25 March 2006

Firestarter

First call was for an ALS MRI. The guy was really cool. He was chatting all the way to the ambulance. We were taking him because he had a seizure. My partner was playing music off of his ipod on the way to the MRI. The song that came on right away was the Beach Boys. The guy yelled, "turn it up!" and was jamming to the music. We listened to Stix, the Beatles, etc. all the way to his appointment. He was having the time of his life. we took him back to the hospital when he was done too. It was the same routine on the way back.

For the rest of the daytime we did mostly BLS calls. Nothing special.

Our first "real" call came in around 1900. We were called to a local nursing home for a patient with tachycardia. We got on scene, to find a man of about 40 dripping with sweat (literally) and extremely pale. The staff said he had an anxiety attack in the morning, and then began to sweat and get pale around 1600. Way to wait three hours to call EMS. We got him moving. Just about everything checked out-we couldn't find any explanation for his symptoms. Another crew took him home in the middle of the night. They said he still looked like crap when they got to him. He was still sweating and pale. Nice to know that the hospital takes care of its patients.

We did another call right after that for a patient with SOB. When we got on scene, we found our patient: a fever of 103, unresponsive, and belly breathing. The nurse said the guy was up at 2100 to get a drink out of the vending machine. She went to check on him at 2245, and this is how he was. We got him onto the cot, hooked up to the monitor, and got him downstairs. He looked pretty good on the monitor. His blood pressure was about 96 systolic. His oxygen sats were kind of low, but came up to about 95% on a NRB. I noted that his pupils were unresponsive. He also didn't have a gag reflex. I put an oral airway in, which he wasn't bothered by. I got my intubation equipment out, had the laryngoscope in, visualized the cords, and started sliding the tube in...and he started gagging. I stopped and put him back on the nonrebreather. So much for that. He didn't become any more responsive than that.

We did a transport in the middle of the night for a psych from an immediate care center to the ER. Nothing special.

We did another psych call around 0400, that proceeded to take up the remainder of my shift. The woman was quite odd. According to the nurse, the lady was found by neighbors on her front porch, dousing it with gasoline, and carrying a few knives with her. They called 911, and they got to her before her whole house was torched. There were several burn marks on the porch from earlier in the day-she tried to torch it earlier, but it wasn't burning properly. That is when she proceeded to get gasoline to do the job. The police also found several more knives on the kitchen counter, including a switchblade, and about 10 cans of lighter fluid (the kind you would use for a grill). Nice.

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