I am 911

Chapter Five

Some days weren't crazy and stressful. Some days it felt like you just might die of boredom. All day the only thing I did with a patient was taking an elderly woman with a GI bleed from the local ED to the ICU in a larger hospital.

As a brand new emt you want hard calls. You want CPR, GSWS, ODS, and live birth. Down time as a student feels like death but once you've seen enough death, once you've been seasoned and damaged and changed, you come to appreciate down time. I did laundry in the back laundry room, I cleaned out my husbands office (he's on the bard at the corp), I swept, vacuumed and sanitized the day room. Down time was time to study, do homework for your next class and catch up on sleep.

Boring days for us just mean that everyone else is having a good day. Boring days are safe days.

***2 days later***
*Tones dropping* I had one foot out of the rig and immediately turned around and sat back down. My driver jumped back into the front and lit up the sirens. We pulled out of the bay and onto the dimly lit road. O two hundred and already running lights and sirens to heroin over doses. What a way to start the day.

We rolled up and I jumped out running with the BLS bag. My driver grabbed the gurney and ALS and I were off toward the front door. We ran in without even knocking and found the unresponsive thirteen year old female with her big brother kneeling over her. He claimed he didn't know she had been using but the track marks on her arms told a different story. I grabbed the Narcan and pushed some in her nostril while ALS placed the airway in her other nostril. Once administered we began bagging her until she woke up fighting us. This was a minor, this was endangering the welfare of a child.. and her parents weren't even home. 

Within 20 minutes she was awake and talking, and of course crying. We had loaded her into the ambulance and the police were walking around the rig. I told her we are not the police and that she needed to tell us exactly how much she had taken. After we knew her mother arrived and I had the police inform her that she could not ride in the ambulance and that she needed to drive to the hospital separately. One of the officers gave her a ride and another jumped into the rig to start asking her the usual questions. 

Once we got to the hospital our job was done and the police and nurses took over. The mother was not allowed in until after the patient spoke to a crisis counselor to set up a plan on how to get clean. Calls like this were great in the moment when I was making split second life saving decisions and hard afterwords when it was time for the patient and family to cry. I hated crying patients but at least this patient had a reason. Some patients just cry because they like being over dramatic. 

ONE WEEK LATER

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I sat in the day room typing on my laptop while sipping the coffee my husband had been so kind to supply for me this morning. He was off taking some exams for his firefighting classes and I was alone at headquarters awaiting a call. 

It was much colder than usual so we were all wearing our florescent green/yellow coats that said EMS on the back. I was hoping for a quiet day as I pulled out the homework I had from a few classes I has started taking.

Of course, tones drop. My student and I took off for the rig with our driver right behind us. I had already done the rig check for the shift so I knew all of our supplies was filled and where we needed it. We were en route with medic 65 right in front of us to an unconscious elderly women who passed out waiting for her medications in a pharmacy. We arrived to find an older woman with sweat pouring down her face while wearing several coats and sweatshirts, unconscious on the ground and shivering. 

I turned to my student and said, "Lets start cutting clothes and get her on the monitor. Be careful she might have the flu lets grab some gloves and a mask first." I already had gloves on and as I grabbed my mask and trauma sheers. "LETS CLEAR THE AREA", I yelled and the pharmacy staff began to remove the civilians that had formed a crowd around us. I cut off her top coat and quickly realized it was a down jacket when feathers reputed everywhere like confetti.

"Get me a temperature" I told my student while I continued to cut clothes and medic 65 got ready to start line in the left AC. Once through all the clothes I grabbed the BP cuff and my stethoscope while my student got a temp and pulse. "BP is high, 150 over 110" I told medic 65.

"Pulse is fast and irregular, 122. Temp is extremely high, 105 degrees" My student announced.

I responded, "Okay, and what does that tell us?" 

"Possibly flu or dehydration" she said nervously. 

"If she was dehydrate would her BP be raised?" I asked while we watched the monitor with her irregular heart rate and moved her onto the gurney.

"Oh no. So flu or other infectious disease. That means we need to put on PPE"  I told her she was right and to go grab the PPE kits from the rig, quickly. She ran out into the parking lot and came back with the familiar black backpacks. 

Once loaded into the ambulance and blood pressure medication administered to help lower it and stabilized the pulse. "Lets go bud" I yelled to let our driver know we were ready to head off to the hospital. "No lights or sirens".

While en route to the hospital with fluids and medication delivered the pt woke up and was able to tell us she had no insurance, and had gone to the pharmacy to ask for some cold medicine as she could not afford a doctor's visit. She was in her late 60's and had been feeling light headed and dizzy for a few days now. 

By the time we rolled up to the hospital her vitals were improving steadily. My student was in charge of repeat blood pressures and getting the pt's information. The nurse was in her PPE and waiting for us to unload while the doctor suited up. We still believed it was a severe case of the flu and sense the flu had already claimed 12 lives in the state, we were taking all precautions. 

We dropped off the pt and two hours later when back at head quarters, the phone rang. We had finally finished sanitizing the rig to prevent flu spread. It was the doctor from the hospital calling to let us know we all need to be extra careful while watching for symptoms the next few days as the pt's rapid test came back positive for the flu. 

Great. Just great.