Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Thrift Store Return

All of us have a second hand store somewhere in our area.  Whether it is a Salvation Army, re-purposed store front, or every Monday in the church hall place.

These places are on the rotating call list for us too.  Wait, you don't have a call list?  Think about it.  Scan your memory bank for the last week or two of calls,  I'll wait...

OK, nursing home, nursing home, other nursing home, chemically challenged individual, taxi, taxi, used stuff store.  There is apparently a law of averages that seldom allows us to deviate from the prescribed dispatch pattern.  Yet it must be interesting or I wouldn't be bothering you now would I?

Start song by Macklemore: "I'm gonna pop some tags/  Only got twenty dollars in my pocket/
I - I - I'm hunting, looking for a come-up/ This is f-ing awesome"

Man lying on the ground in front of the Thrift Store.  I respond to help the BLS crew because I know there is no ALS available.  Sometimes you just need another pair of hands..This is that time.  I pull up behind the Police (a good thing) and see a bystander doing CPR on a bloodied man laying on his back on the sidewalk.

The officer says "clear" and I head on to the sidewalk and let dispatch know it is a full arrest with by stander CPR.  I can hear the ambulance siren in the distance.  Another person with a CPR mask is attempting ventilations on the bloody face of the victim.  Attempting because you would actually have to tilt the head back and actually have to blow into the mask to do anything effective.  Please step away and thanks for your help.

"I'm an LPN I know what I'm doing" says the person doing CPR on the left side of the patient's chest.  OK, stop for a pulse check, who is he and did anyone see him fall? I think you can actually hear the crickets chirping at this point.  Low Paid Nurse tells me he is obviously alive because he is breathing.  Agonal respiration honey, sorry they don't count.  We continue compressions and the ambulance arrives.

It must have been a quiet day because out of town ambulance shows up too and we are connecting the AED and rolling him on a board at the same time. SHOCK ADVISED. Clear... jump.  Check for pulse.  GOT IT!  Let's get him out of here.  ALS pulls in.

Everyone gets in the clown car, I mean ambulance and heads to the ER.  I suggest that the bystander throw his mask away and he says he will clean it because it was expensive.

I approach the LPN to talk about her knowledge base and the quality of her CPR.  After being told that I don't know what I'm talking about because I don't work in Home Health I give a long sigh and ask her to review her Pit Crew CPR process and suggest that taking a radial pulse isn't correct...

Anyway I help the Police pick up the mess we left, let them know how much we appreciate them and listen to the cop's story of how he attached the AED.  I told him he saved the guy's life and that we will recognize him later.  His badge seemed to sparkle a little more as I left.  All in all not a bad day.




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