wwrescueEMT
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I was on a call recently with the volunteer department i'm on where the only thing anyone on the crew could really say after it, or when describing the scenario to anybody was, "it was just the wierdest thing."
We got paged out for an unresponsive male patient out near the edge of our area, a good 10-15 minutes away. One of our first responders out in that area went to the scene and called us with updates that the patient was "unresponsive, vomiting, facedown. Get here as fast as is safe and get the paramedics here now." So we page out some nearby paramedics as we race to the scene. As we get on scene, I see that our first responder has the patient on his back, with an oral airway in place and is bagging the patient. Says he found him facedown, we have no history other than that the same first responder had been out there the year before for some psychological problem, no meds, he didn't smell like booze, no family on scene or anything. We grab the guy and get him in the back of the ambulance (along with a million and a half mosquitoes). The guy is vomiting and just keeps vomiting, so we're alternating with suctioning and bagging. His BP and pulse are elevated, sp02 is in the 80's and he's unable to maintain his airway, so we did an iv and combitubed him. We went to assess mental status again and to our shock he opens his eyes and looks right at us! Doesn't move, doesn't have a gag reflex, never once made a motion as if he were trying to pull out the tube, he just looked at us. And you could see in his eyes that he wasn't just looking at us...he actually saw us. We had no idea what was going on with him. BP and pulse were coming back down to normal and the sp02 went up to 100 with the combi in place. Once the paramedic jumped on board he took one look at what was going on and we showed him that the guy would look at you when you called his name. The paramedic had no idea what was going on either, he just sat back and said that there was nothing he could do that we hadn't already done.
We rolled into the hospital and showed the doc and nurses our guy and they had never seen anyone who would look at you, even though they had a tube down their throat either. It really was the wierdest thing...
An hour later the paramedic called me and said that the guy had a BAC of .511. He didn't smell like alcohol at all. Our first responder is a cop. None of us had any idea.
We got paged out for an unresponsive male patient out near the edge of our area, a good 10-15 minutes away. One of our first responders out in that area went to the scene and called us with updates that the patient was "unresponsive, vomiting, facedown. Get here as fast as is safe and get the paramedics here now." So we page out some nearby paramedics as we race to the scene. As we get on scene, I see that our first responder has the patient on his back, with an oral airway in place and is bagging the patient. Says he found him facedown, we have no history other than that the same first responder had been out there the year before for some psychological problem, no meds, he didn't smell like booze, no family on scene or anything. We grab the guy and get him in the back of the ambulance (along with a million and a half mosquitoes). The guy is vomiting and just keeps vomiting, so we're alternating with suctioning and bagging. His BP and pulse are elevated, sp02 is in the 80's and he's unable to maintain his airway, so we did an iv and combitubed him. We went to assess mental status again and to our shock he opens his eyes and looks right at us! Doesn't move, doesn't have a gag reflex, never once made a motion as if he were trying to pull out the tube, he just looked at us. And you could see in his eyes that he wasn't just looking at us...he actually saw us. We had no idea what was going on with him. BP and pulse were coming back down to normal and the sp02 went up to 100 with the combi in place. Once the paramedic jumped on board he took one look at what was going on and we showed him that the guy would look at you when you called his name. The paramedic had no idea what was going on either, he just sat back and said that there was nothing he could do that we hadn't already done.
We rolled into the hospital and showed the doc and nurses our guy and they had never seen anyone who would look at you, even though they had a tube down their throat either. It really was the wierdest thing...
An hour later the paramedic called me and said that the guy had a BAC of .511. He didn't smell like alcohol at all. Our first responder is a cop. None of us had any idea.