Monkey See, Monkey Do

1423 hours

Truck 51, respond with engine 57 for a motorcyclist down....

The truck was canceled by engine 57 while en route to the call, but they were already committed to the canyon. They passed the accident and saw that the rider had laid his bike down but had not gone over the edge.

1712 hours.

Engine 51, rescue 42, battalion 5, respond for a motorcycle down, possibly over the side....

As we started up the canyon we verified with dispatch that an engine and ambulance were responding from the city on the far side of the canyon, just in case they were closer.

As we wound our way up the narrow road a CHP unit came up behind us. Since he was able to take the road at a lot faster pace, we let him go by. A couple of minutes later we came up on him again. He was stopped behind a group of motorcycles and cars where one guy lay out on the ground. We immediately reported what we had and the responding BC canceled the balance of the assignment.

My patient had been traveling up the canyon when he hit some gravel and spilled. He didn't lose consciousness but was experiencing neck and back pain and also pain to his left scapula. We quickly did a "strip and flip" (a quick trauma assessment where we cut the clothes off the patient and check head to toe for injuries) then strapped him to a backboard.

It was about this time that we started to wonder about our ambulance. My captain called dispatch and found out that when all of the responding units were canceled, the ambulance was inadvertently canceled as well. Dispatch then informed us that there was still an AMR unit coming from the far side of the hill. We then asked for an ETA only to find out that that unit had gotten lost and was 30 minutes out. We had another unit sent from our side of the hill.

Meanwhile, we had time to do everything we needed with our patient. We had a complete history and physical. I started an IV and offered some medication for pain management, which was refused. We still had time to kill. We started making small talk. That's when we found out that he had traveled down to our trauma center to visit a friend in the ER. His friend had been in a motorcycle accident several hours ago, about 100 yards from where he was now strapped to a backboard. He had been unable to see his friend (because he didn't know his friend's last name) and had been on his way back home.

Almost an hour after he hit the asphalt my patient was loaded into the back of an ambulance. He was headed back to the trauma center where he had tried to get in to see his friend. Maybe they shared a room.

"Stupid Is As Stupid Does"

It wasn't even a holiday weekend which made the presence of a DUI checkpoint down the street a surprise. I'm sure it was more of a surprise to the drunk drivers trying to make it home. But this post is not about them. It's about another driver that made some very poor choices both before and after encountering the DUI checkpoint.

This man had chosen, earlier in the day, to steal a Land Rover. Stupid move #1.

As he rounded the corner and the flashing red and blue lights came into view I'm sure his adrenaline started to kick in. He then decided to do what a lot of people trying to avoid the law do when presented with a checkpoint, turn into a parking lot and go another direction. Unfortunately for him the police know this too. So when they see someone turning last minute it guarantees that a motorcycle unit will quickly follow to investigate.

When the officer tried to pull him over the driver hit the accelerator. Stupid move #2.

A short chase later (about 2 blocks) the thief wrecked and then tried to flee on foot. Stupid move #3.

The perpetrator, who happened to not be in great running condition, then decided that his chances of escape were better if he used his physical prowess to climb a fence. Stupid move #4.

The officers (now there were a lot of them....I have to assume that a chase is to a cop what a structure fire is to a firefighter) caught up to the bad guy at this point and pulled him off the fence. Now seeing as he was only outnumbered by guys with batons and guns and since our delinquent was obviously in great physical shape  I can understand why he decided to attempt to fight off said officers. Stupid move #5

This is about the time that we were toned out. As we approached the scene we could see that several PD units had half of the major street blocked and the entire side street was cordoned off with yellow police tape. An officer led me to the back of one of the patrol cars while explaining the situation to me.

My patient was very upset and was yelling quite a bit. Mostly he was cussing out and cursing the deputies that caught him. He was mostly cooperative but every couple of minutes he would go back on a tirade about police brutality. His face was bruised and sore but his biggest complaint was a sharp pain in his ribs. It's possible that he could have had a fractured rib. Every time he would start screaming about the "f***ing cops" I would just reassess his painful ribs (does it still hurt when I push here?). It shut him up fairly well.

Trying to get sympathy from me for getting beat by PD when you deserved it. Stupid move #6.

The arresting officer asked if he needed to go to the hospital and I informed that I thought so. He then asked if he was going to die if he went in the patrol car. Nope! Cancel AMR.

His only good choice was the type of vehicle he chose to steal, which I'm sure happened quite by accident. This is a pursuit of a Land Rover in LA several years ago.

Calling For The Bird

 

No, not that bird.

The tones went off for a traffic accident. We had the report of a motorcycle down on one of the canyon roads. This call started out like a lot of calls. We arrived at the reported location to find nothing. So we kept going. A couple miles down the road we found the accident.

The 25 year old rider said that he was being tailgated so he tried to go a little faster. That's evidently when he lost it. We found him laying on the side of the road in the dirt. Several bystanders had stopped to help. My patient had removed his helmet (even though he said he knew better from the combat corpsman training he had received while in the Navy). He said he didn't lose consciousness. His helmet was intact without much damage. His only real complaint was pain to his left hip. I quickly did an assessment to determine if we need a helicopter or if he was stable enough for the long transport to the hospital. Everything was looking like ground transport until I got to his pelvis. The patient was complaining of left hip pain and when I rocked his hips it really hurt. The decision was immediately made to land a helicopter. A patient could easily lose enough blood from a fractured pelvis to be life threatening.

Now that that decision was out of the way I continued my assessment. The young man also had decreased mobility and strength in the left leg.Other than that he was in fairly decent condition. After checking him for further injuries we packaged him up. As we were strapping him down to the backboard AMR showed up. We quickly loaded him into the back of the ambulance and headed up the canyon to the LZ. There, engine 52 and engine 97 (from a neighboring agency) had shut down the road and set up for the helicopter.

We were there waiting as the helicopter approached. The pilot circled around the valley once to gauge the winds and then settled into a landing pattern. We all had on our turnouts and helmets, with our goggles on. I flipped up the collar on my jacket as high as it would go and got ready to get pelted by debris. I'm sure that there were a lot of drivers that were stuck behind the big red road block that enjoyed the show.

This is the same type of aircraft that was on my call.

As the helicopter came in he was buffeted by some strong cross winds. When he finally did touch down it was only with 2 wheel. The road was a little too sloped in the spot that had been chosen and the pilot was reluctant to set the chopper all the way down. He tried 2 more attempts at the same spot. Each time he did I became more and more nervous. I kept getting visions of helicopter blades and fireballs flying into the air.

Statistically, flying on a medical helicopter is the most dangerous 

job in the country, It even trumps miners, loggers and fisherman. Read a 

couple articles from Popular Mechanics and  The Wall Street Journal 

that talk about the dangers.

After the third attempt the pilot told the CHP officer and the captain of engine 97 to move their vehicles. They were now in his landing zone. This time he was able to bring it in without much trouble. He did decide to shut the helicopter all the way down while loading the patient for some additional safety. A few minutes later the bird took to the air with our patient.

We cleared the call as soon as the helicopter was gone. We had ice cream back at the station that needed eating.

Similar To Reindeer Games?

You ever wonder what other games the reindeer play besides Monopoly?

I like to think they do practical jokes. Kind of like a bored firefighter.

The other day I was at the station just sitting down to eat lunch with my crew. My engineer offered to make tuna sandwiches for everyone. My captain was just getting a glass of water when I took my first bite. I quickly discovered that the reason he was getting water is that there was cayenne pepper in the tuna. I wasn't expecting it and it hit my throat just right where I started to cough a little. So I got up and went to get a drink of water like my captain.

While I was getting a drink my captain noticed my face was red. He turned to the engineer and asked him if he had put cayenne pepper into the tuna because I was allergic to cayenne pepper. When I heard this I immediately tightened up my abdomen turning my face beet red. My engineer, who was on the phone with a firefighter at another station, took one look at me and thought that I was headed into anaphylaxis.
My captain yelled for him to go and get the EMS gear. His cell phone went flying as he headed toward the truck. Once he was out of ear shot we started cracking up. As the engineer started to come back in my captain was shocked to see me take it a step further by dropping to the ground. Now my poor engineer comes around the kitchen to see his firefighter "near death" on the floor. All he can do is shout, "What should I do?! What should I do?!"

At this point I sit up. Needless to say he was a little upset. After a few minutes he could at least see the humor in our gag. Although, for the rest of the shift he kept referring to us as *ssess and was sure to let me know that payback is coming.

Okay, maybe firefighter games are more fun.

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