I thought it would be fun to share tales from the days of EMS ala "things I learned from my patients"

I used to dabble in EMS back in the day for a largeish waterpark

I learned that when you are almost 6'9" tall it is perfectly acceptable to attempt a dive into my 16" deep wading pool, and when by some miracle you aren't immediately paralyzed and you regain consciousness as my guards are loading you in the bus to transport your mangled bum in to the trauma center you should definately start screaming obscenities at the African American and Asian staff members. It will cause them to make doubly sure you are taped and velcroed to the board. and when you become angry cause you can't wiggle off the board, you should try spitting on the Hispanic good-sam bystander that is holding your crying children. That will earn you lots of props and maybe even a rectal when you get to the ED.

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Hey O-Nut,

Shouldn't you have been in one of these instead?

Scary, they let them have red lights and sirens. In any case, props to the new EMS forum.

Ok, to actually stay on topic (which is hardly discernible from the title) :-), here's a few of my favorite memories:

Dispatched priority 1-Charlie with the fire department for an elderly female, rule out stroke. Upon our arrival on the scene, found a female unresponsive being held up in the sitting position by her elderly husband. Patient went to bed at 10PM with a headache, and was found to be unresponsive at 2AM. The patient's pupils were fixed, GCS of 10, and was incontinent of urine. The patient's daughter (who increasing became an annoyance and a hindrance to care) said that her mother had eaten a piece of month-old tiramisu prior to going to bed, and in her esteemed medical opinion, the patient's condition was most likely simple food poisoning. We advised the daughter that the symptoms, history and pt condition were more likely due to a cerebral event. The daughter wanted the patient transported to the hospital where the pt worked. This is a small community hospital with a 10-bed ER, 2 nurses, 1 MD, and no CT tech on the overnights. Definitely not a stroke center. When advised of this hospital's limited capability and our recommendation to transport to a more appropriate facility where the patient would stand a greater chance of survival, the daughter said "they can transfer her if they need to." Ok fine, but by that time the patient's brainstem will have herniated, and they can ship her to the morgue instead. The patient finally became fully unresponsive in the ER and had to be intubated. To give you a glimpse into the quality of care, one of the nurses asked me if he could have an OPA out of the ambulance, and they used our bag-valve-mask, since they couldn't find theirs. All this for a patient that the daughter didn't think we needed to put oxygen on, since her main concern was that the patient might vomit from "food poisoning."

On another call, we had a elderly female, Down's Syndrome patient. Upon arrival, the home health aid was standing outside, hyperventilating. When asked if she was alright, she proclaimed, "I had to do CPR for 15 minutes, and I saved her!" Naturally, the crew rushes in, to find the first-responding fire department all standing around the patient, doing nothing. The patient was laying on the floor in the bathroom, breathing, with a pulse and conscious/alert to normal. Patient was also having loose bowel movements, and was scheduled for a colonoscopy tomorrow. Now anybody with any clue knows that CPR will not bring someone back from death by itself, despite what you see on TV. It only buys time by keeping tissues oxygenated until you can defibrillate/give medication to correct the electrical/metabolic disturbances which caused the heart to stop in the first place. So what we believe happened was that the patient experienced vaso-vagal syncope (passed out) because of the colononscopy prep. This was further confirmed by my partner, who was telling the medic that the patient had begun to vomit, when he received the patient's gastric contents projectile-vomited into his mouth. The medic had hoped it was only water, but my partner corrected her with, "No, it tastes fruity." (Colonoscopy prep solutions are often made to taste fruity.)

What do you think that icon on the electrically powered cheese grater stands for? Ok, I won't keep you wondering- evidently it stands for do not put your hand into this feed chute, especially when the grater is still turned on. My only patient on last night's EMS shift failed to recognize this obviously ambiguous symbol.

lol!

Your pic brings back another memory of a less-than-stellar engine crewmate of mine when I worked for the dept of forestry during undergrad.

We had these extremely expensive gasoline powered pumps that we used to fill up our port-a-tanks, engines, tenders, and to charge our hose lays. We were on this one fire that we'd been going on all night and *suprise* Stellar let the pump run out of gas, as evidenced by the disturbing lack of H2O and foam from the end of my nozzle. Radioed down to the bottom of the hill "erm... 81 to 80, we just lost pressure, check the BB4 please" [pause] he/she replied "uh, 80 to 81, um, it's like not running boss. do you think it's out of gas?" (keep in mind here I'm like counting the days until this dork is out of here, and I"m also like half a mile away up the ridgeline in the dark) "81, check fuel, oil, and water level in the portatank, then try and restart please. if that doesn't work I'll come back down" [pause] "akkk!" comes over the radio, follwed by [silence] but I've suddenly got oodles of pressure and H2O mixed with foam galore. Scared the crap out of me cause there was no "here comes your water" warning, I got this instead: "erm, 80 to 81, could you come down for a minute?" [sigh] "81 copies. On my way"

When I got there, I found this image perfectly branded into the dude's hand in reverse-I can't find a good pic on the web, but it was a giant pic of a hand with the big circle and slash through it with the words "caution, HOT!" around the outside lol. We had to coat with burn gel and send him off to the ED for treatment lol. The genius had put his hand right on the exhaust manifold to brace himself when he went to start the pump back up.

Same dude dropped a radio on the district forester's head on another fire and dang near knocked the guy out-had to transport him to the ED to get checked out too.

Guy finally got let go when he forgot to shut and lock the pump compartment door and the engine lost not one but two pumps coming around a corner on the way back to the office.

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