Recovering from another hectic night shift! It was manic! We did 13 jobs in a 12 hour shift. It was the usual hotch potch mix of the weird and wonderful with a couple of real life threatening cases thrown in.
Starting at 1900 hours and 9 minutes into checking out the truck we got our first job…and that’s when the fun and games began!
- 20 year old male with…flu like symptoms. He had…Flu!
- 93 year old lady fallen from a chair…no injuries.
- 22 year old male confused…totally drunk!
- Male early twenties assaulted…minor head injury. Drink related.
- One of our regular callers, assaulted…he is a knob! Drink related. I would assault him!
- Male laid out in the street, aggressive…drunk!
- 8 year female, neck injury…fell off swing…c spine immobilisation to be on the safe side!
- 58 year old male, diabetic hypo…unconscious with a BM of 1.1! Recovered after injection of Glucagon.
- 18 year old female with abdo pain…query ectopic pregnancy.
- Female in twenties?…heroin overdose…respiratory arrest!
- Female age unknown, collapsed…drunk!
- 20 year old female…tampon stuck! (you know where!)…Drunk!
- 61 year old male, SOB (shortness of breath)…resps 40 per min, BP down, heart rate 140 per min!
Only seven jobs out of thirteen that were drink related! That was good going, usually its more so I count myself lucky that we only had seven alcohol based jobs!
The heroin overdose was full on. We were directed into a dingy downstairs room where we found her…unconscious, cyanosed and in respiratory arrest. She looked like she was too far gone at first but she had a good radial pulse of approx 100 per min. I bagged her with the BVM to get some O2 into her body while my crew mate drew up the NARCAN for me. After giving her two lots of 400 ‘mikes’ NARCAN I.M. she made a respiratory effort. It was assisted with the old ‘sit up and yank’.
She finally started to breath for herself and then opened her eyes…I advised her to come with us to A/E as the NARCAN would wear off after a short while…with which she told us to ‘F**k off!’ We left advice with her ‘friend’ (who had been sharing a ‘pin’ (needle) with her that night but he said he did not know her…at all! Strange people some of these IV drug users! But…if he had not called us I’m pretty sure she would have died and become yet another statistic.
So…that was one lot of jobs for one crew on a typical night shift. And all the other crews were just as busy with similiar incidents. Some went to stabbings, others went to RTCs, a few went to serious assaults (where the patient eventually ended up in ICU) and one crew went to the classic…‘foreign object up rectum!’
‘Bimble on a Bulb’…
Driving ‘on the light’ with a sense of urgency but not in a fast manner.
Purpleplus 
I thought when I saw the title it was something someone had inserted …lol…I must get out more..xx
What was an 8 year old doing on a swing at midnight? 🙂
uphilldowndale, that was going to be my exact question! (That’s all assuming that list is in order?)
Anyway, sounds like an interesting night shift. I almost want to ask what the treatment is for a tampon stuck up there, but there again, I really don’t…
Regards,
Nick
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
uphilldowndale, that was going to be my exact question! (That’s all assuming that list is in order?)
Anyway, sounds like an interesting night shift. I almost want to ask what the treatment is for a tampon stuck up there, but there again, I really don’t…
Regards,
Nick
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
uphilldowndale, that was going to be my exact question! (That’s all assuming that list is in order?)
Anyway, sounds like an interesting night shift. I almost want to ask what the treatment is for a tampon stuck up there, but there again, I really don’t…
Regards,
Nick
13 jobs in 12 hours? What kind of lazy bones are you? We would do that in 8 hours in Brooklyn. 😉
Yeah, I agree with the others. An 8 year-old has no business being on a swing at that hour. Then again, I would see the welfare moms carting around their 2 year-olds at 2 am sometimes…
Rach…you are a bad girl! x
UHDD…it was around 2000hrs when we got sent to her. Nice family with an accident prone child.
Nick Hough…list not in order. I did well to remember the jobs. Shifts tend to blur. Treatment for stuck tampon…take a good history (sometimes a female may feel its stuck when there is nothing there!) We dont examine the area (as if it was showing I’m sure the female could pull it out) We would do obs (BP, pulse, temp) and transport. As you are aware Toxic Shock Syndrome can kill.
Mr. Nighttime…if management could they would give us a 26 hour day, nine day week, six week month! When I first started in this job if a crew did three jobs on a night shift that was considered busy!
Yeah, I hear you. What is your daily job count system wide? My brother, also a paramedic, told me yesterday that the system is breaking 4,000 jobs per day regularly in NYC.
Thanks. That was what I presumed the treatment would be.
(Apologises for the repost of the comment – it didn’t seem to take the first two times!)
Cheers,
Nick Hough
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
Mr.Nighttime…London averaging 3500-5000 per day. In the sticks averaging 1500-3000 per day. (In the sticks is any other big city outside of London). The following document gives a more comprehensive rundown on stats.
Click to access Ambulance%20Bulletin%202007-08%20final%20with%20data%20quality%20note%2015-12-08.pdf
Re Rach 8:44 – I wondered if the the picture of a lightbulb related directly to ‘something stuck’…?
uncle J…after re-reading my post I can see where the connection could be made between said ‘bimble’ and the ‘bulb’. We have sick minds I think!
The word ‘bimble’ is forces slang for a walk or slow pace. The ‘bulb’ is the blue light on t’ambulance from many moons ago before we got strobes.
The ‘foreign object in rectum’ was, I am informed by the crew, an ornament. I will never be able to watch ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ in the same way again!
We at least have protocols to force transport anybody we have to use Narcan on. It’s amazing how many unconscious, near dead idiots I’ve revived with the stuff who then vehemently deny using ANYTHING. That’s why I named my own blog here “In Naloxone Veritas”.