Killer weekend,...literally, lots of dying

Mostly of braincells from coughing so much, there's this darned chest cold/flu thingy going around. Seems like everyone is suffering from it.

Rode my first couple nights as a real EMT last week. Finally got to do stuff on medic calls. Caught a couple good ones on thursday night. Night started off fairly benign with the usual workout, then had some awards dinner for the local high school's robotics team. Evidently I did something to help them, i was just having fun and came up with a few suggestions for them. They gave the dept. a neat plaque and a thank you card. Rushed back to the station after the dinner to sign on to the medic unit. There's nothing like the realization that you can actually LEGALLY cal yourself an EMT now to get your blood going about running calls.

Get signed onto the unit, get my gear stowed and not too long after that get toned out on a BLS call for a child choking. On the way in it gets upgraded to an ALS call. 11MOM was chewing on a coat hanger (the type where the hook is actually a flattened loop so its not deathly sharp at the end) and got it stuck in his sub-lingual soft palatte LOTS of bleeding. Got upgraded to ALS because the dad said the bleeding was "uncontrolled". But, by the time we got there the hanger had been removed. Bleeding had stopped but its such a sensitive area and babies will put just about anything in their mouth that our medic driver thought it was best for the baby to go to the hospital to see if the wound requiered stitches or not. Man that little baby bled a lot, or at least it looked like it, not enough to worry about shock but dad's shirt and mom's white vest are certainly stained beyond repair.

Next we get toned out about 1030 for a possible stroke but its WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY over there, like 2 districts away. Whats that all about, i know the volunteer ambulance for that district was in service and the ocuntty didnt look THAT busy on the CAD display that there were no medical transport units between us and that call. Oh, well. We get there and there's classic signs of stroke. Facial droop, difficulty speaking, lack of movement in the left arm and left sided weakness generally. Go through the Cincinnatti stroke scale (all by myself) on the way to the hospital to reevaluate to see if its a TIA, or a real chance at a bleed. Not TIA but not mega-bleed. We get her to the hospital and the stroke nurse meets us, she must have been some sort of self styled miracle worker because simply by touching the patient's forehead. Oh well, when we dropped her off she was no worse than when we found her so we did our job, and damned well if you ask me considering response and transport times. We're back at the station by like 11:30 so all in all 48 minutes on that call wasnt horrible timing.

About 0230 the tones drop again for ANOTHER BLS emergency, injuries from a fall. By the time our sleep asses had been dragged forth and made it to the unit the call was upgraded to ALSE and made a CPRF (fire unit: CPR event) the wife couldnt find a pulse or tell if he was breathing and he was too big for her to roll over and check. Our engine and medic are both called so we roll up just behind the engine and by the time i had the cot up the walk the engine crew and our liutenant are both up the stairs checking the guy. Our cot was acting up that night and i couldnt get it to go down to the loading position. oh well just one more thing to get irritated about. The call went OK at best, a lot of stuff we could have done better in hindsight, nothing that affected patient care, he had passed away before we were onscene, there was nothing more we could have done for him than we did. I attract dead people evidently. It was a shame that the wife didnt know CPR, he was still warmish when we got there, had she initiated CPR there is a chance he'd have made it, not MUCH of a chance but a chance none the less.

AGAIN DO YOURSELVES A FAVOR TAKE THE 8 HOURS AND GET YOU AND YOUR FAMILY CPR CERTIFIED AND IF YOU HAVE THE TIME TAKE A FIRST RESPONDER EMT CLASS...

a perfect example of a call where if the caller was able to start CPR we might havebeen able to do more for the patient.