Kawasaki Syndrome
Not acute, but good to know.
Fairer sex
I did some tour 2/day tour overtime today, mostly because I have $0.83 to my name for the next 7 days and I’d like to not have that happen again. So after I got over the initial urge to hiss at the giant ball of fire in the sky, and the smoke stopped rolling off my skin as the sunlight touched it, it wound up being an agreeable tour with an agreeable partner.
But we did have a patient who’s address alone made her go “oh not him again,” not because this gentleman was disagreeable but because he was huge. And not huge-for-a-90-something-year-old, just plain goddamn huge. There aren’t too many 200+ lb people over the age of 80 for a reason, but damn this dude apparently ate his way around natural selection.
So we walk in, the family goes: “They sent two girls?”
To which I reply: “They sent two girls to do the thinking, we have six boys coming to do the hauling.”
The way some engine companies get all fucking twisted over lift assists makes you wonder if theyve forgotten they get paid a stipend to assist on our jobs now. Tell you what, put 6 bls girls on a bus and pay us time and a half to go help cpr and lift pts and you won’t hear a peep out of us — I guarentee it.
Bell’s Palsey! Or, not actually a stroke.
So you getting on with your bad self and prepping for your housewarming party when suddenly your (insert hubby, fwb, roommate, pet fish here) comes up to you and says, “I can’t drink my beer; something’s wrong with my face.”
OK, you think. I know what to look for here, and you say: “Gimme a big ole smile!”
Which they do, and which looks kind of like :-\
Stroke! Or is it? Fun fact: the cranial nerves usually involved in stroke-induced facial droop don’t usually involve anything above the eyeline. Most stroke pts can blink, move their eyes, waggle their brows.
Also, strokes usually involve the entire side of a body (which most people know).
So, when my pet fish found he was unable to drink his beer because he couldn’t control the right side of his mouth, but could hold his solo cup in his right hand, he started to try to blink, and found he couldnt close his eyelid all the way. Now, since my pet fish is also a paramedic and a horrible patient, he explained Bell’s Palsey to me briefly mostly so I wouldn’t call him a bus and so he could still get his party on, but I would still recommend always calling 9-11 for facial droops of any kind.
Bell’s Palsey can still be a permanent change in facial muscle function, and it may be for him, it’s too soon to say. Other symptoms include changes in hearing or ear pain on the affected side.
Disposition Roulette Pt 1
Here in the good ole’ NYC, while our dispatchers usually dispatch us first by radio — giving us the call type and cross-streets, hell, assigning the correct unit! as their daily horoscope dictates — we then receive the call’s “details” on our “computer” attached to our ambulance. Often, this consists of an address that is hopefully correct (no, our dispatchers are not required to confirm the existence of a street address before dispatching), the general type of call, a segment number (yes lights and sirens, no lights and sirens, yes ALS, no ALS, etc), and some kind of dispatcher input that as often says “No further information” as it does “pt sts space aliens stole his brain.”
Now, the premise of disposition roulette is as follows: I list the general gist of the entry we receive on our KDT. My partner then guess what the call’s gonna be, and if a transport, to what hospital. Based on the often wildly inaccurate text. Hence the roulette reference. Fun game, yes? This TL;DR explanation won’t be included in all the posts, so I’ll create a new tag for this kind of post.
Now, the premise of disposition roulette is as follows: I list the general gist of the entry we receive on our KDT. My partner then guess what the call’s gonna be, and if a transport, to what hospital. Based on the often wildly inaccurate text. Hence the roulette reference. Fun game, yes? This TL;DR explanation won’t be included in all the posts, so I’ll create a new tag for this kind of post.
- Segment 7: Bipolar acting out on street, 3rd party caller:
ME: Totally, totally GOA. 96.
PARTNER: Eh, you’re probably right, but for the sake of argument, I say it’s a 91 dispute.
REALITY: Bipolar indvidual who didn’t call for himself as per the text, was probably acting out on street but didn’t stay in once place — and isn’t at the specified cross-streets when we pull-up — because he’s not, actually, a tree. 10-96.
It took me, like, 2 hours to figure out how to spell Bahcets.
There’s nothing quite as sobering as being one doctor’s appointment away from being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Except maybe cancer, but hey — if you don’t die from cancer, they can usually get rid of it pretty effectively. Not so much with the whole autoimmune thing.
Siri skips cheating and goes straight to murder; boy, those Skynet nightmares are gonna be hitting me full force again, aren’t they?
(Source: rahnstopit)
