As we pulled up to the house we were greeted by the patients husband. He led us inside where we found his wife sitting on the couch. As I walked in I got a quick first impression. She didn't appear to be in any kind of respiratory distress (this brought the urgency level way down) but she was very red in the face. She had hives covering he face neck and chest (which immediately started bringing the urgency level back up). I asked her if she had any allergies to which she said no. Although later on she would admit to being allergic to Demerol. She said that she had had some soup for lunch and had no idea what could have caused the reaction. Then her eyes lit up and she said she had some sushi. We have a likely culprit. Then she said it was actually a California roll (that was a leftover from the day before)...so much for that idea. We only had time to run a quick set of vitals on her before AMR showed up. We told her that we would give her something for the rash (benadryl) and take her to the hospital.
The last allergic reaction that I heard about in my city was a 43 year old male that was allergic to crab. He went into anaphylaxis and died before the engine ever got on scene. The crew tried to perform a needle cricothyrotomy but there were no landmarks on the guys neck. He was just too swollen. I'm glad mine wasn't anywhere near that bad.
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