the coolest thing that ever happened on a call!

[madmedic8522]

OK all, the post asking for the best chief complaint got me thinking a little and i thought this may be a neato idea LOL! What is the coolest thing YOU have ever done on a call. now feel free to share stories of others you may work with as well.......I have one of a co-worker that I'll tell later.

this happened yesterday, 14 y/o female with mild retardation has a seizure. get came/ we saw/ we transported. on the way she was talking and talking, first time for her in an ambulance. she let me start an IV....missed, ahem! d-stick yada yada! so i told her i would give her a "picture of her heart" after i called the ER. hooked up the EKG ran a strip, then showed her how to read it.......this little bump is the top part, this little bump is the bottom part, this little bump is everything going ahhhhhhhhhhh. grandma was with us, mom was behind in the car. in the er after all was said and done, i asked her if she showed her picture to her mom, she pulls it out and repeats everything i told her (as noted above) and in the right spots.......she thought that was the coolest thing!

this is what I'm looking for, BTW if you did something, I'm asking you to pat yourself on the back and share.........NO Egos please!!!! have fun with it!

madmedic

[Scaramedic]

I thought this one was kind of cool. Dispatched to a private home for an elderly male with dyspnea. As I walk into the room I can hear his lungs, they are full of some kind of junk. Talk to his VNA CNA and she states it started after his tube feeding, yep you guessed she placed it in the trachea. So we shut off the pump and remove the NG tube. Pt is chronically A&OX1, his minute volume is pathetic, so I decide to nasally intubate. As I am advancing and I get to the point when they cough, I advance as he coughs, and I am in. He then coughs again and Vanilla Ensure comes flying out of the end of the tube all the way to the end of the bed. He coughs a couple of more times, more Vanilla Ensure and then starts to breath again. I kid you not, his lungs sounds improved 100%. No more audible junk, I had to auscultate to hear a little bit of rhonchi in the lower left lobe. Fire thought I was a god, my partner was pissed because he was standing at the end of the bed getting ready to hand me the BVM.

Not a lot of skilled involved on that call, I just got lucky on "clearing" his lungs.

Peace,

Marty

:usa2:

[madmedic8522]

OK, let's try this one. A-shift out of my house responded to a sudden death at 0800 (approx) one morning to find a male who had died in his sleep. The male pt was the father of three small children and was quite young. As the 2 medics were getting the paperwork done with the PD, one of them heard the little daughter say that the tooth fairy had not come. Realizing that the father had died before the tooth fairy had completed rounds, this medic tip-toed in to the little girls room and took care of the problem. As they left the scene the mother was told that indeed the tooth fairy had come, and 8517 returned in service.

This medic is not a parent, but as a parent when he told me how much he bought the tooth for...........I was shocked!!!! LOL! He told me the only thing he had on him at the time was a 10 dollar bill.........what a nice surprise for the little girl that must have been, considering. BTW the tooth was returned to the mom as they were leaving.

madmedic

[madmedic8522]

BTW, saramedic good story! that was a stroke with luck, and I'm glad to hear that it worked. this is what I'm looking for. LOL!

madmedic

[Defiant1]

ummm, how about this, a while back i was on call doing work experiance down at the squad building, when tones dropped, turned out it was for a heart attack, so we had 2 students and one EMT-IT (I-85) in back. me and the other student had our training permits so we could care for the patient as long as we had a preceptor. anyway, lets just say it was a perfect text book code. we got there, did CPR, got a combi-tube in him, had shocked him with the defib, and en-route to the hospital, we had restarted his heart, so when we intercepted with the paramedics, we just had to switch over to there ventilator machine thing. we had a line started on him and stuff, so once we got the medics in our rig and we had someone to drive the medic's rig, we continued on to the hospital.

fast forward about a month, our squad was having a little awards ceremony, i received an award from the patient i had helped save, him and his wife gave me a hug and said thank you. i was of course at a loss for words. but yeah, that was like the coolest thing for me.

[madmedic8522]

good job trench, this is what i was asking for.....anything that "touched" you on a call.

good job *pats you on the back*

madmedic

[Urbanmedic461]

When working rural EMS we were sent out for a VSA. We shocked her once, GCS returned within minutes. At a later date we were visted from this women at our base. She brought a thank-you card, a cake, and her happiness. It was then I realized what it is we actually do (sometimes), we 'save lives' not just resuscitate bodies.

This women now can continue to enjoy life, her family, and spread her joy which she is full of....I'll never forget my lession.

BTW this was two years ago and she is still going, happier then ever!

[emtkelley]

The sweet rewards to this job is endless! Just a word can make all the difference in the world.

The time that stands out in my mind the most is the first time my daughter got to see me "in action".

We were at a county fair for the day doing EMS. I was talking to my daughter who had stopped by to chat with me at the EMS tent. All the sudden a little girl, accompanied by her mom came up crying. She had hurt herself in some way (can't remember the whole thing). As we went to treat her, I heard my daughter tell the friend she was with how proud she was of me and how cool it was to get to see me take care of someone.

[Coach Hohman]

Kelly, great story...I have a similar story, but from the other side of the fence.

My mom has been doing this for over 20 years and the first time I saw her work was when we were going on vacation and saw a bad accident on the highway. My mom pulled over, grabbed a pair of gloves from her coat and ran to one of the cars, while my dad ran to the other car. I was probably 6 or 7 at the time, but seeing how my mom worked was the most amazing thing ever. To this day she has nerves of steel and a heart of gold at the very same time. Now, once a week I run a shift with her as my partner on her volunteer squad ( I work paid on the side) and she is still one of the best EMT's I've worked with. I'm new to this game, but you never truely appreciate your parents till you see what they do.

My personal story involves an accident call that my mom and I had one night...single vehicle MVA, rollover with entrapment. When we got there we found a young woman pinned under a truck from her hips down. She kept talking about her baby and I looked up in the truck and saw the baby, hanging by his babyseat upside down....giggling. I undid his straps and brought him out of the car, grabbed his blanket and ran him to the squad as the firemen were moving the truck and more personel showed up to help with the pt. who was pinned The baby was completley unharmed and was actually laughing and playing and more interested in my reflective lettering than anything. It showed me that sometimes in this field we focus on the negatives or focus on the things that we do and not the things that we cannot do. Later on the family invited our whole crew out to a cookout as thanks for our service to them. It really helped make the connection that what we do effects the rest of peoples lives..

[Rezq304]

This happened a couple of years ago. Responding to a report of a boy fallen off of a scooter, ankle injury. On arrival FD Chief is with kid since it was near his house. Kid is approximatley a 12 y/o male who was riding his "Razr" scooter when his foot got caught under the thing. The kid was initially covered with a blanket to keep him warm. At this time I was a BLS provider and AIC on my truck. I lift the blanket to see the kid's L foot attached by only approximately one inch of muscle. Needless to say, we picked up the pace and "hauled butt" with this kid. En route to the hospital, intercepted ALS truck. They pushed the max amount of Morphine allowed and it still barely touched his pain. I ran into the kid about six months later during a stand-by at a high school football game and he thanked me for everything that I had done to help him. He had a very large scar, but still appeared to have full use of his foot. It's things like this that keep me pressing forward.