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Lights, Sirens, and Johnny Cash

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So I return from the abyss that is “no posts in forever” land. The last week has been very interesting and I expect to have Good News/Bad News back up later today. 

In the last week I have had:

1 femur fracture–ALS intercept–not imobilized. Imagine the screams…

1 OD. Insulin, Morhpine, and ETOH. GCS of 7–and get this–appropriate responses to all questions. Do the math there…

2 Half-assed suicide attempts. 8 benedryl does not make a suicide attempt. It makes for a long nap.

2 assaults–both by family members.

1 car accident–The whole family made it to the scene before we did.

5 transfers–a AAA, two AMIs, and some “sick” people.

Yup. That was my week. How about you!?

Posted by on August 13, 2008 • Filed under: Wow. • Tagged:

Smack.

1 comment

Right in the face.

That’s what it felt like watching this video of the late Randy Pausch give his “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon University. EE posted about his death. Take the time-all 1 hour 16 minutes and 27 seconds of it–you’ll find it worth it.

Here are links to some of the back story:

Prof whose ‘last lecture’ became a sensation dies

Randy’s Wiki Site

The Last Lecture

The Independent

Randy’s Website (may be down)

Randy’s Blog (May be down)

Dr. Robins’ Site about Randy–more links than you can handle

Anyways–take some time to watch this and read about him. A lot of us can use his life philosophy to take advantage of every minute.

Posted by on July 26, 2008 • Filed under: Life, Wow. • Tagged: ,

Don't Speak….

3 comments

I know just what you’re saying, So please stop explaining, Don’t tell me cause it hurts….

No seriously. My wife watches two stations. VH1 and MTV. I am the opposite, I watch Discovery, Investigation Discovery, BBC, Travel Chanel, TruTV, A&E, and the History Channel. Notice a pattern with mine–if you’re my wife, you would notice that they are all boring.

Anyways, tonight my wife had the control. This is a battle I try not to fight as I lose, and losing is not good for one’s masculinity. We got to watch a little bit of “Brooke Knows Best”. You know… the spin off from “Hogan Knows Best” since obviously he didn’t since his marriage fell apart and his son got someone killed…. I digress… We’re watching the quality programing that is Brooke Hogan and she is looking for a new roommate(I spelled roommate correctly the first time, she didn’t). They go through the menagerie of party girls, wanna be porn stars and nut jobs and end on this “political” girl. Now… I’ve worked on campaigns. I care a little about politics. But this girl was VERY politically minded. When she asked Brooke who she was going to vote for just take a guess at her response…

“You know what? I am actually not that much into voting. I think it’s kinda crazy that a woman is running, because I think that women deal with a lot of emotions and menopause and PMS and stuff. Like, I’m so moody all the time, I know I couldn’t be able to run a country, ’cause I’d be crying one day and yelling at people the next day, ya know?”

You have got to be kidding me… Please, please, PLEASE don’t speak.

Posted by on July 26, 2008 • Filed under: Wow. • Tagged:

You stupid Bastard!

4 comments

“You’re a stupid bastard! You Stupid Bastard! You’re just a government cronie!”

This was how the trip to the ED of my LAST call of internship started. We found Mr. Happy Pants sleeping ON the street with his head on the curb. A rather busy street at that. Oh, and by “sleeping” I mean passed out. Drunk as a Skunk. Bombed. Inebriated.

Yeah. So he wasn’t happy. Being the cautious young moron that I am, I yelled at him when we rolled up. Blew the air horn. Just trying to raise him. Not wanting to walk up to him and shake him awake… since waking drunks that way never ends well. Finally he got up–as PD rolled up, 2 squads, both with new recruits. New officers are fun. They have a certain “gung ho” attitude that can’t be matched.

They jumped into it. One grabbed his arm, “helping” him stand. The other went digging for the wallet. Well, this didn’t please our newly found friend and he went swinging. Remember how I said the new recruits were gung ho… Well, they swung back. As I said before, it didn’t end well.

They go through the ropes, cuff him, shove him in a car, deal with his non-sense… Then say “Detox is closed…. They’re all full. You guys wanna take him to ‘specials’?” Um… Do I have a choice at this point. So I go over to the car, and start talking to him. He’s being rather pleasant to me, since I’m one of the few people who hasn’t done anything to make him feel worse. Offer to help him and tell him he’s going to for a ride in the wambulance. He’s ecstatic. Till he sees the restraints.

Yup. 4 pt restraints… And my favorite friend was handy–the pillow case. Get him down(with the help of my over zealous friends) and on our way we go. We refuse the PD escort since our sleepy pal’s ability to fight is nill with his limbs secured.

As soon as the doors to the truck close it starts. “You’re a stupid bastard! You Stupid Bastard! You’re just a government cronie!”

On, and on, and on, and on. Just repeating versions of the same lovely phrase. But I have to do an assessment, don’t I? So I go into it, SAMPLE, blah blah blah. And then the fun starts. I ask if he has any pain anywhere at all. Rather quick for his level intoxication, he responds quickly with “yup. Yeah. I’ve got a gigantic pain in my ass! You. You are just a pain in my ass!”

So, beings that we’ve identified a new source of pain for him I feel it is important to identify the severity of said pain… “Sir, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain imaginable, what would you rate this pain in your ass?”

“10. You stupid bastard.”

Posted by on June 3, 2008 • Filed under: Psych, Wow. • Tagged: ,

Hillarious…

3 comments

Boredmedstudent did this. I’m better.

27

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Tell me that isn’t classic. 27? At one time? I rock…. (when my wife gets a hold of this one of two things will happen–it will be removed, or… i will look like a wimp cause I’m sure she could take me… let alone 27 5 year olds…

Posted by on May 27, 2008 • Filed under: Wow. • Tagged:

Hello Goodbye

4 comments

Or maybe it’s the Reverse…

EE over at Backboards and Bandaids can’t seem to make her mind up! First she’s done blogging–and understandably so, and now she’s back. 8 hrs and our responses seemed to change her mind!

Hopefully she’ll stick around to give us a little bit of her antics from time to time! But we all understand that “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”.

So you all know my fascination with the lollipop. I have the utmost respect for good nurses–and most nurses are at least there cause they like to be there. If you don’t like your job–quit! There are plenty of “good” lollipop retirement homes out there that will take you.

Today was special. One particular private hospital in the metro area was our destination–twice today. We don’t usually have good luck there. They won’t take our STEMI diagnosis, or even CVA diagnosis. They are the only hospital that we regularly transport to that call a STEMI team upon our field recognition. So we bring in a NON-STEMI cardiac patient, SOB, pain up and down his whole left side.

Pressure was 220 on arrival, pain a 9/10. Pale, Sweaty… looks like crap. We do our thing, load up, go, run 12-lead(insignificant), throwing a few PVCs(eventually 10 a min) and do the whole cardiac workup: Nitro, Aspirin, Nitro, Etc.

Get him down to a 6/10 on pain. Pressure is 110 so we have to stop nitro now, and he doesn’t want Morpine. So we live with it.

The fun starts when I go to give report. I’ll give the highlights… It goes a little something like this:

me “He is having SOB, left sided chest pain from his shoulder to abdomen, and pain traveling through his left leg and arm.”
LOLLIPOP’S RESPONSE “He has left-sided chest pain in his leg?”
me “yup. we moved his chest”
LOLLIPOP “so why did you give nitro and aspirin?”
me “um… did you listen to the first half of report where I gave vitals, Symptoms, blah, blah…. He is also throwing about 10 pvc’s a minute now”
LOLLIPOP “ok… everyone has pvc’s….”
ME “NOT AT 10/MIN. AHA SAYS 6/MIN IS TREATABLE. WE’VE CROSSED THAT LINE. HE DOESN’T FEEL WELL AND WHY DON’T YOU ADDRESS THE OBVIOUS THINGS”

Earlier today we brought in a little old lady who was having syncopal episodes to this same facility. She had these same episodes before her last AMI about 1.5 months ago. She didn’t have many complaints, but had a very “weird feeling” and an impeding sense of doom… “I just know I’m gonna die.” So, I gave report, and including her statement. The nurse smirked. Even giggled.

When we brought our second patient back today–I found out that she had in fact had a massive MI and didn’t make it.

Fucking lollipop.

Posted by on April 25, 2008 • Filed under: Blogroll, Wow. • Tagged: ,

5- star, class act, Grade A douchebaggery

190 comments

douchebaggery: When everyone on your squad seems to do everything they can to be the last crew to clear the hospital so that they can be most likely to get sent out to BFE… That was the story of our day.

We ran 8 calls, all code 3, plus 3 canceled calls. We switched posts 6 times. Awesome.

Posted by on April 16, 2008 • Filed under: Wow. • Tagged:

I'm going to let this one speak for itself

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I’m going to let this one speak for itself. Get the whole story by clicking the link. Something just don’t deserve me rambling them to uselessness. Many of you may have seen this one. Some of you may have not. Either way, take the time to go over it one more time–and keep doing so every week/month/year whatever it takes to keep it fresh in your mind.


The Day Joy Died

Oct 20, 2006
By:Gary P. Brandeland, MD
Medical Economics

It’ll soon be the anniversary of my OB patient’s death. Twenty years ago, I stood in the ICU, holding her limp hand. Her name, in stark contrast to her present condition, was Joy. Her mother was the only other person in the room.

The patient was brain dead, the result of an anesthesia catastrophe. In preparing her for her C-section, the nurse anesthetist had accidentally intubated the esophagus and failed to put a pulse oximeter alarm on her. She became severely anoxic during the operation, went into V fib, and was shocked back to sinus rhythm. The airway was corrected by an anesthesiologist who responded to the code, but it was far too late.

The patient was a beautiful, healthy 21-year old. She was well known locally as a singer. She and her husband had family all over the area. She came to me for her OB care because her mother had told her, “Go to Dr. Brandeland, he’s always been so kind and polite when he gets his messages.” Her mom worked at the telephone answering service I used.

So, I saw her and her husband at every visit. I was 18 months into my career after finishing my family practice residency in the same town. The practice was thriving. I couldn’t have dreamed of something this bad happening to a patient, a family, and my life. I thought I might someday miss a diagnosis and have a malpractice suit, but this was like getting hit with a telephone pole.

Read the rest by clicking the title above!


Posted by on April 3, 2008 • Filed under: Wow. • Tagged: