catchup post, thursday night

• Male, not communicating. Really, he wasn't talking, moving - nothing. Physically healthy, but had a history of mental health problems. His mother was distressed, understandably. Not much we could do at scene, so transport to hospital for further psychiatric evaluation. Weird, strange, I felt like a sausage talking to him at home. But I gave him all I could, and I hope he could hear and understand me, and I hope I came across in a good manner.
• Hyperglycaemic patient (high blood sugar). Again, physically fine, but felt thirsty. This is a good sign of high sugar - it makes you sweat, which makes you thirsty, which makes you drink a lot, which makes you wee a lot. Also, the sugar is high in you blood, but not in the rest of your body (it can't reach there). So you eat a lot. In medical terms: Polydipsia, Polyurea & Polyphagia. Another cool bit of info: Back in ancient greece doctors could tell the difference between diabetes insipidus and diabetes mellitus by...tasting the patients urine. You see, all diabetes is, is a pateint excreting a lot of urine. Insipidus is due to the body having hormonal problems, which lead to increased urine excretion - you are born with this. Mellitus is the body either being resistant to insulin (type II - 99% of the time older onset) or not producing insulin itself (type I - an autoimmune disease, the body destroys its own pancreatic cells, you have this from birth). Anyway, I digress. We took our patient to hospital.
• RFDS transfer, liver problems.
• Patient deceased in Nursing Home (see seperate post above).
• Priority 1 to a cold. Patient very panicky. I managed to calm her down a little, but in the back of my mind the question lingered "you called 000 for a cold? Anyway, I hope my patient treatment did not suffer due to the fact that she had a cold and was panicky. It probably did suffer from lack of sleep though, this job was at 5 am.
• This time no priority 1 dispatch, but still a cold. Patient walked sheepishly to ambulance, as he didn't call us, his overly concerned neighbours did. Again, why they didn't take him to hospital himself if they were so concerened remains a mystery. I still treated him as a person, not  timewaster.

No sleep that night. Really tired. Slept like a log that day.

Damn abbreviations...

Nightshift Shiteshift.

Another night in the van. I didn't sleep too well during the day, and didn't get much sleep the night before - I was feeling a little hazy. We do a few calls. We clear from hospital after a job, and I start to write the date in the case sheet, ready for the next call; I put it in as if it were past midnight. I glance at my watch: 10pm. Bugger me. It feels like 3am.

An hour later later we get called to a patient, the screen reads: "HYPO, ALTERED CONS STATE".

I'm attending, and I mentally prepare for the job. Hypotension a.k.a. low blood pressure can lead to altered conscious states. Not enough blood in the brain, not enough oxygen, nutrients, sugar etc, it makes you go a bit funny. Could be anything.

We whizz along, emergency lights allowing us to treat red lights as give way signs, allowing us to swap the shown speed limit to a speed we're comfortable with. We arrive at the house, we pour out of the truck, grab our gear. In the hallway of the house sits our patient, husband holding her sitting upright. She is unresponsive.

I go blank.

Husband starts talking about insulin, diabetes, no food. In a smooth move PTSD colleague kicks in and takes over, grabbing the blood sugar testing kit, and hints me on grabbing the Glucagon. I clue in that this call has something to do with diabetes, not enough sugar in our patients blood. I desperately try to yank the picture of our screen in the van in to my memory. Why didn't it tell me the patient has a problem with her diabetes? Did I not read that bit? Curse you calltaker, you robbed me of my preparation. This is getting my brain tied up in knots. Not good.

After a couple of minutes, we get out patient sorted, we take her to hospital for observation as she is feeling pretty nauseous.

After we deliver the patient, do the handover to the triage nurse, clean and restock the ambulance, I take a good look at our van screen, and read again: "HYPO, ALTERED CONS STATE".

Oh, that probably stands for Hypoglycaemia, not Hypotension.

A lesson lived is a lesson learnt. Don't think I'll get that muddled up again.