Halloween Scare!

Day one. First call is for a person who is lethargic. We get there turns out this patient has stage 4 colon cancer and has increased weakness today. She wasn't doing too good so I go for an IV she has a port but we can't access those so I go for a peripheral line and got it and we took her in. Next call was for short of breath we get there and the patient is tripodding (working hard to breath) and she says she has some chest pain we get her in the truck and realize she is v tach with a pulse (most of the time v tach presents pulse less and therefore you are doing CPR trying to get them back) so I get an IV and we give amiodarone in hopes to convert that rhythm but no such luck. The hospital was about to give her some more when we left. We get a call for a transfer for a fractured scapula (shoulder blade) ouch! I'm pretty sure we hit every bump in OKC and this patient was not thrilled! We get a call for a fall. We walk in and the house was filthy dirty. It was terrible. I saw roaches just crawling around I thought to myself we gotta get out of here. Patient only needed help back up on the couch. We were posted in the middle of the city and we get a call up to the north side and so we start booking it. We get to the apt and this patient had passed out twice. The friends stated that after the first time she passed out they thought she had a seizure so they went to take her to the hospital but she passed out again and they decided to call us. The patient had been trying to open a package of spoons and cut her finger and started feeling nauseated. But she really didn't have much wrong with her.

Day two. First call of the day is for neck and back pain from a fall that happened in August and she thought everything was fine finished her medications a week ago and the pain just came sudden today. Not much there. Second call was for a man choking but by the time we got there he was fine and no longer choking. Third call was just a transfer from one hospital to the hospital next door to go directly to cath lab due to having an active MI (heart attack). Fourth call was for short of breath and the patient walked away. So in other words we are going to have to find him and luckily we do. He tells us he broke his arm (so nothing close to short of breath) we keep asking him questions to get the story and he gets mad at us and wants pain meds. We finally figure out he was on a ladder in a tree cutting branches and he fell. Turns out he dislocated his shoulder and elbow. Ouch!! Next call was for a car accident with a road sign. Man I hate when those signs jump out of nowhere. He didn't know what happened or how to answer our questions. We found an insulin needle and assumed he was a diabetic from some abd bruising. His blood sugar was 86 which isn't really low but we started an IV and began to give him sugar to see if that helps and he started talking to us and was no longer confused he says that sometimes he will have a seizure due to low blood sugar and turns out his blood sugar is usually 150-200 so that was low for him. We got his sugar up and he was doing pretty good no injuries from the car accident. Next call was for a fall and we pull up to a lady sitting in front of her trailer home in like 50 degree weather waiting for us because she needed help up. Poor thing.

Day three. First call of the day is for a patient with trouble breathing. She was struggling and went put her on our CPAP machine to help her breathing and at first she found it odd but then she found it helping her. It was good. The next call was for a younger gentleman who was complaining of chest pain so im not really thinking a heart attack because of his age but I still keep it in the back of my head I show up and start asking him questions and we determine it is just anxiety and that he has been drinking and due to other things him drinking alcohol gives him this chest pain. Turns out he had drinking almost the whole Oklahoma river amount in alcohol in hopes that it would kill him. Well I dont think he succeeded but he very well just about killed his liver so that’s one step closer I guess. We got a transfer from one hospital to another for a brain bleed and his patient was not doing too hot, it was kind of sad, but we just drove fast and didn’t do much for her. We get another call for trouble breathing but this time it wasn’t near as serious as the one earlier and he wasn’t really short of breath as much as just not feeling good. There is a nasty bug going around, but who knows. Yet another call for trouble breathing, this one had been diagnosed with pneumonia earlier on in the day but family felt that he needed to go to the hospital so therefore we taxied him on over to the hospital per request. Last call of the night was for a fall and I was thinking oh this wont be bad. Quick and easy way to end the night. Turns out he was an obese man in the smallest bathroom complaining of weakness and could not get up off the bathroom floor. Well he was exceedingly sweaty (not a good sign) and he kept wacking his head on the back of the toilet. I was like sheesh! So fire gets there and I jump on out and let the big guns in to get him out. So the hospital we were going to take him to was about to go on divert (which means they are too busy to take any ambulances) therefore we hurried up and said we are coming and so we didn’t wait for me to get an IV which wasn’t detrimental or anything and he lived right up the street from the hospital so by the time I got the monitor hooked up and all my stuff for the IV ready we were pulling in to the hospital so I hurried up and got the IV and finished taping it down right as we put the truck in park. I got skills ;)

Day four. Friday!! And Halloween!! Our first call is to a doctor’s office for a patient who had an abnormal EKG and chest pain. We get there and the doctor tries to explain what is going on to us. We get a better 12 lead to see what the patients heart is really doing. Our 12 lead did not show any signs of a heart attack but she was throwing PACs (in other words a heartbeat before it should come) so her rhythm was irregular. She was a funny lady didn't think anything was wrong and just wanted to go home. ( therefore probably not a good sign ). Our second call was for a fall. Turned out to be a seizure and he had knocked over a whole china cabinet. Yikes. He wasn't hurt or anything though. Our third call was for a fall and she just needed help up and did not want to go to the hospital. After a few hours of nothing (during trick or treat time) we get a call for a fall and turns out he is the funniest patient I have ever had. He had this huge knot on his head from hitting it on something. The patient did not feel like he needed to go to the hospital to get it checked out but luckily after he saw it he agreed to come with us. He was just so fun and everything he said had me and my medic laughing in the back. (Atleast read this call!!!) The last call of the night has probably been the most intense call I have gotten. The call comes in as trouble breathing so I start thinking okay I know what to do, then dispatch says possible aspiration. I then start thinking well this could be more serious than I thought so we rush in and fire has his spo2 on their monitor reading <50% so im like oh crap lets go so we throw him on our cot run out to the truck while my basic figures out what hospital we can take him to because at first the nurses said one that is 30 min away and honestly he was not going to make it that long. So we get out to the truck and immediately I go for an IV my medic puts on the CPAP (device that helps him breathe) and we try for a 12 lead and the 12 lead is showing a massive STEMI (so not only did he aspirate something into his lungs he is also having a heart attack) so my basic gets out and we start heading to a closer hospital. Mind blowing piece of information here CPAP only works when you are breathing well the patient fails to keep taking his own breath so my medic throws me an ambo bag so I can start controlling his breathing with the bag so I open that up we throw the cot flat I jumped to the head of the cot while my medic climbed over me and she starts doing compressions on this patient and I start getting my stuff ready to intubate this guy and I go in for it and it was just crazy hitting bumps while going code and trying to put a tube through the right hole. I see the hole and shove it in and we go to listen for breath sounds and we don’t hear them, but they are also not in the stomach so we don’t really know where that tube went. The patient was so gunked up in his lungs that possibly could have been there but we weren’t sure so I took it out and we get to the hospital and continue doing CPR while going into the hospital and the doctor goes to intubate the patient and he pulls out his fancy laryngoscope with a camera and just slides the tube on in, man must be nice. But I like the challenge. The hospital worked him for a good 30 minutes and decided it was best to just call it. So my patient ended up dying, but he lived a good long life and is now in a better place. It was a wicked awesome call though! 

Vroom Vroom Or Ding Ding?

Day one. First call goes out as a cva then a full arrest I was like oh snap is this real life so we walk in and the patient is laying there moaning turns out it is not a full arrest. So we get her hooked up to the monitor I start the IV we load her up. The monitor shows a fib with RVR and the patients states no history of irregular heartbeat. From the time we left the patients house to getting her to the hospital she was now throwing frequent PVCs and then they went trigeminal and then she was having couplet PVCs. She was confused the whole time with us and wasn't quite sure of anything going on. Our next call was for a fall I walk in this very pristine vintage home and this patient fell from being dizzy and split the back of her head open. I start going through my assessment and she is very snippy with me. Okay rude I'm just trying to help you out and I want to make sure I don't miss anything. So anyways her snippiness continues and at one point my medic almost had to step in but it was all good. The patient didn’t mean to be. Next call was for another fall and this little lady went to sit down in her office chair and she just missed it and kind of hit her back. She was the sweetest thing but she ended up not coming with us. We get a call for a seizure 16 year old. I'm thinking okay good. Well we get there and fire already started an IV and the patient had a seizure while in fires care so we load her on our cot get in the truck and she fights us a little bit, we wrap that IV so we don't lose it and she starts fighting us more so I start holding down the legs and my medic gets the top half and patient was going crazy. It was like that all the way into the hospital. My hands would slip because the patient was so sweaty which made it tough. We pushed 5 mg Valium in hopes it would help just as she started relaxing we sat down and she went at it again this time we start getting the restraints out and we give her another dose of 5 mg Valium and then we pull into the hospital so we never got the restraints on we are trying to wheel her in while we strapped her legs down good in hopes she doesn't get out of the buckle again and my basic has the foot of the cot I am holding one arm down and pushing the back and my medic is on the other side holding the other arm down and pushing the cot. Dude it was a big mess! That patient was mad strong too and also like two of me! Next call was for a diabetic emergency hyperglycemic. Hey guess what. He was combative too. Awesome! So we wrangle him on the cot strap him in and this time we pulled the kerlex out and restrain him before we left and once we got in the truck we pulled out the soft restraints. Cause me and my medic were not about to fight back again. Next call was for short of breathe history of COPD. So we get on scene and I'm like well hopefully not combative with our luck he will be so I start hooking him up to the monitor an I put the bp cuff on him and he made some statement that he will slap me I thought oh no here we go again but he was a little disoriented. He was not combative thankfully. Load him up and do the whole work down.

Day two. We get a call for shortness of breath and abdominal pain. The patient recently had a colon resection. She really just wanted to get out of the house though. The next call was for a fall. Turns out this patient had drunken about a gallon of listerine and was just a tad drunk also he had broken his hand two days prior an had since taken the cast of himself. His hand did not look too good. And from his fall he had split his head open. We were finally able to talk him into getting everything checked out. A listerine drunk patient is quite the smell! Third call was for a suicide attempt overdose. This patient would only respond to painful stimuli and we were unable to figure out how much of what she took and when she took it. All her vitals were stable and she was breathing adequately. She wasn't in any need of narcan because she was stable and it's no fun dealing with a patient who has narcan on board but as we were pulling into the hospital my medic said the hospital likes when we try it so we gave it when we were almost there. There was not much change. It slowly started to show a change and by the time we were leaving the hospital she was talking some at least. We got a call to transfer a cancer patient on a few drips. After that we got a call for an assault in a sketchy sketchy apt complex! So we stage for a few minutes then get cleared to go in and we have two patients who got the snot beat out of them. The guy was knocked unconscious so we had him back boarded we get him in the truck I do my assessment and start the IV then they bring the other patient in back boarded as well so I do my assessment on her and an IV and we bring them in. They both had swollen faces and it looked pretty painful. We get this call for a patient who fell off his bike ( mind you it is like 1015 at night ) my medic tells me what the call is for an she goes we don't know if it is his bike vroom vroom or bike ding ding. We get on scene and fire says he left we were about to go start looking for him. So we start driving around the neighborhood looking for this patient. But clearly he must not be that hurt. We never found him. The last call was for a fall and this elderly lady was found on the bathroom floor. She was not very enthused we were there she did not like me touching her. She complained of pain everywhere but it was not believable. I finally get somewhat of an assessment done and only found a big bump on the back of her head which was painful to her. We couldn't take her to the hospital until her daughter got there and decided. So meanwhile I had to put up with her repetitiveness and fighting every time the bp went off and if I tried to put the little spo2 clip on her finger she would freak out that it hurt so whatever. Her daughter finally gets there and after 5 minutes they finally decide she will ride in the ambulance. Now that that is figured out we are able to get the show on the road. We were unable to get a sugar or IV on her, which wasn’t a big deal. Needless to say we got off a little late.

Day three. First call was for "man down" that's all we got. So we show up and fire is just all standing around. So apparently this patient was just lying on the sidewalk and fire drove by and stopped. Her blood sugar was low so they gave her some glucose we get there I check her level again and it stayed the same so we try to give her more but by this point she was all sorts of frustrated and angry. We had called her mom and she was going to get picked up. We had to wait for the mom and the patient just yelled at us the whole time she eventually just made herself comfortable on the sidewalk and just laid there till the mom came. Ridiculous. We get a call for a CVA so we show up and this patient is just so antsy and can't stay still and delirious. Since called in as a CVA I go to do a stroke assessment and have him squeeze my fingers with both hands and he had equal strong grip and would not let go. We load him up fast when we saw he was a fib with RVR at 180 a minute. Get him in the truck and I start an IV give him fluids and he won't sit still and trying to take his seatbelts off and he was just all sorts of crazy. He felt warm to us but we don't have a reliable thermometer to check it so once at the hospital they check it and got 103.7 yikes! They give him some Tylenol and started giving him haldol before we even left the room. The last call was just a transfer for chest pain. A whoopin 12 hours and only three calls. Impressive.

Day four. It's a PINK truck day so of course I had to get the pink gloves too! It's fun but it's an old truck so it rides TERRIBLE! So our first call is for short of breath. The patients sats were 84% on 5 liters of oxygen we put him in a duoneb with 6 liters of oxygen and get his sats up to 99% super. He sounded pretty gunky. Poor guy. So after that we were headed to post and a car broke down in the middle of the road so we blocked off the road and pushed the car out if the way and we got a call so once the car was out of the road we booked it back to the truck. Got my exercise man. The call was for a diabetic emergency. Patients’ blood sugar was 31. We ended up giving him an amp of D50 (through a 22gauge unfortunately) and 100mL of D5 and got him up to 159. Apparently this happened last night as well so we said it’s probably time to get him looked at. We get a call for a fever for a patient at the dialysis center who had just had a fistula put in a week prior and the swelling from that has gotten worse. Being that we were right across the street from the hospital we did not have much time to do anything. Next call was for a seizure at a college nearby. When we got there we were talking to the patient and from the way that the patient was responding we don’t think it was a seizure but more of a syncopal episode. We started questioning her and find out that she hasn’t eaten in 24 hours and she had just got home from soccer practice. Crazy I tell you crazy!! So we start attempting for an IV and im sure everyone can guess that didn’t go well because she was so dehydrated. I think after 3 or 4 tries we got it. We gave her fluids on the way in. Our next call was for a possible stroke we get there and this patient checks out fine but she did have an episode where her speech was garbled and confused so at that point we stepped it up a little. We get her to the hospital in that 3 hour window for a stroke patient but to our surprise the family neglected to tell us that they woke her up when this started. What we got from the family was that they had gone in to talk to her and it started and then resolved. So then the real time of her last time seen normal was passed the 3 hour window which was a bummer. We go ask the nurse about that syncope pt we brought in and turns out that patients electrolytes were all sorts of screwed up. Her potassium was 2.48 and normal range is 3.5-5.0 so that is pretty low. No wonder she felt so crappy! Anyways last call for the day and week was for abd pain with n&v. Ongoing pain for the past 6 weeks and tonight was just unbearable therefore we got the call.

Good week. My preceptor keeps telling me I am improving more and more each day, which I like to hear :D

Unicorns and Angels

This week is shift change. I now work from 1245-0045. New week new shift new crew new ways. I now have to adjust and make a system as a new team. I am now able to attend part of church before going off to work which is nice. So my crew has given me a few tips and warnings about how they are and how they do things. Just some good to know tid bits. Our first call was for a possible fall and low blood sugar by the time we got there the nursing home didn't need us anymore. Next call was for an assault. The patient got maced. Sweet. We rinsed her eyes out for a good while and then she didn't want to go to the hospital so we left. Next was for a MVC but nothing significant.  Then we get a call for a fall and this pt had fell like an hour before calling us and her story just seemed fake. She was complaining of a headache from hitting her head. But she just seemed a mess so we took her in. Our next call was for a suicide attempt. Probably my FAVORITE CALL yet! So when we get on scene she was sitting on the curb still somewhat alert but she was deteriorating pretty fast. She said she had taken like 30 muscle relaxants and boy let me tell you she was relaxed! Haha. So we start hooking her up and just from the time she was in FDs care to walking in the truck her heart rate went from 60 to 39 so we were like oh crap. She was at the point of barely responding to us anymore and we rushed her in hot. We were so close to the hospital we didn't have much time with her. We get her in the hospital and on to their bed and I'm think eh we are done with her now they start there work up I ran to the bathroom and then my medic was like they are going to intubate you can go in and I hear my basic say she has had a white cloud since she been here and the dr looks at me and says ill give you one shot. I was like wait for real!? Legit! So then I got all nervous and I was like no pressure and there were like 10 nurses and 2 doctors in the room and then here I am just a lowly paramedic student about to intubate this patient. So we get all the RSI drugs in and the dr goes whenever you are ready and so I did my thing lift up and would ya just look at those chords! Glorious. Slide the tube down and they listen for breathe sounds and they go present bilaterally! I was like boo yah!! I wanted to jump up and down but I refrained. It was the best thing that happened all day! The last call was for an elderly patient that felt lethargic. Oh good.. But overall a freakin amazing day! I feel so accomplished since I got my first tube here!


Day two. We get a call for a MVC but again nothing significant and both were no cares. Next call was a possible DVT but when we got there my medic was leaning more towards possible cellulitis. Our next call was kind of a joke. Patient went home on her break at work and drank a cup of vodka and took her Ativan came back in to work a little loopy therefore we got the call. Her story was long and it was hard to get what we needed cause she would interrupt us. She started leaning forward out of her chair and nearly fell out and busted her head we had to catch her. It was a mess. We ended up sending her home with her friend to go straight to bed. So lets hope. Next call was for abd pain and that was a sticky sitch as well. Apparently her and her daughter are frequent flyers which is very unfortunate. So we take her into triage. All the hospitals are getting slammed today and so are we. Gotta love it! A call to an assisted living facility for a fall. This was the cutest old lady ever. She was just sitting on the floor content and we start assessing her and her legs are uneven. We start poking at it to she if he has some pain and she says she does but she just sits there like a champ. We load her up and give her some pain meds for all the bumping down the road. But the pain meds and bumps kind of balanced out and the pain stayed about the same. We got a call for a psych/inappropriate behavior turns out she is on a new medication and he body is still adjusting to it. Our last call while others were getting shootings I went up to Guthrie and picked up a DKA to bring back down here. That took us awhile.


Day three. So we get this call for a fall and I was like alright but ten tey tell me it's a 24 year old. I was like for real. We get this and he is laying prone on a bed an says his back hurts real bad. Apparently he fell into the coffee table and bumped his back. There were no deformities just some tenderness where he hit we told him he should probably take some Tylenol or ibuprofen and ice it. He was worse than some of my older patients wow. Next call was for low spo2 at a nursing home. We all know how those go. Like I was taught in school "treat the patient not the monitor!" We did another transfer for chest pain but patient was completely stable. We get a call for a traumatic injury which entailed the patient knocking her head on the corner of the mantel with a little laceration that bled quite a bit. It was on the head so not surprising. She did not want to go to the hospital. We get a call to a nursing home for a stroke we get there and the patient is actively seizing. We load him up but by the time we got him in the truck I had started an IV he began to seize again. We then called it status epilepticus because he had no in between lucid state. We gave him some Valium to stop the seizure. He also had a code brown. Smelly yuck! When we got him in the hospital he began to seize again so we tried another dose. Newt call was for chest pain we pull up to a corner and find this man lying there all sprawled out and wouldn't do much to help us out or even answer our questions. Did the whole work up and found out he overdosed on his meth. He was definitely tweaking out with us. Our last call was for back pain dude to kidney stones. Her prescribed meds were not kickin it so she called.


Day four. When I was headed to work I noticed it was way windy outside and thought to myself I'm going to blow over. Well so we get out first call and it is for a fall. While headed there we are driving down the highway and pull over and a cop pulls over as well and was like everything good. Turns out they thought we blew a tire but it really was just the mud flap falling off. So we get back to headed to the call and we show up and fire almost had her backboarded so start questioning her an she was walking out of the restaurant and the wind just knocked her over and she split her head open. Rough day. After we drop her off at the hospital we are heading to post and see an accident so we stop and they were no cares. Next call we get was for another MVA minimal damage to the vehicle but the patient was complaining of pain so we do the whole work up. C collar KED and back board. We get a call to a middle school for someone who passed out. Turns out during basketball practice she was running and passed out and hasn't eaten today. So that's that. We get a call for suicide attempt we show up and the patient doesn't want anything done to her said fire so I get in and tell her I jut have to check her out since we are there. She doesn't want to go with us and then she decides she wants to get out if the house so we take her and once in the truck she admits to having taken a bunch of pills. We give her some activated charcoal and she downed that like a champ. Next call was for a MVC and the patient didn't suffer much her car did though. We get a call for a shooting woot woot. Once we get cleared to go in we come up and all that happened was maybe a bullet case bounced off the patients back. She was fine. She had quite the bullet holes through her door and window. We get a call for a fall and we show up and this drunk guy greets us at the door and says he doesn't need us he says he is fine so we call it good. So our last call for the week was for an elderly lady at the nursin home. We walk in and walk right past her due to no one telling us where she was we come back to her and I start talking to her and she doesn't really know what's going on. The nurse called for increased confusion but she doesn't know the difference. So I'm asking the patient some questions and she is answering them as if she is trying to cover something. I tell her we are going to take her to the hospital but she isn't quite sure why so I explain that the nurse was a little worried about her increased confusion ad that she should get checked out. She says okay and we get her loaded up. She was in no type of distress for us just a little confused which isn't normal for here. Busy day nothing too exciting. My crew has a very white cloud as do I so therefore we like to say our white cloud has unicorns and sparkles and angels cause we never get anything good.

{[ sorry about missing last weeks update, i cant even remember those calls anymore, but nothing too exciting sticks out]}

Get Me A Coca-Cola!

Here is another week in the truck. 

Day One: My normal basic is gone today so we just have a sub in. She is a funny little cookie, should make for a fun day. So I was talking with my medic and he asked about my weekend and I had said I went grocery shopping and he said at Target with the dead guy? I was like ha no but I did hear about the shooting. He goes apparently the dead guy was just in the parking lot for awhile before anyone came. Oh boy. So the first call goes out as breathing problems but we show up to the jail to this man complaining of leg pain. History of arthritis and it is a crappy day out so nothing to worry about. He apparently was just getting released from jail. We drop him in triage and mousy on our way. My medic says he just wanted a place to go. ( as we were walking out of the jail some other guys walked out and said do you have a cigarette my basic goes yes cause we are an ambulance and carry those! Gotta love it ) Second call was for a fall at a nursing home. Third call we get was kind of fun. We show up and the patient yells at us to leave she had called her guy to take her to the hospital for back pain and he had called us. Patient refuses as she is laying on the couch under a blanket and just continues to yell at us to leave we have to get her to sign refusal because we made patient contact and we need some basic info. Her an her boy start fighting and he says I'm done and leaves. She won't give us info but finally tells us her birthday is "kiss my @$$" so my basic goes wow really we are done and then someone who knows them comes by and he signs as a witness but we try again to get her to sign and the other guy says stop messing with her your just trying to make her mad and my medic looks at him and goes you need to stop telling me how to do MY job I got you to sign as a witness but I still need her to sign and he was getting mad telling us what to do an my medic had to put him in place and we left. The patient tried yelling at us the whole time as we left and such. Whaterr. Car accident in the parking. Those are the best calls.... Sike. Usually they aren't bad enough to injure anyone as long as they are in the car. Anyways these patients all seemed fine and didn't want to be transported. So this basic I have been working with today is basically just awesome. Every time we get a call she will be like you gonna follow us or we will see you there. Haha I'm right behind no worries. Next is for another fall and this patient injured her ankle she was so nice but nothing too fun. Next call was for a little boy who fell on the playground at the mall and injured his arm. Him or his mom didn't speak English so it made it a little hard to communicate. Our last call was to a funeral home. Weird huh? Patient was not dead just complaining of chest which subsided as we arrived. At the end of the shift the basic I worked with told me I was her favorite because I could occlude a vein when I did the IV. She was like that's why the first IV you did I hovered so bad because others I have worked with seem to practice blood letting and that is not cool cause I have to clean it up so thanks for your great skills. :) Yay

Day Two: First day of October! Yay and it was cooler this morning. I got it my car and the low tire light comes on I was like ah man. super way to start my morning but none of the tires were obviously flat. I check the pressures and they were all borderline fine. Anyways.. I get to work "late" but I was still there "early". Our first call is a fall. Wow don't worry I'm a professional at those. Although this guy had a bloody nose as well that had resolved by the time we got there as we were about to pull into the hospital he says he needs to spit but he is back boarded so not so easy. We hand him some paper towels but that wasn't cutting it so we pull the suction out. And let me tell you I do not do suction. It was all I had in me not to not gag. The next call was for a "stroke". When we showed up the patient had no s/s of a stroke and things had resolved. So after we drop him off we were about to leave the hospital when they dispatch us a transfer from that hospital clear across town. This patient had textbook perfect Wenckebach but was not symptomatic. That was an easy transfer. We then ran on a patient with breathing problems but did not want to be transported so we just have her a breathing treatment and went on our merry little way. The last call was a car accident. And you never know whether to be excited about it or not. Most of the time they are just back/neck pain and nothing fun and others are more fun. So my medic tells me to grab the vest and so I was thinking maybe it's a little more serious we pull up and the firefighter opens the side door and this little girl walked in. All she had was a little bump on her head but she was fine. No transport there either.

Day Three: So today marks my one month being in Oklahoma. I still don't feel like I'm here it's so weird. I'm sure ill get used to it soon one could hope. My medic today keeps asking me if we are going to get anything good today I just keep saying one could hope! First call of the days is for breathing problem aka an asthma patient who didn't get their inhaler filled yesterday as he should have. So our second call was for the same thing. Short of breathe. We walk into this motel and it was the same patient we picked up from the jail on Sunday. This time he had a nice bottle of vodka on the night stand empty and boy you could smell it on him. He was not a fan of us this time he thought we played to many games with him. We take him to a different hospital from Sunday and we walk in and the whole staff knows him name. It's a dang shame! Our next call was for a seizure. Shocker it's not a breathing problem. She seems pretty alert you just couldn't understand a word she said we got her in the ambulance and she starts "convulsing" but is telling us at the same time that she is having a seizure, we said most people when they have seizures don't talk and she stopped talking. Weird how that happens. So she kept saying four different hospitals so we just take her to the closest one again the staff knows her by name. Aye yie yie. Fourth call was for palpitations. We show up and she is in a fib but has no history of it. She was waiting for her grandson to get home but then she had to call us as we were in the truck he came home so needless to say he found out and he came with us. We took her in nothing too significant happened. Our last call was a GSW (gun shot wound) but it was a transfer from one hospital to the level 1 trauma center. Apparently this guy was walking down the street minding his own business when he heard 4 or 5 gun shots and felt something hit him and he stated that his body went numb for a minute. He had his parents drive him into the hospital. We then transferred him. But this patient was completely alert and oriented x 4 and the bullet was still in his head. They are guessing it was just a little gauge bullet. I felt bad for him if that was a true story of how it happened. We aren't too sure if there was more he wasn't telling us.

Day Four: My Friday!! First we start by sitting at a post for 3 hours. Then we get a call for a fall and this patient was so adamant that she was fine and did not need to go. After hearing the same story for 20 minutes we finally get her to talk to the supervisor and clear the refusal with him and then we got her the coca cola she had been asking for and put her to bed. The whole time we had to listen to her say y'all are just so nosey. Why thank you I will take that as a compliment it is my job :) Next call was at a doctors office for short of breathe aye yie yie. Literally the office building was connected to the hospital. We show up and her sats were 82% on room air. Not good so we finally get her up to 96% on a mask with 10 lpm of oxygen. She is also in A Fib with RVR and no history of it. So we do our two minute transport and be done with her. Next call my basic goes its another fun one. So this guy "broke in someone's back yard and is drunk and high" we show up and he is a little wasted off his butt hard! So he doesn't want to go to the hospital but he is too drunk for us to leave him. We get him in the truck and start and IV and hang a line. My medic just messes with him but we start down the road and he is just staring at me. Gosh. So finally I say do you need something he responds you I said excuse me no you can't have me. My medic kicks the cot and yells at him to behave and that that was inappropriate. He was a mess. We get him in the hospital and two of the nurses that were help checking him in he looked at the blonde and said "you ugly" she took it as a compliment and didn't care and was like thanks that made my day the other nurse was brunette and he looked at her and said "you pretty lord that blonde hair mmm I love you" and she was like ha thanks he makes his rounds to me and says "you ugly" I said thank you. He goes from wanting me to thinking I'm ugly awesome. I hate drunk people and how they are abusing the system using his social security/disability check to buy alkeehol and get so wasted that he is a potential threat to society to where we have to take him in. We get another call for a patient who drank too much alcohol but now wants help and wants to sober up. What is it with these people today it's mid Wednesday sheesh. The cop ends up taking him in to get sobered up. Next call was just for a transport. Last call for the week was an elderly lady unconscious. We load her up and she is only responsive to pain. So of course when I stick her with a needle she flinches. That's all well and good. By the time we arrived at the hospital she started talking to us.

Overall a good week. My medic keeps bugging for something good instead of all these little bs calls. Stupid white cloud. Maybe next week!

Why Don't You Just Hit More Bumps While Your At It

Week three. Time here is going so fast. I can't believe it. Alright here goes the low down of calls.


Day one call one. An elderly man fall. Enough said. He was Mr. feisty though. He says “why don't you hit more bumps while you’re at it” as you request sir. The roads are just magnificently paved so well here. Call two crazy lady on board, complaining of chest pain. She is asking for nitro but won't let us give aspirin to start with. Also not a fan of letting me do the IV lameee. I keep doing my thing looking for a prime vein and she continues to throw her fit asking if one of the guys could do it. Why is it such a problem for me to do it? Idk. But anyways I poke her and get it so she was throwing her fit for nothing. Whaterr. We establish she is just crazy and take her in. Call three we seem to have just lost gravity today another fall with another lac to the head. No different run down there. [ As I'm sitting in the ems room another truck had come in and I'm talking to that medic and she goes can I tell you a problem I have with one of the BYUI students I say go for it. So she tells her story about a patient she had last week and she went to do an IV and it blew and the patient told her well one of the kids in the blue shirts (aka a BYUI medic student) got it on the first try. I thought to myself well if that's the only problem you have with us we are doing pretty good here! :) ]So we stop and get lunch then get another call for chest pain. We pull into a car wash parking lot and this pt is in the passenger seat just freaking out screaming her chest hurts. So we get her on the cot and in the ambulance hook her up and find that her heart is racing at 226 I slap a 12 lead on her while my medic gets an IV and then we give her adenosine and it converts her to sinus tach. It was pretty cool to see. I had never seen it before. The patient began to feel better but still complained of some chest pain. So initially  the patient was screaming in pain at us but by the time we get her to the hospital she was carrying on a normal conversation. It was a good feeling to know that there are those people who are out there that really do need the ambulance and we are there J So we get a call for unresponsive. We show up and the FD is trying to assess her and she is responsive but barely. We get her to the ambulance and are trying to figure out what is going on we give her some narcan and boy did that do the trick. She was all over everything at that point. I've never had an adult that age act worse than a 2 year old. I asked her to put her capno back in her nose she decided to start trying to snort the spo2 monitor and proceeds to tell me that it is not cocaine. I said no, that is not cocaine but I need this back in your nose to monitor your breathing. The last call of the day was for another fall. I'm telling ya something with the gravity today it's got everyone trippin. Overall a good day.


Day two. So I wake up and Laura just got home and Merritt was still awake. That never happens. So it's really Monday but I forget its Monday and forget there are more cars on the road and so I left a little later than usual an had to wait on a train I was like man. I was also exhausted. So anyways get to work and I'm in the truck just so tired and I fell asleep but then we get a call for chest pain. Naturally. We load that up and take it in nothing too special. Next call was for pedal edema I didn't know you call an ambulance for that but really you call the ambulance for anything these days so we take him in. He requests the heart hospital but we weren't sure how much treatment he will get there I call in report and they weren't too impressed about the complaint of the patient we were bringing in and they hang up. I thought "she didn't even say goodbye" so we show up I give report to the nurse and he looked at me and was like good job (since I'm still new to this) and he asks if I got that 18 gauge IV I said yes and he was like way to go you deserve these and he hands me a pair of blue shears that say air evac life team. Hey thanks I’ll take em. We get back out on the streets end up getting called to a pedestrian who got struck by a vehicle. I start think oh that'll be good. Turns out nothing exciting and she refused transport. I wanted to refer her to an eye doctor because she stated she didn't see the car as she was running across 5 lanes of traffic. Some people’s children these days. After that we get a call to take the pedal edema pt back to his assisted living facility. We get in his room and he states it’s cold and wants the heat on. Me and my crew thought it was hot but he wanted it on at 82 it was already 80 in there so my crew walked out and left me to get the patient in his chair and they tried hiding from me when I came out but really you have a big stretcher you can't hide too good with that. But nice try guys. Next was a transfer, lots of lines and wires to not pull on and get tangled. The next call was for abdomen distention. Excited eh? The patient was way hard of hearing so that was fun. I felt like a retard because I had to yell at him for him to hear me but oh well. So after that call my truck had been cleared for the end of the day. My medic packed up the bag I packed up the cot and we were sitting there about to head back to 41 and at 1818 dispatch goes sorry we need you to respond to this traffic accident. So my medic hands me the monitor batteries to put back in and I'm trying to unpack the cot while my basic decides hopping curbs is the way to go then they cancel us. I was like I did that all for nothing.. What a day.


Day three. So today is just starting off great. I didn't want to wake up and I'm just grouchy. So we are sitting in the truck when a different ambulance got a call for a person who felt a spider crawling on their neck. Wow all I can say is wow! So we get our first call of the day is for abdominal pain or something to that nature nothing too spectacular. Call two was for an assault and the patient had sliced her finger over and made a mess with blood everywhere. She was the only one home with her baby by the time we got there so we ended up transporting her baby with us too and let me tell you he was quite the little cutie. So when we got to the hospital my medic hands me the baby and says have a baby. Awesome I always wanted a baby. Just kidding so we took them in and then left. Next call  was for a shoulder dislocation. That was mainly just pain management and not too much fun for me. He was kind of smelly and then I smelt him the rest of the day :/ no fun. Take a gander on this next call. A fall! You got it. Alright this next one is exciting. Call for constipation! Woot woot. My basic likes to tell me I have small hands and can just fish to help things move I like to disagree and refuse to do any such thing! So we walk in and the patient is on the toilet screaming it hurts so we ask him to pull his pants up so we can get him loaded up. He was complaining of such terrible pain so we did pain management and that’s about it. I was unaware that constipation was something to call an ambulance for, but just these crazy people of OKC I guess. The last call was a diabetic wake up and the patients sugar level was 17, for those who don’t know it should be anywhere from about 80-120. FD was there already just waiting for us so we get there I go straight for the IV and give him D50W and we get his sugar up to 128 but we know our sugar doesn’t last long so he needs to eat something, but he was not answering our questions correctly and just kept sleeping so we had to transport him. But that was a first for me having their sugar so low. He wasn’t combative at all so it was good!

Day four. It’s my Friday! I always love when I can start my day and be thinking it’s the last one for the week. Call one is for an altered mental status and confusion for someone in the nursing home. Well that is usually pretty typical for those patients but okay. We show up and the nurse is just freaking out, she states that the patient is so confused and her oxygen saturation is like 80% and her blood pressure is high, but the patient shows no signs of distress. So we put her on our monitor her sats are 96% and her BP was just a little elevated. Nothing too concerning. But so we transport her anyways and didn’t find anything significant with her. Quite possibly just a UTI. It was a slower day and my medic wanted to stop at the gun store, so we took a look at those guns. I’m thinking I need one! Anyways our next call was for a patient on an airplane that passed out so we get to the airport walk right on through security (im pretty sure that is the only time I will get through that security with as many knives and scissors I had on me). So we are standing at the gate in that hallway thing waiting for this plane to land so we can get our patient. The plane lands and the patient isn’t in much distress she seemed pretty okay for us. They had to make an emergency landing just for her, so that was sucky! But everything is fine for us so it was just a nice easy ride to the hospital. Third call was for vomiting, super! I hate vomit. So anyways my medic looks at me and says go ahead so I walk in as she is just vomiting in the toilet, head in the bowl and everything. I was like man you’re going to have to stop. So I ask her if there is any way we can get her out of the bathroom so we have more room. She goes I need something to puke in so I hand her a bag and she comes out and sits in a chair. She was babysitting at the time so we had to wait for the mom to come get her kid and so I start the IV and she is in a chair I am kneeling on the ground, but she is leaning over and her head is pretty close to mine and she is like about to puke, which made me just work faster cause I DO NOT want to listen to you puke next to me ear. So I give her some Zofran to help stop puking. And then we can finally get going to the hospital. Last call was for a fall. So we essentially do the whole work up back board and transport him.

So a side note, OKC has crazy storms with some crazy lightning. Someone in my class has taken some pretty dang awesome pictures of the lightning. Thanks Stephen. This is one of them:

Everything else is going great. :) Sorry I never posted week twos adventures. I decided to just skip that week. I may or may not ever post about it; we will just have to see. 

What Year Is It? 204?

So I survived my first week on the ambulance. It was a blast! I had some good calls and some lame calls. That is about normal though.
Day one was nerve racking, but fun. The first call came in as a possible stroke. I start running through how to treat a stroke in my head before we showed up. We pull into this truck stop where we meet FD and the patient outside of the big rig. The patient walks in to the ambulance and we get started asking her questions and my medic turns to me and says go ahead and start an IV so as I get the stuff ready I was like sheesh its been awhile since I've done this, but I nailed it thankfully. She was negative on the stroke test, but we transport her anyways. We get a second call for a fall. Show up and this lady states she was walking down the hallway and her toes gave out. I don't know about you, but I've never had my toes give out to where I land on my butt, but okay. We take her in per request. Call three was for another fall. Elderly man was said to have fallen twice during the morning, but we found a greater concern was his breathing. We could hear across the room his congestion in his lungs and see him struggling. We load him up and get him in the truck and start the assessment you could hear bilateral crackles. He was a funny guy. We asked if he was short of breathe he said no. We asked what year it was and his reply was 204. He was pretty certain that was the year so we said okay. Our fourth call came in and we start going and my medic tells me you got a shooting! I got excited and thought wow first day on the job and I get a shooting oh Oklahoma. So we show up, but the guy was a goner so no treatment needed. We then had a break from calls for awhile and our last call was respiratory distress. We show up and load him up. His story was a little weird because what the wife told us we weren't sure if we could believe it because the daughter was telling us other things and how the wife is a little forgetful and such. We start him on a breathing treatment in the back and his sats start climbing back up which eased our worry. We were ready to do CPAP if this treatment didn't help. But it did luckily. My medic is so great because he likes to quiz me on other situations and treatments similar to what we have at the time and sometimes I just can't think of the treatment but he helps me out and is a great teacher.

Day two I am working with a different medic because my medic had something he had to attend. I go up to the clipboard to look to see what truck I'm on today and it says 73 so I go to find it and it turns out to be this truck:

 Our first call is for a lady who passed out in the bathroom in downtown, my EMT was like she is probably just trying to get out of work. Sometimes the things they say I'm like rude, but then sometimes you just find it true. So we get to the patient and she is lying on the floor. We try to get the story of what happened out of her, but her coworkers state that they have called the ambulance three or four times in the last 2 months for this. So we automatically think okay she is a frequent. We ask her what makes her pass out like this she states low BP but that was normal range. No diabetes and her BGL was normal range. We ask her what else could have caused this if she has any other conditions we need to know about she states no. We ask if the doctor has ever given her a reason of why this happens and she says no. We take her in and she just seems out of it the whole time. Afterwards my medic told me that she was a patient that if we were to ask specifics such as do you have trouble breathing or do you have chest pain that she would feed off what we say. He says that sometimes you have to be careful with that. Call two was for a man acting funny. They also said he overdosed on two pills. We show up to the patient and he seems normal. The PT said that he had been glazed over and he was lethargic. We looked at the drug he had taken and it was his prescribed pain med and he had taken the right dose as prescribed, but the patient said the pills looked different today and he just got it filled. The only thing we could think of was they changed the dose. Everything we checked on him was fine and he was not glazed or lethargic for us so the patient did not want to go. We had to call the supervisor to okay the refused transport. Third call was for an elderly lady who was lethargic and family wanted her to get check out. So while in our care there wasnt much for us to do. I did start an IV in the foot because that was the only vein we could find so that was fun. We were still in the parking lot so i was standing halfway out of the truck while doing it. Call four was for a motor vehicle accident with a  vehicle that had rolled I get to the scene and thought well this is exciting, but none of the patients were too badly injured just complaints of neck/back pain. My ambulance transported two patients and we had called three ambulances. So that was a first. Our last call was for a seizure in a bar. The patient stayed pretty postictal while in our care, but by the time we were close to the hospital he started coming around and didnt know what had happened.

Day three: My normal medic is back today. We leave post 41 and get a call. First call of the day and im thinking today is starting off good. My medic tells me its a motorcycle accident possible DOA. Well maybe today isnt starting off good for others. We show up and my medic tells me just grab the monitor we arent thinking we are going to be doing too much we approach the patient and all the firefighters are around him bagging him and such so my medic goes oh rap load him up fast. As soon as he gets in the truck we start driving. There was no time to waste. We could not secure an airway on him due to his trismus and we tried nasally intubating but that was a no go as well he then just starting coughing up blood. We ended up just bagging him all the way in. Luckily it was not too long of a drive. I am getting better at my riding while standing in the back. I'm getting lots of practice. That was a cool call to see. Call two is for someone who dislocated her shoulder and decided to just be a pain in the butt for us the whole time. Call three was a cardiac call but the lady just felt weak and dizzy. Her 12 lead was a little suspicious and once in the truck she did complain of chest pain but she did not want her son to worry. Call four was for another cardiac complaint so we did the whole work up again. The last call was just a transfer from one side of town to the other so we didn't have much to do there.

Day four: Its my Friday but it is only Wednesday how nice! I am pretty lucky for having a three day weekend every weekend :) So the passed three days i have had a trauma call so my medic goes what kind of trauma are you going to get us today I said I don't know guess we shall see. First call we get is for a kid we has a seizure. I was thinking my first pediatric call woot. We show up and this was the boys first seizure no history of them and he is still postictal. We get him on the cot and do an IV while he is still out of it and my medic let me do that IV so that was cool. We had to wrap his whole arm because we did not want him to pull it out. He was autistic as well so it was not a normal ped call. A little more challenging. His dad met us at the hospital due to the mother not able to leave the other kids. Lucky for us the boy slept the whole time and we didn't have to freak him out too much. Call two was for an OD out in the boonies. I swear we were driving for 20 minutes going lights and sirens, but we finally get there and the patient was pretty loopy. He had taken a handful of drugs in attempt to commit suicide, attempting and failing. Call three is for a fall and the patient complained of shoulder pain from tripping and falling. We weren't too concerned with anything so we stabilize her arm and get her in the ambulance when we realize that her sats are lower than we like them and we ask if she is short of breathe she says no but we also heard wheezes and so we give her a breathing treatment and she then says that it is a lot easier for her to breathe now. Who knew? Call four  is for weakness and slight chest pain, but not cardiac pain like we first think. It was just slight respiratory. The last call  of the day comes in as chest pain for a young lady who has a history of cardiac. We check her out and we don't think it is cardiac related but maybe more respiratory pain. Either way we take her in and she gets checked out.

That was my first week pretty exciting stuff :) Sorry its so late. I am working on balancing things out. I had classes start that week as well and there is lots of busy work. I will try to get my second weeks adventures up soon.

People Still Die On Sunday...

I've had people ask me how is it that you go on an internship through BYU-Idaho and have to work on Sunday. Well to answer that question my job is always working 24/7/365 and they always need people working therefore I can't be choosy with what hours or days I work. I am just grateful this company will accommodate enough shifts for all of us. 

Well today was my first day on the ambulance. I was nervous because the big city which in reality the city itself is not that big. When I met my preceptor he asked if I had rode along anywhere and my answer was yes I have just had a small call amount of calls with nothing too spectacular of an event he continued to say that's a lot of it here too. It's true. Our calls today seemed more on the non emergent side of things and to just take them to the hospital. I did have a shooting, and well that was new to me. All in all it was a pretty good day and it starts all over again dark and early tomorrow! :o

Ok-A-Homa!

Well my new adventure is now in Oklahoma. Oklahoma you ask? So do I. I would not have chosen this on my own, but since it is for my Paramedic Internship, here I sit :) I am pretty excited to be here. When driving in it looked a lot different than I imagined. There is actually things here instead of just tumbleweeds. I have been here for almost a week and since I am one of the last ones in the class to actually start working I have done quite the exploring with Laura since she hadn't started work yet either. My dad drove me out here and stayed a night at my place since I barely had a bed to sleep on he had to sleep on a stack of blankets, poor guy. But he managed. The beginning of the week we just had boxes everywhere but our place is looking quite nice now. We have almost everything any other apt has just ghetto poor college kid style. Laura was able to bring a little card table with three fold up chairs which is perfect for us, I brought my very stylish older box tv. One of the first few days we knew having no internet would just suck, so we jumped on that real fast and now we have internet. It is awesome, basically completed my life here. We decided a couch was a necessity and that sitting on the floor to watch tv or anything just wasn't cutting it anymore. We looked up some yard sales and other free stuff on craigslist. Yesterday was our yard sale day. We brought Taja and her little guy Emmitt. Me and Laura we're not successful in finding a couch or anything we would benefit from, but Taja found a nice baby carrier. So at least someone got something out of it. We came home and we're all worn out from our yard saling so we took a nap and then we woke up found a house in Norman, OK (which means about as much to you as it does me. All I know is I live in OKC) with a free washer and couch sitting on the side of the road we weren't sure if it would even be there by the time we got there but we had nothing else to do so we jumped in the truck to go find it. After a 45 minute drive we get to the address and find nothing. Full of disappointment (seems to be our motto). We just start driving around and end up in some sketchy neighborhood and i spot a couch on the side of the road so we go and check it out. This is the beauty we found:

Because we are poor and desperate we don't judge. We were all about taking it! Laura had a canopy on her truck so we had to see if it fit in the truck. We start trying to shove this couch in the back of the truck and it just wasn't going to go in. Again full of disappointment. We had to leave the couch, but there was a vacuum sitting there too. So we at least got a free vacuum out it.

We get back on the road and drive by a goodwill so we stop. We have been looking for one since we got here. We go in and straight to the back looking for a couch and the only couch we see is listed at $59.99 we say not happening and we go to walk away and I spot a futon frame for $14.99 and we say no that is doable for a couch. We take the sticker to the front and pay and they didn't offer us help so we just go to the back and walk out with this frame and no one even said a thing to us so we kept going. We get it tied in the truck and start our 45 minute drive back home. On the way home it was dark and rainy, we passed a car accident on the other side of the highway and there were two EMSA ambulances on scene and we got excited for our shifts to start soon :) Once home we looked at the price for a futon mattress and it is not something for our budget right now so instead we took our extra blankets and claimed a spot on the futon  with our blankets and pillows to make it a little more comfortable. It works for us and we don't care what it looks like. 

I would have to say we have gotten pretty good at this. Our apt is looking pretty established. Every time Merritt comes home from her shift we have added something else to our apt. It is beginning to feel more homey with a couch ;)

Well tomorrow I start my internship on the ambulance. I am looking forward to it!! :)