DKA

Three calls today. A syncope, an MVA and a diabetic.

The syncope was at a house I have been to often, yet never recognize until I am inside and see the family. They know me by my name. I usually transport the wife, but sometimes the husband. They are nice people and they think highly of me, which makes me feel good about my job. Today while the daughter was getting dressed -- the husband was out on his daily walk, I sat in the back of the ambulance with an elderly neighbor who had come over to help. I asked her if she was coming with us. I said I just wanted to make sure we wouldn't be leaving with her in the back if she didn't want to come. "If you took me, so what. At my age I've learned, what the heck, you go with the flow." I'm learning the same.

The MVA was a good hit, a tracktor trailer into a van. The driver of the van ended up in the trauma room with bruised ribs.

The last call was for a forty year old man with difficulty breathing. The officer thought he had the flu, but he was breathing so quick and heavy, and it stunk. He was an insulin diabetic. I thought for certain his blood sugar would be through the roof. I thought he was in diabetic ketoacidosis, when your sugar goes through the roof and you become extremely acidotic and have to breathe rapidly to try to keep your blood gases in line. I had the stretcher brought in, and we got him out to the ambulance. I checked his sugar. Its going to be high, I announced. It came out 242. Not that high. I still dumped in fluid and kept him on a nonrebreather. He was nauseous and very restless.

We get to the hospital. They check his sugar -- its critically high.

So much for my glucometer.

At least it turned out to be what I thought it was.