Friday, July 31, 2009

PD gag

Sometimes to break the monotony, we mess with the cops a little. Not too long ago the rescue and ladder truck were dispatched to a heroin overdose, with of course PD. On this paticular call the officers assigned were both female.
The call was in fact another heroin overdose. The needle was still in our friends arm and he was unconscious. For those not in the know, heroin (opiate) depresses your body's desire to breathe. Our friend on the floor was breathing about 2-3 times a minute. The magic cure that our friend needed is a drug called Narcan. It blocks the opiate receptors negating the opiate's effect and restoring the drug addict's desire to breathe. Well one downside to ruining our friends high, if administered too fast, the narcan can cause projectile voliting.
So in this paticular apartment the 2 officers were standing in the living room and our friend was lying directly in the path to outside. The rest of the room was occupied by furniture and of course the big screen tv. Since all our equipment was opened and our friend was being attended to by several firefighters the police officers were blocked in this tiny living room.
As we are caring for our friend who is still unconscious after the first round of narcan, the medics begin a discussion concerning a possible repeat dose of narcan and the desire to avoid any projectile vomiting. As we are having this discussion we notice that female officer number one has turned away from us and is now facing a plant. Female officer number two explains that her partner is very sensative to vomit and also has the distinct honor of an over active gag reflex. Well that a whole bunch of info you do not want a bunch of smart ass firemen to have. So we start talking more about vomit: the smell, the consistancy, the recognizable food pieces, the sound it makes hitting tile etc. With no means of escape female officer number one is now gagging and dry heaving into the plant. When she turns around attempting to threaten us she is a palish green color , tears in her eyes and she is unable to speak without gagging more. We are laughing so hard half of us now have tears in our eyes. So now everytime we see female officer number one, no matter the scene, we make a few gagging noises just to watch the color drain from her face.
And yes we were still bagging our pt and administering enough narcan to save our friend from himself one more time.

3 comments:

  1. I LOVE IT! Best thing I've ever done to mess with the cops is sneak into an officer's car while on a Fire-scene in the middle of the dead freezing winter and turn his heater off and onto full blasting A/C pulling the near 15 degree cold air into his car for over an hour before he got to step back in. His face was priceless! Lucky for us, Firefighters and Medics stick together.

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  2. Poor gal, I wonder how many times she'll gag and puke during her career. . .

    I had no idea there was this kind of messing around going on between cops and medics/firefighters. And I love how you were doing this all while administering to the patient.

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