Q: “Annie, Annie, are you okay?”
A: Hell yes she is.
I present to you: Super Sexy CPR (also coming in June, Super Sexy Abdominal Thrusts! Main link here, slightly NSFW). If they could have made a year-long paramedic course as riveting as the following video, I’m certain I would have entered academia to study this sort of thing instead of being a street-level provider.
Maybe EMS isn’t so bad, after all.
/RL
A little while back, I spent a day with Georgetown University’s EMS system (officially yet whimsically known as “G.E.R.M.S”). I originally contacted their PR director because I was intrigued by the notion of an independent emergency service provider that operates within a city that already has a full-coverage Fire and EMS Department. It’s not a bad little operation; the providers are competent and excited to work, their training regimen goes above and beyond the national minimum standards, and there’s certainly no shortage of undergraduate students eager to join the ranks. As an entirely student-run organization under the umbrella of Campus Safety, they have developed as an excellent resource on campus whose response and subsequent medical care has proved useful to students, faculty, and visitors alike.These frames and accompanying text are what I dug up one rainy afternoon with G.E.R.M.S.
Click on the photos below for the larger, more-readable version!
Thank you to the entire G.E.R.M.S administrative and training staff, with a special thank-you to Brendan Maggiore (VP of Operations), without whom this endeavor would never have come together. If anyone would like to see additional pictures from that day, all of them are available in this gallery on Raising Ladders Photography.
Keep up the great work, G.E.R.M.S.!
/RL
P.S. – an interesting bit of lore: on a shelf above the staff mailboxes, there is an old frame holding a conundrum of a photograph. It is, quite clearly, a glamour shot of actor Danny Glover. However, upon closer inspection, it says “To Germs, continue your great work. Danny Glover.” The strangest part? Nobody has any idea how it ended up there. Despite the photo’s prominent location for “quite some time now” (i.e. longer than anyone whom I asked remembers), there are no records, memories, or even legends of its origin. One G.E.R.M.S. member took it upon himself to look back more than a decade into the service’s employment records, interviewing and calling prior staffers about the photo—nevertheless, the search proved once again fruitless.
Any ideas?
“Ugh… you have got to be kidding me.”
On average, I say that about five times per tour. In this particular instance, I was (quite comfortably) slouched down in the passenger seat of Ambulance 12—returning from my fourth switch-out that night—when a woman ran out into the street, frantically waving one of her arms. The other, unsurprisingly, had her cell phone sandwiched to the side of her head.
I blinked twice, hard, as if to clear both the sleep from my eyes and the woman from my view. As I climbed out and grabbed a pair of gloves, I convinced myself that rolling my eyes was an Ancient Chinese Secret used to increase alertness—at least, that’s my story if anyone saw me do it.
Flaggings usually don’t amount to much. Granted, there’s the occasional “this guy was just shot,” or “she clutched her chest and fell down and now she’s not breathing,” but for the most part, being flagged down is akin to hailing a taxi on a day when it might rain: “…So, should we? Eh, maybe not, we can make it… oh, here comes one! Let’s get it anyways, since it’s here!”
Let’s not assume anything, though. I mean, she was quite the Samaritan: She ran out into the street, laughing at something on her cell phone (trust me, she was not speaking to a 911 operator); flagged us down; then barged past us into the storefront as we tried to find the patient, saying “Ooh, I gotta finish gettin’ my nails done!” Of course, she stepped over the unmoving supine figure on the ground, nearly skewering his skull with a stiletto in the process.
Quite the Good Samaritan, indeed.
Bystanders said he walked in and laid on the ground with no explanation. Okay, well he’s breathing. That’s good. Strong pulse, also good. Outwardly, there doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him. Blood sugar? Well within normal limits. Maybe a heroin overdose? It’s fairly common, so let’s just take a look at his eyes…
Cue the Microsoft Word Paperclip Assistant. If you were to click “yes,” you would see a small list:
So into the ambulance we went. As expected, the patient miraculously “woke up” moments later and said he was fine. Now grinning from ear to ear and looking at the swarm of people gathered around, he kept saying that he didn’t want or need any medical treatment. No history, no complaints, no physiological problems, and not a care in the world.
“What happened? I fell down? I must’ve just passed out… long day, you know? Ha-HA!”
“Yes, sir, I do know. (sigh) Please just sign this.”
—————
Hey, it could be worse. About a month ago, a man in Australia flagged down an ambulance (expecting just a ride, no treatment) and then attacked the crew when they wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go.
Damn. In America, the public is at least able to come up with some reason why they need to go to the hospital–whether it’s toe pain or a cough for two weeks, at least it’s a reason.
I first encountered “free taxi” syndrome when I worked in Pittsburgh. Let’s say you wanted to go visit your friend, but you don’t have a car or any money and he’s waaaay across town. So, call 911! Tell us you have something like elbow pain, and that you want to go to Allegheny General because your doctor’s there, or something. (Really, anything. As the patient, legally you’ve got plenty of leeway.) As soon as you get to ER triage, though, you can just sign out AMA* and walk to your friend’s house!
Wonderful, isn’t it?
Damn, I was just about to go to bed.
Halfway to the bunkroom to wake up the next guy on watch, the tones went off. I shook the sleep out of my head as I spun in place and headed to the desk. I didn’t catch the dispatch, so I grabbed the printout and read it as I grabbed the intercom mic.
“Engine, engine. Medical local, for the…”
I paused as my eyes finished the page a split second before my voice did. Dammit.
“…cardiac arrest.”
—————
A hysterical wail cut through the air to my left, now audible only because we had turned our sirens off. I grabbed the medical bags and started in that direction (it’s usually not a good sign, but it ain’t a bad locator beacon, either).
As I had pretty much expected, there were three things present inside the apartment:
As I passed the first, deftly avoided the second, and approached the third, one of my hands found a place near the side of her head and tried to position her airway—the other snaked up beside her neck and felt for a pulse.
I recoiled slightly; she was as cold as the sidewalk outside, and about as flexible. Rigor was setting in, so I turned to my crew (who, wonderfully, had grabbed a BVM, oxygen, and a tube kit out of my stuff) and gave them the curt headshake reserved for TV characters who have to stoically answer the female lead’s tearful rendition of “Did he make it, doctor?”
“Just the monitor, guys.”
I still feel strange running EKG strips on obviously dead folks. I mean, in certain DOA situations, our patient is exhibiting obvious “signs incompatible with life” (decapitation, dependent lividity, rigor mortis), and yet… we must prove it.
So, we put EKG stickers on cold limbs, palpate depressurized arteries, and take pink and red pictures of motionless hearts.
I folded the paper up and turned to leave. By this time, the screaming daughter had left, replaced by a much calmer son with a thousand-yard-stare.
“Excuse me.” It was barely a whisper.
“Yes?”
“So, what’s the situation?”
“Well, she’s been down for too long, so… there’s unfortunately nothing we can do for her.”
I kept it simple. I’ve tried the other route, and it doesn’t usually work out so well in these situations. So, I swallowed all the typical, feel-better phrases that I’ve heard used countless times before. They sound like bullshit, and they feel acidic in your throat.
“So, she’s gone?”
I stared for a second.
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, okay.” His thousand-yard stare turned from me, scanned the room, and stopped on Mom.
I left without a word, seeing his back still turned on me and his head slowly nodding.
We run our strips, and we go home.
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