Ambulance ride along

So I want to keep track of some of my ambulance calls that I go on, becuase they are awesome, and good learning experiences for me. I'm not sure if I want to start a new blog for those, or just post them on here... I'm still undecided, so for now they will be on here. (Might be gruesome for some?!) I'm not going to go into full detail of what everything is or why we did something, but if you have questions please ask!

Call to: Car Accident

Some lady had been hit from behind turning out of Walmart. She had hit her head on the steering wheel. When we got there she had some old shirt that she was holding on her forehead that had a lot of blood on it. When we took the shirt off her face had a ton of dried blood, and some fresh gooey blood all over! We got her into the back of the ambulance and I just worked on cleaning her face. She had two big cuts on her forehead. One over each eyebrow, both were pretty deep, but only an inch long. We just took her to the hospital, nothing we could do, but it's always fun to see some blood.

Call to: Fainting in Car

We pull up to this lady who is pulled over in a Home Depot. She had a history of Atrial Fibrillation. She had been driving and almost passing out while on the road. So she pulled over and tried to hold her breathe/bear down. Which usually calms a person enough who has atrial fibrillation or any kind of tachycardia, but this time it wasn't working. She continued to feel faint and a little nauseous. When we got there the medic could feel her pulse at about 160. (average is 60-100) In the ambulance we got her hooked up to our monitor with a 3 lead and BP. Her Rhythm was SVT and blood pressure was about 177/90, high for her.

Immediately the medic says to start an IV in the AC, which I got to do. The other medic got the Adenosine out, which slows the heart. So we push that and just stare at the monitor. This drug is so cool to watch, becuase normally it slows the HR to a flat line on the monitor and then starts the heart again just at a more reasonable rate. Well she was tachy'n at 190 when we pushed the drug. Her rhythm got wider and wider and slowed to about 130. She got super pale and said her chest hurt, and she didn't like the feeling, felt like she was going to pass out. She started coming back though and her HR went up to 214!!! So a normal person's maximum heart rate, they say, is 220- their age. She was about 55, so her max was around 170, and she was at 214! NOT GOOD!! The medic calls for the Valium, to sedate her to cardiovert her. Once he says that she says she has been cardioverted twice before!! umm RED FLAG, now we were plannig to shock her. We applied the Defib pads, and she asks us to please not to shock her, becuase her doctor doesn't want her to be shocked again. I guess she had some other heart problem that doesn't respond well to it. So we had it as our back up if our next dose of Adenosine wouldn't work. We each got a vial of adenosine and on the count of three pushed it in, as we pulled up to the hospital. So we brought her in and the nurses got her hooked up to their machines. We stayed a bit just to see if they were going to shock her, or if our last dose of the drug had worked. The pulse came up as 110!! It worked!! I felt like we had saved her, just a little bit... she was on the brink in the ambulance a couple times of almost coding. I'm so grateful I'm learning this knowledge and can see it all being applied! SO COOL!

Call to: Headache

This call came about 30 minutes before I was leaving, so at first I was thinking stupid lame-o call! Some person has a headache and wants to go to the hospital... So we get to this ladies house and she's curled up on the couch. She was released from the hospital yesterday... So we decided to just transport in. Once in the ambulance the medic tells her we're going to start an IV. We start looking over her arms, but she only has a few baby veins. She starts pointing at her neck and groaning. I was just confused, I told her we we're trying to help her with her pain (which was around her neck). But she was trying to tell us that she had her IV there yesterday, because the nurses couldn't get one in her arm either. The medic looks at me and says, "well, wanna do it?" I smile and say I would LOVE to!! :) So he shows be how to do it and I poke her, SUCCESS!! :) In class we call it an EJ, cause it's in the external jugular vein. So I got my first EJ!! This is what the vein looked like. mmmm... Juicy!