“We’re going to need Decon.” “Main Street, use full precautions.” “We have an isolation patient.” “Shortness of breath, fever, just moved here from New York.” “4th Floor apartment, vomiting, fever, use precautions.” “We need resupply, out of gowns.” “Positive screen. Take all precautions.” Patient on corner, just left hospital who wouldn’t test him because they…
Author: medicscribe
Closed Down
A couple weeks ago, they cancelled my daughter’s basketball championships. Her team was in the state semi-finals and had a good shot at winning it all. The championships were going to be in a high school gym where maybe fifty people would come to watch her sixth grade Catholic league team play. The NBA was…
The 5 Second Rule
You know the five second rule. You drop food on the floor and as long as you pick it up before five seconds have passed, you can still eat it without worry of getting sick from the bacteria that was on the floor. That is because the bacteria as a fellow living species gives us…
Twenty-Five Years
I hit my twenty-fifth anniversary at work last month. Twenty-five years full time as a paramedic. I am sixty-one years old now and feeling the wear and tear, particularly in these last two years. I don’t sleep well at night. My hearing is shot. I need a stronger prescription for my reading glasses (which I…
A Ravine in Winter
There is a picture in the Hartford Courant of Mark Jenkins talking with police officers looking as forlorn as I have ever seen him. They stand next to yellow tape sectioning off an area of woods just off Park Terrace where down a small ravine a man has been found dead. The paper describes the crime scene…
Missing
She frequented a neighborhood park near the hospital. I’d see her times smoking a cigarette while she sat on the playground swings. Many nights, she slept on cardboard by the fence, sometimes she tied a tarp from the fence down to the grass to provide shelter on rainy nights. She was tall and gawky with…
Two Man Dead Lift
This was sent to me by an old medic. This is how stretchers were when I started in 1989. In the days of the dead lift, careers in EMS were much shorter than they are now. I remember each new stretcher innovation as they arrived, and fought against them all, but within days was sold…
Sunrise on Albany Avenue
Judge Rules for Safe Injection Site
A federal judge ruled yesterday that a nonprofit group in Philadelphia’s effort to open a safe injection site where people can use drugs under medical supervision does not violate the federal crackhouse statutes prohibiting the operation of a space “for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing or using controlled substances.” U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh wrote: “The ultimate…
Water
The next drug to add to the EMS formulary should be water. That’s right. H20. How many times have you been on a call and the patient has asked for water only to be told by every EMS responder in the room, “No! You can’t drink anything!” Really? The reason we don’t let people drink…
Calm
When I first became an EMT, a friend asked me why I liked the job so much. When I come through the door, people look at me like I am an angel, I said. What is it like driving lights and sirens? Another friend asked. Awesome — I feel all powerful. I hit wail and…
Two Boys
We are called for an unconscious and find the man out cold on his feet near Pope Park. He is a tall man in his early thirties with a ghost white complexion, standing there on the side of the road, his head nodded forward, arms hanging down swaying. Another drug user on the nod in…
Austin Eubanks
I attend the Department of Public Health’s 2019 Connecticut Opioid & Prescription Drug Overdose Prevention Conference on May 2. The featured speaker is Austin Eubanks, a survivor of the Columbine shooting. He and his best friend were golfing and fishing buddies. He shows us pictures of the two of them smiling, no idea what fates…
All
I’m on scene of an overdose. A fifty year old man in an unkempt apartment went unresponsive after sniffing two bags of heroin. His neighbor found him, giving him 4 mgs of Naloxone IN, and then called us. The man is alert and oriented by our arrival and does not wish to go to the…
How We Feel Versus What Dispatch Hears
It has been busy at work lately and the crews have been getting pounded. An EMT posted this video (found on the internet) on our employee Facebook page. I laugh every time I think of it. If you have never worked commercial EMS in a high volume system, you might not appreciate it. I can…
Connecticut Overdose Deaths 2018
The official death numbers for 2018 are out from the Connecticut Medical Examiner’s office. Connecticut Accidental Drug Intoxication Deaths 1017 people died in Connecticut of accidental overdoses, down 21 from 2017. This is the first decline (albeit minor) after six years of escalation. 746 people died in Connecticut due to the presence of Fentanyl, up…
Muscle Rigidity in Opioid Overdose
I wrote a number of months ago about fentanyl induced chest wall rigidity in opioid overdoses. Chest Wall Rigidity Fentanyl induced chest wall rigidity is rare in the hospital setting, but it should not be surprising to find it is a factor in overdose outside the hospital given that the amounts of fentanyl being injected…
Dancer
I first picked Veronica up on Hungerford Street one afternoon two years ago. We had been called for an unresponsive, but instead, we found a small woman with a club foot staggering along the street. She was half on the nod and covered with leaves. I asked her if she was okay, as we walked…
Manual Versus machine Blood Pressures
How do you want to be known as a Paramedic/EMT? A. Reliable B. Frequently wrong According to a recent article in JEMS, Ditch the Machine to Improve Accuracy in Blood Pressure Measurement and Diagnostics, “automated blood pressure readings are frequently inaccurate.” Is this a surprise to anyone? Yet, many of us continue to relay on automated…
Balance
December 8, 2018: This weekend, I am in Worcester, Massachusetts at the New England Short Course Meters Masters Swimming Championships as a member of the Connecticut (CONN) team. Last year, we shocked many of the other teams by taking first place. Points are awarded based on place finish in individual and relay events. Each swimmer…