Aug. Update

various reasons had me working on an inter facility car for the last couple of months. And it gave me a great opportunity to get the full dosage of the reason why our statistics can actually claim that we people tend to get older and older in our modern times.
Ha... I can only laugh about that.. the majority of the old people I get to transport and the ones I see in the con- and nursing homes have lower life quality than fungus on somebody's feet.

It is gut wrenchingly horrible to see how thousands and thousands of people have to live like vegetables in those homes with no dignity whatsoever.
I'm not quite sure, but I think that in some cases the families would have the power to actually take them from the vents and let them die. But nobody seems to have the balls to make a decision. I might be wrong about that.. I don' t know.

So that's why I've had some patients who, as long as they where still able to speak were begging to die after all. I've had a patient who wanted to die right there in the ambulance. I've had some interesting conversations with some of them.
Luckily I also have a lot of patients who I can let die if they would die on me, because they have a DNR order. DNR means (Do Not Resuscitate) So I'm not even allowed to start any resuscitating measures.

I've had one patient that I could actually let die, and it felt good. She was terminally ill in her last minutes and any CPR would have been a big mess and totally unnecessary.

But I'm back on a fire car, and I feel very much in the right place again.
Today it was one of those days again.
We only had traffic accidents.
4 in a row to be exact.

From minor, to medium, to severe.

After all we were able to save a 14 year old girls life.
She is dying right now though.
We performed CPR on scene and transported her, and her heart began to beat while we were in route. Unfortunately she probably had been dead for too long and her head is injured so badly that she probably won't make it through the night.
The CT scan showed that she sustained a basal scull fracture, multiple facial bone fractures and a epidural and subdural bleed. That means bleedings in between her scull and the first layer of her meninges (skin that covers the brain) and bleeding between one of those meninges and the layers below them or the brain. Moreover she had air trapped in her head as well.

When we showed up on scene she had been dead for minutes already.
She was lying right next to the car that just minutes ago was carrying her with five of her four siblings crashing into a wall giving her the serious injuries that killed her and that we were now about to treat.

While I was giving CPR I saw a big hole in her right arm that looked like it had been ripped into her arm by a very abrasive surface.
It looked like that she had been sliding along the wall where the car and she was lying right now. The right side of her head was in pretty bad shape also.
While the paramedic tried to slide the ET tube (a tube that helps us to ventilate her) into her trachea (wind pipe), I had to stop doing CPR and put a 4x4 on that hole in her arm. somewhere in between the AED (Automated External Defibrillator) was also analyzing her but could only show that she is asystole. Her heart stood still completely and cannot be shocked for that reason.
We disconnected AED and provided manuel circulation and ventilation again.
Unfortunately the paramedic couldn't get the ET-tube into her trachea. He suctioning a lot of blood out of her throat and could see her larynx (voicebox) very good, but whenever he tried to slide the tube through her vocal cords the larynx began to spasm.
But we could manage to get an oral airway in (a small specially shaped hollow plastic pipe) to keep her airway open as good as possible and continued to ventilate her with the bag valve mask and I resumed to compress her chest to get her heart squeezed to transport oxygenated blood to her brain.
Simultaneously we put her on a backboard then on the gurney and then into the ambulance.

Later on the police tried to reconstruct the accident.
The mother managed to crash with her 5 kids unbuckled in the car with high speed into the wall which I suspected to have put that big hole into the girls arm.
The mother apparently lost control of the car and hit the wall in the same direction the car was traveling in an angel big enough to get the girl, sitting in the back of the car, partially ejected out of the side window. Hanging out of the car after the first impact, the car was still moving at a great speed crushing her head and arm in between the car and the wall.
The car seemed to have spun around to the right at one point and finally got to a stop throwing her back into the seat, where a police officer found her after he arrived at scene.

It's hard to tell how the accident really happened, but her head and arm had definitely extreme contact with the wall, that's for sure.

The policeman, who showed up first, pulled her out of the car and started CPR on her, that's what they're saying.

The other kids didn't have too severe injuries exept one little boy, who was being transported to another hospital. I don't know how bad he was.
We definitely didn't have enough time to bring the girl to a trauma center. She probably would have died completely in rout then. The hospital we brought her to was right around the corner.

Well, after running inter facilities for 2 months, I'm happy to be back on a 911 car and I'm able to tell you a little of what I experience out there in the field again.
I have only been out there for a little over a week and we already got a day like this. It felt good to be able to save her initially, because I thought she would stay dead for sure as I was giving her chest compressions.
It's tragic that she might die after all anyway.

And just because she didn't wear a seat belt.

BUCKLE UP GOD DAMN IT !!!!!!!!!

And whoever of you is still smoking.... quit that shit. What I get to see everyday at my transport runs is almost always due to the fact that people smoked and eat shit.
Believe me, you don't want to die like this.
The way those people die is so bad, that it totally doesn't get justified by the fun you have smoking those f... death sticks and eating fattening pizza when you are young.

That was big daddy olli talking ;-)

Ahh.. and one thing more...
I found a posting on the internet about that they were looking for EMT and paramedics for the Iraq. I called this morning and applied for it. But the lady said that they are only looking for paramedics and that it was mistakingly posted for EMT also.
What a crap. It would have been perfect. First hand experience and a lot of money for me to actually get to go to paramedic school or finish my pilot license when I return. I mean if I would return..;-)
They would have payed 9000.- $ a month inclusive a bullet in your ass I guess.
That would have been the entire costs for my future training excluding the bullet.
Well, with my 8.25/hour I won't get anywhere, I guess

So off to buy some lottery tickets again ;-)

Well, let's see what the future brings.

I wish you all lots of luck for all your dreams and wishes.

And as always, if it bothers you do get one of my updates, just drop me a line, or off to the trash with it right away.

So long

Your Olli