Your First Call

First call was an MVA but one of the most impressive MVA's I've seen. 76yo man in a bronco on the rural highway following a flatbed trailer with an Excavator on it. Apparently the extra bucket for the excavator wasn't chained properly, chain broke or something because around a big turn this huge chunk of metal comes off the truck, hits the asphalt taking out a 6' by 4" deep trench, bounces, hits the hood of the old guy's bronco, rolls up and over the roof, hits the asphalt again and then bounces into a ditch. Pt. had a tib/fib fx and a nasty case of "What was that??????"
To this day I marvel at the force that it takes to get something that big and that heavy, not only airborn but bouncing.
 
Yikes!! talk about things that Bang! Bang! What amazes me about patients is how some can be SO calm about what had just happened to them. Meanwhile there have been a few times, I was the poor EMT that on the outside I am pretty calm and can get the job done. On the inside I am chanting to myself "OH :censored: :censored: :censored: :censored: I am going to cry!):wacko: must be my demented coping system! Lord I love EMS! :)
 
My first Call

My first call as a paramedic was dispatched as a gsw, one person down, unknown injury. Upon arrival, police informed me and my partner where the victim was, a 18 year old gang member had been shot in the big toe with a 22 caliber rifle. Long story short, he lost his big toenail.
 
I wish I could remember my first call...sometime in 1988.
 
Mine was in 1995. A stroke victim. My second was a head on collision with a tramatic arrest.
 
Warm summer day, Very rural yet heavily populated resort area. MVA. 44yo male single occupant of a small compact car that backed into a tree line at approx 70mph after an unintentional 180 turn. rear bumper was up against rear of driver seat, so was everything else inbetween. Driver had obvious fatal injuries. C1 vertebrae fracture resulting in the anatomy of the neck looking in it's normal foward anatomical position, but the skull had dislocated from the atlas structure, rotating striaght up. his skull met his neck at the upper back portion of skull. amazingly, the skin didnt tear, just stretched. possible aortic dissection and branchial tre rupture led to the pt bleeding out of his mouth, all of which had stopped by the time we got there. the only part worse than the massive truama was the fact that we saw a bit of car seat in the rear of the car, the extrication team was still 18 minutes out. (Rural vacation land remember). I had to climb over the bloody vomit covered corpse into a small hole to see into a cavity of wreckage to see if the car seat was occupied, thank god it wasnt! sad first call though. I obviously pronounced the death right away. no point in even trying to work that one.
 
1st Call

My first call was on a night shift, at about 4 in the morning we responded for a frequent-flier homeless man / drug addict.
 
After I got out of transport hell, my first call was an MVA. Just a bunch of RMAs, but a couple white dudes in East Orange, NJ, at 9 pm, in the winter? Coming from at least an hour south of there? Twitchy? Gee, I wonder what they came to the hood for.

As for my first EMS call, which I did a couple of whilst slinging lizards, we got a CHF patient in resp. dist. in this nursing home which is, like most every other nursing home, reknowned for killing their patients through awful care. We get there, and I can hear the guy breathing, not from the door to the room, not from down the hall, but from around the corner and down that hall. I ask the nurse, "Has the pt. been suctioned recently?"
"Oh, he's non-secretive." Beautiful. Mind you, the poor old guy's laying almost supine, on a simple mask at 5 Lpm. He was totally topped off, and you could feel the Rales if you put your hand on his chest. We package, full Fowlers, NRB, high-flow, all that good stuff. Our dispatcher wouldn't answer us when we tried to raise them, so we said "screw it, we're close enough to not call ALS" and hauled to the nearest ER. Couldn't get a BP (permanent IV lead in one elbow, dialysis shunt in the other, horrible edema in both legs) and only got one distal pulse. Get the guy to the ER, get him in a bed, wrap up my paperwork (trip took maybe 5 minutes). As I get the signed paper back from the nurse, the guy flatlines. And that's the story of my first actual EMS job.
 
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ReebTop said:
"Oh, he's non-secretive." Beautiful. Mind you, the poor old guy's laying almost supine, on a simple mask at 5 Lpm. He was totally topped off, and you could feel the Rales if you put your hand on his chest. We package, full Fowlers, NRB, high-flow, all that good stuff. Our dispatcher wouldn't answer us when we tried to raise them, so we said "screw it, we're close enough to not call ALS" and hauled to the nearest ER. Couldn't get a BP (permanent IV lead in one elbow, dialysis shunt in the other, horrible edema in both legs) and only got one distal pulse. Get the guy to the ER, get him in a bed, wrap up my paperwork (trip took maybe 5 minutes). As I get the signed paper back from the nurse, the guy flatlines. And that's the story of my first actual EMS job.
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Let me guess.. language barrier with the nursing home staff, and the pt was a full code?
 
fm_emt said:
Let me guess.. language barrier with the nursing home staff, and the pt was a full code?
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Nope, no communication difficulties at all. At least, not with the staff. But this guy was toast; by the time they called us, it was just a question of him dying in the home, in the bus, or in the ER.
 
ReebTopQuote:
Originally Posted by fm_emt
Let me guess.. language barrier with the nursing home staff, and the pt was a full code?

Nope, no communication difficulties at all. At least, not with the staff. But this guy was toast; by the time they called us, it was just a question of him dying in the home, in the bus, or in the ER.
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They never die in the bus. They die in the home or ER but never the bus;)
 
30 something year old woman in labor with her second child. Contractions were 5 minutes at the time of the call then dropped down to a minute and a half by the time we got goin with her to the hospital.
 
emtbuff said:
They never die in the bus. They die in the home or ER but never the bus;)
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I have only one rule when I'm working as AIC:
You do not die or give birth in the back of my ambulance.
 
My first Call in EMS was to my best friends house her dad had a massive MI and that was the first EMS call I ran over 17 years ago:sad: :sad:
 
destinyemti said:
My first Call in EMS was to my best friends house her dad had a massive MI and that was the first EMS call I ran over 17 years ago:sad: :sad:
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wow. Thats one hell of a first call. Certainly will make you nervous.
 
FF/EMT Sam said:
I have only one rule when I'm working as AIC:
You do not die or give birth in the back of my ambulance.
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Appearantly, you'll never have worked with me.. I have had plenty die on me.. and yes, even as rude as it might be even deliver !!!

Actually, I don't mine delivering kids.. Mom does all the work!...

R/r911
 
Ridryder911 said:
Appearantly, you'll never have worked with me.. I have had plenty die on me.. and yes, even as rude as it might be even deliver !!!

Actually, I don't mine delivering kids.. Mom does all the work!...

R/r911
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lol! I've yet to deliver a baby, but I have had people croak on me. <_<
 
Or take you for "brisk" midnight dips! :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
YOur first call is always one that you will never forget. I saw a pic recently of my friend and her 2 daughters and I went back to when I first got the call.
 
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