran to his side, took his hands, and begged everyone in the room to make things change. She begged him to wake up, begged him not to leave her. She begged someone to wake her up and tell her she was just dreaming. I had to leave the room. We had done all we could. We had only been on scene 6 minutes. It only took us 12 to get to the hospital. We had done all the drugs and all the CPR textbook perfect, but you win some and you lose some. It isn't your call to make.

Hey Mister!

2009-06-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hey mister- I'm sure you had a good time at the bar. You probably chatted with your buddies and checked out the waitress. You had a few drinks, had a good ol' time, and had a few more "for the road". Little did you know the road bites back. You missed the curve. You never hit the brakes. You moved a telephone pole over ten feet. You knocked out power for several miles, resetting alarm clocks, making people late for work. You set off alarm systems of nearby apartment complexes. You shut down the road all night.

There are some things you didn't do as well. You didn't listen to the little voice that said "maybe I've had too much". You didn't sober up. You didn't slow down. Thankfully, you didn't kill anyone. You didn't wipe out an innocent family. Let this be your wake up call.

Don't text and drive!

2009-06-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

I was on my way home from work last week when I was involved in a wreck. I was doing about 45-50 mph down a 4 lane divided highway when I saw it. A young girl texting on her cell phone, pulled her vehicle into the intersection to turn left. She looked up in time to realize that it wasn't clear, freaked out, and stomped on the gas. I had slammed onto my brakes to avoid it, but she T-boned me, spinning me 180 degrees. My vehicle stopped about 40 feet from the original impact. I sat there, dazed. It all happened so fast yet in slow motion at the same time. The side curtain airbags had deployed, uncurling downward from the roof line. They were in place before my head hit the glass window. The brunt of the impact was at the driver's side sliding door of my minivan. The frame and axle were both bent (if I had a shot of the back wheels from behind the vehicle, you would see that the tire is leaning inward at an angle.) The vehicle wasn't drivable. Her insurance company rendered my vehicle totaled (because the frame is bent, the back door doesn't open, and the opposite side of the vehicle has damage to it as well from the entire rear of the vehicle shifting over. Repairs stopped being estimated when they hit $15k, and they weren't done adding yet.) The driver was only 16, and had only driven without her parents 3 times.

For anyone interested, here is how a top of the line 2007 Toyota Sienna XLE limited (yeah, the one with the bluetooth and navigation and whole nine yards) holds up in a decent little wreck- it fared surprisingly well for the impact it took:

The car seats MUST be replaced. They have been subjected to the forces of the collision and even though the kids were not with me, the seats must be destroyed. There is no guarantee what they would do in another wreck, and I am not about to risk their safety for it.

My "baby" is two and a half, but only 26 pounds. Her car seat allows her to ride rear facing until 33 pounds. Think that's crazy? The AAP has said since 2002 that it is optimum for children to remain rear facing as long as possible. Find out more here: http://joelsjourney.org/ and see for yourself the difference it makes in a crash here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRP7ynNI8mI

OK- done with my soapbox.

Two for two!

2009-06-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

Being back on duty has been a blast! I caught a fire again yesterday. We had an uneventful day and I was preparing to go to bed, when three beeps made me stop in my tracks. Three beeps means a fire, and everyone in the county is secretly chanting either "please be me, please be me, please be me" or "oh no, not me, oh no, not me!" I was chanting "please be me". It worked!

We arrived to a dumpy apartment complex and found light smoke seeping from the roof line. I was assigned to take the TIC and scan the roof. The TIC is the Thermal Imaging Camera. (Explained here: http://mommy-medic.blogspot.com/2008/07/interesting-day.html ) I went around the side of the building and scanned for hot spots. The outside of the building was 72 degrees, and I found one spot about the size of a dinner plate that was 78 degrees. It was located where the two upstairs apartments would back up to each other, at their ceiling level (but not the top or the pitched roof line.) I went to the back of the building, and saw that the smoke had thickened. It was not puffing from the roof line and gutters. The fire was growing. We had crews inside trying to find it, so I went back around to the first side to scan the warm spot again. It had tripled in size and was now 118 degrees! Bingo!

I let command know what I had found, and was assigned to go with my partner to start shutting off the gas to the building. My partner had learned it in class, but never actually had the chance to do it, so I helped him. When we finished that, we were assigned to get into the back lower apartment and find the fire. Other crews were working in other units, hunting the elusive flames. The door to our unit was locked, so we went around the back and broke out a window. The window had a small square bottom pane and a large rectangular top pane. The top was too high to climb into, and the bottom was too small. I shed my airpack and squeezed into the opening, avoiding the jagged pieces of glass that threatened from every angle. The smoke coming from the outside of the roof was billowing out angrily, and I expected the flames to make themselves visible promptly. The smoke inside the room was thickening, so my partner passed me my air cylinder back and I hooked up to it. He joined me in the room and we started hunting the fire.

I could hear it popping and crackling, and water was pouring down on me from the apartment above. The ceiling overhead groaned and creaked as the truck crew above us worked in their unit. I used the TIC to check the back wall of the apartment, and found heat at the ceiling line. My partner used a drywall hook and started opening the wall up, exposing the charred embers of the frame of the building. We got a hose line and sprayed water of the burning material, and kept opening the wall up more. It took quite a while, and we took turns each pulling the wall and spraying water, but all the crews got the elusive fire out.

We got back to our station around 3:30 in the morning, sweaty, stinky, exhausted, and exhilarated from the nights activities. We cleaned the gear up, cleaned ourselves up, and climbed into bed for 3 hours of sleep. I can't wait to see what next shift has in store!

What a day!

2009-06-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

My first shift back what quite eventful. I listened to just about every other truck in the county run "good" calls. Several apparatus were out on a motorcyclist who had lost control on the freeway at about 110 mph. When he finally came to rest he was in about 8 pieces. Another truck got called to a 7 year old whose leg had been run over my a lawnmower. It was REALLY bad. I waited patiently for my turn. Surely I would get a "good" call. A truck across town ran a mediocre wreck. I waited. Another had a call for difficulty breathing. The caliber of "good" calls was waning, and I was still waiting. I went to bed, still waiting. At four in the morning our tones dropped. the voice on the speaker crackled as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. "Apartment fire, two buildings, fully involved, occupants attempting to get out". OK! I am awake! I put my boots on and grabbed my button-down shirt, and headed for the truck.

We neared the scene and the sky was orange. This was the real deal. We could see flames shooting at least 80 feet high, and the smoke that was spewing from it was heavy and thick. On scene, we saw the organized chaos that resembled a recently-kicked ant pile. I had previously head the batallion chief advise there was a victim in the front yard with 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and arriving on scene, saw several people around the back of the ambulance. I would not be able to do much for a while anyway given the truck I was on, so I asked if I could go help the guys on the squad. (Honest, it was a desire to help, not morbid curiosity calling me over! Honest!)

I climbed up and was a bit surprised. The patient was a man, about 35 years old, and alongside him was a 6 year old little girl. He had skin sloughing off of his forehead and both arms. He had blisters forming in the crooks of his elbows. He had a brand new medic nervously attempting to bandage his burns. He had a broken ankle, and he had a story to tell. Without emotion he said that the smoke alarm had awakened them, and that he jumped out a window, breaking his leg. He then stood up and caught his daughter, who appeared shaken but not injured. His wife died in the fire.

We loaded him onto a helicopter for flight to the burn center. The flight crew said they had room for the girl too, so she could stay with her dad. When they were loading them up, the child broke down, crying "Why didn't mommy jump?". Ouch. How do you explain that one?

Just because I'm bored

2009-05-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

So as most of you know I broke my leg. That means no more riding the bus for a while, no more driving the engine. Instead I get to sit and stare at a cubicle at headquarters. Goody goody joy joy. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely thankful that I can do that, and they aren't making me burn up all of my sick time then use short term disability. (I'm not disabled, just clumsy). Anyway I sit up at a desk and work on random projects that need to be done. While up there, the radio is on. I don't mean Michael Bolton, I mean the 911 radio, so not only do I sit around and mope, I get to listen in on all the fun everyone else is having. I have missed out on quite a few good calls- several wrecks, a window washer that fell 3 stories off a building, a lady thrown from a horse, and all sorts of ailments, parts and pieces where they don't belong, and general malaise. (I'm glad I wasn't on the wreck that cause a lady to lose her baby at 5 months pregnant though- no thanks!).

Since I am missing out, I have been living vicariously through other public service bloggers. Check out the updated list over there to the right under all the pics and feel free to browse and share the love.

Since it's going to be a while...

2009-04-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

I got the walking boot today but am not allowed to put any weight on the leg for at leat another 3 weeks. The doctor stressed the fact that this was a 12 week injury :( I did get to see the x-ray today and I am VERY lucky not to need surgery (fingers crossed it will stay that way). The fracture is about 5 inches long spiraling up the bone, and is actually 2 separate breaks across from each other- imagine a fracture that looks like the old double helix DNA strand model and that's a pretty darn good idea of what it looks like.

Since it will be a while before I have anythign worth blogging about, here are a few blogs I like to read:

http://sofineedsaheart.com/ Be warned- this will tug at the heart strings (no pun intended). Sweet little Sofia is 18 months old and was waiting for a heart transplant for a very long time. She got her new heart (Prayers and thanks to the donor family fo rtheir priceless gift of generosity during their tragedy). There are a lot of pics of her so if you want a good blog to follow, check this one out.

The pioneer woman- I have a link over to the right to her site. I LOVE her site! This woman is amazing- (but be careful, the apple dumplings and beef tenderloin recipes are out of this world). If you enjoy photography she has a section full of helpful tips on there as well.

Then there's this little gem. http://noexpectationsmeansnodisappointment.blogspot.com/
The blog author and I both have 2 year olds born in February of '07 and became friends on another site. She has a 4 year old and twins on the way! She updates about as often as I do (Love ya J!) but when she does it's usually pretty good stuff. (Keep reading till you get to something about cows looking at a billboard, a giraffe in the dentists' office, and ten pounds of hot tamales).

Stir crazy!

2009-04-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

It has been almost 2 weeks now, and I am going nuts! It is driving me absolutely crazy to try and slow down. I can tell when I have been up too much because the ankle swells, and the toes turn a lovely shade of violet. I have tried my best to keep up with the housework, but when the kids outnumber me three to one, it's a losing battle. It isn't possible to sweep linoleum or hardwood floors with crutches, and that "bare floor" setting on the vacuum just flings it around. The laundry is caught up, but I need to take advantage of the opportunity to go through my 7 year old's wardrobe and filter out the off season and outgrown. That is a monumental task for the darling little diva to play an active role in as well. She gets all of the clothing her older sister outgrows or doesn't like, as well as sports a mean shopping streak in her blood, so her closet and dresser are well stocked. I could finish reading all the books that I started and lost interest in, or reread the ones I couldn't keep my nose out of. I could organize my closet, update the kids' scrapbooks, or find something else productive to do. I haven't done any of that though. I have taken one day at a time, gotten the older girls up and dressed and off to school. Then I usually hope to drift back off to sleep before the toddler tornado wakes up, but alas, one of the older girls usually closes the front door a little too enthusiastically on their way out, and the two year old is up and running after that. Our day is always an adventure. I look forward to her nap time, hoping to take a nap myself but seldom succeed. Before I know it the older two are home from school and my kitchen table gets transformed into a homework-and-handout covered paper explosion. It is a whirlwind of after school snacks, stories about their day, and homework. They finish the school work and go outdoors to blow off steam and stain up clothes. I don't mind. I want them to love the outdoors, get muddy, climb trees, catch bugs, build forts, and just be kids. I get dinner ready and feed everyone, then we all have a little play time and try to watch Jeopardy. My oldest is 9 and is pretty good at some of the categories. We usually find at least one clue that leads to a million and one "mom,.... why does it...how do they...what if...?" questions, so we google and talk and learn about more of the world around us. Then it's bedtime for them. I try to read them stories, but in all honestly I am usually so tired and looking forward to bedtime that I send them off with an exhausted hug and kiss. They need their sleep- we have to do it all over again tomorrow!

Role reversal

2009-04-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

I certainly never expected this to happen. Saturday, I had to be the patient. I took a nasty fall and as I went down, my toes caught, turning my right foot 180 degrees so that my toes faced my back. I felt my ankle snap, and felt the bones give. There was no debate to it, my first thought was a matter-of-fact "it's broken". I wasn't able to drive, so called for an ambulance. Ten milligrams of morphine later I was still in nauseating pain. The ER confirmed a spiral fracture and torn ligaments. It will be a while before I am back at work but I am healing as quickly as I can. The doc that I saw said healing would take 8-12 weeks at least. He doesn't know me very well. It has only been 3 days and I am going absolutely stir crazy!

Is that a tooth?

2009-04-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was fairly mundane. We turned a bunch of hydrants to ensure that they had water, painted them, and did spring maintenance. We ran a call here and there. (One was a lady with a badly broken ankle from simply trying to get into her vehicle the wrong way- ouch!). I was fortunate enough to sleep mostly all night, with the exceptional "I drank too much water before going to bed" interruption, but no middle of the night calls. I got off duty this morning, came home and got a nice hot shower, changed clothes, and headed to the gym. I did a little ab work, and went tanning, then went to the ice rink. (I used to figure skate competitively, and after a 12 year hiatus, I am getting back into it. It's great exercise and really fun!) And yes, I may be clumsy on land, but on ice it's a different story.

I walked into the rink and there was a surprising crowd of people there. Usually the rink is barren except for a few regulars, but this morning there were about 20 people in corporate clothes and street skivvies out on the ice playing broom ball. (You get a small ball, and a hard plastic net-type thingy on a stick, and play the game like hockey, only you don't wear skates, you wear shoes). I overheard someone saying "yeah, she got hit right in the face". I looked up at one of the ladies that works at the rink and jokingly mumbled "you know I'm not on duty today, right?" and she said they had already called an ambulance. "Whoa, I was just kidding... What happened?" One of the figure skating coaches headed for the ice and asked me to come along. I asked if anyone was bleeding and someone said "oh yeah!" so I grabbed some gloves from the first aid kit first. I walked out on the ice, which was surprisingly challenging. 1/4 inch wide steel blades actually stick to the ice very well compared to running shoes. I saw a young woman laying on her side on the far side of the rink. I saw about 4 rolls of paper towels strewn about, freezing to the cooling puddle of blood on the ice. Then I saw her face. Her nose was undoubtedly broken, and she was gushing blood. I looked around the ice, and noticed something else. There on the shiny slick surface was a tooth. I think she lost two of them. Apparently she had gotten whacked in the face by the hard plastic net-type thingy at the end of the broomball stick. I checked her for neck or back pain, and helped her get off of the ice. One of her coworkers offered to drive her to the hospital, so they cancelled the ambulance. I called around to make sure the local hospital would have a plastic surgeon if she ended up needing one and gave them directions.

It felt weird to put my skates on after that. Usually I have a couple of hours to unwind and get out of "on duty" mode before taking the ice. It felt good to be helpful though, and I skated very well. Now if only I could land those double jump combos....

Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?

2009-03-23T05:33:00.000-07:00

The weather is beautiful and everyone is getting a little bit mischievous. The other day, one of the guys proposed to his girlfriend (outside work of course, and yes, she said yes). The next shift he brought in a slab of chocolate cake from a fancy-schmancy place his parents had taken them all to, and he proudly placed it on the shelf of the station refrigerator. He announced that it was his, and one could see his mouth water as he thought about what a great treat it would be for later. Someone else thought it would be a grand idea to hide said slab of cake, so a few hours into the shift, the cake has mysteriously vanished from the fridge.

The fellow that brought the cake in, was not one to be easily fooled, however, and searched the station high and low (while the other crew was away on a call), found his cake, ate his cake, savoring every morsel, and, with an evil smirk, placed the empty cake container back in it's new hiding spot. Then he waited till later that evening, and smiled as the games began. "Hey" he asked the officer "so, uh, where did you guys hide my cake?" The officer remembered the practical joke that had taken place hours earlier in the day, felt a tad guilty (or maybe not, it's hard to tell), and revealed the hiding place. The original cake-owner hid a grin as he went to retrieve the empty container. He then proceeded to get irate and question everyone in the station as to who had eaten his cake. He put on a grandiose show, elaborating that his parents had bought that in celebration of his engagement, and how it was oh so special to him. I had to walk away, I just can't keep a straight face.

The charade continued throughout the evening, and eventually everyone was in on the joke except for one person. The guys went so far as to pull the entire crew into the office, and of course nobody confessed to eating the cake (why would they? after all, they had only hidden it, not eaten it). The lieutenant wrote up the entire crew, including himself, for the "monetary loss and lack of honesty" of the crew. I had to pretend to cry to keep from laughing. I have been with this county for several years, and never been written up for anything, and now I was getting "written up" (wink wink) for a practical joke I had nothing to do with? Oh, the acting that ensued in that little office from everyone was oscar-worthy. The one guy that had no clue we were all messing with him seemed unmoved by the write-up.

Until today. He still doesn't know it's all a joke, and he told his mom he had gotten in trouble at work. Apparently mama raised him better than that and didn't hesitate to speak her mind on the matter. He was a bit more quiet than usual. I think maybe next shift we will let him in on it. It is a bit funny to glance at one of the other 5 that were in on it, smirk, and try not to giggle. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?

Spring is in the air

2009-03-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

The weather is finally perking up here, so that means it's time to get busy! Every day there is a different "chore" around station. Lately the more experienced guys have been talking about how we should all have "a sense of pride in our work" and how we all "know what's expected of us, just do it". I came in yesterday and checked off the engine, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, running the chainsaw, fan, and extrication tools to make sure they worked, and getting ready for the day. Yesterday the chore was yard day. Needless to say throughout the winter yard day is pretty easy. You make sure nobody has thrown trash on the ground, and pretty much look out the window at the dormant grass and say "yep- there's the yard". Someone on another shift had recently fertilized the yard and put down fresh mulch, making the station look better. Last shift we got really REALLY bored late at night, found an old golf club in the storage building, and invented out own golf game- we had two dust pans for the holes, and since we couldn't find a ball, we took a bulb aspirator type device (think about one of those snot suckers they use for newborns, only with a short fat part instead of the long, skinny, up-the-nose part) that happened to glow in the dark, and commenced to our own cosmic golf. In doing so, one of the guys discovered that the golf club made a decent weed whacker as well, and I noticed how tall the wild onions were getting in places. The yard is patchy, with grass, sod, weeds, and various types of this and that growing all over, so most of it was still dormant and short, but the weeds were starting to shoot up. After I finished the engine yesterday I went to the shed and pulled out the lawn mower. I knocked the dead grass off of it that had been sitting all winter, gave it several good pulls, and it sputtered to life. I was under the influence of some pretty stout espresso and had energy to burn, so I mowed the entire yard. (I say "entire yard" but in all honesty it only took me about 45 minutes, the yard isn't really all that big. Just feels good to say I did the whole thing). There were 5 other guys at the station yesterday and I know at some point in time they heard me cutting the grass. Heck, on one pass across the turf I even saw one of 'em peeking out the kitchen window and smirking, apparently amused at my ambition. Don't get me wrong, I can be pretty lazy as well, but yesterday really wanted to do a good job. The espresso had nothing to do with that, I swear. No, really. I hoped the guys would pick up the pace and grab weed eaters, blowers, brooms, and clippers, but they seemed content to chat and drink coffee and do whatever male bonding rituals they were doing in the kitchen. I was having fun being outside, and since rain was due to roll in that afternoon, finished cutting the grass, then took the clippers to the hedges, and swept off the driveway.

We had a fairly mundane day, doing some training, running a call or two, and as usual, debating the never ending question of "what's for dinner?". We get so tired of the restaurants in our little area, and aren't allowed to drive further to find something different. We do have a Wal-Mart and two nice grocery stores that we can go to, but when we cook, coming up with what to cook that everyone agrees on, crossing fingers that a call doesn't come out mid sautee, and being able to get more than one bite in before tones drop is always risky. Some days we are super busy, and other days the first call doesn't happen until you raise fork to mouth and insert. I swear dispatch knows when we sit down to a meal.

In the evening comes "tidy time"- we wash the trucks, sweep, mop, vacuum, wipe the counters down, do the dishes, take out the trash, and just clean the station. We got that done, and I had a good sense of accomplishment about the whole day. It was a good day. I can't complain at all, I have the best job in the world. I get to work full time, but with my schedule, also get to be a full time mom. I realize I am rambling now, and guess I should go wake up the baby and get the older ones ready for ice skating lessons. Until next time, stay safe- and go do something fun today!

Why is it...

2009-03-14T05:41:00.001-07:00

Why is it that some of the people who call 911 don't need emergency assistance, yet some people who need to see a doctor refuse to? People call 911 to ask the time, or directions, or report such travesties as a dead bird in a yard deposited by a neighbor's cat. Then other people, like a guy that came into the station for a blood pressure check yesterday, refuse to go to the doctor even though they need to. Our gentleman was 67, in amazing health, worked at a local gym and it showed. He wanted his blood pressure checked, was clutching his chest but adamantly denying that he was in any pain. His blood pressure was 210/120. Anything over 180/120 is classified as a "hypertensive crisis" by our protocols, and if transporting in the ambulance we would treat aggressively with a slew of medications in an attempt to thwart a stroke. The vessels in the brain can only tolerate so much. Anyway, our ambulance was out on a call, and he refused to let us call for another one. He said he would go home and call his doctor. We told him he needed to go to the ER. He said he would go to a nearby urgent care clinic. We let him know they would call 911 and he would see us again, to take him to the ER. His friend finally convinced him to go in their car. Fortunately most of the general population falls somewhere between the "I want to be seen for every paper cut and hangnail" and the "I'm having a massive heart attack, I've cut my leg off, a mountain lion attacked me, I can't see from one eye, and have lost 12 pounds from vomiting but I will be OK if I just walk it off" categories.

It doesn't happen here

2009-03-07T06:39:00.000-08:00

At least it's easy to think all that "bad stuff" you hear about on the news doesn't happen here. Unfortunately, the I was off work, planting some new tulips (my favorite) at my mailbox when my neighbor drove by. She stopped to chat, and asked if I had seen the news. She had gone to get her daughter from our local middle school- apparently a 15 year old and a 17 year old took two semi-automatic assault rifles, a pistol, and 200 rounds of ammunition to the school. The local middle school and high school are connected, so the entire campus was locked down. The news was happy to report that there was no "immediate threat" because "there were no diaries found". Um, hello? Three guns and 200 rounds? What more threat do you need? Supposedly the 17 year old got into a fight with his mom and took the weapons from the house. The mom was the one to call 911 and report that she suspected he took them to school.

It is so easy to forget what happens, and to think this type stuff "doesn't happen here" but I remember there was a suicide in the classroom my freshman year of high school. I remember that day very clearly. I was in class and someone came over the intercom and announced that all students were to stay in their classrooms no matter what. My teacher at the time was an absolute dingbat and sent someone to the office to find out why nobody was to leave their classroom. (Seriously, this teacher was so out there, the kids used to unplug the projector during slide shows to make her think the bulb burned out, then waste all hour "swapping" the projector out for new ones, and they would turn the lights out in the classroom to make her think the power had gone out to the building. As it turned out a student had brought a gun to school, threatened several students with it (they jumped out a window to get away) and he turned the gun on himself.

Scary, huh?

Lots of supplies

2009-02-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

At station we have a room full of supplies to restock the ambulance. There are shelves full of bandages, splints, and various things. We have suction tubes, nasogastric tubes, endotracheal tubes, oral airways, nasal airways, IV supplies, syringes of assorted shapes and sizes, and walls of sterile knick knacks. I was working another station tonight and they had an EMT student searching the supply closet for something. He came out a few times and asked one of the guys which shelf it was on, and the guys would reply, then snicker and giggle as he walked back into the supply closet, more confused than ever. He finally asked the supervisor where the fallopian tubes were kept and she filled him in that they probably weren't in the supply closet.

You never know

2009-02-24T05:31:00.000-08:00

I was on the engine last night and a call for chest pain went out. The house was only about a half mile from the station, so we got there quickly. As I was walking in, one of the other guys came running out for a backboard. (That means someone is probably going to be doing some CPR). Entering the house I see our patient- a woman in her 50's lying on the couch, breathing maybe twice a minute. We grab her and put her on the floor so we can work. Her daughter is in her late 20's or early 30's, and doesn't comprehend the scene playing out before her eyes. The lead medic on the call attaches the monitor and we see that she is in V-fib. Her heart is quivering instead of beating. We attach the defib pads to her chest and shock her. In theory this is supposed to let the heart reset itself, into (hopefully) a normal rhythm. More often than not if you shock someone more than 2 or 3 times they go into asystole- flatline. She didn't.

We all work as a team getting done what needs to be done- someone attempts to intubate her in order to secure her airway, another guy attempts to establish IV access so we can push drugs. I wrap one hand over the other and start compressions. I feel ribs break- first one, then two more. It always makes my stomach churn for a split second.

We strap her to the backboard and rush to the hospital. By the time we got to the ER, she has been shocked 9 times, has every applicable drug we carry pushed through her veins, and has remained in v-fib.

In the trauma room there is a team of people waiting to help. They get the low down from us and take over. A doctor orders one or two more last ditch drugs, then mentions "calling it". They get a doppler and listen to her femoral artery. The room falls silent as the familiar "whoosh whoosh" of a heartbeat is heard! In disbelief, the doc feels her groin and neck, and locates a pulse. She has a pulse again. We watched as they hooked up more IV medications to pumps and calculated doses, then wheeled her down to get a CT done to rule out a blood clot. After the CT scan they took her up to the cath lab in an attempt to open any blocked cardiac arteries. I heard later from the hospital that she coded again last night but they again got her back. I haven't checked this morning. I don't know that I want to. Even though she had a pulse the chances of her keeping it and actually recovering are slim to none. I was happy we at least gave her family a couple more hours to be with her.

Mr. Ants again

2009-02-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

A few posts ago I shared the story of the old man with the ant bites. It seems that we will probably be transporting him every shift now for something. We were called to him yet again for a fall. The poor guy has had a stroke years ago and it left his left leg and arm paralyzed. He still attempts to walk, and falls down. Today he slid off the toilet. The nursing home hasn't attempted to help him (they may have rules against picking them up off the floor or something, I honestly don't know). We find him wedged between the toilet and the wall. When he slid, he dislodged the toilet from the floor. Imagine a septic service on a hot muggy summer day in the middle of a field of dead skunks, and you can begin to imagine the fragrance the met us in the hallway. Everyone was staring at him, attempting to formulate a game plan. I sucked it up and stepped between the other side of the toilet and the wall, and got ahold of his arms. The guys all watched in amusement. I felt silly having to pipe up that this wasn't a spectator sport, and several other guys grabbed his legs and pulled him from his landing spot. He said he wasn't hurt, that he had just been stuck. The nursing home insisted that he be taken to the hospital for evaluation anyway. Taking someone who is alert and oriented to the hospital against their will is kidnapping, so we had to do a little persuasion to get him to agree to go with us. I think the thought of hospital food was actually appealing to him. We loaded him up and away we went. I wonder what next shift has in store for us with him.

Wanna fight?

2009-02-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a busy day. Tones started dropping and we weren't at the station much at all until about 9 at night. During the day, we were called to a welfare check. A lady had called 911 and said she hadn't heard from her brother in a week, and he had threatened to kill himself by drinking too much. The cops showed up and knocked on the door. I stayed warm and dry in the safety of the ambulance and watched a man answer the door, assure the cop everything was OK, and go back into his home. As the officer walked away, we saw a neighbor walk up to a nearby house and open a garage door. The neighbor later reported that he was coming over to drink and play cards. On the floor of that garage lay a man, covered in stale urine, and severely intoxicated. Donning gloves we all walked up to check him out. The radio crackled and I had to laugh when dispatch announced that "Per P.D. on scene you can go back in service". The officer had no idea what we had stumbled upon. One of the firemen responded into his shoulder mic that we were "on scene with a semi-conscious male" and would be investigating. It appeared that the man was just drunk. Very, VERY drunk. We couldn't leave him on his garage floor to sleep it off, and as we loaded him up onto the stretcher he awoke. He was quite startled to see all of us, and immediately balled up his fist. "Wanna fight?" he inquired. He wasn't going to start anything until someone agreed to fight him and probably shook on it before hand, and we all had a good chuckle. He went down the line, looking at us all in turn. He locked eyes with me and without missing a beat, asked "you wanna fight?" The boys laughed and said that their money was on me. I smiled, and told the guy I had already fought twice that morning and he missed his chance. He looked truly disappointed as he explained in slurred speech "I like to fight". On the way to the hospital, he asked me at least two dozen times if I wanted to fight. Every once in a while he would throw in "you got any dope?" just for good measure, and again I had no choice but to disappoint him. We got him to the hospital safe and sound, but all day at the station the phrase of the day became "you wanna fight?"

Ants!

2009-01-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

We had been called to the same man three times in two shifts. He was a resident of a local nursing home, and seemed to be affected by gravity a bit stronger than usual. He shouldn't be attempting to walk, but he does and he falls down. I'm not sure how sending him to the hospital makes the nursing home think he will stop falling, but we don't really have a choice when we get called to him. On our third trip things were a bit different. We found the familiar room, and rolled our eyes at each other as we entered. One would think that for as much as it costs for elder care, they could take a bit better "care" of him. Today we were called because his left hand was swollen. I glanced, and sure enough, his hand was noticeably larger than normal. The staff member said that the guy's wife had taken him to the doctor the previous day and had been given some benadryl cream for it. They wanted him sent to the ER today for it. On closer inspection, I noticed 18-20 little pus filled zits on his hand. They looked like ant bites. I have been bitten by ants before, and a day or two after the bite occurs, the spot will fill up and turn white. As the other people on scene loaded him onto the stretcher, I walked into his bedroom and checked out his bed. There was a spot of fresh blood on the sheets, and about 200 dead ants around the head of the bed. Lovely! That means someone had noticed the ants, sprayed the ants, and made up his bed- complete with pesticide, blood, and bugs- without bothering to say anything. Would clean sheets be too much to ask for?

In either case, even though this guy had already seen a doctor for his bites, we had to haul him back to the hospital for something he had already been treated for. Your tax dollars hard at work here folks! I hope I never get old. It doesn't look fun at all.

Memory lane

2009-01-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me recently if "seeing all those dead people" bothered me. To answer the question, no, it really doesn't bother me. Sure, it's upsetting to see a young person who dies from driving too fast, or to watch a family struggle to say goodbye to an ailing loved one, but in reality, death is a fact of life. What bothers me more is when bad things happen to children because an adult isn't keeping them safe, or taking care of them, or doing their job as a responsible adult. The question got me thinking about my very first dead person though.

I was working as a volunteer for a local department up north, and the ambulance was always staffed with volunteers. We were all EMT basics, and were certified to splint broken bones and check blood pressures, but not much else. The paramedics would show up to bad calls in a Crown Vic, with their cardiac monitor and bag full of goodies to do advanced patient care. It was a slow Saturday afternoon in August and we were playing cards and carrying on conversation in the kitchen when our tones dropped. There was a motorcycle wreck on the freeway entrance ramp. It was my turn to do the initial patient care, and all the way to the call I mentally ran down the list of equipment I would need to grab when I got off the ambulance: Backboard, C-collar, head blocks, straps, splints, and our jump bag.

We found our patient lying on the ground on the entrance ramp to the freeway. I got out of the truck and went to get the backboard. I glanced up to see one of the more experienced guys shaking his head no. I gave him a quizzical look as if to say "oh yes he does need a backboard after a fall like that" and he made a motion with his hand across his neck. I understood immediately that the guy was dead, but this was my very first real dead person. I went over to talk to his friend and ask what had happened. His friend said they were both riding their motorcycles, and his buddy had hit some gravel and went helmet first into the retaining wall. The dead guy laying on the ground was wearing blue jeans and a short sleeve shirt, and still had his full helmet on, and I didn't see any blood anywhere. How could he be dead? He wasn't all bloody and gross. The paramedics showed up, and the female medic called me over. "Hold C-spine so I can remove his helmet" she said bluntly. I slipped my gloved hands inside his helmet to hold his head still while she slipped his helmet off. I looked at his face. There was a little blood coming from his nose and mouth. His eyes were open, and I can't forget the weird grin he had on his face. As I held his head, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was staring right at me, no matter which way I moved my head, it seemed he was always watching me. She hooked the cardiac monitor up to him to confirm that there was nothing that could be done. Then she said matter-of-factly "he's got brain matter" pointing to a small chunk that I thought was just a blood clot that had come out of his nose. It was a bit strange to see. She told me I could lay his head down, and as I did I could feel that his neck was broken. To this day it still seems odd to me that he didn't have a scratch on him, and that he was out enjoying his day one second and dead the next.

I walked away from him and removed my dirty gloves. I grabbed the clipboard and went to get some info on him from his friend, who was extremely, and understandably, upset. I held the clipboard in my left hand and my pen in my right. For whatever reason, the entire right side of my body started shaking uncontrollably. I tried my best to write down the essentials, name, age, date of birth- but I couldn't put anything down on paper that was readable. I got very angry that my body was trembling so badly, and wondered if it was like that for everyone, or if it would be like that for me each time I ran a dead person. When the call was over, my right side continued to shake for about an hour. The call hadn't upset me, but the shaking was making me mad and embarrassed. I was a brand new EMT and wanted so badly to prove that I could do the job, but it made me second guess everything. The training, the desire, the calling. Was this right for me?

Thankfully that was the only time I have had the shakes on a scene. Sure I have been nervous several times since then, but the shakes only happened the one time. Subsequent dead bodies- no matter how they got that way- don't really bother me. As morbid as it may sound, I would love to go assist an autopsy down at the state crime lab. I am absolutely fascinated by the way the human body is put together and works. Our organs do what they are supposed to do, our skin is waterproof, one size fits all, and self-repairing. We are all so different yet on the inside, we are all the same for the most part. It amazes me!

Sometimes Tragedy Hits Too Close To Home

2009-01-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

I was laying in my bed at my house, watching the final question of Jeopardy with my kids before sending them off to bed, when my phone rang. It was one of the guys I work with. He was upset, and was having a hard time figuring out what to say. Finally he said "I have bad news. are you sitting down?". Sitting down? Well no, but just say it! He said that he had just gotten a call from one of the other guys, and that one of our ambulance had responded to a 14 month old baby in cardiac arrest. They did everything they could, but the child was pronounced dead at the hospital after they also exhausted all possibilities. He continued that the child was the daughter of one of the firemen we see every shift!

The girl's father is a firefighter and paramedic of a neighboring department, and we see him about 6 or more times a shift. Her mom is an ER nurse at the local hospital, so we see her on a fairly regular basis too. They reported that they had been at a church function, and the nanny was going to get their 3 or 4 year old son, and younger daughter up from their naps and take them up to meet the parents for the evening. The nanny went into the baby's room and found that she had apparently tried to climb out of her crib, and fallen between the crib and changing table where she was stuck and unable to breathe or cry for help. The funeral is tomorrow.

I can't help but think of how horrible this is. At work, we see so much bad stuff, that it makes us hold our own children a little tighter with each hug. There are no words to express how sorry I am for what they are going through. Please keep them in your prayers, and hug your kids a little tighter.

The Sick Baby

2009-01-16T13:04:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I have updated, and I apologize. Things have been surprisingly normal. We have run calls here and there, but most of it has been run of the mill stuff. We did have a really sick baby a few shifts ago though. The call went out as a "1 week old with a stuffy nose". Newborns breathe mostly through their nose, so this can be a problem, but we assumed it was a first time mom over reacting, since we get a lot of those as well. The address was a local suburban lodge. My heart sank for the mom- how difficult would it be to give birth and be living in a hotel- with no nursery to bring your new little baby home to, especially right after Christmas. That must be really tough. We got to the room, and found a woman holding the infant, wrapped in a large wool blanket. The woman said she was a friend, and that she was a nurse with 7 children of her own, and that the baby was just fine. I looked at the baby in her arms. The tiny little girl was a little pale for a Hispanic baby, but seemed to be sleeping. I asked if I could take her and check her out, and she passed me the little bundle. Mom was watching anxiously, and trying to keep her other child- a toddler of maybe 13 months- from being underfoot. I laid the baby on the hotel bed and unwrapped the blanket. The baby was dressed in an unsnapped onesie, and her belly button still had the stump on it. I looked at her belly to watch it rise and fall as she breathed. Newborns have a normal respiratory rate of 25-50, and this baby was much lower than that. She was struggling. I took the bulb syringe mom had, plugged one side of baby's nose, and aggressively suctioned the other nostril, then repeated the process several times for each side. I got a lot of mucous from the child, and made her get mad and start to scream. That was exactly what I wanted, since it made her pick up her respiratory efforts. Mom grew concerned at my assertiveness and nervously asked my partner "um, does she have any kids?" He calmly replied "yes ma'am, three", and mom seemed much better after that. I gave the baby a minute to see how she would respond, and she maintained her respiratory rhythm for a minute before again slowing down and becoming lethargic. This baby would need to go to the hospital. If left like this she would tire and stop breathing, and it would happen soon. I explained to mom that because of her age she was extremely susceptible to infections that would give an adult a cold, but could quickly kill a newborn. Mom got on the phone to attempt to locate the baby's father. After several calls, she hadn't tracked him down. I explained that I was taking the baby to the ambulance to get her some more help. I didn't think twice, and changed her wet diaper, strapped her into her car seat, and carried her to the truck. Mom initially said she would drive her own vehicle to the hospital but that the car seat for her toddler was given to her by her cousin and was "missing a little piece". I checked it as we walked outside, and "a little piece" turned out to be a critical buckle that holds the child in. I told mom just to ride with us- one of the seats in the ambulance has a built in child seat with a harness, so we secured the sibling in it, and strapped the baby's seat to the gurney. I hooked up some oxygen tubing to the port, and taped it to the chest clip of the infant's seat, giving her blow-by oxygen. The baby's color improved drastically, and she became very alert- looking around and taking it all in. Mom even commented that it was the most awake the infant had been in days. We got her out to the hospital without any complications, and I stressed to mom that if she would come by the fire station, I would give her a new, non-broken car seat for her other child. She still hasn't shown up.

New Year's Eve

2009-01-01T07:04:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve started of dreadfully slow. By 9 p.m. we had only run one or two calls, and we were all waiting for the bottom to drop in the county. Fireworks at midnight... maybe we would catch a good fire. Drunks at parties..... please don't let anyone kill an innocent motorist, or worse, a child. More drunks...... then the fistfights begin! Instead everyone got sick. Several other ambulances in various parts of town were called to sick people. Not drunk sick, just elderly people with blood pressure problems, or chest pain, or difficulty breathing. The dice were rolled and our number came up. "Respond to person down- unknown if CPR in progress". Great. I really don't mind working a "full arrest" because they pretty much run themselves. There is a sequence to which everything gets done, and on every call something will go wrong, but you roll with the punches and do what ya can. We found the address, only the numerics the caller had given the dispatch center was the street address for the entire trailer park- they hadn't given a lot number, so we drove through the park hitting our siren, waiting for someone to flag us down. Some of the firemen on the responding engine went door to door, looking for someone dying. We found the place and drug all of our equipment in- backboard, intubation equipment, oxygen, cardiac monitor, drug bag, and more. We scooped the lady up onto the backboard and continued CPR, loaded her into the truck, and were out of there within 8 minutes.

One of the guys riding with me is a brand new paramedic, and since I am the only experienced medic at my station, all of the new ones have to ride 3 shifts with me to be checked off, before they can go before a field training officer to be checked off, before finally being cleared to run calls on their own. He had run ahead as we were carrying our patient to the truck, and had drugs and intubation equipment ready and waiting. He inserted the laryngoscope into her mouth, lifting her lower jaw in an attempt to see her vocal cords- the target for the tube we put down someones throat to breathe for them. He suctioned saliva and gunk from her mouth, looked again, and inserted an endotracheal tube like a pro on the first try. We confirmed that it was in fact in the airway, not the esophagus (which would put air in the belly and make the patient vomit, in addition to deprive their dying body of oxygen), and secured the tube. We ended up shocking the patient four times, drilled a needle into her leg bone since we couldn't get an IV, and pushed all the drugs we could. Despite our best efforts, it was just her time to go.

TV would have you to believe that you can do CPR on someone and they magically wake up, but the reality is that by the time someone is in bad enough shape that CPR is called for, they only have about a 5% chance of ever living another day. It was really sad to see her husband of 20 years absolutely devastated and lost, a mere hour before ringing in the new year.

We did the report and restocked the truck and got back in service. More calls were rolling in, and we were dealt another piece of the pie. "Caller advises female is E.T.O.H. (drunk) and hurt her arm. Caller sounds very E.T.O.H. as well". Lovely. We show up on scene to find our "patient" walking out to us. She is drunk but doesn't appear injured. She says she fell and her shoulder hurts but that everyone is too drunk to drive her and she wants to go get seen right now! Her son stumbles out to the ambulance as well. I was a bit irritated at the misuse of emergency services, and explained to him there was absolutely nothing the ambulance could do for her, she just need a ride for her "hurt arm". (The one that she had no problem moving all around and using to it's fullest extent.) He got nasty and yelled at her "they said if you ain't broke, they ain't taking you!" That isn't what I said, what I said was that we wouldn't be doing anything other than giving her a ride. I tried to clarify but he got very belligerent and nasty with me, and I wasn't in the mood to waste my time on him. Sometimes you just have to suck it up, roll your eyes, hope and pray a real emergency doesn't happen while you are stuck on a call like this, and take them anyway. I closed the back door and said to my other partner "let's go ahead and go so we can get back in service". The drunk man declared "I'm going with her!" I wasted no time in correcting him. "You are NOT getting in MY truck". There was no debate on that. You just got nasty with us, you can barely stand up, you reek of booze, and now you want to ride along? Like the friendly folks at the ER have nothing better to do than babysit you too? Oh I don't think so! I may not be able to refuse to transport stupid stuff that doesn't need an ambulance, but I do have full control over who I take along as a rider and who I don't. I offered to call the nice police officers back out to the scene if he wanted to continue, then we climbed into the truck and headed to the hospital. I hope he has a killer hangover.

By 4 a.m. the county had slowed enough that we could finally crawl into our bunks for a couple hours of shut-eye. I am now home, enjoying the morning with my kids, and praying for naptime to hurry on it's way! Hope you all had great, safe, non-stupid 911 call making, New Years!

Gotta love overdoses

2008-12-31T10:14:00.000-08:00

Sunday was a slow shift. In the evening we were called to "unknown trouble". We were told to wait for the sheriff's officers to clear the scene, and dispatch added that "the caller stated someone was parked in her driveway and not getting out of the car". It took us a while to locate the house once the officers said it was safe to enter. The mailbox was out at the road, but the driveway was a long dirt one, and the house wasn't visible from the main road. We found our patient standing next to one of the officers. There were pill bottles scattered all over the hood of the patrol car. Our patient was an overweight lady in her 40's, whose eyes were glassy and whose speech was slurred. We asked her a couple of basic questions, and she answered with garbled speech that made no sense. One of the guys walked her over to the ambulance as I started looking at the pill bottles. She had about 12 different prescription medications, some filled just 48 hours prior, that were empty. I asked one of the officers if she had any other medications in her car, and we went to go check. In her purse I found a Ziploc baggie about 3/4 full of weed, as well as her pipe, and a few other pill bottles. I climbed into the ambulance and joined the two other firemen and two cops with our patient. The guys had started an IV on her, and had put her on the cardiac monitor. Her pupils were pinpoint, and it was pretty obvious she had taken way too much of something. We gave her a medication called "Narcan" that will reverse opiate overdoses, and she immediately began dry heaving. Her garbled speech began to produce actual words, though none of it made sense. She got mad about something and was pointing angrily to the overhead lights of the truck, and declared loudly "friszhnick verbane?" We all exchanged puzzled glances. She again said something nobody could make out, then "verbane". One of the officers piped up "I've heard of Kurt Kobain" and the other officer began singing "Hey man, nice shot" at which point I joined in the fun, clarifying that although the song was about Kurt Kobain, it was sung by Filter. I couldn't help adding that "I've seen a weather vane" and the other officer chimed in "I've heard of Germane- which is either 'pertinent to the situation' or one of 'The Jackson 5', so which is it?". Our patient didnt get any of the jokes. The nice officers gave her her complimentary DUI citations, and let us go on our way to the hospital. Our patient's speech and mental status improved a little, and we could understand the words, even though the phrases made no sense at all. She became anxious, and was staring at all the compartments of equipment in the back of the ambulance. She bolted upright pointing at one and asked "Is there a dead baby in there?" No, sorry. She then noticed her reflection in the back doors of the ambulance, and could see the other medic sitting behind her, only to her it looked like someone peeking in the back door- while on the freeway at 70 mph. She threatened to kick his tail. I told her it was her reflection, but that didn't sink in either. Telling her the truck had bulletproof glass did though.

As I was putting the leads of the cardiac monitor on her torso, I noticed she had about three dozen pinprick type marks on her belly at her belt line. This is typical of patients who are diabetic and give themselves injections of insulin, but she didn't have any bruising. Diabetics usually have at least one or two injection sites that bruise. I asked if she was diabetic, she actually answered "no. rash." Then lifted her shirt wayyyyyyy up so she could rub her overflowing belly with both hands for several minutes. Gross.

We dropped her off at the hospital and returned to station. As we usually do around the firehouse, we talk to each other about the calls we have run. We told the guys on the engine about all the fun they had missed out on, and they told us about a woman they had run earlier in the day while we were on another call. They described a woman similar to our, with braidable leg hair (when you wear shorts in December around medical professionals trained to examine you in the first 0.2 seconds, don't expect anything amazonian to escape their observation). Our patient had been blessed with extremely furry extremities too. They described the mullet three decades past it's prime. Funny, our lady had a mullet too. Sure enough, they engine had been at her house earlier in the day- but it wasn't for her, it was because her adult kids were fighting with the neighbors. They spun a colorful tale of an altercation among neighborhood inhabitants, and several arrests. Suddenly my own "weird" family seems "normal"!

Working on Christmas

2008-12-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

Working on Christmas isn't as bad as it may sound. I get the kids up extra early to see what treasure await them, then I go to work. For the last week or so a lot of the neighbors and people of the community have been bringing by every type of sweet treat imaginable. The counter tops are filled with cookies, candies, brownies, cakes, and enough to make your dentist lecture for an hour. Working on Christmas does have it's drawbacks- no grocery stores are open! Lunch was a burrito from a local gas station- gross. We polished off some chex mix, and nibbled the heads off a dozen gingerbread men. One of the guys had split the shift up with someone else, so he was coming in for the night half. we talked him into bringing leftovers for us to eat, since the sweets were too much. Thankfully he obliged, and we all had a grand feast of ham, turkey, beans, and the likes. To those of you who brought goodies by the station- THANK YOU from the bottom of our heart. It feels really good to be appreciated, and we do recognize the effort you all went through to take time out of your busy day for your local fire station. For future reference though, firefighters will polish off a veggie tray just as quickly as those brownies- we never turn down free food of any type!

1 broken finger and 7 stitches later...

2008-12-23T19:26:00.000-08:00

I was on the ambulance yesterday, and we didn't have many calls to start off with. By 3 in the afternoon we were going stir crazy. The battalion chief came by our station to see how things were going, and as he was leaving the radio let loose with three beeps. Three beeps means a fire, and all conversation stopped instantly. They advised who would be first in on it, and it was only about a mile from our station. Everyone scrambled to jump in trucks and bunk out in their gear. We fight fire from the ambulance as well as the engine in my county, so I grabbed my gear from the outside compartment and slammed the door. I tried to run around to the passenger side to get in, but my pinky had gotten caught in the door. There was no pain initially, just a pinch of the tip of my finger. I gave it a good tug and it wouldn't come out of the door. I reached with my other hand and opened the handle, but it wouldn't budge. I gave it a good yank and the door opened. I shut it again, and grabbed my gear while scrambling to jump in. My partner tossed me the map book, telling me the coordinates of the street. I felt some pain in my finger, and looked at it, only to see it bleeding like mad. My fingernail was a bit mangled, and the tip of my finger was blue and flat. Great. I again turned my attention to the map book, but was suddenly hit with a hot flash and nauseating wave of pain. M finger was throbbing, and I got a little dizzy. The ambulance was trying hard to keep up with the engine and follow them to the scene, and I was suddenly having a major hot flash, so I asked "Can you just follow the engine?" as I rolled my window down and hung my head out the window. My finger was screaming at me, and bleeding like mad. The tip was bent at an odd angle, was all smooshed, and turning blue and purple. We were on scene of the fire in 2 minutes, and I had to get it together! I sat in the truck for a second regaining my composure, then got out, and put my gear on. I grabbed an air pack from the truck and went towards the commanding officer. I didn't have my gloves on just yet- this was going to be painful. The officer announced over the radio that the fire was out and other responding units could go back in service. It had been isolated to the stove, microwave, and a couple of surrounding kitchen cabinets. The homeowners had put it out before we got there, but the smoke was slow to clear. The microwave handle had melted and dripped down, making interesting shapes and swirls as the molten plastic hardened and cooled. My officer told me I could take my gear off, and suggested I show the chief my finger. I didn't want to take of my gear. I wanted to go inside and help with clean up. It's hard enough being a female firefighter- the guys I work with have never given me the impression that they think any less of me in this male-dominated profession, but I always feel like I need to work ten times harder than the guys to prove myself equal. The last thing I needed was anyone cracking jokes about "what- you can't fight fire cause you broke a nail?" or anything of that sort. By God, I was dressed and ready to play, bloody or not. Reluctantly I approached the chief and told him about getting my finger caught in the door. He suggested that I go to the emergency room to have it checked out. I protested heavily- I have been doing this almost 8 years, and never had any real on-the-job injured before I landed on my head 6 weeks ago, now this? It's no secret that I have three left feet and am the biggest klutz on the planet, but the finger just needed a band-aid or something. Chief wouldn't hear of it, so up to the hospital I had to go. He explained that it was county policy to cover the department, and I understand, but I hate having anything slow me down, and hate going to the ER for what seemed minor. 1 broken finger and 7 stitches later, I was leaving the ER with my finger all wrapped up. The doc was pretty cool, and had to completely remove my fingernail, sew up the nasty cut, then sew the nail back on in hopes of leaving the nail bed open so that a new nail will grow back. I finished out my shift with a huge throbbing finger, and on our other calls had to oh-so-carefully put on gloves that fit over the gauze, but I stuck it out. I am still pretty angry at myself for the whole thing.

This was in the ER yesterday. Note the interesting little angle- it used to be straight!

Bleeding has slowed, going to need a new manicure!

And today it has taken on an interesting blend of colors!

The piece that broke off the tip- it isn't one solid piece- it's actually several small shards that are floating around, but I can't get a good pic of the other angle off the x-ray film.

Oh what a wreck!

2008-12-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a busy day. We ran ourselves silly from 6 minutes after our shift started, until after midnight. None of the calls stood out as being spectacular, or even really memorable now that the shift is over, except for the last one. That last call was a doozy. We were on our way back from the hospital, and almost back into the county when tones dropped for another ambulance to respond. We were geographically closer than the other ambulance and the call was in our territory anyway, so we picked it up for them. It was a wreck and the engine was already on scene. They advised "3 foot intrusion". That certainly got my attention. Usually cars will hold up well to wrecks, and there needs to be significant force in order for intrusion to occur. Intrusion is when the outside of the car caves in to the passenger compartment. Usually it is measured in inches. Most cars are only about 4 feet wide, so a 3 foot intrusion.... was it even possible? We arrived on scene and surveyed the damage. A car had been traveling down a 4 lane county highway, and had made a left turn in front of another vehicle that was probably traveling around 60 mph. The other vehicle never even had time to hit the brakes, and broadsided the turning vehicle on the passenger door. Our patient was the driver of that vehicle. In looking at the car, the driver should have been dead right there. Nobody should have survived this wreck, in this vehicle! The driver had not only survived, but had gotten out of the mangled mess on his own and walked away! His seatbelt saved his life last night, no question about it. We took him to the local trauma center, but he seems to only have a cut to the back of his head, and a banged up knee.

In some spots, his car was only 6 inches wide after the wreck! He was in an older ford of some sort, and the car that hit him was an early 90's honda accord that held up very well considering the impact. The occupants of the honda were also wearing their seatbelt, and walked away uninjured. I told the 25 year old kid that was drivng the ford he needed to go buy a lottery ticket as soon as he left the hospital. These pictures don't do it justice, and to see this car in person, to really see just how far the passenger side got pushed in- is absolutely amazing.

(I went to the tow yard this morning to get better pics. I got some last night from one of the other guys on scene, but being dark and rainy you couldn't see terribly well).

Musical Engines

2008-12-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

Our regular engine is one like this:

It is nice and shiny and new, despite the quality of the above camera phone pic. Something broke on it, and we had to send it to the shop. It will be a while before we get ours back, so in the meantime, we have to play musical engines. First they put us in the hurricane- this lovely green gem with an open back (so whoever the third crew member is freezes their tushy off, and gets covered in road grime and grit. Sounds fun, huh?)

But this old truck started leaking fuel all over, so they had to put us in a different old truck. A manual one. The "knuckle buster"- so named because in order to reach third gear, you had better have your knuckles out of the way or prepare to dig them out of the dashboard. The next shift they had fixed the fuel leak on the green one and we were back in it. Today, they decided they wanted us in a different engine, seen below:

It too has an open back, and allows for only two people to stay warm and dry at a time. I am so thankful I get to drive today. Don't get me wrong though, the county has recently bought a lot of new engines and equipment, so we seldom have to go into our reserve equipment. When we do, it's always an adventure!

Random comments and a suicide

2008-12-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

I like to cook. I really do. At my house, it's usually me and the kids, so coming up with elaborate culinary masterpieces is either out of the question, or completely unappreciated. At the station we have one guy who is a health nut to put it lightly, so cooking elaborate culinary masterpieces usually involves chicken breasts and broccoli. There is only so much of that one can take. I am working today, and our health nut has the day off, so I got on my absolute favorite website/blog http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ and looked up some new recipes under her "cooking" section. I tried this one today- http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/02/apple_dumplings/ and it is absolutely the best thing ever! I couldn't believe how easy it was to make, and how perfect they turned out for the first try. Usually when I try something new at the station, it is followed by the phrase "sorry guys, I tried" as something gets scraped into the trash can. (I said I "liked" to cook, not that I had any skill at it). Here is how ours turned out- they looked different from PW's blog where I got the recipe, but they are oh-so-good nonetheless.

Then, because I was on a kitchen kick, I made up a batch of super healthy sausage and cheese balls that disappeared quickly.

For now I think I am done with the domestic kick. I am on the engine today, and so glad too! The ambulance crew has run their tails off. They left around 7:30 this morning, and didn't get back until around 2. They ran several calls, including a 2 month old baby in cardiac arrest. Later in the afternoon, tones dropped for the engine and the ambulance, sending us to an address right around the corner. We arrived to find one sheriff's officer standing in the driveway, and a woman running around hysterically in the yard. The officer asked for someone to go inside to check our patient. I was first in the house, and followed the officer to the basement. Our patient was seated inside his vehicle, and was deceased from what appeared to be a gunshot wound. I told the officer there was nothing we could do for him, and turned my attention to the family that was gathering outside the home. The patient appeared to be in his mid to late 30s, and his friends and family began arriving. I don't know what type of troubles he was having, but if he had seen the grief and pain he would put his family through, he wouldn't have done it. I don't understand suicide at all- it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem!

Classy lady at the bowling alley

2008-12-08T17:12:00.000-08:00

Tones dropped for a "domestic dispute" at the bowling alley. This usually means a fight between two people of some sort, related or not. We arrive, and 4 police cars plus the local fire station's rescue truck are already on scene. We are directed to our patient. She is in the back of one of the police cars, handcuffed, and is extremely drunk, and writhing around like an earthworm in the sun. Her lower lip is cut and flapping. It appears that her teeth went completely through it. She has a cut on her nose, and a bloody spot on her elbow. The story comes out that she passed out at the bar of the bowling alley, and was face down on the ground when the cops got there. She decided she wanted to fight anyone and everyone, so she was taken into custody. Now we get to remove her from the police car and put her in the ambulance. Oh joy!

They stand her up and begin walking her towards the squad. I run ahead and get the restraints ready, as she lets out a stream of threats and expletives directed toward everyone within earshot. They tie her to the stretcher, as she tries to punch and kick and bite anything that comes near. Her lip is bleeding, and I can see the wheels turning in her head. She sucks hard on the injured lip, and spits a huge glob of blood and spit at the firemen tying her down. Oh I don't think so! I am not going to be exposed to whatever you have, not tonight, not ever. I get an oxygen mask and put it over her mouth and nose. Now try spitting! Someone asks her what her name is, and another string of muffled expletives explodes from the oxygen mask. I wonder to myself if that name might be hyphenated. She is restrained, and still screaming and carrying on and thrashing about. Time to bring out the big guns! I get a syringe and needle, and crack open the drug box. With a little help from some haldol and versed, she becomes much quieter. I didn't give her enough to completely knock her out since she had been drinking so much, and had god-knows-what-else in her system, but just enough to take the edge off the potty talk and flopping. An extra fireman and I enjoyed our ride to the hospital a bit more than the rookie cop that had to ride with her. She kept grabbing onto his pants leg with her bloody hands and crying and sobbing then screaming a little. Someone must not have told him that hepatitis lives for 2 weeks in dried blood, because he didn't seem to mind. Me, on the other hand, I won't let ANYONE put their hands on me. I have learned not to trust any patient, they can snap on you in a heartbeat, and I have to look out for numero uno above and beyond all else. We got her to the hospital, and were greeted by several neckless security guards who put her in the concrete room. She decided to play a little nicer with the nurses when they presented her with a choice for her temp- oral or rectal! I hope she sobers up and gets the help she needs, or at least moves on to someone else's territory.

Chock full o' nuts!

2008-12-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

What a weird shift. First let me update the last post about that semi wreck- it's funny how hard it is to stop one of those big rigs, in the dark, in the rain, when you are still doing between 60-70 mph at the end of the exit ramp, and you *might* just be three times the legal limit for intoxication! Now I am not saying anything is "certain" but one could only assume just how hard it would be to stop if that were the case. I got an update on our patient- the hospital we took him to is a level 2 trauma center- meaning they can handle trauma, but have to call a surgeon in. A level 1 trauma center would have every type of surgeon in the building at all times. Level 1 trauma centers are few and far between here. I think there are only 2, maybe 3 in the entire state. Our patient got stabilized and shipped to a level 1 center. He ended up having (drum roll please) a torn abdominal aorta. The aorta is the largest blood vessel coming out of the heart. It sends the blood to the rest of the body. It's just a little important, and his was ripped. Obviously it wasn't completely sheared in half, or he would have been dead before we got there, but that explains the ever-expanding belly. He had bilateral (both-side) hemo-pneumos. That is short for lungs full of air and blood where it doesn't belong. He got two chest tubes and they drained a lot of bad gunk out of him, letting his lungs and heart expand as they need to. We knew he also had a head injury that would need to be addressed, but we had no idea how bad it would be. His brain was bleeding in so many spots on the surface, that they had to completely remove the top half of his skull. (Don't worry, they can put it back on if he pulls through). This gives the surface of his brain room to swell. Otherwise, the brain swells but the skull confines it, and it forces bits and pieces of the brain stem out the foramen magnum- or the hole in the bottom where the spinal cord comes out. The brain stem isn't like a vegetable stem and easily removable- it controls trivial stuff like breathing, hence the desire to not cause it to herniate. At last check he was in critical condition, but I am thankful he is even alive.

We had a couple weird calls yesterday though, and I am dying to get them typed out so I will stop laughing to myself and getting strange sideways glances from strangers in the grocery store. Actually, I am pretty sure I will always get sideways glances when I chuckle to myself in public, but that's OK. You should try it some time. It makes people really wonder what you are up to. Anyway, the reason I have to chuckle is because we had a wreck where it appeared someone failed to stop, and read ended another vehicle, pushing it under a large pick up truck. There was decent damage to the middle vehicle, but there was no airbag deployment, so I am betting they were either stopped or just starting to go when it happened. Everyone was out walking around, staring at the dents and dings, shaking their heads, and hunting for long lost insurance cards. Everyone except for the lady in the middle car. She is sitting in the driver's seat, and appears to be- for loss of a better way to say it- completely freaking out. We ask her what happened, and she can't answer direct questions without going off on a tangent about her brother's priest and some credit cards. We put her in the ambulance to evaluate her, and though she doesn't have a scratch on her, she says her chest hurts. OK, I am sure it does, especially if the seat belt locked on impact. One of the guys asks her date of birth, and she strikes a pose like a squirrel in the headlights, and rambles on and on a million miles an hour about random thoughts and absent ideas. She asks one of the firemen if he can get her purse out of her trunk. He disappears, and returns a few minutes later with a small, fuzzy, leopard print purse with pink trim. It was the kind you find in one of those el-cheapo teeny bopper stores in the mall. The lady doesn't bother to say thank you, instead she begins to try to pull the stickers from the cardiac monitor off her chest. She says something about how she has credit cards in the trunk and doesn't trust anyone- police, firemen, anyone- and absolutely must get them right now. So glad to protect and serve today. The fireman explains that her trunk is jammed shut, and that they won't be cutting it open. Insurance companies really dislike that unless you are trying to get to a live person. The lady begins to full-fledged WHINE and says in her best bratty 3 year old voice "but I haaaave to get in my truuuuunk!!!" then she looks straight at me, and pushes her bottom lip out as far as she could while batting her eyes two or three times. I was absolutely flabbergasted. She is about 45 years too old for this act. She looks at the fireman at the back of the truck and continues "weeeeeeeellll, can you at leeeeeeeeast tow the car to my hooooouuuuuuuse?" He gets mad and declares "lady- I'm a fireman!" before walking off. I had enough of her dizzying thoughts and childish behavior, and got out of the truck, leaving the other two guys to finish checking her out. I found the tow truck driver, directed him to the back of the ambulance, and talked to one of the police officers for a minute. The tow truck driver returned in record time, red in the face with one vein throbbing out on his head. He declared "she's all yours!" before storming off.

We had been on scene a long time waiting for the princess of pout to decide if she needed an ambulance or not. I lost my patience a bit and finally blurted out "OK, this is an EMERGENCY vehicle, you need to decide if you want us to take you to the hospital or not, because other people need help too". It never sunk in, instead she said "oooh, I know- can you take me to my house first and then let me decide?" um, no. Last time I checked this was a large red truck, not a small yellow sedan. She finally decided that she needed a chest x-ray, so I got up front and headed towards the hospital. The entire ride, my two partners were shooting me dirty looks and rolling their eyes at her tiresome ramblings. Each yes or no question asked of her got a long drawn out story sure to make your head spin, all the time she avoided answering the question, leading to it being asked again. I mentally pictured her owning at least six cats. We were almost to the hospital, when I heard her yell out "Ten YEARS!!!". I glanced in the mirror and everything appeared OK, so I kept driving. Later I asked the boys what that was all about, and one just giggled and said something about a boyfriend doing time in jail for killing his last girlfriend, a Rabbi, and a Priest. I waited for the punchline but realized he was serious. We put her in a room at the hospital, and warned the approaching nurse that if she had any xanax, SHE might want to take one before going into that room! Wow!

Early Morning Wreck

2008-11-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

Friday was a slow day for the ambulance. Unusually slow. So slow it made us all a bit nervous. Nobody came out and said the "S" word, but worried glances were exchanged as bedtime approached. We all knew what we were in for. A slow day usually means a crazy night, and it was a Friday. To top it off a slow drizzle started at nightfall and turned to rain around ten, continuing all night. I made my bunk up and climbed into my sleeping bag, full expecting to be right back out of it as soon as I fell asleep. Sure enough, tones woke me when it was still dark out. Tones dropped and kept right on dropping. I assumed it was a fire, but dispatch came across saying "Semi versus small truck. Two unconscious. One fading fast". I blinked the sleep from my eyes, and tried to convince myself this wasn't a dream. Dispatch doesn't use terms like "fading fast" so it confused me. I listened for a minute as we drove through the wet streets, our lights reflecting off of every surface, giving a surreal glow to the city. We were the only ambulance headed that way, so I grabbed the microphone and meant to say "go ahead and start another ambulance tot hat location" but in my half-slumber, what came out was "We are DEFINITELY gonna need more than ONE ambulance on this!" As soon as the words were out I tried to grab them back out of the air. I had been really rude, and would have to call and apologize later. For now the point had been made, and another ambulance was dispatched.

We arrived to find that a semi had come off the freeway entirely too fast, had run a red light, and broadsided a pick up truck. The semi couldn't even stop until it was on the entrance ramp on the other side of the intersection. The big rig had very little damage to it.

But the pick up truck it hit was totaled. The impact made the bed of the truck separate from the frame and rotate about two feet. These pics do not do it justice, because the truck was actually L-shaped after the impact. (Pics taken by county Public Information Officer). The driver's side rear door was hanging off, the tailgate was broken, and there were still patients trapped inside. The impact happened on the passenger side, and the front seat passenger is unconscious and barely breathing. There is no time to try to extricate him correctly. We pull him from the driver's side door and put him on a backboard on the stretcher. The other ambulance arrives and begins helping the other patient who is awake but going into shock. We load out guy into the ambulance and take off for the trauma center. It is at least a half hour away, and the dark rain doesn't help our transport time. I take two firemen with me. One is another paramedic, the other is fairly new to this game and still learning a lot. I use the trauma shears to cut this guys clothes off, exposing everything to check for injuries. There is very little blood, all of his problems are on the inside. His eyes are swollen shut, pupils non responsive. His belly is rigid and tight, a sign of internal bleeding. His pulse rate was high, and getting higher. His blood pressure started out surprisingly good, then shot up to severely high. Looking at the heart monitor, his cardiac function was dropping fast. His chest wall was swelling, and in touching it, we discovered he was leaking air into his chest. The other medic suggested we decompress, so I grabbed two of the largest needles I had access to at the time, and began trying to feel for ribs. With the air trapped in his lungs, we had to put needles in his chest just below his collar bone to let that air escape before it crushed his heart. He had so much trapped air, that we couldn't feel any ribs at all, so we both shrugged and stuck each side. The hiss of escaping air confirmed that his lungs were punctured, and temporarily relieved just a little of the built up pressure. He would need bilateral chest tubes at the hospital to relieve the air and blood in his lungs. He would need surgery for his belly. His head injury would need to be addressed. There is no telling what his outcome will be, but we did what we could.

Watch out for that first step!

2008-11-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

When I am on the engine, we usually run one or two calls all shift. The engine at my station has a very small territory, so it was a bit surprising yesterday when call #7 came in. That one stands out. The radio crackled as dispatch filled us in with the info "72 year old man, fell through the roof and down a flight of stairs". Wow- that sounds painful! We arrived at the home, expecting to see a mangled up elderly man laid out somewhere. Instead we find him on the couch, but he certainly doesn't look 72, he appears at least 20 years younger, and is awake and looks to be in good shape. His family calls out attention to this: (sorry about picture quality, used cell phone to grab a quick pic)

He had been in the attic bringing down Christmas decorations, and had stepped through the sheet rock. He fell through the attic, and landed on the top step of a flight of stairs, causing him to tumble backwards down the whole staircase. He tells us he is a retired Miami-Dade police officer, and begins showing off his scars and war wounds. He has been shot three times, wrecked a motorcycle and had to be rebuilt one bone at a time, and the fall tonight didn't phase him in the least. It did surprise me a bit that he let the med crew take him up to the hospital to get checked out. I am sure this tough old guy will turn out just fine. Watch out for that first step!

Way off topic!

2008-11-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

This is way off topic, and really has nothing to do with work, but I wanted to share some of what's been going on at my house. On my days off work, I raise three little girls- ages 9, 7, and 20 months. Their dad lives and works out of state, and is only home a couple days a month, so I have my hands full with dentist appointments, PTA meetings, homework assignments, all of the laundry, all of the cooking, and cleaning, as well as everything else around the house. To top that off, I have undertaken a home renovation project! The house I live in is a beautiful Victorian with a wrap around porch- the ideal all-American dream home. The lady who lived there before me did several do-it-yourself projects, but didn't have a clue what she was doing. She knocked out a load bearing wall, leaving only two 2x4's to hold up a major support beam. As the beam sunk, she simply added caulk to fill the crack. As a result, the horrid 1970's trim was off in the corner by about two inches. The ceilings had been painted, but whoever did that did a horrible job as well. The fan is a generic white one, that doesn't do anything at all for the white room. I have had professional (i.e. firemen that I work with who have expertise in carpentry, electrical, hardwood, etc skills) help, and have been able to repaint the ceilings, add some earthy, neutral color to the walls, replace the ceiling fan, replace the trim, tear out the wall and fix the falling beam, and replace the wall section with appropriate support this time, and after the Thanksgiving holidays, my hardwood floors are going in! After that, I will be replacing the fireplace with a stack stone one. I can't wait- it is going to look sooooo good when it's all done! Anyway, I just wanted to share a little of the home front with you. (oh, and I was painting the ceiling and got paint all in my hair, so my toddler wanted to "be like mommy"- I had to grab my camera before running her up to the bath tub! Thank goodness for little helpers.)

It's Sunday!

2008-11-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

For my new readers, this will catch you up on today's big secret http://mommy-medic.blogspot.com/2008/09/life-is-precious.html

Now, on to the big reveal: The boy that got hit by the car and his father and sister came by the station today! When I took the shoes back to his dad, dad had said that Marcus (the boy) would one day walk into the fire station to personally thank us. At the time I thought to myself "there is no way in the world..." but today- today it happened! He still has an external fixator on his leg- a metal device keeping his right thigh bone straight so it can heal correctly. Emotions were high today, and he has made a complete recovery! You would never know that two months ago, this boy was broken from head to toe, and had his skull smashed, ribs fractured, both thigh bones broken, and lungs crushed. Kids never cease to amaze me! (The other fireman in the picture is one of the ones who ran the call with me that day).

Hard-to-keep secret

2008-11-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

I have a secret. I have a secret. NahNee NahNee boo-boo! I got a phone call today, and Sunday *should* be an amazing day. If everything goes as planned, I will have an update to blow your socks off. Stay tuned!

On cloud nine!

2008-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

I am so very excited. I have been doing this for 7 years now, and have been with my current department almost 3 of those years. Early in my career here, I had another baby, and firefighting and growing another human being don't work too well together. The department moved me into headquarters for 9 months, then I had 12 weeks off for maternity leave. That made a full year that I missed out on. It is incredibly frustrating to go from flashing lights, loud sirens, and adrenaline, to cubicle life. I did what I could to get by, but to say I had a wretched case of cabin fever would be an understatement. Anyway- because I missed out on so much, and because I got moved from one station to another after coming back, it was very hard to get my driver's training book completed. There is a book of tasks- everything from driving obstacle courses, to pumping the engine, to flowing foam, working the extrication tools, and performing a full truck check including raising the cab. I had to do all of the tasks, and my station officer must feel completely confident in my skills before signing me off on each one. In the two years that I have been back, I have been whittling away at that booklet. For the last 3 months, the only task that stood in my way was pumping. Our engines carry 1000 gallons of water, and in order to get checked off, you must be able to flow 3 hand lines AND the deck gun, then connect to the hydrant and get water coming in to the truck. If you run out of water, you fail. If you forget to throw the wheel chocks down, you fail. If you surge the lines by opening them too fast, yep, you fail. I am a perfectionist by nature, and for the last 3 months, I would make myself incredibly nervous during pump training. I became my own worst enemy. Shortly before getting hurt, I finally made myself shake the jitters, and set my mind to getting this done. I wasn't going to let it beat me. Yesterday I finally earned full driver/operator privileges. I have been working so hard for so long, and making it harder on myself than it should have been, but I finally did it. I don't know why I had such a tough time with it. I understand medical stuff easily, but the engine made no sense to me until someone explained to just think of it as a giant heart and blood vessels. They were speaking my language! It worked, and everything just seemed to click. I just wanted to share my sense of satisfaction and pride with you all.

And what fun would this whole blog be without a weird call, right? Dispatch gave us an address we were all too familiar with, in that nasty trailer park I have mentioned many times. I won't get into just how bad this place is, because no amount of describing would do it justice. Maybe I should just take some pics and let you all see for yourself. (Would that make me snobby and judgemental? I hope not, because this place is the slums of the ghetto, in a rural area, if that makes any sense). Anyway, we got called out for a possible broken arm. We arrive to find an obese lady in her mid 20's, seated in a plastic chair in the overgrown grass. There was a pile of garbage- literally- burning nearby. A pit bull tied to a spike circled as far as his chain would let him. The lady was upset, and all of the neighbors had crawled out of the woodwork to see what was going on. A toothless woman sauntered up with one of those "Black and mild" small cigars hanging from her lips, and a Natural Ice in her hands. A young man in a nascar jacket carries a toddler clad in a tee shirt, jeans, and bare feet across the yard in the 40 degree weather. I got irritated- that poor kid needs, no, deserves better care. Out patient tells her tale, cradling her arm that has a small pink scratch on it. She says that the Repo man came and took her truck, and that she tried to grab her purse but got her arm caught in the door. She demanded that we- the fire dept- make the repo man pay for her scratched arm. We made it clear in no uncertain terms that she would have to take that matter up for herself. She decided she didn't need an ambulance after all, and wandered off behind the refrigerator that was in the yard to a cooler in the back. She pulled out a bottle of moonshine and decided she would be better off medicating herself at home. We went back in service, shaking our heads the whole time. Why do I hear the theme song from "deliverance"?

Feeling better

2008-11-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

I am back to my normal self, and the calls keep rolling in. The county is starting to run more fires as the weather gets colder, and I am hoping we get a piece of the action soon. My last shift was a double- first on the ambulance then on the engine. The ambulance ran a few calls, and one old man in particular stands out. We got called to a local park where he and his family were having a picnic lunch. He had gotten dizzy and passed out. We took care of him and took him up to the hospital. As we wheeled him in to the emergency room, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a loaded gun. He said "can you give this to my wife so she can put it in the car?"Sure. And thanks for telling us sooner. The last half hour or so we were with you would have been an opportune time to fill us in on that little gem. It was a tiny little handgun, no more than a little Derringer, but still made us all play the lovely little game of "what if" in our heads.

My shift on the engine went well. We turned hydrants till 3 then went for some more pump training. I am getting better and better at it, and feel a lot more confident in my skills. One of my officers keeps trying to mess me up (not maliciously) and I am finally doing well enough that I really believe in myself. Why is it that I am my own worst enemy? Even when everyone else says with confidence "you've got this, you know this" why do I doubt myself? I am hoping that more and more training shakes that doubt. I feel like it is helping by leaps and bounds. Tomorrow is another shift, and hopefully we get something exciting. (Or at least not stinky).

Got my bell rung

2008-11-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

Election day went smoothly. There were no mass riots, no looting, no fistfights. The only incident that took place at a polling location was a lady in line who shot herself in the thumb while demonstrating how her Epi pen worked to pass the time in line. As the lazy afternoon wore on, my Lieutenant decided we should go do some pump training. We drove to the local elementary school- they had a big empty parking lot and a couple hydrants we could use. It was my turn to practice- I had to pull up to the hydrant, let two guys out, and wait. The two guys would pull the 5 inch hose (about the size of a large saucer or small dinner plate when filled with water) off the truck, wrap it around the hydrant, then signal for me to take off. I would drive forward a few hundred feet (simulating catching a real hydrant at a real fire- the hydrants is almost never in the front yard) then jump out and feed someone a small hand line for fighting fire. I used the water in my truck to do that, then had to go around to my large hose, disconnect it, then hook it into my truck, signal that I was ready for water, and let them supply my tank- before running out of water. The afternoon was going well. I was really quick, and doing everything right. The officer in charge even tried to throw me for a few loops- opening drainage units in the engine, changing pressures on me- making me really be on top of my game and do some real life critical thinking. Then I had a little accident.

About the seventh or eighth time I had gone through the drill, I motioned for the guy at the hydrant to give me water. I watched as the water surged through the large intake hose, making it stand straight out as it barreled towards the truck. Then it hit a kink. The hose came to a sudden halt, and I started to walk towards it. I saw it suddenly fix itself, then I saw my feet in front of my face, with the sky in the background. "Wait a minute! My feet don't belong level with my shoulders! What the...?" Of course I didn't have time to think any of that. I landed on the asphalt, the back of my head hitting first. I instantly saw stars and flashes of light. I immediately curled into a fetal position and wrapped my arms around my head. I could hear screaming, though it didn't seem like that scream was coming from me. Yet it was. Another fireman had been standing right there, and was over me in a split second. The guy that was 100 feet in front of the engine, flowing the hand line, said he heard my head hit over the sound of the rushing water and pumping engine. He came running over. I was on the ground, and we had the deck gun (a HUGE water nozzle on top of the truck) flowing, and soaking me in the process. I remember someone yelling to cut the water off, and when I finally uncurled myself, I realized that somehow that heavy 5 inch hose was on top of my hip, pinning me to the ground. I pulled myself out from under it and went over to sit on the curb. I was seeing stars. Everyone was overly concerned, asking me every two seconds if I was ok. I felt ok- I knew I would have a major headache, but was more embarrassed than anything. I never felt the hose hit me- it was as if someone had tied my feet to a catapult. The one that saw the whole thing said it threw my feet up to where my head had just been, and threw my head to the pavement. It felt like it too.

They offered to call the ambulance out there, or to take me to the hospital, but my pride and stubbornness answered and said "let's keep going". I did a couple more drills, and watched as a few others took their turn. After two hours, I was climbing out of the driver's seat of the engine, and looked down. Instantly my fingertips went numb. I looked up,it went away, and my heart skipped a beat. This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't normal. I tried it again, and again my fingers went numb. One of the guys caught the terrified expression on my face and furrowed his brow. Busted. I finally agreed that I should probably go get checked out at the hospital. They took me back to station, put me in a c-collar and onto a backboard. My left hand went numb. The toes on my right foot started tingling, and I am sure my heart started racing. So many thoughts went through my head from "It's just a pinched nerve" to "great, I'm going to be paralyzed the rest of my life over something stupid". I couldn't help it, the tears flowed down my face and into my ears. I am NOT a good patient. My head hurt, my neck hurt, my eyeballs were screaming at me, and here I was, some big tough firefighter with ears full of tears. The guys had all acted like overprotective big brothers, and had even gotten into a heated discussion behind closed doors over who got to ride with me to the hospital. Both the Lieutenant and the Sergent went, leaving the other firefighters at the station on the engine.

The visit to the ER is a blur, and I only remember bits and pieces. I remember I refused any pain meds or anything for the nausea. I hate taking medications and won't do it unless I am in complete and total agony. I do remember that they sent me down for a CT scan of my brain and neck. The room was cold, the old lady working there was colder. I had to slowly scoot over to the CT table, and my neck hurt so much it felt like the base of my skull weighed a million pounds. Every time I moved, the pins-and-needles feeling surged down my arms. "At least I can feel them" I thought. The CT lady made me put my head onto a little molded platform, and that forced me to look down, making everything numb again. I tried to scoot out of it and explain to her what was going on, but she interrupted me saying that the c-collar was causing it. I lost my cool and blurted out something to the affect of "LOOK lady- I was thrown onto my head, and that's making my arms go numb. It's NOT the c-collar!" and she stared at me in astonishment before leaving the room. I don't remember much of that, but the guys have had a grand old time filling me in on the bits and pieces that are still missing. The CT came back all clear, so they let me go home. They told me to take a few days of rest and to go for an MRI if the numbness persists.

The guys drove me home, one in my car, and one following in the engine. This morning chief sent someone over to get me and take me to the doctor. I appreciate the gesture, but hate being doted on, especially by coworkers. The numbness is a lot better until I move certain ways, and I was determined to get clearance to return to work, so I got up and they drove me to day care to drop off the baby, then to the doctor. That office was closed. We had to drive 20 minutes to the other doc since it had to be one that worked with the insurance for this. I signed in, filled out the requisite paperwork, and waited. After a half hour, the receptionist called me up to the desk and said that she spoke with the doc and wouldn't clear me for work until I saw a neurologist. What?!?! Nobody had said anything about that. The receptionist said that they would need my records from the ER before they would see me or even think about clearing me for work. I went back to the ER, and was sent to the medical records clerk, who then had to go back to the ER for the chart. Then we went back to the doctor's office. I was in the waiting room about a half hour, then back in the little exam room almost two hours. The doc came in, had me stick out my tongue, cross my eyes, wiggle everything, and asked me how I felt. I felt like crud, and when I moved it felt like I was going to throw up, but I wasn't going to admit that. I am not one to sit at home and milk the time off, so I fibbed, saying everything was fine. Really, it was fine (just not completely better), and would feel a lot better in a few days, but I signed a shift swap with someone and plan on honoring that. It's on a slow truck anyway, so I will be able to get some rest. Anyway, that's my update for now. Time for a nap!

Edited to add- No, I was not wearing my helmet (and should have been, but am thankful that I wasn't). You see, my neck is what hurts the most, and out helmets have that long bill on the back. Had I been wearing it, it would have forced my head to flip forward even farther, and thinking about that makes it hurt even more!

So, the chief came by...

2008-11-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

I was on the engine last shift, and it was slow. The ambulance got all the good calls. The engine didn't turn a wheel with the exception of going to the grocery store for dinner. Salmon was on sale so we threw it on the grille with some sweet potatoes and salad. Exciting, huh? Meanwhile, the ambulance got called to a "person stabbed". The radio said "He called from a payphone, then we heard gurgling and the line went dead" though I think it turned out to be much less dramatic than that. Then they got called to the interstate for "a car ramming a U-haul with a person pinned between the two vehicles". Another ambulance was closer and picked up that call, and ended up going emergency with extra crews on board to the hospital, so there must have been some truth to that one. The only call the engine was dispatched to was at 2:15 in the morning. Some lady had lost her bottle of Xanax (anxiety medication) at a Halloween party, and had called 911 so that the nice firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, and police officers would perform a treasure hunt for the prized brown pill bottle in her house. I don't think so lady.

Earlier in the evening the chief had come by. Not the CHIEF chief, but our battalion chief. He had important paperwork to go over with us regarding next shift (Nov. 4th- election day). He started with a complicated flowchart of who responds to what in what apparatus with what crew. There were twice as many names as usual on the roster. He explained that the county had hired 150 additional law enforcement officers to work that day, and had doubled the staffing at all fire stations. They even have the 30 some odd students from the current rookie class going to stations that day for extra manpower. They said they don't have any specific threats, but that security has to be beefed up all across the country at polling facilities, should problems arise. Wow. That scared me quite a bit. Then he cautioned something in a voice so stern I sat on the edge of my chair to listen intently to his every word. He said slowly and earnestly "Your rookie is NOT to be hazed." Great. So we couldn't even give the new guy a hard time. What fun would that be? Here we were getting someone wet behind the ears for one day and one day only. He hasn't even had his EMT training yet, so we are guaranteed to deliver six babies, work three cardiac arrests, and extricate a bus full of nuns from a mangled wreck. (That seems to be how it goes). We can't even play a few friendly little harmless practical jokes on him. Oh well. We can at least pat the back doors of the ambulance twice before they take off, just like they do on TV! (No, nobody really does that in real life, hence the inside humor to it.)

To all of you who didn't take advantage of the early voting- be safe out there! Have some extra patience, and THANK YOU for taking the time to make your voice heard.

Code Brown (Gross)

2008-10-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Code blue- someone isn't breathing. Code red- we've got a bleeder! Code brown- put the pudding down and stop reading right there. It is disgusting, and I am on a mission to use as many adjectives and adverbs as possible, so skip this post and find some other blog about the daily life of tree newts or how light bulbs will one day save Gilligan from that island. Really. It was gross, and I just have to get it out of my head (this blog stuff is great therapy!)

The three paramedic students at my station are in the final weeks of class, so I have been on the ambulance a LOT to get them checked off on the final skills and assessments they need. We were all checking the truck off first thing in the morning when we were called to a "person sick". Dispatch can use "person sick" for just about anything except a car wreck or DRT (dead right there). We got in the truck and started to pull out of the bay, lights on, but waiting till we were out of the driveway for the siren. Traffic was backed up in front of the station from the neighboring elementary school. We have lines painted on the road, and signs that say "Do not block intersection" even though it isn't an intersection, just our station. All that does no good, and the people in their cars keep having their phone conversations, eating breakfast, shaving, putting on makeup, and yelling at their kids. Until we try to pull out- then the fun begins! If you have ever stepped on an ant mound and watched them scramble you can imagine the sights we observed just getting out of the driveway. Before long we were at the house w had been dispatched to. It was a beautiful 4/3 in a nice neighborhood. We went inside, and I immediately lost my footing. I felt like that poor deer I blogged about a few posts back. Apparently putting a rug on a slick hardwood floor without a no-stick pad underneath isn't the best idea. I regained my composure as the captain on the engine snickered at me, and we went to find our patient. He was in a back bedroom. The first thing I noticed going down the hallway was that these people already had their heat on for the year, and it was cranked wayyyyyy up in the bedrooms. The split second I noticed the heat, the smell hit me. This was not going to be pleasant. Heat makes bad smells even worse, and this was no picnic.

Our patient was a gentleman in his 50's who had diabetes and liver problems. He was lying in bed, unconscious, covers pulled up to mid chest, neck and chin covered in vomit. Thankfully his airway was open and he was breathing well, but as I watched him breathe I prayed I could stop. Just till we got him outside. No such luck. I pulled the covers back, discovered an electric blanket on its highest setting, and a leaking "depends" adult diaper. My nose hurt. He had suffered more than one episode of explosive diarrhea, and the diaper did little more than turn to gel and try to run away. One of my students exited stage left in a huge hurry, and I heard him outside dry heaving. Yes, it was THAT bad. We tried to get the sheets from the bed to pick him up and carry him to the stretcher. The house had a turning hallway that neither stretcher nor backboard would make the turn of, so a blanket or sheet was our only choice. The sheet he was on ripped, so we stuffed one of our blankets under him. His wife was understandably worried, but kept insisting that we remove his pants and diaper and get him cleaned up before we go. I explained that he was unresponsive and needed to go now. (Plus that was one present that did NOT need to be opened). We carried him to the stretcher and wrapped him in more blankets and sheets. It was cold outside, and I was trying to contain the smell. His blood pressure was only 80/36 in the truck, so we started two large IVs and dumped the fluids into him. His blood sugar level was fine, his heart looked great, and his pupils were responding, but he was cold and pale and stinky. We turned the siren back on and headed for the hospital in rush hour traffic. I noticed a jerk staying right behind us, using us to get through traffic. I stood up and made some obvious hand gestures out the back window and he backed off. (No, I didn't give the universal "you're number 1"- that would get me in trouble.) Thanks for taking my attention ff my patient. I let my student attempt a nasal trumpet (nasopharyngeal airway device) that will help him maintain his airway. The guy was holding his own well, but if he vomited again that could change. The nasal airway won't do much if he vomited either, but my rider needed the skills. He inserted it well but our guy started gagging, so it had to come out. When we got to the hospital his pressure had come up to 130/66 but he was still out cold. The hospital used some great drugs to knock him out more and intubate him, securing his airway for good. One of my other students anxiously went inside and asked if he could attempt the intubation. While the doc and the respiratory team were working on the head end, there was another team working on the tail. They had opened his pants and diaper, were trying to insert a foley catheter and clean him up, but they kept gagging too. I have to give my student credit for even going into the room during all that. I didn't have the nose for it.

We ran a few more calls, the guys studied, I helped sweep and mop the bay floor, and then as they were discussing dinner options we were called for a 48 transport. DRT. A dead body that needed to go to the morgue. Some people get really creeped out by this but it really doesn't bother me. The only supplies we need are a couple sheets and a body bag, and they don't complain or throw up on you. I get time to write my report while we drive, and once we drop them off we go back in service. I always find it ironic when we get called to someone with pinky pain or an ingrown eyelash after transporting a dead person. I silently think to myself "you're doing much better than the last guy we had on that bed". The patient we had to pick up was on hospice- meaning he knew he was dying and they were just trying to make his last days comfortable. He had gone down in the middle of the floor, and had lost a lot of blood out his mouth and nose. His belly was distended from internal bleeding. He had lung cancer and liver failure. He was young- early 40's. When we arrived at the house, there were about 20 kids playing in the yard about six feet away, all curious about all the flashing lights and cars and trucks next door. I approached that house and asked the adults there to bring the kids inside for a few minutes, then I went inside where the dead guy was. The coroner was there (though I'm not sure why if this was a hospice case, but ok) and helped us get the guy into the body bag. Yes, there is truth behind the phrase "dead weight", and even a small person can be difficult to get in just right. The coroner handed me the toe tag and asked me to put it on, but I was at the head. I took one look at his toes and passed the tag to my partner. This time it was me gagging and dry heaving. Yellow and black and nasty and gross and thick and NASTY toes. I was NOT about to touch them. I can handle the poop, just not the toes. Yeeeechhhhhh. We got him zipped up and were told that he was going to be cremated, and family wanted to say goodbye. We opened the head part a bit, smoothed his hair down, and wiped the blood off his face that had come out as we moved him. There is something about zipping up a body bag that is so incredibly final, and it makes me appreciate life for a while each time I do it. We wheeled him out into the hallway so family could say goodbye. The guy had lost a lot of blood and they didn't want family to see that, so the guys on the engine went in with utility knives and cut a large piece of carpet and padding away (at the family's request). The wife came and kissed him on his forehead, and his stepdaughter said her goodbyes. It was awkward and uncomfortable. I can be around dead people all day, but seeing the love and sorrow in the family always chokes me up. I fought back a tear or two, and wiggled my toes. If you concentrate on wiggling your toes it takes your mind off whatever is upsetting you. Hey, whatever works, right? We loaded him up and took him to the morgue.

The morgue looks exactly like something out of a cheesy B-rated flick, complete with the green ceramic tiles on the wall, the silver sliding slabs for the cooler, and the one big autopsy table in the middle of the room. There is even a cabinet off to the side with jars of strange and random parts and pieces floating in liquid. It is in the basement of the hospital, down a long corridor with fluorescent lights with one always flickering, threatening to go out. There are carts piled with bundles of hospital laundry in the halls, and discarded and broken furniture and cabinets in the only room with an open door. It is creepy.

We ran a couple more calls, went to bed at 1, got up at 2:30 for a homeless guy who had supposedly walked 49 miles to get to our part of town and couldn't make it the last ten, so of course he asked to go to the hospital in that part of town. Lovely. We hit the bed again around 4:30 and had to get up at 7 for shift change. I am going to don my over sized "Tom and Jerry" pajamas and crawl into bed, in the middle of the day, and not feel guilty in the least. I just pray the baby sleeps in a bit today.

Six Things You Didn't Know But Now You Know After Reading These Six Things You Didn't Know

2008-10-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

OK, so this post is a little off task, but hey, so is real life. There is always something coming along and rerouting your plans. I was challenged to post six things you probably don't know about me, so here goes my feeble attempt at staying on task.

1.) I hate toes. So you may have already known that, but this is for the one new visitor. Welcome to the site, I hate toes. Toes are ugly and gross and aside from baby toes, they grow over one another and in all sorts of funky directions. Then there are the toe nails of the elderly.
*gagging while typing* Yellow, thick, crusty, long, curved, nasty nails on the ends on gnarled nasty toes make me vomit. I don't mean that figuratively.

2.) I always wanted to be a doctor. Now I wouldn't go back through school unless I won the lottery or something. There is just too much to it, and the liability and malpractice insurance premiums make all monetary incentive null and void. Maybe I can be a malpractice lawyer when I grow up. For now I love playing firefighter. Who wouldn't love driving the big truck and blasting the lights and sirens?

3.) I have pets, but am really not fond of them. I have three kids, two cats, a dog, and a newly acquired goldfish that was for the oldest kids' science project and hasn't been told that most goldfish don't make it 24 hours here. I am a responsible pet owner, the critters are fixed, and fed, and once in a while someone will throw some loving their way, but for the most part they are just more for me to feed and water and clean up after. I am too big of a softy to dump them off at the local shelter, where they would be put to sleep after about a day, so they continue their free ride here.

4.) As I type, I am secretly pondering the inventory of my freezer, and wondering just how many days in a row you can feed children some variation of a chicken nugget before it borders child abuse. I have some honey barbecue ones that need to be used up.

5.) I work tomorrow, and am really hoping to get a good (translation- bad. Like hair, teeth, and eyeballs everywhere bad) wreck. It has been a while since I got to use the extrication equipment on a serious wreck. Then again a fire would be just fine too.

6.) My youngest is 20 months old and I need to get her off the pacifier. My other two never tolerated a paci, but this one loves hers. I am doing pretty well at making her leave it in her crib unless she is sleeping, but she has a homing device in those things and always finds the one random one that was on the ceiling fan or behind the blender or hidden in the bowels of the couch cushions. I guess it is time to start being the bad guy and taking it away more. *Sigh*. I don't like being the bad guy.

Now I think I am supposed to leave links to six other blogs I follow, but I honestly don't follow any blogs. There are some regulars I check, and they are listed over to the right, but I usually just slum around and bounce from one blog to another to another. I like to click on someone's name in the comments, and see where that takes me, then click on someone else's name in their comments and so on. I like to keep it unpredictable!

I'm impressed

2008-10-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

I hope I am not speaking too soon, as there are still 8 hours left to my shift, and it is a Saturday night, but so far today everyone we have been called to has actually needed an ambulance! That is almost unheard of, and surely there will be something silly before the night is over.

We started out this morning with a call for someone feeling weak and dizzy about a mile from the hospital. We found the house, though mansion would probably be a more accurate description, and pulled up the driveway. The engine was already on the scene, and when they opened the door to the house, I saw our patient, laying on the kitchen floor with his feet up in a chair. He got my attention immediately. His skin was fish-belly grey, his lips were a dusky greyish purple, and he was sweaty. I pulled the stretcher in and immediately lowered it. One of the firemen was starting an IV, so I hooked him up to the cardiac monitor, expecting to see the worst. Surprisingly, he was in a normal rhythm. We moved him to the stretcher, and he immediately began to vomit. The monitor showed a PVC- an irregular beat- in the midst of all of the nice normal beats. Then it showed a couple more. We hurried to push him to the truck. We loaded him up, put some oxygen on him, and started fluids wide open in his nice new IV. I asked one of the firemen to ride in with me. The ride would be very short, but this guy was circling the drain quickly. I glanced at the monitor again and saw bigeminy- a rhythm where one beat is a normal one, then there is a PVC, then a normal one, then a PVC and so on. Only the nice normal beats were actually pushing blood around, so even though he had a rate of 80 on the monitor, only 40 of those beats really counted for anything. We raced him to the hospital and got there in three minutes. We have certain things we can do to help him out- we could hang some lidocaine (a drug that helps calm down irritable crabby hearts) but that would knock out his PVCs and leave him with a rate of 40 (which we can also speed up with drugs) or we could pace him- hook him up to the big pads you use to zap someone, and repeatedly zap him at lower electricity to make his heart beat better. I grabbed the equipment to hook him up, but heard the beep beep beep of the truck backing into the hospital. We hurried him into the emergency room, where his heart decided to change rhythms six more times, making treatment difficult. After much debate, the doc finally got him stabilized and feeling better.

Shortly after that we were called to a little old lady with a pesky case of gravity. It reached up and snatched her and pulled her right down to the ground. Her hip was broken, and her leg was bent up under her, which can actually be the most comfortable position for that type of injury. She was in her late 80's, and her husband was trying to help by attempting to straighten her injured leg. She was cursing him enough to make a sailor blush, and he just kept right on trying to help. We thanked him and took over. We used the scoop stretcher (a backboard looking device that hooks together like giant Lego's so we put it together around the patient instead of lifting her to get her onto it) and put her on the stretcher. The trucks are made for patient care, and aren't the most comfortable ride. The little old lady cursed us too, as we tried our best to take it nice and easy down to the hospital. I believe she will be petitioning the county commissioners for ambulances made by Lincoln Continental. Yeah, that'll be the day.

We tried to grab some lunch but it wasn't going to happen. There was another emergency. Dispatch advised us that we had an elderly man possibly having a seizure. We got to the house, and found our patient in a recliner, eyes closed, unresponsive. There was a big wet spot where he had been incontinent of urine, which is normal for a seizure. His family tells us he doesn't have a history of seizures, and that he had fallen in the bathroom 4 hours prior, hitting his head on the counter. He has a small lump above his left eye, but it isn't very swollen or discolored. I get very worried- if there isn't swelling on the outside, then it must be on the inside. Huge purple goose eggs on the outside, though they look horrible, usually aren't that bad. We start to get him out of the chair and put him on the backboard, when he wakes up. He is confused, combative, fighting us, and can't say anything understandable. We have to restrain his hands to the stretcher, because he keeps undoing all of the buckles and straps, and trying to rip out his IV and remove his c-collar. We get him loaded up, turn on the lights and sirens (altered mental status after head trauma is an emergency) and begin causing traffic jams left and right. I end up giving him two different drugs to make him stop fighting everything we were trying to do for him, and even though he was 88 years old, he still had a little fight left in him once the medications kicked in. He was cursing the straps, and the only words I could understand can't be printed here. We got him to the trauma center and they took him straight in for a cat scan or an mri or some other expensive brain scan. Hopefully the blood thinners didn't make him bleed too much into his brain.

We had just enough down time to grab lunch, then got back to our station and washed the engine, the ambulance, and the supervisor's suburban. Tones dropped again as we rinsed the last of the soap suds off our truck. Unknown trouble, Wal-Mart parking lot. On the way our radio crackled. Dispatch said that an off duty police officer had been flagged down by an employee retrieving carts, and led to a woman who had been in her car for four hours. They came back and told us the officer believed she was under the influence of something. On our way, some vehicles pulled to the left, some stopped dead in their tracks, and one flipped us off and kept on going. Then in a bad curve, a deer ran out in front of us. What the....???? How the heck does a deer run out in front of what looks like a Christmas tree and sounds like the love boat on crack? We didn't hit it, but it looked like Bambi on ice when hooves met pavement in a hurry. We arrived at the store, and found the lady out of the car talking to the officers. There were three empty cans of "duster" on the hood of the police car. (Duster is compressed air used to clean dust off of computer keyboards and tiny spaces. People huff it to get high from the propellants in it, but it can kill you in a hurry too.) Ironically enough, huffing has become a big enough problem, that these products now have a "bittering agent" in them to make them taste bad. Apparrently it isn't bad enough. They lady says she "only" did one bottle, but two of them are cold from rapid emptying, and they have the same lot numbers, so were probably purchased at the same time. She is paranoid and although she gave the officers permission to search her vehicle, she keeps trying to hide something from them. She is acting squirrely and can't answer any questions as to the date, location, her name, etc. We load her up and take her to the hospital, and she repeats the same few questions the entire way to the hospital. She wants her purse, she wants her pills (that the cops kept because she had about six different ones in a tylenol bottle, and prescriptions have to be in their original container) and she is absolutely freaking out to get to her purse. I don't know what she has in her purse, I am not about to go through it, nor am I about to give it to her. We try our best to keep her calm, but the paranoia has a nasty grip on her, and she repeats "where is my purse?" "can I have my meds?" "I need my purse" "do you have my purse?" "where is my purse?". I grow tired of answering the same question sixteen times a minute, and finally ask her if she even realizes she is repeating herself over and over. She laughs and says yes, but the paranoia kicks right back in and she repeats the cycle. What a great way to spend a Saturday night!

Rainy, drizzly, nasty day.

2008-10-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

That about sums it up. It has been raining, misting, drizzling, and spitting on us all day. It is really really cold too. I HATE being cold. I wore my tee shirt, my button-down uniform shirt, my job shirt (a thick sweatshirt with denim collar and elbow pads that I never understood the purpose of, but it's warm) AND my quadruple layered coat and was still cold. The outside temp wasn't even that cold, and some of you who enjoy arctic climates might smite me, but I had goosebumps all day. I was hoping we would run a decent wreck or two, and maybe a fire. Our first one out of the chute was a tummy ache. Then we ran a chest pain. Then we ate lunch at a local pizza joint. The boys got a couple of slices of the special and I got a turkey wrap, no mayo, on a wheat tortilla. It wasn't that great and I only ate half. Then we ran some difficulty breathing.

We did finally get a mediocre wreck. A Honda civic came to a stop for a yellow light and a van full of Mexican painters ran into the back of her car, pushing it about 40 feet through the intersection. thankfully cross traffic hadn't started going yet, or it would have been really bad. Her trunk was pushed into her back seat, but she wasn't hurt seriously. She didn't want to go to the hospital, said she wanted to wait for her husband to get there. The Mexicans weren't hurt either, they were busying themselves trying to use a wooden banister railing to pop their steel bumper back out. It wasn't working too well.

We headed back to our station to do chores. Each day of the week has specific chores: Monday is engine day- take every single item out of the inside and outside of the engine and give it a full detail. Tuesday is squad day- detail the ambulance the same way you did the engine. Disinfect every surface that gets missed during the cleaning we do after every call, scrub and disinfect and inventory everything. Wednesday is bay day- clean up the oil spots that have leaked, scrub the floors, take the blower to any leaves and little dead moths that have fallen from the heavens. Mop the floors, squeegie the floors. Squeegie. Squeegie. It's just a cool word. Squeegie. Thursday is house day- clean the station room by room, dusting, mopping, scrubbing, vacuuming, cleaning out the fridge and throwing away leftovers from the week. That used to be the favorite past time of a coworker at another station, because he got free lunch out of the deal. Friday is yard day- cut the grass, trim the hedges, pull the weeds, spread mulch, rake leaves. Saturday is a free day, and on Sunday we inventory the medical equipment in the supply closet and order what we need. We use a lot of supplies each week, so this one is important. You don't want to run out of body bags mid-week.

We tried to do our house day, but ended up running more calls. I didn't save any lives, nor did I see anyone die. Heck, I think I only saw one person that truly needed an ambulance, but I had a great time. I have the greatest job in the world and can't wait to go back for more.

Owie

2008-10-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

I arrived at station yesterday, watched the news, drank some coffee, and started to check out my truck. Tones dropped 17 minutes into my shift though, so the truck check was put on hold. (We inventory every item every day, but after doing it for years and years, you have a pretty good idea of what is likely to be missing- mainly IV supplies and oxygen masks. You learn where everything goes, and it becomes easy to spot a missing item right away.) We went to the address and found a cozy home in a quiet, older neighborhood. Inside, we found a 60-ish year old lady curled up on the couch, holding her stomach and moaning in obvious discomfort. She says her belly has been hurting all morning, she has a history of chronic constipation and had a bowel infection a few months ago. She says the pain feels the same. Her husband is concerned, and explains that they tried to get in the car but she almost passes out when she stands up. We gently load her up, and take her to the emergency room. Her blood pressure is pretty darn low, so we run some warm fluids into her IV and help her feel just a tad better.

By the time we left the hospital it was after 9 a.m. and we were supposed to be at training. We cleared the ER and grabbed some quick breakfast. Training would run well into lunch time and nobody wanted to hear grumbling growling stomachs, or deal with my partner when he gets hungry! Training was great fun. (yes- that is sarcastic). We had 4 hours on "what is water and where does it come from?" and discussed everything from municipal water grids to the algebraic calculations to figure out how many BTU's it takes to heat X number of gallons at X temperature by X degrees. For some reason it made me want to cook a lobster. With butter and garlic and a little lemon wedge. I mean, you can't calculate heating water without having something to put in all that hot water, and lobster beats Ramen Noodles any day!

We went back to our station and ran more calls. A toddler had fallen down when her over sized puppy jumped on her. She hit her head and had a decent goose egg of the front of it. Mom was a bit surprised when I asked for her car seat for the ambulance, but the adult straps wont hold a 20 month old onto the stretcher, she won't sit still in it, her familiar seat is a better choice for her, and mom would need it when they are ready to go home. We secured the car seat to the stretcher and away we went. The toddler pointed out cars and trucks on the way there, and was doing just fine when we left.

One of our guys went to the local landscaping store to get mulch for station. They have mountains of it. Yes- mountains. When mulch decomposes, it gives off heat, and can spontaneously combust. They use bulldozers and front loaders to turn the mountains of mulch regularly, but it still burns fairly often, and when people see the smoke, they call the fire department. In exchange for us going out there alllllllll the time, they give us free mulch for the station. Thanks guys! We spread the mulch all around the plants and made our station look fantabulous. Then we ran an old lady with back pain.

That evening we were called to a suicide attempt. A 58 year old guy had gotten laid off and was having a hard time dealing with it. His wife thought he was taking a nap until she found the insurance papers and suicide note. He had taken about 20 or so sleeping pills, and she woke him up with some cold water. He was pretty out of it though, so we took him to the hospital. Hopefully he gets some help. While we were on that call, one of the Sheriff's officers' radio crackled, and dispatch said something about signal 67 or some super secret cop code. The officer perked up to listen, and I asked what that code meant. He said "person down". As it turns out, while we were on the overdose, the guys from my station that were on the engine were called to a 6 month old baby. Dead. They said that mom went to check on the baby from a nap and found him dead in the crib. We usually try to "work" anyone that might have a chance, but there are certain signs that we look for that tell us it is too far gone, and without getting graphic, this baby had them. There is no sense in giving parents false hope and a huge bill for what you know you can't fix. Glad I missed that call.

During the course of the day, I had been feeling silly, and began playing the old kid game of "punch bug". Not sure if you guys have this, but for my readers *across the pond* if you spot a Volkswagen beetle, you call "punch bug (whatever color)" and punch your partner. Convertible ones are worth two hits. My partner started out just giving a gentle nudge- after all he didn't want to hurt "the girl". As the day wore on, the punch bug spotting became more intense, and he spotted every convertible one on the road. Since we took turns driving, both of my arms were getting wailed on. I did spot quite a few myself, but he found a special way of poking one knuckle out when he slugged me so that it somehow went between the muscle and hit a nerve on the bone, making my thumb go numb each time. By the end of the day, my arms were turning blue. I held my own fairly well, and never cried uncle, but this morning, this is what my arms looked like, Owie:

Arm day

2008-10-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

Friday was a rainy, drizzly, miserable day. It was the type of day where you curl up in bed with a good book and some coffee. With Kahlua, of course. I half expected us to run a zillion fender benders, but when we went 8 hours with only one call, We all started feeling the vibes. If you are on a busy truck, and don't run your tails off all day, it comes back to bite you at night. Everyone tried to go to dinner, and on the way the ambulance got called to a local church. (if you could call it that. The place is the size of an amusement park, and we call it either the "Jesus Dome" or "Six Flags Over Jesus" because of it's sheer size). We went to where our patient was, and assessed the situation. The lady had fallen while walking and her arm was broken. We did the best we could, but it was the humerus- the bone in the upper part of the arm- and there isn't a spectacular way to splint that with the shoulder's range of motion. We got her an ice pack, some morphine, and gave her the easiest ride our huge truck could manage to the hospital.

We got back in the county, and my partner was really hungry by now. We tried again to eat, and again got called out. This time it was for a 4 year old boy with a broken arm. He had tried to do a flying suplex off the top of a bunk bed. His elbow was dislocated, and his forearm was unstable. We splinted him up and took for for the long ride down to the children's hospital. We looked forward to any excuse to go to the children's facility, so we could check on the boy hit by the car. We dropped off our patient, and asked one of the nurses seated at a computer if she could tell us what room the other boy was in. She perked up and said that he had gone home that day! I was so excited for him, but then remember reading his website and not seeing anything about him going home. I double checked when we got back to the station, and sure enough he is still in the hospital. He is doing amazingly well though, and should be going home soon.

We tried again to get dinner after that, but those two calls had taken a little over three hours, and everything was closing. We inhaled some Taco Bell (Those cinnamon twisty things are so addictive!) and headed back to our station. The night grew very long, and we didn't make it to our bunks until after two in the morning, only to get up again at three thirty. We didn't run a single wreck that day (all the other trucks did while we were busy with broken arms).

Thanks for riding along, stay safe out there.

Another "normal" shift.

2008-10-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

I just got home from working a double shift. The first 24 hours I was at my regular station and was assigned to the engine. We went out and did some pump training. I succeeded in proving that I do have to left feet, got a bad case of performance anxiety, and turned into my own worst enemy, making too many stupid mistakes. I learned a lot and got better with each practice run, but still don't understand why I get so nervous pumping the truck. I guess it's because I understand that on a fire, every person inside has their life in the hands of the guy at the pump panel. If he screws up and can't get them water, they are in the worst possible position. I want to make sure I understand that truck inside out and upside down.

We finished training, and went back to the station. I rolled up my sleeves and made dinner for everyone. We had mashed potatoes (yes, real ones. Like I would feed the boys flake spuds. OK, you're right. I would do it in a heartbeat if it had been a busy day. Heck with enough butter and sour cream they go down well.) I made barbecue/sweet and sour meatloaf. It's like normal meatloaf, only it isn't drowned in ketchup. I hate cooked ketchup. It gets all hard and gooey. This recipe has a homemade barbecue glaze on it. Yummy. We had some veggies too, and then went to wash the truck. The only call we ran was to help a lady with a history of multiple sclerosis who had slid out of her bed. She lived with her 80 year old parents and they couldn't pick her up. It was her third fall that day, but another engine had run her the other two times.

After that shift, I went to another station. The goat station, if you recall that story. I got there as the guys were checking their equipment, and joined in to help. We had to completely empty every shelf of the heavy rescue and clean it since that was the daily chore. With five of us working on it, it still took us until about noon to get it done. It was pretty dirty. Then we went up to headquarters so the guys could get fitted for new uniforms. We get to order uniforms once a year, and do have a budget. Last year I ordered way too many long sleeve tee shirts. Now it's time for some new pants, boots, and button down shirts. Maybe some shorts too. I never have a problem with the guy from the uniform shop, but the guys hate getting fitted every year. the uniform shop guy is quite light in the loafers, always wears bright Hawaiian print, Miami vice style shirts, and insists on triple checking every inseam. I stifle my giggles as the guys squirm uncomfortably.

We finished up at headquarters and hit the sub shop for lunch. We went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for dinner. I had told the guys I wouldn't mind cooking again, and made homemade chicken cordon bleu with rice and green beans. Yummmm!

After dinner we got called out to a 23 year old with difficulty breathing. The call is several minutes away in a mountainous neighborhood. The engine arrives, and dispatch comes back with a shaky voice, telling them "I know you just arrived on scene, but I need you to stage (wait) for s.o. (sheriff's officers)...Please" It was how she said "please" that concerned me. She was genuinely worried about something. She sounded almost like she was pleading with them. We were close to the scene, so we stopped. I called dispatch on my phone and they filled me in. The guy with difficulty breathing had freaked out and tore off running through the woods when the engine showed up. The day before, that same station had a crazy lady pull a gun out and try to "shoot helicopters down", so if this guy was making a break for some hidden forest arsenal I wasn't going to be one of the ones he picked off. The cops got there and asked for out thermal image camera. You may think you can hide in the dark, but the TIC can see your heat, and even your footprints if they transfer heat. The cops got the guy to come back to the house. He was extremely inebriated, said that he spilled something and his sister-in-law yelled at him. He says he went outside and sat on the porch. The in-law says he fell over and was barely breathing. In either case, if he can take off on a marathon through the wilderness then come back and smoke, he must be breathing just fine now. He refuses transport to the hospital and we go back in service.

Sorry for no pictures today- I got my camera out to take some shots of more random wildlife at the goat station only to realize that I left my memory card at home when I downloaded the last batch.

The little boy is doing so well!

2008-10-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

The little boy that was hit by the car is making an astonishing recovery! He is awake, alert, and interacting well. They set up a website for him, and here is a recent update straight from his family:

Well, I found the right medicine for (M)!! His sisters!!! (M)'s face lit up when they walked in. He has been talking up a storm since they walked in. Not all of it makes sense, but it sounds beautiful!! Then his PaPa gave him a ten dollar bill and boy did his face really light up!! He kept telling everyone that he has ten bucks. He has had a couple noodles of mac-n-cheese and he ate a popsicle. The excitement has gotten to him now. He has quieted down and is just watching his sisters. We are so grateful!!! It has been so wonderful to see him laughing with his sisters. Thank you all for your prayers. Tomorrow he starts his day at 8:00A.M. He will be evaluated by the therapy team. He will also see his PT, OT and speech and language therapist. I'll let everyone know how his night went. Thank you all!!

As you can tell from the pic his head is still a bit uneven from all the trauma it received, but to even be alive....and recovering! The lower picture is an older picture his parents posted from earlier in the summer. Recognize those shoes?

This should be interesting...

2008-10-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

So the auction is still on for tonight. Several of the guys are up for auction, and one of them is a bit silly. He is going as Elvis Presley. He has taken some of his old boots, painted them white, and added sequins. Yes, sequins. No respectable fire boots should ever look like this:

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The auction was a ton of fun! We raised a lot of money fo rthe Susan G. Komen foundation. Here are a ton of pics from the event. Some of the guys are in uniform, but all of these are people I get to work with. It's a crazy, wild bunch but I wouldn't have it any other way. Even "Elvis".

This is another one of our female firefighters (above), and Elvis (below) is her husband, also a fireman.

These two (above) are firemen. The one in the black shirt has scars on his face if you look closely. He was in a severe boating accident (other boater at fault) that left two dead. As a result of that accident, he decided to become a firefighter and help other people.

One of our guys with his winning bidder!
There are no words!

These two (above and below) are our calendar boys. Literally. (Contact me if you are interested and I can point you to them. Maybe even get you a signed copy!)

Two of our captains (above)
Yours truly.
Yes, he's off duty!