So I finally got to watch the Ambulance movie, now that it is available for free streaming on Amazon Prime. I did not have high expectations for the thriller (having seen the trailer), but I am always interested in how EMS is portrayed by Hollywood. The movie is simply one long chase scene as the…
Earlier this month in Connecticut law enforcement arrested two men from Maryland for having 15,000 blue Fentanyl pills hidden in Nerds and Skittles candy wrappers. This was not the rainbow fentanyl (multicolored pills), just regular blue counterfeit oxycodone 30’s hidden in candy packaging to elude law enforcement. Nevertheless, news coverage following their indictment this week…
The DEA recently warned Americans about rainbow fentanyl, multicolored pills, powders and blocks containing fentanyl that the agency said were “a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults.” We haven’t seen the rainbow pills in our area (Connecticut) although we have seen quite a lot of blue and purple…
I turned 64 recently. Happy Birthday to me. A couple weeks ago, on two occasions, people offered to help me carry my gear. I work in the fly car so I am often on scene first, and then I turn the call over to the responding crew if they are ALS or if they are…
Many people retired from EMS lament their past as some of the best times of their lives and state how much they miss working the road. Why did they stop? Injury, Age, Working Conditions, Lack of Upward Mobility, Time Away From Family and Money or combination of the six are the likeliest explanations. Otherwise, why…
I worked my first shift as a paramedic in Hartford in January of 1995. Hartford was in the final stages of a gang war between Los Solidos (The Solids) and the Latin Kings. Homicides were at an all-time high. And there were far fewer medics on the streets then. It was a good introduction to…
A friend of mine who works in social services showed me a picture he’d taken of a rash on one of his clients who they sent to the ED. Came back positive for monkey pox. Fever, chills, exhaustion, painful sores and blisters. Just like with COVID once upon a time monkeypox was far away from…
When I see murals in the city, it makes me feel love and joy for life and the people of Hartford. And these Below, gone, but not forgotten.
When I was a precepting medic, I had a young boy as a patient. I heard a rumbling sound and my preceptor said “Look out!” Not a second later, the boy vomited all over me. “You’ll learn to recognize the signs,” my preceptor said, handing me a towel. The mark of an experienced medic is…
The patient had lost nearly two liters of blood and was barely responsive. I arrived shortly after the primary medic who told me to get the blood set up while he extricated the patient with his partner. As the rapid response medic, I carry the whole blood (0 negative) in a special cooler. I check…
The patient is lying under the slide at the playground jungle gym. It is a blistering hot day and this may have been the only shade she could find. She is unresponsive, cyanotic and breathing agonally. Her pupils are small. From the hard lines on her face and poor dentition, I surmise a life outdoors…
I received a book in the mail about a month ago. I slipped it into my briefcase to read while in between calls in the rapid response vehicle in Hartford. It sat there in its unopened package for weeks as I was too busy between calls and writing PCRs to take it out. Yesterday, Saturday,…
“You need to get that checked out,” I said. “I’m not going to the hospital. They treat me like shit there.” “I’m sorry they do, but that’s not getting better.” The woman has a nasty necrotic ulceration in her AC that has eaten away the skin and some of the tissue underneath. It is black…
The CDC recently released data from their 2020 State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS), which describes the drugs involved in and circumstances surrounding drug overdose deaths in 28 states and the District of Columbia. It is available for download here: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/databriefs/pdf/SUDORS_Data-Brief_Number_1.pdf Four points from the report are crucial to understanding the death epidemic. 1. …
Our unconscious patient’s chest heaves again and he coughs up another gob of high flying trapeze pink froth that splats on the ambulance bench seat where seconds before my partner’s knee had been. As he secures the IV, I check the patient’s pupils. Midsize, unreactive. No one home. Ten minutes before, bystanders who found the…
A podcast I did recently on the Addiction and Recovery Network of the Life Change Center has now posted. https://recoveryandcompany.podbean.com/e/a-paramedics-dispatches-from-the-front-lines-of-the-opioid-epidemic-part-1-episode-14/ https://recoveryandcompany.podbean.com/e/a-paramedics-dispatches-from-the-front-lines-of-the-opioid-epidemic-part-2-episode-14/
A young EMT saw me at the hospital this week as we were both bringing patients in. She had a present for me, she said. After I got my patient situated in their assigned bed in the hallway and gave a report to the nurse, I went back outside and met the EMT. She reached…
I spoke on a panel a few weeks ago about safe injection sites, (SCS) also known as overdose prevention centers and supervised consumption spaces. These are places where drug users can use in a clean, safe environment under the watchful eyes of trained individuals, some medical personnel, other people who may have used themselves in…
The best TV show of all time to me is The Wire, a five-season drama about the city of Baltimore and the battles on its streets between the police and the drug dealers. The drama is crisp, the dialogue is authentic and there are no simple answers offered. The same people who did the Wire…
In EMS, we can’t take pictures of the dead. We can write about them, but we have to change the details so the person cannot be identified. I have done this on many occasions. In my head I have a photo gallery of the fallen in this opioid poisoning crisis. The photos are not blurred,…