Several years ago I sat in a meeting of an overdose committee and listened to a woman argue that we should have naloxone in all the middle schools. I am a data person and I pointed out that middle schools are not where people are overdosing. If you only have a limited amount of resources,…
They say the omicron wave is past its peak here in Connecticut. The infection rate is declining as are dailey cases. Even wastewater measurements seem to say the wave is receding. While we didn’t have the deaths we saw with the first wave (thank you vaccines), our hospital had record numbers of admitted hospitalized patients…
This past week in Hartford, a 13-year old boy brought some bags of fentanyl to school. He later collapsed and received CPR from a school teacher. EMS arrived and resuscitated the child, who died two days later in the hospital. Bags of fentanyl were recovered from the scene and the boy tested positive for fentanyl. …
The patient has a fever, headache and cough. He can’t smell anything and he can’t taste his food. He feels too short of breath to even get out of his chair. He sits there with his hand over his eyes as if not seeing might make how sick he feels go away. His sister says…
I’m recerting PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support), ACLS (Advanced Life Support) and CPR today in one all-day session. After this, I’ll be good for another two years. If you are in EMS, you can measure your career by how many American Heart Association recerts you have taken. For me this is the 15th time for…
Our ED has seen record volumes of patients in recent weeks, many with COVID. Most of these COVID positive patients recently tested positive, and not feeling well with minor shortness of breath fever or body aches, come to the ED where they are evaluated and sent home. Our in hospital COVID admissions are only 50%…
Overdose on the avenue — a woman in a tattered hoodie and black winter coat lays on the sidewalk next to a streetlight, with bystanders surrounding her. The woman, who looks to be in her forties, was talking to them and then she slowly collapsed against the pole and then to the ground. If I…
These are two old Christmas posts I wrote years ago, reposted now. ***Fifteen on the Scale It’s Christmas eve. We get called to one of the local nursing homes for rib pain. The room number sounds familiar. As we wheel our stretcher through the lobby, “Good King Wencelous” plays through the speakers. Gently shone the…
I try to time my calls so that I have everything done that I need to have done by the time the ambulance backs into the hospital ED bay. I know some medics are taught to do everything on scene. If a patient is sick and needs immediate care, I will absolutely treat them on…
An old man sits on a bench in front of the police substation in one of the worst areas of town. When he sees the narcotics sergeant, he says, “How goes the War on Drugs?” The sergeant says, “Great. We put twenty dealers away this week. Sent them all to prison.” The old man sees…
For the last year I have worked primarily in a rapid response vehicle or “fly car.” There are many benefits to such a position. I do almost exclusively 911 calls. I self dispatch based on calls I hear over the fire and EMS radios. I am often the first on scene. My day is never…
Through my plastic face shield, fogged up by my N95, my too small gown tied around my waist and neck, I stand at the foot of the bed and look at the man. He is sixty years old, eyes fearful, face flushed with fever, his hands tremble with rigors. He mumbles, “What took you so…
I was walking in Pope Park, my EMS radio on my belt, and the ambulance idling not a minute away, I stopped by the pond where there is a open air building with a concrete floor where users often sit against the walls and shoot up, out of site of traffic. I go down there…
A recent article in JEMS argued for an EMS system model, heavy on BLS with just a few experienced medics, similar to the model used in Boston. The article revolved around an anecdote where two experienced BLS providers helped save a man with a ruptured appendix, by transporting him rapidly to the hospital. The article…
There are three loaves of bread sticking out of a paper bag in the passenger seat of the car. I recognized them from the bakery on Park Street where people pick up fresh long loaves of the crusty pan de agua (water) bread hot out of the ovens when the shop opens at six. It…
“He cut them down in droves–the corpse fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.” – The Illiad -Homer (Robert Fagles translation). In 2017, for a powerpoint presentation on the opioid epidemic, I made a slide that showed a graph of annual nationwide fatal ODs (about 15,000) from when I started as a…
“You’re covering the city,” dispatch says to us, when we clear Saint Francis after an early morning cardiac arrest. We park on Albany Avenue. The sun isn’t up yet, but the black birds are stirring. We’re on for another ten hours. By midday, we’ll have twenty ambulances on, but right now it is only us. …
(This is an excerpt from a fictional work-in-progress.) Frank Anastacio walked out of the brick building with a small paper bag in his hand. His work boots trudged forward, each step taking him deeper into a world he no longer wanted to live in. The autopsy report said she had died of asphyxia from tying…
When I started as a paramedic in Hartford, many of my coworkers referred to the city as a shit hole. They said this as they put on or took off their bullet proof vests at our base and swapped stories about the populace they encountered in the inner city, drunks and deadbeats, and addicts and…
This week I have been reading/listening to Sam Quinones new book “The Least of Us” about the changes in the opioid epidemic caused by the shift from heroin to fentanyl and the shift from ephedrine-based methamphetamine to a more dangerous type he calls P2P meth. A federal drug agent told me a few years ago…