Sunday, September 2, 2007

Chest Pain at Gerber

My partner and I decided to go get something to drink. While we were out on the air our dispatcher came on the radio and said "MEDICS! Return to station for chest pain." Here a bit of back story is needed. Our dispatcher (that day) has heart issues. When we hook him up to the ECG monitor while he drinks a Monster energy drink it shows him having an MI (heart attack). Sometimes when he wants a Monster he tells us he needs his heart medication so when we got this call for chest pain we thought that he might just be thirsty. When he didn't ask us to phone in we realized was probably serious.

When we got to the station we were told that it was one of the billing ladies (we are a compartmentalized company can you tell?) and that she was upstairs in the conference room. We grab our stuff (drug box, ECG monitor...) and went up. Turns out she had had a chest cold with a non-productive cough for 7-10 days and is a smoker. The chest pain, which she described as a pressure, had been going on for a week and she was told to have us check her out by our office manager. Everything checked out normal and she did not want to go to the hospital so we made base contact (we are required to contact the hospital for patients with possible serious medical complaints to cover our butts) and signed her out AMA (against medical advice).

2 comments:

  1. So THAT's where you caught your cold!

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  2. Actually, I caught it from my dispatcher (it may also have been one of about ten other people at work).

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