Friday, November 20, 2015

True Save

Our 6 am shift is off to a good start, it's a beautiful, clear summer morning and we successfully managed to get coffee before heading to our downtown base. I have not worked with my partner before, but he seems like a pleasant enough older guy, obviously counting down the days until retirement. Dispatch calls our truck number; "Code 4 at the gym, unconscious male." The address is right around the block from us, so we swing around and arrive within seconds. "Update: CPR in progress." We see a lone police cruiser parked haphazardly on the sidewalk and load up the stretcher with all of our bags before heading in. An idiot of a security guard leads us straight to the escalator, and I look at him, then at our fully loaded stretcher, "Do you have an elevator?" "Oh, yah, I guess we do. But he's right up there, can't you just balance it on the steps?" Fire arrives to hear this and we collectively shake our heads. My partner and I grab our bags and head up the escalator while a couple  of fire fighters volunteer to bring the stretcher up the elusive elevator.

We are ushered into a small workout room where a spin class was taking place, and see a relatively fit-looking man in his 60s lying on the floor with a police officer doing impeccable CPR, an untouched AED is sitting at his feet. "Keep going, officer, you're doing a great job!" I set down the equipment I'm carrying, avoiding the pool of blood under his head, and we get to work - although it is quickly obvious that my partner should be thinking about retiring sooner rather than later, he is incredibly slow and flustered with everything he is doing - and he's an Advanced Care Paramedic. I cut his shirt off, slap the pads on, set up the ventilation gear and take over CPR while my partner fumbles with the monitor, finally succeeding. The man is in textbook v-fib, a rhythm where the heart muscle quivers like a handful of worms, a lot of action but not coordinated enough to pump any blood. The first shock is delivered and a firefighter continues compressions while I gather patient information.

The spin class instructor tells me that he is in class 3-4 times a week and has never shown any difficulty, that he has always seemed quite fit for his age. Today, he simply stopped peddling and fell sideways off the bike, striking his head hard on the one next to him. That explains the blood, at least. I turn back to the patient just in time to see his hands come up, "Stop CPR!". As I reach for his pulse, I glance at the monitor and see that he is now in a relatively normal looking rhythm. Awesome! Now our priority changes, we no longer want to stay on scene and work him, we want to get him to the hospital quickly, and hopefully still alive. I ask dispatch to give the nearest hospital, which luckily happens to be the cardiac hospital, a heads up, since we are only 3-4 minutes down the road and they tend to want a bit of notice when getting critical patients.

We get him packaged quickly, needing to restrain his arms as he starts to flail around widely. He is still alive and fighting a few minutes later when we unload him at the hospital, his vital signs amazing for somebody who was just dead. We find out later that he walked out of the hospital, neurologically intact, several weeks later. The spin instructor who began CPR started the Chain of Survival, the police officer who took over continued it, although using, not just grabbing, the AED would have been a great idea. He was extremely lucky that we were pretty much driving by the gym when he collapsed, and that the cardiac hospital was super close. All in all, a true save.

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