Last night was what I would call a perfect night of EMS. It's a hard concept to come to grips with, but as an EMT, there is a certain part of you that wants to work - you want calls, even though you know that a call means that someone else is sick or injured. You don't wish for the accident, you wish for the chance to help, and more often than not, you get it.
Last night was such a night. I came on in a good mood, although I had been tired and feeling sick all day. Dinner improved my spirits, and afterwards, we settled in for a quiet night. A little after 9 pm, we received a call, and luckily I was still dressed; an elderly individual at a local restaurant, unresponsive and projectile vomiting. We hop in the rigs quickly, the call is upgraded to code 1, the lights go on, and we page for assistance.
We arrive on scene to find a person in truly serious condition. They aren't speaking, but seem to be able to obey vocal commands; they are able to squeeze our hand, they're breathing, and they have a good pulse. So far so good. However, there are clear signs of a neurological problem of some kind; the eyes are unresponsive, and one is pointing in the wrong direction. We attempt and fail a quick on-site blood pressure reading, and decide not to wait any longer. We load the patient (with some difficulty) and move to the ambulance.
Doors close and we move right away. On route, I set to taking a blood sugar reading, which came up normal. I grab a gauze pad to cover the finger, and look up at the patient, who coughs twice before proceeding to vomit a surprising amount of barely-digested expensive dinner, a sizable portion of which ends up on my legs. I ignore this, towel the patient off a bit, and we continue to be bounced around the ambulance, suctioning the vomit from the patient and starting him on high-flow oxygen via nonrebreather mask. We arrive at the hospital, move him in quickly, transfer him to a bed, and the nurses set to him immediately. I stand back and watch it all happen, never having experienced this level of emergency before, and find that everyone's motions are practiced and smooth, while I hardly know where to stand this time; I just take it all in, remembering what to do for the next patient.
Afterwards, we begin on the lengthy cleanup process. Every tool we used gets wiped down thoroughly, and I change into a set of scrubs, feeling for all the world that although I've been an EMT for a year now, this was my first real call.
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My growing addiction to Emergency Medicine
About Me
- Peter
- I'm in my early twenties, a recent college graduate, and new to EMS. I Attended a BLS course in the fall of 2006 and joined a local ambulance company during the class. I'm currently a Massachusetts certified EMT-Basic, currently working with my squad one 12-hour night shift a week.
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Patient confidentiality is very important to me. In sharing my experiences, my intention is to tell the story of my encounters and not to reveal information that my patients would prefer to keep private. Therefore, I've intentionally kept many details vague, not used names, and changed the genders of some of the patients in these entries. If you feel that any of these posts allow for an identification of a specific patient or if you believe that any of the stories posted here violate patient confidentiality, please let me know and I'll immediately remove the offending post.
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