Progress Report

Well, it seems like I'm more likely to stitch and blog from work, as odd as that is. I thought that I had posted last shift, but it turn out I didn't! Oh well, I wouldn't know what to do if I actually did half the stuff I thought I did. On the upside, I did get to stitch a lil last shift. Here's my current progress:

Today got to be a bit busy earlier. Just as we was getting ready to bring Minion for breakfast with a couple of the others, we got our first call. A 79 yof that had syncope x2 (in plain words, she passed out twice. That med term class was expensive, so I figure I may as well use what I still remember 😉). UOA, (upon our arrival) we found her sitting on the edge of the bed. She wasn't sure what had happened, but was able to answer all of my other questions. Turns out, she has been passing out a few times a year for the past 20 years or so and the Dr.s  haven't ever figured out what is causing it. We ended up taking her to one of the Big Town hospitals. She was a very nice lady and we had a nice chat. She does have some issues with her memory, so there was a few stories she couldn't quite  finish. When I saw that one of her meds was to treat memory loss/dementia, it made sense. Sadly, we was almost to the Big Town when church services started, so I wasn't able to go today.
 After we had been back for 10-15 min, we got another call. In a roughly 20 min time period, all of our trucks were out on calls.  My plan was to finish QAing reports and then eat lunch. I should've known better. Fortunately, Minion had just finished eating, so he was good to go. This call was for a 65 yo gentleman that fell at 01:30 this morning and wasn't found until a lil before noon when his family stopped by to check on him. He told us that he had drank 5-6 beers last night (his normal nightly amount) and that he must have done too much dancing. At least he still felt well enough to joke! His only complaint was L hip pain. Which was most definitely deformed. He was laying on his R side and as soon as I saw his L hip, I knew we were either going to a Big City or Big Town hospital. Thankfully, that was his only injury. His L leg was also shortened about 2" and his foot was externally rotated. Both are indications of a hip fracture or dislocation. Fortunately, pulse, motor, and sensory were all intact (basically a pulse in his foot was present, he could move his toes, and he could feel when we touched his foot). Sadly, with the way it looked, its probably broken. I've been wrong before though; hopefully it will just be dislocated. If so, it should be a quicker recovery time and he should be able to go back to work earlier than with a fracture. After we got him moved to the ambulance and pain meds on board, I was finally able to talk him into letting me cut his jeans so I could get a better look at the hip. It was a new pair of jeans, so he wasn't too thrilled, but he finally agreed when I pointed out that it would hurt less to cut them than to pull them off. I had waited until the pain meds kicked in before cutting them because the pressure helps support the hip and decrease the pain. We have to get a better look to see if bleeding, swelling, open fracture, etc. is present, which is why I had to cut his jeans instead of letting them continue to support that hip. We can always tie a sheet around a person's hips to accomplish the same thing. In his case, it was supported sufficiently w/o it; I honestly believe placing a sheet underneath him to bind it would have just caused more unnecessary pain. His hip was most definitely deformed. I'm just excited that he was wearing underwear! Its amazing how many people run around their house buck naked  or don't wear undergarments. They don't seem to understand that being naked and/or no underwear tends to result in something happening and me having to see more of them than I ever wanted to. So please wear underwear!!!!!!    *Side Note: Once on a different call, we had a young man that had obviously fractured his femur; his jeans looked like someone had crammed a basketball mid thigh from all of the swelling/internal bleeding. Fire cut the pant leg just as I was about to say, lets get pain meds on board and move him first. That poor guy screamed as soon as the firefighter started cutting. We did get him fixed up with a traction splint (when a femur is fractured, the leg muscles tense up. This causes increased pain and the bone ends then get jabbed into muscle, blood vessels, etc. The traction splint actually pulls the leg longer than it would normally go, to help decrease that horrid muscle spasm and the pain of the bone ends rubbing/jabbing stuff) and plenty of pain meds. I just wish we could have gotten him medicated first.  On the up side, we had a student that day, so it was a great learning experience for her. *End of side note.
  Well, I think I'm going to try to watch a movie and stitch. Minion and I are up for call now, so we'll see how long that lasts! 😊 I hope youns are having a wonderful Memorial weekend!