f13.net forums - Work WOWS!

Thanks Morat20, we allways hear about how much EMS, Fire, Police, Nurses, or Doc's are assholes, and never enough on our saves.

I have had a couple of times I've been brought back to tears of joy/weak kneed/"the OMG you fucking lived and are normal!"

A 12 year old girl and 24 year old male:

The girl was a bad Multiple Vehicle Crash, disaster protocol kicked in and worked great, it was like a 20+ car pile up on Interstate 70, and I was doing ride along for paramedic training (I was allready an ER RN and Advanced EMT, needed to get my paramedic, so was more or less doing the run, but had the paramedic there for guidance, was in the final stages so the runs were mine), and we pull up as the 2ND squad on scene. 2ND on a disaster gets the most critical and hauls ass to the hospital or air evac area depending on what we have coming. Our town isn't equipped with the Level I trauma centers (we only are level 3 and not certified) so we have to ship to the two Trauma centers in Indianapolis. Anyway, she was a 12 year old girl, who was in a Motor Vehicle Crash going about 70 mph, she was in the top of one of those campers and had been pinballed around the back and top of it. She was posturing out (looked like decerebrate), screaming unintelligibly, her face was hamburger, and I had Mom beside her. The medic who was over me said, "you got it?" I said, "Yep, allright lets do this, this, this, and this, and went into my head trauma mode." Her breathing was crap, she had a head injury, and facial trauma. We tried intubating her to keep her breathing in the field with RSI (rapid sequence intubation), but there was so much freaking blood in the air way that as soon as I would suction clear it was back to a blind intubation.
We tried in the ambulance while in route, mom was a rock, I told her everything going on and what and why she needed done, then as soon as we hit the hospital, I was telling doc we can't get her tubed and her airway is crap. The Respiratory Therapist said she couldn't', the ER doc made the call to do a Cricothyrotomy, I was still at the head and bagging and thinking, "holy fuck, it has gone from TARFU to FUBAR."
The ER Doc made the cut and blood blew up out of her neck. It was not like the others ones, he didn't cut bad or anything like that, it was from the head trauma we found out later, but as I'm keep bagging her and keeping and eye on her vitals, it takes the ER doc, plus 4 other surgeons to get the Cricothyrotomy done. We finish, keep her sedated, vitals are stable, the heli is here, we transfer her to Indy, in route the Flight crew had to give her lots of fluids and blood and some drugs to keep her stable (didn't get the full story but heard it was a freaking intense 30 min flight), she hit surgery and they found the bleeder in her neck and took care of it and was still in Neuro ICU the next day.
A year later, in comes this Mom and a healthy, beautiful, girl. She came in and her and her daughter thanked me and the rest of us for what we had done on that day. That was the best feeling ever.

The 24 year old male was involved in a bad single car accident at high speeds, had an obvious fracture of the right femur, a head injury, facial trauma, and possibly something in his abdomen or chest since he was an unrestrained driver who hit a tree at high speed. I was called in that morning, because the weather sucked and the heli wasn't flying, our local ambulance would take him to Indy, but that is a 70 min drive if you are lucky, and the guy was in bad shape but needed to get to Indy, they had him stabilized but had given him a couple of units of blood, so I knew he could crash in route again. They gave me two units of blood to infuse in route to Indy and I was to help transport with the Paramedic. Well I kept the Blood going as fast as I could, kept watching his pressures, and he would loose his pressure and then get a really fast heart rate, then we would loose him when he would go into V-Tach, we actually shocked him once to get his rhythm back, and had pushed all the blood, had a ton of fluid, there was freaking blood coming from his face and nose that we couldn't get stopped, the blood didn't look like it was coming from his ears, it looked more like the bandages were getting soaked threw on the head, and his abd was more rigid. We kept resuscitating him in the back of the ambulance with CPR and drugs, as we were working him I hear are driver cuss and look up to see a semi had nearly hit us, I was never so thankful to see Indy traffic, as that meant we were closer. We got him there, handed off, and they went to town. He hit surgery pretty quick, he had a spleen that ruptured, along with all the bleeding in the facial trauma, and the fractured femur, and he had a cervical fracture (not sure which one), the guy was lucky we got him there.
About 2 weeks later he came into the ambulance center and thanked us for getting him to Indy, he had on a halo traction device, but he was up and walking. That was another OMG you lived!

Those are some Work WOWS! I live for...