Knocking out the first save

In this line of work, you have a lot of firsts. Your first dead person, which I got on my very first call, your first child death and on the other end your first child birth. (neither of which have happened yet) There is that first time you get your 50% discount at Outback(sweet) and that first time you say to a patient, "You called an ambulance because of what??!!!!" (i.e. stubbed toe, or chipped tooth, or i couldnt get to sleep)

The other day I had a major first happen to me. My partner and I, along with the Rez Fire Dept, ran a call for a 65 year old male who had passed out in his back yard. When we arrived, he was laying on the ground but talking to us and describing what was going on. We loaded him up and put him in our bus and prepared to give him an IV. He said he was deathly afraid of needles, and my partner told him that we had to stick him to get him some fluids and stated again that he was deathly afraid of needles and would pass out.

Well guess what, he wasnt kidding. At this point he went into cardiac arrest, no pulse, no breathing, turned purple. One of the firefighters said, Damn he wasnt kidding. We started CPR, shocked him a couple of times, got him intubated and what do you know, we got him back. And all of this is before we even leave his driveway. On the way to the hospital, he went into cardiac arrest once again and my partner and the firefighter riding with us got him back once again. At the hospital his heart kept stopping and the ER staff worked on him for about two hours.

I am happy to say, that he has had bypass surgery, was taken off the vent yesterday and doctors expect a full recovery. Its a great feeling to know that you made a difference. I have had 15 patients in which I performed CPR, and this gentleman was the first one I helped get back. Its just awesome.

On the lighter side of this call, my partner said this call required him to do more paper work than he had ever done on a single call and he has been doing this for 12 years. I told him he could have saved a lot of time by writing the report like this:

65 yo m, sweating perfusly w/left arm pain, short of breath. Showed pt iv needle and he died. I saved him. Showed pt needle again, he died, saved him again. Diagnosis, pt is truly deathly afraid of needles.

Yall all have a blessed day.