Lights, Sirens, and High Speed Travel
I did my second twelve-hour EMS (on the ambulance) clinical yesterday. It ended up being 13.5 hours, because we got a late call for a very sick woman. I was wondering on the way to the hospital if she would die before the night was out.
The paramedics (EMS and firefighters) and all the others helping (EMS and Firefighter EMT-Basics/Intermediates/First Responders) had done all that could be done pre-hospital. We transported her to the hospital and kept a close watch on her breathing and heart rhythms and level of consciousness.
On the way to the hospital, I was thinking about how she was someone's mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother, sister, and aunt. Maybe she was still a wife and a daughter and a niece. I'm sure she was someone's friend and neighbor.
I was thought about how frightening it is for families when a loved one goes to the hospital and they don't know if they'll ever see them (alive) again. I wondered if her family would see her again. She was breathing, and her heart was beating. But, sometimes things change quickly, and the heart rhythms become irregular to the point that the heart can't pump the blood efficiently, or it stops completely.
When everything goes wrong, you hope the best of the best are with your loved one doing all the right things at all the right times. But, even with all the 'correct' interventions, when a person has no pulse and is not breathing, most times (from what I've been told) the person does not begin breathing again and the heart does not start beating again.
It is always a joy for pre-hospital emergency people when they can 'bring someone back'. The worst times are when the person dies right in front of them and nothing will bring them back. Those calls haunt EMS workers in much the same way that suicides haunt the survivors of those who commit suicide. They always wonder if there was one more thing they could have done to save the person.
Fortunately for this woman, her heart kept pumping and she kept breathing. We left her in the care of the emergency department at a local hospital.
After we left, I asked the medics I was riding with, "Is she going to die?"
The answer was brief.
"Not tonight."
posted by jordanrep.com/10522 @ 10:54 AM
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