Rescue 5, February 24th, C Shift
Yesterday was quite the day. I worked my 12 hour shift at Rescue 5. I had 9 calls, 8 of which were ALS (advanced life saving). Which means we used medications, IV's, intubation, heart monitors, bag valve masks. The such.
-The first call was just a woman having trouble breathing. We transported her. Gave her oxygena nd an IV. Nothing special.
-Next call was just a woman who had the flu. But she lived at the Allegro, so they would call us if she stubbed her toe. Transport. Over.
-We made our way to the alcohol and drug rehab center. A man chugged three bottles of nyquil. Unresponsive. Vomitting. IV, transport.
-One of our more interesting calls took place at Walmart. A girl with a history of seizures was arrested for shoplifting. Apparently this was a little too much stress for her, and she started an anxiety seize in the back of the car. I know, I know. She was faking, right? Wrong. Until you watch someone have a full on severe seizure, you wont know the amptitude. One of the scariest things I've seen. Anyway. Lots of valium.
-Guy fell in K Mart. Backboard. Transport.
-Lady fell in her house, broke her hip. Morphine, transport.
Then came the call of my life. A guy laid his motorcycle down on US1. Bystanders covered him with a blanket. Let's just say, he had a broken femur. Infact, it was so broken, his foot was resting on his ear. As we drove up, my supervisor said "Either that's a broken leg, or there's two people under that blanket. Unfortunately, it was a broken leg. A very, very, broken leg. He was laying on his face. Kind of breathing....mostly gurgling. I grabbed C-Spine and held his head in place so that any broken fragments wouldnt cut his spinal cord. We rolled him onto his back and they realligned his leg. I didnt watch this part. We got him into the ambulance as we contacted the helicoptor. After cutting his pants off, we found not only a broken femur, but a broken tibfib (both the lower leg bones that make up the shin). It was a pretty crude and deformed leg. He had a serious head injury, which leads to our assumption he didnt live. After mutilating your entire leg, your blood pressure would go down. Unless you have a deep seated brain injury. In which case, the blood pressure goes up, increasing intracranial pressure, and essentially committing brain suicide by squishing it.
During the procedure I didnt do much. I held his arm in place so that the IV could pump. I used a bag valve mask for about 10 seconds to breath for him, then another paramedic took over. I helped but and remove pants, and retrieve things the paramedics needed, while holding his arm up. I helped load him in to the helicoptor. And I did my best not to get sick to my stomach. Which, suprisingly, only happened when he vomitted into the bag valve mask. The leg didnt bother me as much as it should of, which I'm extremely proud of.
This is a clean ambulance, which you'll be able to compare to the ambulance after our trauma call.
Me playing with a penlight. Exciting, I know
I thought a lot of people would be jealous of my ability to handle this all day
Also, to use it whenever I want. A syringe full of morphine.
Now here come the pictures of our Trauma call, AFTER we realligned all his body parts. In this next picture, you can tell he has a broken leg by the way his left foot twists outward, and from how much shorter it is than the right leg.
The next couple pictures are just of our procedures before serious surgical intervention and then the transport.
After transport we proceeded back to the station the clean up. I took these pictures on the way back before we cleaned anything. Compare it to the first picture.
The big metal ice pick looking thing in this next picture is what we had to put down his throat to get a tube into this lungs.
