I am 911

Chapter Two

Being in EMS and Fire is not a job for everyone just like being an interior firefighter is not for me. I'm the fire departments EMT and I'm an exterior firefighter. Though my husband is an interior firefighter I often tell him, "my ass has no business inside a burning building". He laughs and I tell him he's my little hero.

It's not a job that is meant for anyone. Hard calls, long shifts, leaving family events when the tones drop, and constant classes because you can never be too prepared. You're always learning and changing as a medical personal. Just last week we had a training with 7 other ambulance corps and 5 fire departments at the local airport to prepare for a mass casualty plane crash. We can train all we want but we can never be prepared enough to handle begging patients, bloody scenes, and terrified families.

We entered the house led by a young man, maybe 25, he was holding a toddler. We walked up the stairs and found a young woman about the same age and clearly pregnant with an older couple on either side of her. "She can't remember who or where she is... somethings wrong!" The older woman, maybe a mother said. I opened the jump bag and began taking vitals.

"Increased pulse, low oxygen saturation, WHOA! BP is through the roof" Our paramedic immediately got the doc at the local ER on the phone. I heard something about possibly calling a helicopter and tried to distract our hysterical patient. "How far along are you?"

"I-I don't know. Its October .. the baby is coming in October!" The woman began crying even louder and who I now knew was her husband's mother spoke up, "No baby it is October the baby isn't due until March... Um she's four months" I thanked her and wrote it down on the clipboard.

The paramedic reentered the room and to woman could now carry on a conversation and knew the date and where she was so we decided against the helicopter. When we got in the ambulance I spoke to her to try once again to calm her down, "We are going to use sirens because our driver up there likes sirens, okay?" She asked if we were lying and we said no, which was a lie. We were using sirens because her OB was at a hospital an hour away and her vitals were dropping again. We pulled out of the driveway with the husband up front with our driver and then the sirens came on. The sirens must have made her nervous because her BP went back up again and she couldn't remember where she was or what was happening again.

I remember her voice more than anything, "Am I gonna die!? Am I gonna die!? Am I gonna dies!?" Over and over again. She told us she wasn't ready to die. Then she started seizing. I grabbed an oxygen mask and turned the O2 onto full blast while our paramedic dropped the stretcher into a flat position and we started to draw back medicine.

"See if there are any more ALS units in the area" Our paramedic was yelling up to our driver while we worked to control the seizure. Once it stopped she yelled again, "Get me a helicopter and see if they can meet us halfway to the hospital" Our drive repeated the message only to have no response in the area. Her SpO2 kept dropping and I pulled out a mask and started bagging her. We were pushing 80 flying down the highway on our way to the hospital with the sirens blaring.

Almost a half hour after the first seizure we were pulling into the hospital's trauma bay. She had had three more grandmal seizures and was not breathing on her own at all. We had placed a tube down her throat and she was bleeding heavily vaginally. We rushed her into the ED and the were sent immediately to a trauma Bay were her heart stopped and cpr was started.

We got her back after almost 40 minutes of cpr and she was off to surgery... the only way to stop preclansia that causes seizures is to remove the baby.

She'll never know that the day she lost her baby was only a month after I lost my own. I am 911 and I still think about you.