Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Dreaded GI Bug!

Day two was off to a horrible start, the entire ride to work I was fighting off the urge to vomit, tonight was going to be a long night! I punched in and proceeded to check out my ALS Gear, once again in the middle being sent online right away and down to cover the southern most town in our coverage area. We attempt to jump an elderly male who fell and now has an Altered Mental Status, the BLS crew is calling for a medic. We are denied and told dispatch needs us for coverage and that the supervisor will intercept in the fly car with the BLS truck. Moments later we're sent into Hartford to back up a BLS crew on an unresponsive. We arrive on scene a few minutes after the BLS crew, as I exit the ambulance I see one of the EMTs come outside "Daisy what do you need?" I yell out, she responds "Everything, shes out good". I walk in to find a white female being pulled out of a chair and laid to the ground, I notice shes cyanotic with no respiratory drive of her own, "Bag her" I tell my preceptor as I toss a BVM his way, he nods and advises me that her pupils are pinpoint. A glance around the room reveals paraphernalia in the area matching my diagnoses "Heroin Overdose". I ask the EMT-I on my crew to attempt a line while I draw up some Narcan to reverse the deadly overdose my Pt is experiencing. No good my EMT-I says as she can't get a line, I quickly place a Nasal Atomizer on the end of my syringe, with our new protocols we can now give Narcan via an atomizer that dispenses the Narcan into the Pt's nasal cavities, however I noticed something is wrong, I have way to much fluid drawn up to administer, I start to get flustered as I try to figure it out. It's right about this time that it hits me, I need to vomit, and my bodies not going to take no for an answer. My preceptor quickly points out to me that my concentration is wrong, and rethink it, focusing more on attempting to hold back my bodies desire to vomit, he quickly tells me to grab the Bristojet of Narcan, to use that concentration. I quickly swap to the bristojet and administer 2mg, 1mg to each nare. She slowly wakes up, we carry her out to the ambulance, and transport her to the local facility. The 2mg barely touches her, it arouses her enough to help maintain her airway, however she still needs to be manually ventilated the entire trip in. On arrival to the hospital I find myself giving my first report in Red Pod as a Paramedic, I soon leave the room, bound for the bathroom. I have fallen victim to the GI bug that seems to be going around my company like wild fire, I do 3 more calls 2 of which were ALS fighting back my bodies desire to vomit, I finally throw in the towel just before Midnight, and head home to crawl into bed.

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