He's Back

I come in to check my gear, but think to myself, no, the night preceptee probably did it after I mentioned the problems I had yesterday.

Go on the first call for an overdose -- female took 20 benadryl trying to off herself, then called the police to tell them about her plan. She is a little sluggish -- heart rate is 130. I go to put her on the monitor. There are plenty of electrodes, but the monitor starts beeping at me. Battery 1 and 2 are down to one power bar (out of 4). I pick up the spare battery on the bench. 1 power bar. I get enough juice to get a strip, then I turn it off. Belushi is back. At the hospital I find a commercial rig who will swap me a fresh battery.

When will I learn?

Later in the day, I do a diabetic refusal. After an amp and a half of D50, the man does not want to go to the hospital. I reach in the blue bag for a refusal. None. My partner has to take the elevator downstairs and out to the ambulance to get a refusal form.

Returning to the base, I do a thorough and complete inventory of all my gear.

***

Took in an 11 day old baby who choked on his milk, but was fine. 1st time mom. Off to the hospital we went.

When we walk out to the rig after leaving our paperwork, I hear on the PD channel, an officer say, "Tell him to bring in the defib."

We make ourselves available, and we are sent to a local pharmacy for a woman down. We are told the commercial ambulance is on the way. I figure we can just back them up if they get there first. Instead we beat them.

It's a code. Lady is asystole and she has puked all over the carpet. When I go to tube, her mouth is full of watery puke, but I can make out the chords and I slip the tube in with a crick pressure assist from a friend of mine who has arrived with the commercial basic unit. Some epi IV and we have an accelerated idioventricular that holds all the way to the hospital, but we never get pulses back.

***

The other call of the day is a nursing home lady with a distended abdomen. I took her in a few weeks ago for pneumonia. We get to the hospital, and it turns out a family member of hers is in the room across the hall, and soon there is a gaggle of folks crossing the hall to see granny.

A day of viewing life: a woman who doesn't want to live, a child not two weeks old getting milk from his mom, a eighty year old woman who dies alone in a public place, and another eighty year old woman who has a family reuinion at a hospital. A full day.