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************************************************** From: "patti keiper" <pattik1@hotmail.com> Date: Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:38 pm Subject: Like A Pride Of Lions... The wonderous smells from a well cooked meal permeated Station 51's kitchen and the primary cook, Chet, stirred some mash potatoes into consistency in a bowl as fast as he could whip his wooden spoon. The others, gathered around Kelly in a hungry circle, waiting for the spuds eagerly. Gage made a snatch for the bowl and got it. "These are done already." he pounced and ducked with it to the table and the others leaped just as fast into their own chairs to eat. "Hey! I haven't tasted the seasoning yet.." Chet protested. "We can season our own." said Marco. The bowl of potatoes shifted from hand to eager hand as it was dished out. Chet reluctantly untied his apron and sat down. He frowned when the potato bowl finally got to his seat, empty. "What about me, guys? These are gone. Do I look like I need to lose some weight here?" he complained. "Yes.." said Gage, stuffing his mouth. He immediately snatched up a water glass to down when his mouthful of steak proved too hot to chew. "Ahh.." Cap immediately glowered. "Gage, quit burning yourself into a still alarm. Eat slower. I wanna get through a full meal and dessert once and for all,.. and today's the day!" he mumbled through a slice of well buttered Italian bread. |
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Johnny ignored his superior, recognizing a non threatening threat when he heard it. "Oh, sorry, Chet. Here you go. Have some of mine." and he forked over the tiniest mound of potatoes onto Kelly's plate. Chet didn't even blink an eye. When Johnny was still busy reaching for a saucer of mushrooms, Kelly made off with Gage's entire lunch plate, trading it for his potato-less own, and dashed off with it to reseat himself next to Cap for what he considered the ultimate protection. ::No one ever tries a retaliation around Hank while he's ravenous.:: Chet thought gleefully, shovelling in his newly stolen food. Roy grinned when Johnny started cutting into the steak in front of him without realizing that he'd been victimized. "Johnny." "What?! Can't you see I'm eating here?" Gage insisted, chipmunk cheeked and chewing desperately hard in an attempt to fill his gnawing stomach as quickly as possible like everybody else was doing. "Try looking down." said Stoker, chuckling. Johnny did, and immediately started sputtering. "Chet.. now give it--" he broke off when Cap fired off the look of death with no bones about it. "I - I mean.. uh...pass the steak sauce." he wilted verbally, even while his eyes shot flames. "Sure, Gage. No problem. Here you go.." said Chet straight faced, "And here's some extra napkins, too, pal." he added with a smirk, ducking around Cap's larger shoulder. Johnny all but shredded them out of Chet's hand. |
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Cap tuned out the reaction, having gotten the quieter conversation he demanded while he ended starvation. Marco ladled out some green beans for Gage. "Here, Johnny. Have my portion of these. At least, they're fiberous. I like potatoes better anyway." "So do I..." hissed Gage from the corner of his mouth. Then softer, "Thanks." "I'll get even with him later." "There might not be a later if you get blocked up on that whole shitake." Roy said. "Cut it up already." "Why don't you just mind y--" Gage immediately piped and his hands flew to his throat. Cap's head snapped up. "Gaagggee, are you choking on me?" he growled. "What part of 'no still alarms' at the lunch table don't you understand?!" Roy smacked Johnny's back over his lungs with a firm whack that cleared him out violently and the offending fungus sailed clear over the table and across the room. Henry's beefy head shot up from the couch and intercepted it in midair gleefully as a token handout. "... I..got..the..hint..clearly, ..Cap..." Johnny rasped hoarsely as he coughed to find his wind again. "I'm..*cough* fine.." he peeped, downing the last of his water. "Good, now shut up and eat." Hank said, tucking his napkin neatly at the collar so he wouldn't soil it with sour cream. Chet snorted. "Aw, Roy. Why'd have to go and save him for? If Gage kicked off, there would have been more food for the rest of us guys." "You got plenty enough already." Johnny said, feeling his neck for damage. Hank instantly dished out discipline. "Kelly, you just lost your part of the apple pie to Gage here for wisemouthing." "Aw, Cap..I--" "Doyouwantafullmopassignmentwithnolunchinexactlytwoseconds?" Hank gushed lightly with some dangerous speed. Kelly's face flushed bright red just a little bit faster than his lips as they clicked shut. Gage grinned. "Cap..." he said with admiration. "You gotta teach me that dressing down wither real soon. If I'm gonna be making Cap when you get promoted to the chief's spot, I'd better be ready to handle these turk--" "Who said I'm leaving the department?" Hank asked matter of factly, letting his knife sharp glare at Chet fall away. The gang moused down. Roy broke the pregnant pause. "Well, Cap. It's not exactly a secret that you've been studying from manuals none of us have ever seen before." "You know about that?" Cap asked sheepishly. "Yes.." said absolutely everyone. |
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"What gave me away?" Marco lifted his head from blowing on his too hot cup of coffee. "We can't sleep somedays without hearing your snoring, Cap." Lopez shrugged. "On those days, we usually wake up and find that you've gone into the office." It was Cap's turn to blush. "I do not snore." Henry, from the couch, barked in betraying negation. Hank lowered his eyebrows, "Oh... I do. Uh, ok. Geez you two.." he said pinning a stare at Roy and Johnny accusingly. "You're both paramedics. Why don't you ever flip me over or something to stop me from doing it?" "We're usually too tired to, Cap." sighed Johnny. "Putting pillows over our heads is far easier than braving the chill in our underwear just to get up to correct your noisy airway." "Huh.." grunted Chet. "Don't they have nose tape nowadays for dealing with that kind of thing?" he said, scraping his plate clean of the last of the mushroom gravy with a soup spoon. "Well, why didn't any of you tell me that I had a problem at night?" Hank asked. "It wasn't erotic dreams mumbling or anything to tease you about. So why bother?" Kelly said. "I do not have erotic dreams." Henry wailed one out again, this time, two times louder. |
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The rest of the gang stayed politely silent, giving their entire attentions to clearing their divested plates from the table. Only Roy met his eyes sympathetically. "We're all men, Cap." And then he got up to help wash the dishes. "It's no biggie." "Oh, yes it is." said Chet sotto voce. But no one heard him. Gage laid out the still warm apple pie with a flourish with a pair of red checkered pot holders and started cutting it into six pieces. Then he checked himself. "Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to cut only five pieces now outta this." he said straight faced. Chet sighed. "Ok, Gage. Touche. Now let's talk about our little becoming the-new-cap-of-51's-competition in earnest, shall we?" Roy winced in embarrassment for Stanley out loud. "Guys, he's not going anywhere yet. The tests are still a week away for just the preliminaries of battalion chief consideration." Chet wiped his mouth and reached over for Marco's coffee pot. "Well, you know what younger pushier male lions do whenever the dominant one in the pride shows even the slightest hint of aging." "Uh oh." Stoker trickled. "I beg your pardon." Cap scoffed in surprise. Chet eyes got big when he realized that his mouth had led him astray once again. He immediately grovelled. "Well, I uh, I..uh. Cap, I didn't mean it quite ...the way things sounded.. I was speaking figuratively... hehehe, of course..." and he sank deeply down into his chair. "Front and center.. Right now." Cap said, getting up in stiff anger, stabbing his butter knife very near Chet's vulnerable spread fingers. "Marco. Go grab both of our Manikin Andys. ASAP." Kelly yelped and tucked them into his lap. "Oh..boy. Cap..what're you gonna do with me?" he peeped. Hank's eyes narrowed and the guys couldn't tell if he was actually being serious...or not. "You wanna challenge me for my job?" he said, not using his greater height to press into his much smaller man, at all. "Uh, no, Cap. Uh, that's not how it's done I thought. I thought that HR had to--" "Directly?!" Hank roared quietly. "Ok... you're on. Let's do it." Chet's eyes got real big in real fear. "Let's ...do...what?" "On the floor. On your knees. Right now." he said cracking his knuckles meaningfully. "Cap. You don't mean to do that..." Stoker said, catching on instantly. "Oh yes I do.." chorused Cap, taking the place opposite Chet in a like position. "Marco lay them out right here." he said smacking the ground. |
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Lopez grunted with the heavy weight of the two manikins locked against his chest with laced fingers. He dropped them and they fell on Kelly. Chet flailed a bit until he got them off. "What's the meaning of this?" Roy and Johnny started grinning and they began to help turn the Andys until both dummies were lying parallel to each other on their backs. "I had to go through it when I got engineer, Chet." said Mike Stoker. "Had to go through with what?" Kelly said suspiciously. Hank cracked his knuckles again and said. "You got three seconds, Chet. You wanna play games? Fine. Go longer than me and I'll help you study for the captain's test even before I get my promotion paperwork in order." "Uh,,. I don't understand.." Kelly murmured, feeling his knees press into the hard floor. Henry thumped down from his cushion sympathetically and came over to lick Chet's face. Hank met Chet's eyes and held them. Then he gestured. "Your man right there is in full arrest." Cap said, poking Chet's Andy in the chest. "This guy's mine. He's got the same problem and the squad's ETA is ten minutes. You have no gear whatsoever to work him past your bare fingers. Got it now?" Chet squeaked. "Uh,, this is a CPR exercise scenario?" "You bet your a**." Cap said no nonsense. "Gage give us ten seconds so we both can start in fairly. Chet, you wanted to test yourself against me saying I'm the weaker one? You're on." And he ripped his manikin's snapped shirt open. "This exercise will include all the necessary rescue breathing, too." Hank glowered. Then he nodded at Johnny. "An inadequate chest rise will count as a failure. So will mis-counting or missing any compressions." "10...." Johnny began. Chet blithered. "Cap, should we be tiring ourselves out like this?" "9..." said Roy, too, joining in with Gage. Kelly went on, "I mean, what if we get a huge fire call to go on? Neither one of us will be in any shape to even pick up an empty hose.." "8...7...6... ! " chimed the rest of the guys. "Are you saying that you're too out of shape to handle your firefighter's position, Chet? Hmm, this might put a different light on things entirely. Nothing that a tiny board of inquiry can't investigate in more detail.." Chet gulped. "...3....2.." "Don't miss your mark.." Hank hissed. " 1..! Go!" hollered the gang, getting into things big time. Kelly sweated and bent down to listen in a breathing check. Henry bent down, too, with all his bad breath glory. "Eeoow. Henry, ya big bum.. Get outta my face!" Henry just wagged his tail a little harder. Chet forced himself to begin his mouth to mouth, under duress, miserably, and with high fear of falling behind Cap's own dummy CPR. Chet was feeling for a "pulse" when Henry laid down contentedly right on top of Chet's manikin's lower stomach. "Cap.. look what he's--" "Consider him a piece of fallen debris, Kelly. Work around it!" he said, groping his Andy's neck for the required ten seconds monitoring. Kelly whined. "He's gonna make chest rise harder for me." "Too bad.." Gage whispered. "Pretend it's a developing pneumothorax.." and he started laughing to beat the band. Compressions began in earnest at 100 a minute and both firemen worked in perfect concert to each other. Five long minutes passed under the din of the gang's cheering and enthusiastic egging. Then Cap issued a comment. "Just like arm wrestling contests, eh, Chet?" he said giving his Andy a full set of breaths. "How are your butt cheeks faring right now, hmm? Are they burning yet? If they are, that means you're really FAR outta shape, pal.." he mocked. ::Oh sh*t..:: Chet thought as he felt a bead of sweat splatter off his face to land right in the most inconvenient place in the world. Right on Andy's rubber sternum where it posed a slipping danger. Kelly wiped it off with a calf during his next breath cycle. ::Why did I open my big fat mouth?:: he gasped, beginning to feel another kind of burn from lack of air deep in his lungs. The CPR war went on.. And on.. until.. |
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************************************************** From: Jeff Seltun <finiterider@yahoo.com> Date: Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:07 am Subject: "Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat." Henry suddenly looked up with his ears perking back towards the station house. He barked three times in a new urgency that was very different from the kind of excitement that he had shown during the CPR contest. "Visitor's doorbell." Mike Stoker said. Cap broke off immediately and got to his feet."Which one?" "The front office's entrance by the street. He's looking that way." "I'll get it." said Roy and he jogged off with Henry trucking alongside of him with a firm doggy determination. "We'll go, too." said Marco about himself and Stoker. They disappeared after Roy. "I don't know about you, but I got thirsty just watching you two. What do you say I pour a pair of tall ice teas with lemon for the both of ya." Gage said. "I'll leave them on the kitchen table after I check out what the buzzer's all about." and he ran off after the others. Chet covered his true out of breath state by laughing. "Henry's better than L.A. for intercepting incoming traffic, don't you think, Cap?" he said, not getting up from where he was kneeling on the ground. He was practically folding over his middle in an effort to loosen cramps. Ruefully, Cap offered him a hand up. "Come on. Let's see go what the problem is along with the rest of them." Kelly allowed himself to be pulled off the ground. "Thanks.. *gasp*.. Why aren't you puffing yet, Cap? You were pulling mean sets there same as me." "I'm a good faker, Chet." Hank said, finally gaping his mouth to suck in all the air he could get in a few cleansing breaths. "Here's.....*gasp*.. some advice for .....you. A good captain never lets his men see the full extent of ........how tired he is after doing something having anything to do with the business." "But, Cap, you're letting me see it." |
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"That's because I like ya, Chet. You don't give ground under pressure, in spite of how you might act outwardly." he grinned. He looked behind him and started walking as fast as he could for the bay. "It's too quiet over there for just some casual housecall. My sixth sense is starting to fire off big time here." "Mine is, too." said Chet, following, rubbing away the goose bumps dotting his breeze chilling skin. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roy started running for the window framed entryway next to the garage door when he heard a constant car horn blowing. It cut off alarmingly. DeSoto got there just in time to see a frantic woman pounding on the glass. "Please... Please! Help us.." she cried when he jerked the door open and propped it to stay that way with a loose brick from the flower bed. "What's the problem, ma'am?" "It's my husband." she said, trying to calm herself down in his steadying grip. "He's having some bad chest pain. I - I was driving him to the doctor's office when he began throwing up and sweating. It's not the indigestion he says it is.." she told him. "Cap!.." DeSoto shouted. "There's a medical situation out here. One victim!" Gage skidded on the floor after punching open the main doors. "I'll pull the squad forward into the drive out until it's out by you, Roy. Is he conscious?" Roy looked over the woman's head and saw a fifty something year old man sitting in the passenger seat with a worried look on his face. " Yes!" he shouted to Johnny.Then he focused his attention back on his panicking visitor. "Ok...It's all right. Why don't you have a seat on this stone bench right here by the flag pole." She was almost beyond listening as she let herself be guided to sit. "I had to do something fast. I knew I couldn't wait to reach the doctor's office even though it's only three minutes away.." "Ma'am, you did the right thing by stopping when you did. We can take care of him right now." Roy said soothingly with a calming smile. In the background, he could hear Cap in the communications alcove calling out a still alarm. "I figured that you, over anyone else nearby, probably could. My mother told me that you guys have specialized doctor training or something similar to that." The woman startled when Henry interceded his wet nose under her hand for a pet. "Yes, ma'am, I'm one of those trained as a rescue paramedic with the department. I'm gonna go have a look at him right now, ok? Good ol' Henry here will keep ya company along with Fireman Lopez, all right?" DeSoto said, seeing Marco taking a seat next to her. She nodded quickly, her tears just beginning to come. Roy pulled open the passenger car door and knelt in front of the man. "How are you doing, sir?" He saw that the man was ashen and drenched in a cold sweat in spite of the heat of the afternoon. "Not... so hot, fireman. I've.. had this.." he winced in a spasm that made Roy reach out to open his collar and undo the man's belt for breathing ease. "..pain for about forty five minutes." "What does it feel like?" Roy asked, glancing over as Johnny swiftly parked the squad parallel with the car with its lights turned on so the ambulance would be able to spot them better from the road. He heard Chet Kelly and Captain Stanley begin to break out a full array of gear onto the pavement next to him. Bending down, Roy set the emergency brake on the manual stick driven car for added safety. |
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Mike Stoker opened the driver's side of the car and crawled in with the resuscitator case. He unlatched it and got a nonrebreather mask going for Roy to use as soon as he had his initial impression. "It's bad.. Crushing me.. Right under the breastbone." "Does it radiate anywhere else? Mike, go ahead and put him on that. 15 liters." "No." replied the distressed man. "I've had these chest pains before. The docs at Rampart performed one of them angioplastys on me nine months ago.....I don't understand it. Why am I having problems now? They tell me I had a very easy rehab." "I don't know the answer to that question, but a doctor soon will. We'll hook you up to a monitor and let him take a look at what your heart's doing to figure out why you're in so much pain now. Just breathe deep and regular. This oxygen will help you feel a little better." Roy took the slumped man's pulse at the wrist and found that it was very slow. "Johnny. I've got severe bradycardia. His shirt's saturated but he's got no jugular distention or any difficulty breathing." he said, opening the man's shirt. "I'll tell him.." Gage said, holding up the phone receiver from the biocom. "I've got Brackett on the line." The husband tried to relax his clenching fists. "The....only other problem I had was some high cholesterol. The day I heard that test result, I started eating that Promise margarine right away." he chuckled. "But I've never felt pain like this before. It's a ten outta ten, mac.." He stiffened in another surge, gripping his chest with both hands. "I was ....dragging the garbage cans out to the street when all of this came on.." he said through his oxygen mask. He didn't even notice Stoker climb into the back seat to keep tabs on his carotid around the headrest. Cap got busy pulling the leads out of the Tetronix case. He tried to apply the electrodes using the manual pads but they wouldn't stick to the man's chest. He ran to go get a rag from the mop closet to dry off his skin. "Johnny.. Hand me a benzene swab so I can dry him off a little faster here until Cap gets back." DeSoto said reaching behind himself with a look for the foil package. A groan from the man under his other hand drew back his attention. The sick husband's body had arched up into an active shudder. Suddenly, he fell limp and became breathless. Stoker cried, "I'm getting no carotid, Roy." Together, he and Mike pulled the man out of the car and laid him out gently on the driveway, in a patch of full sunlight, on his back. Cap shadowed them with the oxygen equipment he had snatched from the car seat. |
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"Alphonse!" said the wife as she tried to get up. Marco grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and prevented it. "Easy.. let's keep giving them room to work. They're going to do everything they possibly can for him, ma'am." "Cap. Let's skip these." DeSoto said about the manual pads. "Let's use the combination ones from the monitor." He quickly intercepted the clump of stickers and wires that Johnny had already pulled out of the EKG pouch. "Mike?" "I got him.." said Stoker as he began CPR. Chet Kelly started active ventilations using the heavy, black rubber demand valve after he had pulled the other clear oxygen mask off. "Rampart.. Our M.I.'s gone into full arrest..." Roy heard Johnny say behind him. DeSoto sighed when the pads proved to be gummy enough to stick to the husband's clammy skin with good contact points on all three leads. He accepted passive paddles from Stanley who had tackled the defibrillator setup after being shooed away. "Ok, Stoker, Chet. Hold off for five seconds and let me scope him. Turn the screen so Johnny can see it, too." Roy told them as he laid uncharged paddles on the man's dripping ribcage. "Yeah," Johnny agreed while still on the phone line. "Rampart, this will be lead II." Gage leaned forward from where he was writing down doctor's orders and he got his EKG interpretation faster than Roy could tell him about it. "We have a confirmed ventricular fibrillation. I'm sending you a strip now." he said turning a dial on the biophone's communications panel. ##Defibrillate, 51.## ordered Brackett over the phone receiver, loud enough for the rest of the firemen to hear. Hank hit the orange charge button and called out the rising wattage. "One, two... three,..four hundred watt seconds." Roy yelled out, "Clear!" and shocked the man firmly. The erratic bouncing line jolted in a snarled peak but then fell ominously level again. "Nothing. Continue CPR." he ordered. Stoker and Kelly immediately started in again with their care. "Charge it again, Hank." DeSoto whispered hoarsely as he regelled the paddles himself by using some teeth to re-unscrew the lubricant tube's cap. "Make sure his EKG wires aren't touching the car. Henry's sniffing around in there." "They're not....Henry, get out of there.." Cap hissed at the dog tail he could see waving through the window next to his ear. The basset hound dutifully returned back to Marco and sat down uneasily by the wife's side. His instincts were telling him to guard the fallen man. Captain Stanley got his final number. "Ok, 400.." Roy got his clearance and delivered a second shock. The dying rhythm rose up at the energy jolt but otherwise didn't respond as he was desperately hoping that it would. He could still see V-fib on the monitor. "Going for a third, Johnny. He's still in V-fib." he announced in a update without turning around to look at Gage. "It's quickly becoming a fine one." Hank sighed as he held the I.V. bag that Johnny was swiftly setting up. ::Fine V-fib? With that, he's nearly asystole with hardly any cardiac activity. That's always real bad.:: Cap thought as he spared the wife a sympathetic look. He could see Lopez offering her an accepted comforting hug. Kelly anticipated Johnny, and in between breath to compression pauses, he switched out the positive pressure valve for a gentler transparent green latex ambu bag. He pointed to the array of wrapped endotrach tubes in the case with an elbow and Gage answered his unspoken question. "He's an eight French." Chet read a label and got out the proper one and unpapered it, laying a laryngoscope along with the airway onto the man's stomach where Johnny would have easy reach of them when he was set on his medication syringes. Hank helped prime the I.V. tubing while Roy grabbed a tourniquet, tape and alcohol prep to start the man up with his fluid access point. Gage set down the phone. "All right. Roy's ready to intubate him, Mike. Brackett wants an ET as soon as we get him on a long spine board. Kelly, we'll lift at the end of the next CPR cycle. Just slide that underneath him. Cap's got it in his hands. We're gonna need it for his transfer to the gurney later." Johnny told them. "I'm waiting.." said Chet, never slowing on his squeezed ventilations. "So am I." replied Stoker, keeping his compressions even. At the end of a fifteen set and two breaths, all the firemen lifted the husband rapidly by his clothes until the longboard squared him. Then the core of the medical work began. Cap raised the head of the board up onto the splints box just enough so DeSoto would have a way to drop the man's head back for his intubation attempt. Roy used Cap's abandoned closet rag to wipe away a splash of vomit left behind after suctioning. The he quickly tubed the man using the strong early evening sun that was still lighting up the top of the man's head. "How's that?" he said, folding up the laryngoscope and tossing it into the case next to him. Johnny left Cap holding the I.V. bag and an array of sheathed syringes while he checked for equal lung sounds. "Pull it up a bit, Roy. The left's muffled. Chet go easier for a few breaths until we're sure of his placement." he said to Kelly, glancing up from where he crouched low using his stethoscope. DeSoto jostled the ET out an inch, not getting into Chet's way where he was bagging and applying cricoid pressure. "How about now?" Gage paused, moving the drum around Stoker's stationary laced fingers as he listened. "Ok, he's equal bilaterally. No sounds over the stomach." Mike continued his CPR at a nod from Gage. "That's placed at twenty two centimeters.." Roy said for Johnny's notes. "Got it." he replied. After writing, Johnny took back the I.V bag and medications from Hank. Roy secured the man's airway with an ET holder and bite block. A minute later he asked. "Cap, found a vein site yet?" "No. He's flat everywhere on both arms and legs." replied Stanley. He had cut away the man's pants legs and sleeves with Roy's shears looking for possible sites. "Ok, we'll go ET for his epi loads." DeSoto decided. "Yep. Brackett wanted those first. Here." said Johnny passing off two epinephrine 1:10,000 doses that he had cap popped, air squirted and screwed together a few minutes earlier. Roy grabbed them both. "Ok, Stoker. Stop CPR. Chet, go ahead and pull off the ambu for a second." Then he injected both syringes down the airway through its mouth port. "Give him three breaths now. Make sure they're deep." Kelly did so. "Ok, Stoker. Start up again." Chet said when he was through. CPR resumed to begin circulating the stimulant. Roy shook his head at the monitor. The V-fib still hadn't coarsened for them. "Ok, I'm shocking again." and he hit the charge button on the defibrillator until its whine built up to the top level. He delivered the charge, but afterwards, the fine ventricular fibrillation returned to plague him horribly. ::Not another death so soon. Please...:: he wished mentally. Then his knee bumped the man's head as he was setting down the paddles. He let out a grunt of discovery. "Oh, would you look at that." It was one of the nicest jugular veins he had ever seen. "Johnny, I got one." "It's about time.." Johnny murmured as he wrote down another order from Brackett. "I was beginning to wonder if we'd lost our touch." he grinned. Then he set about getting a new course of medications prepared. Roy swiftly inserted a sixteen gauge catheter in the man's neck and attached the tubing. He dialed up a wide open to see what would happen. He got a rapid flow of fluid with no swelling or infiltration to the site. He quickly secured it with tape and turned the rate down to TKO. He barely noticed Johnny delivering Brackett's one amp of sodium bicarb right behind his taping. He was pure thinking instead. "Does he want Lidocaine or the new one?" "The Amiodarone. 300 mgs I.V. push." Gage replied. Roy pulled two vials of 150 mgs and snapped the tops off their glass ampules, drawing both into a syringe. He stopped himself when he remembered that the anti-arrythmic had a tendency to foam on pressure without a saline bolus. He calmed it down with 10 cc's from the I.V. bag Cap was holding up for him. Then he filled his mix the rest of the way into his injection syringe. The foam disappeared. A glance told him that V-fib still existed on the monitor around the CPR waves. He injected all of the cardiac stabilizer and ran in fluid wide open to complete its delivery. |
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They all started gaping in disbelief when the fine V-fib started to grow into a very coarse pattern. "There's our window. Defibrillate him again." said Johnny. Post shock, the V-fib remained coarse. "Ok, it's been four minutes." he said, popping the caps off another Epi 1:10,000 and twisting them together. He shot the stream into the air before giving it into another port on the I.V. tubing. The man was shocked again with the same result on CPR. "Let's go with what works." Roy muttered, cracking open another ampule of Amiodarone. He glanced at his watch. "Here's his second shot. The time of his half dose, at 150, is 17:03." he reported to Johnny as he pushed it into the I.V.'s med port followed by a saline flush. Cap looked up at Henry's bark. "The Mayfair's here." A minute later, a siren began to build from the distance, coming fast from the east. The next shock showed a change from V-fib to a more normal looking sinus type rhythm. Chet checked for a pulse, but found none. "It's not there yet." he said. "Resume CPR." DeSoto said, looking up, leaving the I.V. set at a wide open rate to encourage all the medication. "We'll ready him for transport." "Four minutes since the last epi." offered Hank, looking at his watch. Roy gave the man another loading dose of epinephrine to keep up the required stimulant intervals that Brackett liked his paramedics to use. Captain Stanley planned out their next move. "Chet, Mike, stay with DeSoto. We'll follow along in the engine in case he crashes again. You'll need a CPR switch off with us if that happens. Stoker, you ok for now?" "Yeah, I'm fine. Guess I'm used to long CPRs now." Mike replied. "No thanks to you." he teased under his breath so only Cap and Chet would hear him. Then he winked at them both. The husband was carted off without a break in his CPR to the waiting ambulance. Once he was situated and locked down, Roy rechecked the tube's placement. It was still secure with good breath sounds. Marco quickly got the wife into the Mayfair's passenger seat. The ambulance attendant took over Chet's cricoid pressure hold to prevent the man from stomaching his oxygen. Johnny remained on the side bench getting another dose of epi and bicarb set and ready for Kel's next move. The Mayfair took off for the hospital Code Three. In transit, Roy was all business. Hopefully, he checked for a carotid. And found one. "Hold off, Mike. I think he's got a pulse of his own now." Stoker stopped while Kelly kept bagging. Roy nodded again, smiling happily at the neck pulse bounding under his fingers. "It's there." |
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Johnny looked at the monitor. "He's in the nineties. All right.." he celebrated. He followed up with a blood pressure check. "98/48." He snatched up a smaller 250 ml bag of normal saline and added 250 mgs more of Amiodarone with a microdrip set. He piggybacked it into the main I.V. line. He left it at a rate of 60 gtt to keep up the perfusable rhythm with 1mg of the medication a minute for some patch maintenance. The tweeking brought better results. Roy checked and got a second BP reading. "108/50. He's on a definite recovering curve." All four of them looked at the EKG. It was showing a very good normal sinus rhythm. Seconds after, the man started gasping with some chest rise through his unconsciousness. Chet shifted to assisting him with light vents on inspiration with his ambu. Johnny got back onto the biophone. "Rampart, vital signs are responding towards wakefulness with the rhythm you can see. Respirations are beginning. Our ETA is one minute." ##10-4, 51. We'll be waiting.## replied Kel. ##Nice job, fellas. Congratulations on a successful turn around. We have cardiac catheterization specialists standing by. Rampart Hospital, out.## ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next day, Roy and Johnny asked Brackett how their surprise visitor had fared. Kel replied. "A twelve lead indicated an acute inferior MI. We drew labs and did his second angioplasty, which revealed numerous blockages of the right circumflex artery. He went through a triple bypass last night. He should be fine once again after a bit more of extensive rehabilitation." "Wow, was he lucky." sighed Roy. "He sure was." Gage said, equally impressed. "I thought he was a goner for sure the way he crashed like that." "Well, it helped that his arrest was witnessed and that care was rendered immediately to rectify the situation." said Kel, beaming. "Kinda makes you smile knowing that you've got so many paramedics around these parts nowadays, doesn't it doc?" Gage asked Dr. Brackett. "Smile, Johnny? He gets positively effusive at everyone whenever he thinks about it." replied Dixie McCall, looking up from her chart. "It's a welcome change from his usual grumbling mood, let me tell you." |
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