Allergic Reaction

Posted by on Mar 27, 2015 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

“EMS 6, allergic reaction, at 123 Main Street.” At 7:40 Christmas night, my partner and I flip on the lights and sirens and race our ambulance toward 123 Main Street. En route, my partner reads off details of our dispatched call on our dashboard laptop. “Twenty-year-old female. Respiratory arrest.” I grab the radio. “This is EMS 6, requesting assistance on our anaphylaxis call. Copy?” “Copy EMS 6. FD 14 is en route.” Once we roll up on scene, several people wave us into the two-story home, their faces contorted in panic. As we hear sirens from an approaching fire truck, we rush our loaded stretcher inside the front door and toward the young lifeless body lying on the tiled kitchen floor, cyanosis around her lips. I notice our patient’s chest is motionless, and I don’t feel or hear any air moving out of her mouth or nose. “What is her name?” I ask no one in particular in the crowd of about a dozen surrounding us. “Ally,” several voices answer. “Ally?” I rub my knuckles over her sternum. “Unresponsive,” I inform my partner, who’s yanking out a BVM (bag-valve mask), other airway equipment, and the med box. I feel for a carotid pulse on her flushed neck. “Rapid and weak,” I say to my partner. We share a look of understanding—our patient is headed for cardiac arrest. Our interventions must be quick and efficient. “What happened here?” I again ask the room full of people as I press the mask over my patient’s mouth and nose with my left hand in the E/C formation. With my right, I squeeze the football-sized bag every five seconds to oxygenate the young woman’s system. Her chest rises and falls with every squeeze, indicating her airway isn’t blocked by swelling or any foreign object. “She was eating and started coughing, and said her chest is all tight,” a hysterical woman answered, suddenly kneeling next to me. “She was itchy all over, had trouble breathing, hives on her back.” I face the middle-aged woman, tears flowing out of her eyes and down her cheeks. “Are you her mother?” “Yes. She was severely allergic to peanuts when she was little...

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Author Question: Car Accident Injuries 1/2

Posted by on Oct 3, 2012 in Blog, Medical/EMS, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Author questions are some of my most favorite posts to do. How do you really write an accurate medical scene? Which injuries are plausible and which are not? Amy is visiting and Dianna Benson (EMS expert) and myself (ER nurse extraordinaire) are going to tackle her question. Dianna will be today and I’ll be Friday. Amy asks: I am putting one of my characters in a pretty major car accident — a rollover in which she lands on a broken window and ends up with a lacerated back full of broken glass, in addition to a broken leg, fractured ribs, etc. I need a scene to take place in the hospital where she is recovering. With those kinds of injuries, what treatments would she be under? More importantly, how exactly would she be laying in the bed? Obviously not on her back. But would she be on her side or stomach? Perhaps that depends on the other injuries she sustains… but the lacerated back is the biggest one I want her to have. Dianna Says: The story and the characters are first priority, so I’ll make the medical aspects fit into what you’ve explained. Since it sounds like you don’t have an EMS scene at all (no scene where rescue crews—EMS and fire—are present), it keeps it simple from my end, but I’ll give you pertinent background on what I’d do if I were the EMS crew on your scene. Also, based on the MOI (mechanism of injury) you described, I’ll explain what type of injures are possible. Every patient is different, every MVC (motor vehicle collision) is different, and every rollover is different, so that definitely gives you leeway. First of all: I like the scenario: Your character runs a red light causing another car to slam into hers, which causes it to spin then roll over while her back is dragged on the asphalt over the broken window. I also like the adding of a boyfriend; yes, he’d definitely worsen her injures by landing on her, so have him either land elsewhere inside the car or just have him belted in (unless you want her seriously injured to the point she’s in-hospital...

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