How about a Believe it or Not stories!!

[blowry]

Originally Posted by Tink

Awwwwwwwwwwww poor chickie!

When I was working on the ambulance service, things were still done the old fashioned way. We were on-call from our homes and rushed to the ambulance as needed. When we did CPR it was mouth to mouth without masks or appliances of any kind. More often than not, when you do CPR, the patient ends up losing the contents of their stomach from the strenuous chest compressions; so the person doing the respirations ended up getting a taste of their last meal.

On one occassion I was called and told since the patient was located between my house and the ambulance, I should go directly to the scene and the ambulance would meet me there. I beat the ambulance by several minutes, and found a lady whose family had dropped in for a visit and found her dead in bed. I pulled her onto the floor and started CPR with her family members standing over us wide eyed and frantic.

She'd obviously gotten up and had strawberries and cream for breakfast, then gone back to bed; probably because she didn't feel well. So there I was, doing CPR by myself when her breakfast decided to come back up directly into my mouth just as my partners came running in. The family members never even noticed as I spit out her breakfast and continued CPR while the other EMTs scooped her onto the stretcher and rolled her away.
When we got to the hospital, one of the nurses met me with a bottle of mouthwash, so obviously one of my partners had noticed. LOL
BLECH!

Believe it or Not!

EWWWW! Did she survive?

[Tink]

Sorry Janet, obviously I don't tell that story often. It just isn't good party conversation.

No Brenda, sadly she didn't.

[DianaB]

I can handle a lot of nasty things, but Tink, I couldn't do that!

[Forgivenmom5]

I admire you, Tink. That is TRUELY putting someone else before yourself.

[Gina]

Tink you are one special lady I will say. Not many including myself could do that

[Chandra Amaya]

I know alot of you have said you couldn't do it but when you are faced with the situation & know what you should do, you react first & think later. I think the hardest part of the medical field is holding someone's hand & being strong while they die. You do it without thinking but after they are gone & you have cleaned & prepared the body, that's when you lose it. I would go outside & cry everytime. I thought you would lose this as you got more used to it. I only did it for about 6 yrs but I never did. Every death still affected me that way. I'm sorry she didn't make it Tink. I hope you know you did everything you could & tried your best.

[Ponyup]

When my mom was little, 4 or 5 she was out playing in the play house (actually build out of wood not a plastic one) & stepped on a nail (she was wearing shoes). It went through the shoe, through her foot & out the top. My grandma heard her screaming & had to go pull her off the board. Believe it or not.

[Tink]

Right Traci!
The clinical training takes over and you just do it. There were many times I went home and fell apart after, but I never fell apart at the scene. What was reallly hard was that living in a rural area that I'd grown up in, I did know many of my patients or their families. The absolute hardest though was when a child would die. Those always hurt the most and longest.

[blowry]

Originally Posted by Ponyup

When my mom was little, 4 or 5 she was out playing in the play house (actually build out of wood not a plastic one) & stepped on a nail (she was wearing shoes). It went through the shoe, through her foot & out the top. My grandma heard her screaming & had to go pull her off the board. Believe it or not.

OUCH! I've done that before but, it didn't come through the other side. Hurt like heck though!