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The Mendoza Line

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Do you ever feel like we’re playing a losing game?

The other day I went through my cardiac arrest statistics. Dispatched to 91 cardiac arrests since I became a medic. ~30/year. I have worked approximately 50% of those. I have EXACTLY 1 cardiac arrest save.

ONE!.

If this were baseball, I’d have a batting average of 0.01098901098901099.  OOOH! If we call all of the no start calls “sacrifices” I’d have an average of 0.021739130434782608. If we only say that the ~45ish times I’ve actually worked an arrest count as “at bats”, then I have an amazing 0.022222222222222223.

In baseball the record for lowest career batting average for a player with more than 2,500 at-bats belongs to Bill Bergen, a catcher who played from 1901 to 1911 and recorded a .170 average in 3,028 career at-bats. I’m well below the “Mendoza Line”

What is YOUR batting average?

 

 

 

 

Ambien made me post this…

343 comments

Seriously. It did. I take ambien for sleep(12.5mg XR), as the chances of me sleeping on my own are not so good. But if I am awake past that first 40 minutes it makes me do crazy crap. Like post on my blog. Or clean out the fridge. OR trim, cut and cure 40 lbs of deer meat for Jerky slices. I’ve rearranged my 75 gallon aquarium and not remembered. I’ve don a LOT of things and not remembered.

It is mildly terrifying to know how much can happen with so little control. MY wife sure like the cleaning version of me though, so I doubt I’ll be changing over soon.

Do any of you have first hand experience of the crazy things meds made you do?  We hear stories all the time from patients and coworkers, but I’d like to hear your own stories.

ON a clinical note, what do we need to look for with these odd situations? Can a patient sedated with ambien be reliable?

Drop me a line!

 

Ambien Side Effects

Ambien Dosage:

Dosage in adults

The recommended dose for adults is 10 mg once daily immediately before bedtime. The total Ambien dose should not exceed 10 mg per day.

Special populations

Elderly or debilitated patients may be especially sensitive to the effects of zolpidem tartrate. Patients with hepatic insufficiency do not clear the drug as rapidly as normal subjects. The recommended dose of Ambien in both of these patient populations is 5 mg once daily immediately before bedtime [see Warnings and Precautions (5.6)].

Use with CNS depressants

Dosage adjustment may be necessary when Ambien is combined with other CNS depressant drugs because of the potentially additive effects [see Warnings and Precautions (5.5)].

Administration

The effect of Ambien may be slowed by ingestion with or immediately after a meal.

Mostly it’s the getting by thing…

419 comments

We all joke in ways our families, friends and patients don’t understand. See around the 3:20 mark of this video:

Godspeed, friends!