The Warring States of NPF - View Single Post

batgirl · 04-08-2011, 08:54 PM

Sad.

Sometimes you just have to feel it. I'm not supposed to get attached to patients, but when I see them so often it's hard not to. It's hard to accept their inevitable deaths when you've met their families, spouses, children and friends. Even when you walk into the most roach infested hell-hole, I feel a twinge of sadness for the person lying there, this is their home.

It's been an uneventful day so far, only 1 job and it was a backup for a basic crew. The patient got dizzy in church and fainted, and the EMTs thought it could have been cardiac related. Turned out the woman was wearing her winter coat and standing near the heater, so she just got woozy from the heat. For the better part of the day we sit, them snoozing and me taking a small nap and then reading. A couple of hours before their shift ends (and my 2nd half of the 16 hour double shift I'm working) we get a call for an unconscious patient, not breathing.

We pull up with the basic crew and grab all of our gear, rushing into the nursing home. As we wait for the elevator to reach 6, we stop at 2 and a nurse tries to argue her way onto the elevator. "Well, I'm going to the same floor with this oxygen measuring machine for him."

"Um...stop wasting our time, and take the stairs, we need to close the door." She still squeezes on, making our cramped quarters even smaller. "How are you going to measure his breathing if he's not breathing?"

"...Oh."

We all, all 5 of us, roll our eyes in unison. Getting to the floor we rush into the room. He is blue, like a smurf. No one knows how long he's been down, no one knows why. I go to tube him, almost second nature now. I have a terrible view. I'm crouching like a baseball catcher behind the bed. There;s gunk in his mouth that smells like meat, bad meat. I try to slide the tube in and I meet resistance. I ask for the forceps and pull out some brown material but it's still obstructed. I ask the medic to take over, and I go to prepare drugs, since he is clearly in cardiac arrest. They get an IV in his jugular vein and the medic goes into his throat with the forceps. I'm drawing up the meds and getting the syringe ready, and suddenly I hear "well here's lunch." I look over to see the medic dropping the forceps with a chunk of unchewed roast beef the size of a baseball on the bed. The tube slides in easily.

We get the drugs going and keep CPR up. I have a good feeling about this one. I push my third epinephrine and my hope starts fading. I get a glance at the history and see meningitis and brain cancer, and my hope is gone. I knew we weren't going to bring him back. If we did, there wouldn't be much left with a viable quality of life. I push my last drug as we start taking him to the truck. I push more in the truck and do compressions and ventilations. At the ER, we pass him off to the docs and nurses, but it looks bleak. We've been working him up for 40mins and who knows how long he was down before that. We pulled up at 1230 and lunch for them was at 1130, so he could have been down for the better part of an hour, no one noticing him chocking.

A man's life hangs by a thread, and then gets violently cut by stupidity.

Sad.

04-08-2011, 08:54 PM	#1
batgirl Aim for the top! Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: The Infield Posts: 2,583	Sad (warning gross medical stuff) Sad. Sometimes you just have to feel it. I'm not supposed to get attached to patients, but when I see them so often it's hard not to. It's hard to accept their inevitable deaths when you've met their families, spouses, children and friends. Even when you walk into the most roach infested hell-hole, I feel a twinge of sadness for the person lying there, this is their home. It's been an uneventful day so far, only 1 job and it was a backup for a basic crew. The patient got dizzy in church and fainted, and the EMTs thought it could have been cardiac related. Turned out the woman was wearing her winter coat and standing near the heater, so she just got woozy from the heat. For the better part of the day we sit, them snoozing and me taking a small nap and then reading. A couple of hours before their shift ends (and my 2nd half of the 16 hour double shift I'm working) we get a call for an unconscious patient, not breathing. We pull up with the basic crew and grab all of our gear, rushing into the nursing home. As we wait for the elevator to reach 6, we stop at 2 and a nurse tries to argue her way onto the elevator. "Well, I'm going to the same floor with this oxygen measuring machine for him." "Um...stop wasting our time, and take the stairs, we need to close the door." She still squeezes on, making our cramped quarters even smaller. "How are you going to measure his breathing if he's not breathing?" "...Oh." We all, all 5 of us, roll our eyes in unison. Getting to the floor we rush into the room. He is blue, like a smurf. No one knows how long he's been down, no one knows why. I go to tube him, almost second nature now. I have a terrible view. I'm crouching like a baseball catcher behind the bed. There;s gunk in his mouth that smells like meat, bad meat. I try to slide the tube in and I meet resistance. I ask for the forceps and pull out some brown material but it's still obstructed. I ask the medic to take over, and I go to prepare drugs, since he is clearly in cardiac arrest. They get an IV in his jugular vein and the medic goes into his throat with the forceps. I'm drawing up the meds and getting the syringe ready, and suddenly I hear "well here's lunch." I look over to see the medic dropping the forceps with a chunk of unchewed roast beef the size of a baseball on the bed. The tube slides in easily. We get the drugs going and keep CPR up. I have a good feeling about this one. I push my third epinephrine and my hope starts fading. I get a glance at the history and see meningitis and brain cancer, and my hope is gone. I knew we weren't going to bring him back. If we did, there wouldn't be much left with a viable quality of life. I push my last drug as we start taking him to the truck. I push more in the truck and do compressions and ventilations. At the ER, we pass him off to the docs and nurses, but it looks bleak. We've been working him up for 40mins and who knows how long he was down before that. We pulled up at 1230 and lunch for them was at 1130, so he could have been down for the better part of an hour, no one noticing him chocking. A man's life hangs by a thread, and then gets violently cut by stupidity. Sad.