Schedule

So I've decided to set in stone a schedule to keep me posting here - as Jeff Atwood puts it, 'posting in obscurity' until I 'suck less'. I've been reading his blog for months now and am constantly amazed by the things he pulls out.

Anyway, back to this blog... The last post was a bit of a downer, so I thought I'd make sure the next one ended on a more positive note. That doesn't mean for every bad story there is a good one - only a few people call an Ambulance just to see the pretty lights.

This story is the favorite of Allen's, my CO in St John.

I was in the First Aid post at Vodafone Arena, another boring shift where not much was happening. Suddenly, a woman pops her head in the door and asks for aspirin. A little bell went off in my head - nobody asks for aspirin. Paracetamol, yes, but never aspirin. Flags went up in my mind and I ran through the standard routine;
'Is it for you?'
'No.'
'Who's it for?'
'My mother-in-law.'
'Why do you ask for aspirin in particular?'
'She's having some chest pain and I thought it would help.' She's right - if it's cardiac chest pain aspirin can help break up any clots that might be contributing to chest pain. But if that's the case, it's time to take a little trip to hospital. I give her the spiel about how technically we're handing over medication, so we have to be with and talking to the patient, but that I was more than happy to follow her back to wherever her mother-in-law was.

And off we went. On the way we made idle chatter, how long the pain had lasted, how was the weather, that sort of thing... Apparently the woman was a cardiac nurse, that was why she knew to ask for aspirin. We reach the mother-in-law, and after one look I'm at her side taking observations while requesting for a wheelchair and oxygen to be brought over along with an ambulance - her pulse was erratic and she was not looking good. Aspirin was not going to fix this. Wheeling her back to the FA post I was able to talk to her a bit more and get a more accurate history - double bypass, on blood pressure meds but had forgotten to take them today (the number of times I've heard that... but that's a rant on it's own for another day).

One last thing; she was allergic to aspirin.

It amazes me that a cardiac nurse had not noticed the condition she was in, and was ready to give her medication that quite possibly could have killed her - suffice to say she was very embarrassed and more than a little scared. We had an ambulance come in and drive them both off to hospital, not before confirming on a 6 lead ECG things weren't right in the ticker department. All things considered she would have made a full recovery after getting back on her meds, so this post teaches us three things;
1) Never trust the friends or family, no matter how well they 'know' the patient,
2) Don't forget to take important, life saving medication and
3) Even Cardiac Nurses can hope to be better at what they do ;)

Be safe.