Thank You.....I Think

We got a call the other day for a citizen assist. These calls come in from time to time and can be anything from a cat in a tree (yes, we actually get calls for this) to someone being locked out of their house. As long as there is no emergent call I have no problem going out and lending a helping hand. After all, we are public servants.

This time the service call came in from an elderly woman that lived alone in her own house. She was unable to change the batteries in her smoke detector (Public Service Announcement: If you didn't change yours when we had the last time change for daylight savings, do it now).

This old lady has been calling us to change out the batteries in the detectors for years. This time she let us know that she had been doing us a favor. Instead of calling us every 6 months to change the batteries now she was only calling us when one of the detectors started beeping the low battery alarm.

So thank you....I think.

What Do You Want Us To Do

We pulled up to the house to find a kid about 18 years old waiving emphatically. As we followed him into the house he told us his grandfather was having a hard time breathing.

Inside we found a near 90 year old man laying quietly in bed. He looked frail and sick. Really sick. Like dang near dead sick. His daughter was by his side tending to him. The man was breathing ok and had a weak radial pulse. I noticed he also had an IV in his arm.

I asked the daughter what was going on. She introduced herself as a nurse (which meant absolutely nothing to me) and said that her father had cancer of the colon which had metastasized all over his body. He had a valid DNR and the family's wishes were for my patient to be comfortable. They had made their peace with the fact that he was dying.

The daughter than informed me that she had just given a repeat dose of dilaudid and morphine to the dad. Now she was worried because her father was having a more difficult time breathing.

For those of you that don't know both of those drugs belong to the opiate family (like heroin) and both cause a decrease in the body's respiratory drive. While we do have drugs to reverse this process it also takes away any of the pain killing affects of the drugs.

By now we had the old man on some oxygen. He was still breathing adequately but he was tiring out. We asked if they wanted us to honor the DNR which they did. That begged the question, what do you want us to do?

She just kind of stared blankly in response to that question. While the daughter had realized that her father was going to die it hadn't dawned on her that in would be that day.

We explained all the options to the family taking time to make sure they understood the possible and probably outcomes of each. They then decided to have their father/grandfather transported to the hospital with the caveat that he would be kept as comfortable as possible.

The next day I ran a call with the same medic from AMR. He said that the patient had made it all the way to the hospital but not much further. When they entered the ER the doc asked if the patient was still breathing. The MD and the medic looked down at the patient and watched him take his last breath.

At least he's is comfortable now.

Even Frequent Flyers

If you work in a city long enough you start to learn that there are areas that just produce calls. We have a shopping center in our district that has more medical emergencies in it than every other strip mall in the city combined. A lot of the time it's homeless people that are too drunk to stand and someone else calls for them.

We were dispatched to Taco Bell in this strip mall for a man not feeling well.

We arrived right behind the AMR unit. While they grabbed their gurney I stepped up and talked to the manager. He said the patient had walked in and sat down about 15 minutes earlier but hadn't ordered anything. He also said the guy looked sick.

Inside I introduced myself to the patient. I asked what was going on and he said that he felt weak. He denied having and trouble breathing or chest discomfort. That was about as far as I was able to get before AMR had the gurney ready.

We helped the man to the gurney and then loaded him up into the ambulance. Inside the rig they checked an initial set of vitals which were ok. I asked AMR if they needed anything else and they said they were good.

That was the end of that call. I didn't give it a second thought, until later.

About a month went by and we ended up on another call with that same AMR crew. The medic asked if I remembered the homeless man at Taco Bell and to be honest, he had to jog my memory a bit. The medic said that 5 minutes after they arrived at the ER the man had a massive coronary and died.

Food for thought, even your frequent flyers can be really sick sometimes.

Now Is Not The Time To Panic

We got the call at 3 in the morning. My first thought when we get calls at this time of night is who is up right now?!

As we pulled up to the house a woman driving an SUV almost rear ended us. We try to park Big Red just beyond the address allowing room for the ambulance to park a little closer. The crazy driver slid right past us and into the driveway (making access with a gurney more difficult). The woman, who turned out to be the daughter of my so called patient, then ran into the house.

Inside I found a man in his late 80's sitting on the couch eating some toast. His wife was talking extremely fast trying to explain what she believed was going on. The daughter, who arrived by her fathers side just seconds before us, was trying to talk louder and faster than her mother. Both of them clearly having no idea what was going on.

I asked the women to give the information to my captain allowing my to question the old guy. He told me that he had just been released from the hospital at 8 the previous evening. He had had a 6 day stay while battling pneumonia. He said that he wasn't given dinner before leaving the hospital and went to bed soon after getting home. He hadn't eaten anything other than a sandwich all day.

My patient said he awoke and felt hungry. His stomach was growling. Somehow his wife misinterpreted this to mean he was having trouble breathing and panicked. She called her daughter who lived cross town. She jumped into her car and called 911 then tried to beat us to the house.

In the end my patient stayed at his house, eating and drinking some coffee and shaking his head at his daughter and wife.

Now That Was A Spicy Meal

As we pulled out of the station the radio came to life. We, along with the rest of our first alarm assignment, were responding for a structure fire. PD was on scene as was reporting smoke coming from the garage. 

The first thing we noticed when we were pulling up was the complete absence of smoke. Meh. The next thing we noticed were all the cop cars.

I jumped off the truck as soon as the airbrake was set. The sergeant told me that they had a pair of burning chonies in the garage.

I made my way into the clutter filled storage space that was supposed to be able to house a vehicle and sure enough there was a smoldering pair of tighty whities. I grabbed a metal pole from among the crap (that wasn't an intentional pun but it is funny) and lifted the underwear.

As I was moving them out to the driveway I held up the garment and told my captain that that had to have been one seriously spicy meal (another bad pun).

We used the thermal imager to make sure there was nothing else burning in the garage.

Afterward I asked one of the officers what the story was. He said that they had showed up that morning to arrest a parole for not checking in the previous week. The bad guy had been in the garage and heard the officers pull up. In a vain attempt to get away he lit the underwear on fire and then ran out the door....directly into the arms of a waiting officer. The felon had a history of running and the good guys had been prepared for that.