6.12.2004

¡Me duele en mí corazón!

The call was an injury at a restaurant the next jurisdiction over. I had been hearing the call on the radio for a bit before dispatch sent my unit. We were already out. Hotrod wanted to go out and pickup the 16 year old daughter of a friend of her to ride along for the night.

Approaching the restaurant, we see a man waving us around back. My immediate thought is that some manager doesn't want an ambulance in front of his restaurant. Bad for business, you know.

At the back door to the kitchen we see the patient. She's a kitchen worker in a chair looking a little woozy. A coworker advises me she passed out while working. I ask her a question and he translates into Spanish. I switch right over to Spanish myself. The coworker keeps translating even though I and the patient are conversing in Spanish. Whatever...

Seems she has a headache and chest pain that's radiating to her left arm. She's alert and oriented X3 and I ask her if she can walk to our ambulance. She can and does. Up into the box and onto the stretcher. Good, good. Hotrod hops in and starts taking BP while I get O2 on the patient, check her pulse and Oxygen saturation and ask her a bunch of questions. I love working with Hotrod! That and the patients are the only things I like about my firehouse. (more on that later)

31 y/o female had a cardiac event about 18 months before and the doctors in Mexico told her it was arrhythmia and a secondary blockage. They put her on some medications (she doesn't remember what) for her blood pressure and scheduled more tests. She took off to the US before they completed them. At that moment I figured she was receiving better care in the back of our ambulance that she did in the boonies of Chihuahua, Mexico.

All her vitals are normal, 110/80, Pulse: 64, O2 at 98% (before I started oxygen), color good, skin cool and dry, normal respiratory effort and both lungs sound clear but I hear NO abdominal sounds. Not a gurgle. Hmm...... Last oral intake? A cup of coffee (with cream) more than 6 hours ago. Hmmm..... Pain is 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 but lessening with the application of 25 Lpm of O2 via NRB.

All the hospitals are on Yellow, that means they have no available beds but they can take priority one patients (they have available cardiac monitors). Good enough for me! We get her a room and, again, the nurses are stunned at the information dump I give them. Ah, well. They also want me to stay since they don't have anyone on the floor who speaks Spanish. Good luck!

While we're there, we meet up with the assistant volunteer chief and another FF from the fire station in my town. They tease me about speaking a foreign language when I speak Spanish and again when I give my patient's history to the triage nurse in correct medical terms. Ha! I got the feeling that the assistant chief, who was ribbing me about speaking a "foreign language" when I was giving patient info, knew what I was talking about.

I'm thinking more and more about my home station and about my experiences at my current firehouse. hmm.....

--maddog


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