Ambulance Driver

Busy Sunday morning at the ambulance service, but then, predictably, calls fell off during the Vikings game. We had 77 runs during my 12 hour shift. Ambulance Driver was assigned 4 of them. We then spent the rest of the shift watching the game at a local volunteer fire station.

As always, information contained in the 911 Updates has been masked to prevent disclosure of personal information.

1) Was for a girl who, last evening, got scratched in the eye while playing with the cat. Awoke this morning with severe pain and her left eye swollen shut. Suspected corneal abrasion.

2) Called to care for a man with a history of traumatic brain injury and had suffered his first seizure in months.

3) Was for a very distraught lady with a history of bipolar disorder. Takes care of herself but occasionally suffers from panic attacks. She was alone in the home and couldn’t contact her husband.

4) Elderly male with emphyzema with increased breathing difficulty during the night. Nebs not working. Was severely short of breath on our arrival and very hypertensive. Two nebs of atrovent and albuterol enroute to hospital got things under control.

Tomorrow is an 8 hour day. Getting off work in the early afternoon is one of life’s great pleasures. Ambulance Driver is working on a couple of informational posts on how we deliver health care in Minnesota and will have them up in just a few days.

60,000 purple clad and lubricated Viking fans filed into the Metrodome late this morning wanting to believe that their beloved warriors could pull off a victory against the hated Cowboys. You could tell, though,  by their collective posture that they were putting on an act.

Afterall, we had lost 3 out of our last 5 regular season games after that marvelous 10-1 start and even the whupping we gave the New York Football Giants in the finale came against a team who had quit weeks before. No, it was fun while it lasted but maybe we can get Favre back for one more year and REALLY make a run at the Super Bowl.

Three hours later a very happy and stumbling crowd exited the Dome content in the realization that their undying faith had been rewarded with a decisive defeat of the hapless Cowboys and their thumb-sucking quarterback, Tony Romo.

The Euphoria will last until about Thursday and then the Collective Feeling of Impending Doom will once again descend upon Viking Land.

911 Updates are where Ambulance Driver gives the readers a taste of my workday. All entries are masked in a manner to avoid revealing any personal information.

Busy day in which my Department responded to 105 911 calls during my 12 hour shift. Eight were assigned to me.

1) Was a call for an elderly gentleman who fell in recent days, injuring his right knee. He hadn’t been able to bear weight for the last 24 hours. The knee was quite swollen but no obvious fractures. Being he was a hefty fellow, it was a chore to get him out of the house, through the snow and into the ambulance.

2) This patient was one of our frequent flyers. Always intoxicated and profane, this time they wished transport for evaluation of an old injury that doctors had declared healed. Given that this person had a rather odd hospital of choice this time around, we speculated that “drug seeking” was the motive for calling 911. Just a guess.

3) Was a call for a person lying on the ground and apparently intoxicated according to the caller. When we arrived with the police, no such person was found.

4) This person is a diabetic who had not taken insulin for many months and had been non-compliant with all medications for several weeks. States they just wish to die. From the looks of things they are going to get their wish if this keeps up. The blood sugar was off the charts. Family called.

5) This call was for an elderly man who was experiencing an anxiety attack due to the medical problems of his spouse. She was in the hospital and in very bad shape. Wanted to go to be with her.

6) This “patient” was driving a car that was bumped by another in a parking lot. Speed was reported to be a crawl. No damage to either vehicle. Taken to hospital for evaluation of……something.

7) Was a patient who had fallen during his daily exercise. Looks as if he broke his hip. The good news is he is young enough to recover.

8) Was an infant whose mother “thought” ill because a sibling had a cold. Baby looked fine to me and slept during transport. Mother non-English speaking so it was difficult to assess the concern.

That was it for today. Stop by tomorrow for another installment of 991 Update.

Since Gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton’s revelation late last month in the Star-Tribune that he is a recovering alcoholic and has been suffering from mild depression all of his adult life, local media have struggled on how to properly report the issue – or whether to report it at all.

David Brauer of MinnPost had thoughts that were introspective and gleaned from painful experience:

….depression is the struggle of my life, from the insomnia and obsessiveness that has me up at 4 a.m. chewing over this topic, to bouts of withdrawing from my family and the physical world. Trust me, if I were running for governor, I’d regard my depression and the resulting stress-triggered struggles as something the public should know.

Others, such as Minnesota Public Radio’s Bob Collins, seem to think we should be careful:

It’s a slippery slope that the most influential news organization in Minnesota has decided to take us down, particularly when an alternative is a thorough examination of vision and ideas of candidates.

MPR has covered this story fairly extensively and in a seemingly even-handed manner. Kerri Miller’s Mid Morning show on 1/13/10 was particularly good.

There are, however, quite a few unanswered questions in my mind.

1. Mark Dayton’s mental illness has been known to me for 10 years. It is one of the poorest kept secrets in Minnesota politics. I refuse to believe that a significant number of Twin City journalists did not know of it. Why the current self-flagellation when it seems the media had already made a judgment on the issue’s  newsworthiness?
2. Dayton is the source of the disclosure and news reports state repeatedly that he will not be more specific about the circumstances of his illness. Many have praised his honesty in this admission but questions remain. How do we know what his diagnosis is? Verifying that he suffers only from “mild depression” would go a long way in putting the issue to rest.
3. Substance abuse and mental illness often go hand in hand due to the patient’s attempts to “self medicate.” When Dayton’s alcohol consumption ended up with an admission to a treatment program, had he been compliant with his medicine regimen? A simple question would be, “Has your history included periods where you were non-compliant with your medications?”
4. Another question that has been asked, but bears repeating, is whether or not Dayton’s mental illness has affected his job performance. Indications have been that the execution of his office as US Senator left something to be desired.

Mark Dayton’s illness does not make him a bad fellow and doesn’t necessarily disqualify him for public office. However, that is a question for an informed public to decide. The journalists in this town have quite a lot of follow-up to do before his fitness for duty can be determined.

An Automatic External Defibrillator (AED), pictured left,  is a life-saving tool that   is  becoming  common place in today’s society. They have a proven track record for delivering  definitive care for those who have suffered a cardiac arrest. They are light weight, very simple to use (they talk to you), and provide the treatment of choice in a large number of cardiac arrest states. These things save lives.

Unfortunately, the United States Postal Service can’t seem to get its bureaucracy to approve the installation of an AED that is going to be donated to its downtown Minneapolis facility.

As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports today, it has been 7 months since a worker at the facility died as a result of a cardiac arrest. Since then, his co-workers have tried in vain to get the upper-echelon paper pushers to approve their request – even though one is being donated.

Sure, the Post Office spokesman had a myriad of excuses:

“We can’t just make a local decision,” Nowacki said. “There are processes and things like that within the Postal Service.”

That was spoken like a true Government worker, don’t you think?

The article goes on to say that the spokesman denied the urgency of the request, in part due to the 4 minute response time of the paramedics from Hennepin County Medical Center.

I’ve responded to the downtown post office numerous times. As the workers attest in the article, it is a vast space. Their assertion that it actually took 13 minutes for the medics to arrive at the side of the patient does not surprise me a bit. Having an AED at the patient’s side immediately is much preferable to having to wait for me to show up.

And the spokesman just couldn’t stop digging:

Nowacki said the Postal Service couldn’t move forward, however, until the facility first updated its CPR certification. That process was completed Dec. 1, so a formal request will go to regional headquarters in the next few days, he said.

Nowacki estimated the facility would need 15 defibrillators, and that any decision to employ them must fit in with the “overall safety program” for 14,000 local postal employees.

When you go to the airport, the malls, the skyways or hundreds of other places where you see AED’s, you are not going to see a sign which says “DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU ARE CERTIFIED IN CPR.” As stated before, these machines are fool-proof. As long as you get the lid open, you’re home free. It starts talking to you and gives very simple instructions. Any moron can use one of these things.

They also assert that they need 15 devices. Well, knock yourself out. Go ahead, if you think you must. But that does not preclude placing ONE in a central location where everyone could know where it is.  I bet you could even get a couple of employees to mount it on the wall for you free of charge – except I’m sure there are regulations about that as well.

Well, anyway, I suppose the Postal Service employees can expect to see their new AED sometime in the next couple of years. Meanwhile let’s salute a group of federal workers who are trying like hell to do the right thing.

I Blame Bush