Recently I worked a very long 24 hour shift. We were pretty much awake the whole time. The odd about the shift though was that we only did 2 transports out of 8 or so 911 calls. Now I know what you're thinking, that's a pretty high sign off to transport ratio for the day. It would be if most of these calls resulted in contact with an actual patient. We were cancelled on two calls before we got there, signed off some guy that ended up being transported with PD (I will elaborate in a bit), and got cancelled off the scene of an MVA where the driver wrecked his car pretty bad and took off on foot. Good times. The transports we did do were an LoL NAD with a possible broken hip, and an acute methadone OD which was actually related to the guy that was carted away with PD.
So now let me paint you a better picture of the more interesting call(s) of this 24 hour shift. So we get a call to come "check out" two individuals at a location in a wonderful school district that is known for things like meth, heroin, and all around red neckery. No meth lab explosions...yet. At any rate we show up and there is half the paid on call FD for the area and 3 cops with the K-9 unit on the way. This is going to be "fun". As I walk through the door I am hit with the all too familiar smell of menthol cigarettes, stale beer, and old pizza boxes. One of the "patients" has been put in time out by PD but still feels the need to call the shots.
To digress a bit, I love how the more subdued (hand cuffs, tazers, zip ties, police cell) the more verbal they are about what people should do and what needs to be done. I believe it is an attempt to salvage a little bit of control that they have lost. Usually these people are already manipulative and controlling anyways. So this is new territory for them. Well perhaps not new, but uncomfortable territory. So our guy who just so happens to be wearing a "tapout" shirt is yelling at his family and calling people names and is overall not very cooperative. But he does admit to drug use that day.
Ok back to the scene, his girlfriend, baby momma, boo, or whatever red neck ghetto hood rats call their significant other looks about as strung out as strung out can be. She is confused and says she really needs a cigarette. However, she eventually tells us that she has an extensive medical history, has taken some benzos, smoke some pot...excuse me, "medical marijuana" which she has a prescription for...just not here, and that she rode her bike here. And as she is giving us all this useful information, the cops pile up a bunch of what I can describe as make shift gas station fodder. In other words, drug paraphernalia. She grabs her "prescription meds and her boyfriends legitimately prescribed methadone and leaves with a friend. And right about this time her hand cuffed lover (not in the fun way that requires a safety word) starts to get irate and is dragged off with the cops.Good our episode of cops is over and we can have dinner. Or so I thought.
So about an hour or so later, we get a priority one call for a young lady with abnormal breathing and is semi conscious. We sigh as we jump into our trusty ALS unit and respond priority one. Once we get there, the first words out of my mouth are "Hey I know her!" in stealthily sarcastic pseudo professional tone. Our pt who probably is a GCS of about 5 is picked up and placed on our gurney and we start the process to administer 2mg of IV sobriety, AKA Narcan. Oh and btw, her pupils were almost non existant. So we push the meds and 3,2,1 to quote Eminem "Snap back to reality"! And off to the hospital we went. To the same hospital that her lover boy was at. I'm sure that made for some controversy later in the ER and a few colorful words were yelled at one another for her stealing his methadone.
I know I have written a few of these short stories about overdoses, but they are just so entertaining. However, it boils down to just another day in the life of this particular paramedic.
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