- Ugly In The Morning
- Jul 1, 2010
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Pillbug
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Two years or so ago I got called out to an amputation. We get there and the dude has his hand cut all the way off. My medic partner and I are taking care of the lovely tourniquet the cops put on and sent our trainee to go get his hand from the table saw.
This guy keeps saying “my dog, you have to find my dog” and I’m telling him not to worry, he was spooked but he’ll come back and the cops are looking for him, one way or another he’ll be fine.
That’s when the trainee yells to us that he can’t find the hand and I put two and two together.
The guy’s dog grabbed his hand and bolted.
Luckily they were able to find the dog pretty quick and a cop met us at the hospital with the hand, and despite all the shenanigans they were able to reattach it.
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Feb 26, 2021 03:43
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Apr 18, 2024 01:53
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- Ugly In The Morning
- Jul 1, 2010
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Pillbug
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Apologies if I'm being dense, but what were these people doing? I can't work out what suicide method/s would fail and remove part of a limb.
Power tools.
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Feb 27, 2021 08:06
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- Ugly In The Morning
- Jul 1, 2010
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Pillbug
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I have a story I’ve told on here that’s similar to that.
quote:
So, last night the other crew got called to a nursing home for a adult female with a low pulse ox reading. That's an annoying one at nursing homes, because usually it means a CNA saw a low number and called 911 without doing anything. If you readjust the pulse ox, or sit the person with CHF up so they aren't drowining in their own fluids anymore, usually the number goes right back up and they don't want to go to the hospital.
Well, this was not one of those times. 2 minutes later, right around when the crew was making the turn into the parking lot, the tones went off in the building again. Only this time, it was "a second crew to back up the first crew on a possible cardiac arrest". I don't know what it is about nursing homes, but the most hosed calls always have the easiest sounding dispatches.
We got there, and the other crew- 2 EMTs, a paramedic, and an EMT student observer- are doing CPR. I see pads on the patient, but the staff is loving nowhere to be found. Later, I found out that the CNA's had put the AED on the patient, and then proceeded to do nothing. No CPR, no ventilations (they didn't even know what a BVM was when the first medic asked for one), nothing. At this point, the first medic has them on the monitor, which is showing as asystole. Flatline. Not shockable. The observer went to get the backboard so we could do CPR on the stretcher during transport, I start in on bagging the patient while another EMT does compressions. Medic #1 gets lines in- the first one was usable but dependant on position, and the second was perfect. The observer gets back with the board, we get moving, and medic #1 does the first shot o' epinepherine. So far, it's a little chaotic but nothing out there.
In the ambulance, it's basically Medic #1 down towards the feet doing meds, Medic #2 up top trying to intubate, and the other EMT and I are on the left and right of the patient switching between who's bagging and who's doing pushy-pushy every two minutes. The observer is taking times and letting medic #1 know when three minutes have elapsed so he can do another epi dose. Where the story really starts to get, uh, interesting, is on the first tube attempt.
See, this lady was almost seventy, had parkinsons, and was senile. She wasn't exactly flossing religiously. Not a "brush thrice a day" type. Her dental health loving sucked, is what I'm getting at. The laryngascope blade that was being used to try to see her vocal chords straight up pushed three of her teeth to a 90 degree angle. They were loose, and an airway threat, so they had to go.
So I had to reach into a dead woman's mouth and do some amateur dentistry. Feeling those teeth come out was, if it wasn't the grossest thing I've ever felt, at least a solid top 3. At least I knew the compressions the other EMT was doing were pretty decent, being as that she was perfusing well enough to bleed!
First tube went into the esophagous, so air went into her stomach. That's not that uncommon for intubation attempts, and this lady's anatomy was pretty bad. She had seized earlier in the day, so her tongue was all swollen, so the medic couldn't visualize what he was doing at all. The second attempt had the same thing happen, and at this point, we were suctioning a vomit/blood mix from her mouth. It was pretty nasty, but about to get worse.
See, I can do CPR pretty well in a moving ambulance, but it's still a moving ambulance. You hit bumps and need to go around turns. One or the other happened while I was compressing, and my hands moved. The force from my compressions went onto her stomach. Her full-of-air stomach.
I had a corpse puke its last meal mixed with the blood from when I tore some teeth out of its face, directly into my eyes and nose. I was very happy I had my mouth closed. . Medic #2 ended up dumping hand sanitizer into a towel, and just yelled "SHUT YOUR EYES AND MOUTH!" before scrubbing my face with it, while I still did compressions.
The ER doc ended up having the exact same thing happen in the ER while he made his own attempt to intubate, so both of us had to sit around for three hours while the hospital tried to convince the family to do a blood draw so they could test for Hep C and HIV. The family refused, even though two people trying to, you know, bring mom back from the dead, could really use that information. It was for religious reasons, just like the lack of DNR. I don't get the whole "only god decides when it's time for you to go, so please go through extreme measures to bring them back from the dead" thing. This came out a bit longer than I originally intended, but oh well.
Jeez, it’s been like five years to the day on that one.
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Mar 18, 2021 20:30
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Feb 26, 2021 03:43
