This has been awesome!!! So many interesting calls, that going through the assessment has just led to more details to why they might be acting or feeling the way they do. It's just been fabulous!! We've had plenty of hypoglycemic pts., hyperglycemic pts., bradycardic, tachycardic, drunk, stroke, seizures, breathing problems, asthma pts., lots of syncope, tons of chest pains, abdominal pain... The list goes on and on. Some of the more interesting calls though I'll write here, then try and be better about posting more regularly for my own sake!
We we're called to a 56 yo F not acting right. We get out of the ambulance and there is a crowd of ppl sitting on the back of some cars. (everyone is african american btw) They just look at us and say "ya'll gonna need a mask." Precep. says "well we'll go inside and check it out. Thanks though." I didn't want to go check it out, if these ppl say I need a mask I want a mask! They obviously know something that we don't! At this point I was just thinking the person was extremely sick or had some infectious disease. We grab our bags as fire pulls up and walk into the apartment. Just from the door open I could smell poop. Walk into the apartment it gets worse. The apartment is like a pre-hoarders house. Papers all over the counters, clothes in piles randomly on the floor, broken glass on the floor, garbage all on the floor. They tell us the lady is around the corner in the tub. So we make the turn to the bathroom and it's like a wall of stench hits me. Smell of diarrhea/vomit/crap/urine... everything disgusting. Cockroaches climbing up the walls; of the hallway and once in the bathroom even more and bigger roaches! She had old hospital vomit tubs on the counter in her bathroom that had mucus looking vomit in it. The toilet has crap all over it, and we see the 280 lb. naked woman stuck in the tub. Sitting in 3 inches of her own urine and crap. Her head was down by the faucet so her back was clogging the drain. She couldn't talk, she was just slapping her right thigh with her left hand over and over again. At this point we know we just need to get her out. So we talk to the fire fighters about the plan of attack. In the meantime we get masks and chew gum to try and mask the smell. DID NOT HELP at all. Some of the firefighters couldn't even walk into the apt. I was watching one of them just walk in try to breath start dry heaving and run out! Then he'd make it in a few steps further before turning and running out, and a little further and further. haha it was so funny! So we decide to use a sheet and one of the firefighters lift mechanisms to get her out. When we pick her up we notice tons of sores on her back and on the backs of her legs. We wrapped her in sheets and put her on the cot. We'd found her medications to try and get a history on her. Turns out she has MS and has had a stroke in the past. :/ Then I really felt bad for her. Neighbors hadn't seen her in about 4 days so they are guessing she'd been in the tub for that long. We started 2 IVs in her en route and got vitals. Took us 20 minutes after dropping her off at the hospital to decon. our ambulance and it still stunk for the rest of the day. We talked to one of the doctors the other day about her and said she started coming around after she had some fluids in her. They ended up sending her up to the burn center to get the sores on her backside cleaned.
Another awesome call was to a shooting. We got there maybe 2 minutes after the call came out and by the time we showed up, the police had this intersection spider webbed in yellow tape in a mile perimeter. It was insane how much tape they had going everywhere in such a short amount of time. All we knew to the story was that it was a domestic dispute, and the guy had shot up the leasing office. While police showed up to stop him he decided to just shoot himself. Meanwhile across the street from this going on was a drug deal or something. Those guys heard shooting and saw the cops outside and assumed the cops were there for them! So they took off in a car driving through the apartment complex and started shooting at the cops. We are parked in the middle of this intersection when we show up. we can see the dead guy up on the hill, fire wasn't doing anything so we figured it was an obviously dead call. The paramedic says he'll go check it out while the EMT and I get the cot and bags just in case. We're about to pull the cot out when I see the cops behind the EMT start bookin it, and he's looking at the cops behind me start booking it in the same direction. He just warns me "If you hear any shooting be prepared to just jump in the back of the ambulance and lay down." One cop then comes and stands by us, saying there is rumor of another shooting over there (where the cops were running, also where the drug deal thing was going down). They say they have a man in custody so we're alright to keep going. The paramedic comes back and says he's dead, so there's nothing we can do. Meanwhile the cops bring back someone in handcuffs and put him in the back of the police car right next to us. That makes the whole black community watching angry. Some guy starts yelling at the cops "you can't take my brother" he starts running under all the yellow tape towards the cop car. Luckily the cops run towards him and distract him away from the scene. Crazy. They still want us around in case something else goes down. Oh and a helicopter was circling the scene! So cool! Well waiting around the cops tell us someone is having breathing difficulty up by the dead body. So we got to go up there to check her out. I start asking her questions and applying the BP cuff, the girl was bawling!! She could hardly talk to me becuase she was crying so much. One of the detectives then leaned over and whispered to me "She's the girlfriend of the guy that just shot himself." ahhh eye opener, that's why she's crying! So I continue to ask her questions. She had been hit on the head and had a big goose egg already that was turning purple. She had a bullet grazing on her leg too that we put a band aid on. Probably needed a little more, but we just did a band aid. Vitals checked out so we called it good and left. It was such an exciting call, even though we didn't get to save the guy shot. darn. You can check out the news clip for details of what went down.
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/19595345/police-investigate-deadly-atlanta-shooting#.UFvLpw3eg4M.facebook
Walked in on a dead lady face down on her bathroom floor with her pants down. She was about 85, poor old lady though, had been dead for a couple days like that.
Another dead lady we walked in on had a trickle of blood coming from her mouth. She wasn't showing signs of levitity, so we were about to try and work her, until we rolled her to her side to check her back. Tons of blood came pooring out of her nose. Turns out she was on a bunch of blood thinners she was on and the dosing was wrong. Must have had some kind of hemorrhage in her sleep or something. She was about 80, the family was pretty heart broken about it.
Had a 24 year old that had a collapsed lung 2 weeks ago and the hospital gave her oxygen to make it better. 3 days prior she started having extreme pain on the same side as her collapsed lung and was having difficulty breathing. Listened to her lung sounds and they were absent!! So weird to hear lung sounds on one side and none on the other. We were pretty close to the hospital so we just started an iv.
Had a 26 yo M who got hit by a car. He got pulled over on the south side of the freeway and thought he could run from the cops across all the lanes going north, about 5 lanes of 55+ MPH. Got hit on his trek across. He was hit by a small car and rolled over the top. He had a closed right tib/fib brake, and road rash on all his extremities. He wouldn't answer most of our questions, we think he was on some kind of drug. We started 2 large bore IV's in each arm. He kept complaining about his bum hurting so once at Grady in the Marcus Trauma Center he received the Grady hand shake. :) a nice poke in the boo hole, and he had a cut on his butt cheek. As soon as they spread his cheeks apart he started freaking out and saying how it was his upper leg and not his bum. haha. It was great.
More for later!
