Chips' Fun House ~ View topic

Has it picked up for you at all?
How do you like the work so far?

...other than the hot catheter action of course.

Once I started my ER rotations I was at least busier. Didn't really see any trauma(had a burn victim though), but it was busier. It's really fun, because you'll get the people that come in and are incredibly nice and they make up instantly for anyone who's been an ass to you that day so far. Like this one old lady we got Tuesday. I'm not sure why exactly she was admitted into the ER, but she had a really low blood count and needed....3 units of blood I think it was(so she might've passed out or something to get admitted because of the low blood count). So we tell her that we have to take her clothes off and get he into a gown and she said that we can't do that in front of this cute young man(meaning me). That made me smile, she was just really nice and fun to be around. That lady made the shift worthwhile after we got this person:

I was sitting in the nurse's station just hanging out waiting for something to happen when I hear what sounds like someone having trouble breathing, they're breathing pretty well it just sounds horrible; hacking and coughing and a little bit of screaming. So I give the other student with me(we were in the same class) a really weird look like 'what the hell is that?' kind of look. We follow the sound until it comes in front of us to see this lady come rushing by in a wheel chair with her hands at her neck in the sign of choking, and her tongue sticking out really far. So I give the other guy an 'oh s**t' look and we rush off after her into trauma room 3. We get in and they're putting her on the bed and we learn that she's choking on, get this, her gold teeth. The other student and I get some gloves on just in case stuff starts coming out, and she's dripping saliva all over her at this point because she has her tongue out as far as it can go(think of Jabba the hutt's tongue when he's being choked, yes, that was the only way I could think to describe it). So we tell her to lay back in the bed and she does, and then we tell the husband to leave so we can work on her and he starts to leave, when all of a sudden the lady tries to get up shouting, "NO! HE CAN'T LEAVE ME! DON'T LEAVE ME!" So well politely tell her to lay back and we tell the husband to leave again and he does and she doesn't fight that as much this time. So we try to put a pulse oximeter on her(it doesn't even hurt, all it does is go over the finger, and we even have the sticker kind not the clip kind(look here for more)) and she yells at us that we can't do that, so we gave up on it for then, and we tell her that we need her to take her hands off her neck so we can get her clothes off. Well she just yelled at us at the top of her voice that we couldn't do that to her, and we told her that she had to calm down so we could help her. Well she didn't calm down and just kept yelling, so we said, fine if you're going to yell like that just leave, you're obviously not that bad. So she did leave and we were left with one thought, "What a biatch."

Alright, so new semester, new skills. IV practice was today(the 4th of September), and I have awesome veins, apparently. You get the whole background story with this one Very Happy

Warning: The following post contains blood, needles, and more blood. So if you don't like any of those, you probably shouldn't read this.

So class today was interesting, to say the least. I'm an EMT student at a local community college, and today we(the Intermediate students) were practicing one of our new skills; IV therapy. Today was special, though, we weren't going to use any fake arms this time. Nope, it was time to practice sticking real people. My partner and I decide to be nice to each other and only use 20 gauge needles(we found a 14 gauge somewhere, and it's just scary). He finds a vein in my left arm(I have nice veins so you can't really miss), and sticks the needle in. He gets the flashback, puts it in a skosh more, and then inserts the Teflon catheter(for those who don't know, for IV's the metal needle that penetrates the skin doesn't stay in, it only provides access to the vein for the catheter). When he pulls out the needle, blood just starts pouring out. It drips down my arm and down my leg(from about 6 inches above my knee), and onto my nice gor-tex boot(love the stuff), and, thankfully, not on the floor. Good news is he got the vein, and drew blood from it into a vacutainer, and I got him first try(he didn't bleed as much though).

This(fresh, nice, dark, rich, blood):

And this:

And this(this was after cleaning it a little with some water and a little hydrogen peroxide):

All from a hole this big:

All in all, a fun time. Anyone else have a fun time with IV's, or getting blood drawn?

your house is a mess and that lamp is crooked

Also -- were the needles you were practicing on each other with actually attached to a bag with anything in it?

Hehe, your pants look like all of my pants now. Gives them character.

So when you're done with all your training, do they give you some concs, a shotgun, and a medkit?

*Last edited by Demasu on Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:27 pm; edited 1 time in total*

Dude, you're into hockey???!!!!!!!!

Nope, but I found this video, along with the story of how he lived, to be a good reason as to why medics have to think fast. Warning, this video could very well be very disturbing to most people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXO0xsYsSoU