How do you say Thank You?

[ClutzyEMT]

After a very long and trying week with everything meeting me at the door each and every morning and demanding my undivided attention at once, it was nice this morning to get a phone call that I have never ever gotten before in my life~~

Ring~

Me~ "Hello"

Female Voice~ "Is this Tami *****?"

Me~"Ummm, yes?"

Voice~ "Well, you don't know me, but you know my husband."

OMGosh....little voices in my head are running in circles yelling at each other "What did YOU do? Nothing, what did YOU do? Nothing I tell you! I've been sober for twenty years and haven't touched another ladies man....are you sure?? Yes,"......(okay, well you get the picture)

Me~"Okaaay?"

Then the "voice" starts out with a quiet little laugh that came across with slight embarrassment and then says, "I guess I just don't know where to start but here goes...You met my husband outside of the casino a few weeks ago. He was the one laying on the ground....."

The memory comes flooding back easily, I had stopped at the casino on my way home from a meeting and as I was walking towards the hallway I suddenly felt a female security guard grabbing at the back of my jacket and pleading for me to follow her back outside where they had "a medical" down on the ground. Looking around and seeing no-one else following her I reluctantly followed her as she half ran back to the front of the casino where I was confronted with the sight of an older male lying face down in a pool of blood and several people standing around watching as another older male was feeling for a pulse. When I got close he locked eyes with me and said "I'm glad your here ma'am, he doesn't have a pulse."

I went thru the usual questions quickly as I felt for a pulse and gathered the important information that despite the fifty people standing around, not one of them knew him and no one knew what had happened....the gentleman kneeling next to him tho tells me that he is an EMT "from 100 years ago" so I quickly inform him that we are now partners and CPR hasn't changed much so we proceeded to flip the gentleman over and begin CPR while the casino First Responders ran and got us an AED and BVM while we waited for the ambulance (did I mention I used to work for this ambulance? awkward) arrive we performed CPR.

We managed to get a pulse back after one shock and I assisted ventilations with a plain old BVM while we waited for the boo boo bus to arrive. Seemed like it was a couple of hours but turns out it was only eleven minutes....

Just as we got a c-collar on the gentleman and had him loaded unto the spine board he lost his pulse again so we quickly loaded him into the back of the rig, restarted CPR, shocked and got a pulse back again.

Long story short, I rode along with the gentleman to the ED in the back of my former employers ambulance (did I say awkward before?) where they stabilized him and flew him out to a higher level of care within the hour and I went home to wonder the final outcome.

I have to admit that I googled his name a few times in the following weeks thinking that I would see an obituary and finally just kind of put it out of my mind....

Then the voice started to break up and said, "I don't really know how to tell someone like you Thank you for giving me 45 more years with the love of my life. The doctors told me that if you hadn't of been there and done what you did, he would not have made it. How do I tell someone thank you for that?"

With a few tears in my own voice I replied....."You just did."

Turns out he had a defib/pacemaker implanted and is back to his old self again....

[paramedicmike]

Where's the "too awesome for words" button? I want to click it until my clicker breaks.

Great story, Tami. Thanks for sharing.

Edited March 4, 2013 by paramedicmike

[scubanurse]

That's great... We rarely get follow up on patients we see so it's awesome that it was a great outcome

[Arctickat]

Sob...snurffle

[island emt]

Ya done good girl :-}

It's always a pleasure to get feedback from calls like that.

Congrats on not letting your relationship with your former employer get in the way of quality pt care.

Even more for the multiple saves on a guy circling the drain in spite of the best efforts you all put into him.

Like you, I'm in a small community where we often know our pt's and seem to get feedback from some and not from others.

I often check the obits to see if a pt has ended up there.

that or when the lady at the post office gives me thank you notes addressed to ""The ambulance crew" Bailey Island . They always end up in my mailbox.

[Chief1C]

Good story.. some people are elated when lives are saved, some aren't.

Took a man in, prolly fourteen years ago. Man was home w/ his youngest child, had no medical info written down, and the kid knew nothing - except how to dial 911. So, we get there, and he's pretty well grey-blue, fish out of water resps, pulse low enough to actually start CPR. The kid is calm and cooperative as could be, which worried me even more..b/c that just ain't normal. But just said he fell asleep.

Do CPR on and off for damn near an hour and a half, the third person w/ us couldn't do compressions, so I was on cloud nine when the patient finally just woke up...after a second hit of Narcan. I'd been an EMT for two months, I was too new to know that was given. Now I know the ALS protocols as well as the BLS. Anyhewww.. The wife comes in, and I'm sitting in the waiting room doing my report, all red, sweaty..and in a brilliantly colored jumpsuit that had our name on the back. She asks if I was the person who worked on her husband, I stand up, and just as I sit the clip board down, she hauls off and punches me in the back of the head, then the nose with the other hand. Blood everywhere.

The man had terminal cancer and OD'd on liquid morphine from the pain. She left for the night b/c it was planned, what wasn't planned was that the kid would call 911 before he was too far gone to bring back.The kid never told us he had cancer and he was so ashen and cyanotic, you couldn't tell he was yellow. Not even his eyes. Then when in cuffs, she realized his folder of medical info, normally on the fridge, was in her car.. I didn't press charges, but I haven't spoken to her since.

Holy shit, I can't type, spell or form sentences this morning!

Edited March 4, 2013 by Chief1C

[WolfmanHarris]

Reminds me of a few years back when I got the call my Grandpa had gone VSA at a job site. They'd gotten him back, but I was trying not to be mister doom and gloom thinking to myself: "He's had four previous MI's, he's obese and he arrested in public. His chances..." Anyways, thanks to an RN passing by, a Simcoe County PCP unit that had just cleared the Hospital and had a less than 60 second response time a York EMS ACP unit close behind and great post-ROSC care by Southlake Regional Health Centre (not to mention Central York Fire Services and YRP and the Ambulance Communications Officers at Georgian CACC) he was released neurologically intact 6 weeks later.

I was still a student at the time, but when Spring came around and the Base Hospital hosted a Survivor's Day where Cardiac Arrest survivors could meet their rescuers I had the opportunity to attend, now in the uniform of the crews that had saved him. I met each and everyone involved in his care and thanked them personally. The fact that he was the Grandfather of a soon to be colleague really blew their minds and was a great experience for me and my entire family!