Friday, 2 January 2009

Who am I?


I got to work this morning and found I was working with Scott, we always seem to have good shifts and he is a lovely guy to work with.....
Ok so he is a lovely guy to work with, cancel the rest though!
Today was the worse working day of my ambulance service career! We were sent on a job at 0713, to a lady with breathing difficulties, and diabetes. When we got there we gave her some inhaled (nebulized) medicine and I did a full set of observations, her blood sugar level was a little high but other than that and the breathing everything seemed fine, we took her into hospital and as I was booking her in one of the nurses did an ECG, to see what her heart was doing, when I got back I asked if I could see it, the nurse replied, oh its fine she is just a little bit tachy (fast pulse) I glanced down and was shocked, "erm, isn't that S T elevation"? I ask another nurse looks up and all hell is let loose as our patient is having an MI (heart attack) she is taken into resus and thrombolized (given a blood clot busting drug) she died 11 minutes later. We see patients pass away on a daily basis but this was somehow very shocking, as it seemed to be so sudden (for the medical reader her trop level 6) she had been having the heart attack for possibly 3 days, as she was diabetic it was what is called a silent mi, meaning she had no real pain with it. there followed two other patients who we got into hospital alive but by the end of the day they had passed away, one through severe infection, (toxic) and the other from a liver failure, all very sad, the last one just fell over but when we got there all his observations were out so we had to take him in.
The day was dotted with the odd patient that was ok but they were few and far between.
The biggest blow came when we booked in our last patient, a 3 month old boy, one of the receptionists said to me, "do you remember that 17 year old girl you brought in sometime in October, the one who had the asthma attack and ended up being a resus?"
of course I remembered its not every day that happens, "well she had a similar attack on new years eve and passed away..................................
What a way to start my working new year!!!
Am I the grim reaper??

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