Cardiac Arrest #2

Ok so last night was a great night for action at work. Around 8pm got a call for an unconscious person. Arrived on scene with an elderly lady meeting us at the front door holding what looked like a German Shepard or mix at least (very pretty dog) back and she had this worried look on her face. She said her daughter was just sitting there in the chair and then slumped over. So we make it to the living room and well yes, we find her slumped over in the chair. We repositioned her back in the chair and I see that her face is grayish in color and her lips are blue, she's not breathing and we can't feel a pulse. We get her on the floor and CPR is started. One of the Fort Worth Fire guys went back out to the ambulance to get the monitor and I went back out to get a back board. So we come back in CPR still going, we attach the monitor and she's in V-Fib (see prior cardiac arrest post for ?? on V-Fib). We defibrillated once and CPR resumed for about two minutes when we checked for a pulse and there was one and it was going good. So we load her on the stretcher/back board and move out to the truck where I established an IV and gave some Lidocaine to keep her from going back into V-Fib. If you ever saw the opening credits for the old show Emergency! where Johnny pops the tops on the syringes, yes I did that and its fun to do! So we took her to the closest hospital and she was still alive when we got there. Staff there did a 12-lead ECG and she was having the "big one." She was having a massive heart attack. Since that hospital doesn't have a cath lab to fix the problem they were going to have her Careflited from that hospital to a hospital in downtown Fort Worth. (So many people think Careflite is so much faster) We were still in the ER room and we said we could get her there faster so the ER stabilized her more and we transported her to the other hospital where she went straight to the cath lab (after a brief stop in the ER) and hopefully she is doing good. I am going to try and see if I can track her down in the hospital tomorrow since I work and see what the final outcome is. It's unfortunate that a lot of "out-of-hospital" cardiac arrest don't make it to the hospital alive and it's even more unfortunate that of the majority that make it to the hospital alive don't leave the hospital alive or in the same condition they were in prior to the cardiac arrest. I pray that she makes it out alive and in the same condition that she was in prior to last night.

Just another day

As an update to my previous post. I found out that the patient had died of an aortic dissection. If you don't know what an aortic dissection is I will explain briefly. Your blood vessels and arteries have several different layers. Overtime blood starts to get in between those layers, and eventually breaks/busts the artery and you start bleeding internally. So as a result there was nothing that me or the crew I was with could have done. The man needed surgery and by that time we got there it was too late. Knowing what he died of and knowing that there was definitely nothing that I could have done to save him it makes me feel better, however. The call still bothers me and makes me upset because it's my job to save people and/or make a difference in their life and on this call I couldn't. Yes it's part of the job and it's a hard part of it.

Also on a different note. Public safety education is great and there are people out there who do a great job, a really great job actually, of teaching people safety (ex. Lewisville LAFS clowns). It has come to me that while people are being taught safety and to call 911 in an emergency, that they are not really being taught what an emergency is. Ex. "I called you because I haven't been able to go to the bathroom in a few days." While yes that is a problem that needs to be taken care of, and I don't mind running you up to the hospital as that's what I am here for, what it doesn't need is the EMS and fire departments to be running lights and sirens and putting them at risk of a serious accident. I just would love to see education on what deserves a call to 911. And now I am stepping of my soap box.