Satisfaction

Eight calls, eight transports. Busy on a hot humid day.

I did three back to back allergic reactions. A baby who ate eggs and had hives around his mouth, throat, and scattered on his torso. A man who just recieved IV dye while getting ready for a Cat Scan who had hives, and a 500 pound lady stung by a bee who had hives all over her body and who was itching like crazy. I gave the baby 10 mg of Benadryl IM and it pretty much cleared up. The medical staff at the Cat scan place gave the man epi, and benadryl, and two puffs of an inhaler. I followed it up with a treatment. He had wheezes, but I think they had more to do with his smoking than the reaction, although he said the treatment made him feel better. The lady I gave .5 epi SQ and 50 Benadryl IV. It stopped the itching, but didn't do too much about helping the hives. I think at her weight, she needed a double or triple dose.

We took a suicidal man from the community health center back to the hospital which had just released him after an overnight stay in their psych ward. I'm going to kill myself, he said. I just need help. Keep me away from a gun.

We were called for a fall. An old lady who fell last night and had a hematoma on her head. The response was on a priority one to a suburban town, and they kept us coming all the way on a one, but it was not a priority call. There was a visiting nurse there, who said the doctor wanted her evaluated because she had been falling a lot lately with no explanation. I worked her up as a syncope.

We did a fifteen year old in labor, contractions two minutes apart, lasting two minutes. She was huffing and puffing and occasionally screaming, but her water hadn't broken yet and it was her first child.

We did a seizure patient, who stopped taking his meds. He was extremely postictal, a three hundred fifty pounder, big strong guy. We had to carry him down a narrow staircase, and he was still moving unpredicatably. He started leaning to the left, and we bent the stair chair trying to keep him upright.

And we got called for an unresponsive in someone's backyard. It was a guy on a Lark -- one of those motorized scooters He was GCS of 3, skin cold, clammy, more than clammy, he was drenched. It took me awhile to realize, he had been out in the downpour, we'd had earlier. It occured to me he might be a diabetic. Blood sugar was 26. I gave him an amp of D50 and he woke up, although he was still groggy. In the ambulance, I mixed 25 grams of D50 in a 250 bag of saline, and ran him on a D50 drip or techincally a D10 drip. He gradually perked up. I read an article where they are studying replacing D50 IV with 250 cc of D10 IV Drip. It is easier on the patient's veins and brings them about more gradually.

While I was at the hospital today, a medic from one of the volunteer towns brought in an asthma respiratory arrest that he intubated and got back. A young woman. What was so great about the call was not just the medic's skill on that call, but this medic is in charge of their service, and he basically turned their BLS volunteer service into a small but well-run medic service(The service is still technically volunteer, but the medics and day staff are paid.) He has to take enormous satisfaction that he was responsible for getting medics to that woman's side, and being the medic who saved her. He said, when he arrived at the house, the little kid answered and said, "I think my mommy's dead." He found her purple with an inhaler in her hand. Now she's pink again, and her kid has a mommy that's alive.

Nice job.