Friday, July 11, 2008

Heart break

If you want to know about heart break try EMS in a small town tight knit community. Our EMS in the area was a Community Ambulance service that was made up of three towns in the west end of Sanders county MT, the Ambulance was housed in the center town and every one was a home responder.
We never ran shifts, we would respond to the scene and if you started patient care it was kind of understood that you saw it out to the hospital. It worked for us? The two nearest Hospitals were 45 miles away but due to road conditions and seasonal influences (SNOW) it took an Hour to travel them even at a code three response. One summer day we get a call for a sick person (unknown Medical). It was a person Mrs. Fyreman went to school with. Lana Was Short and Bubbly You couldn’t help but laugh when you were around her. She had a miserable ex-husband who would cause her all sorts of grief. We get on scene and Lana Is grey, bad grey, and she coded right there in front of us, Now remember we are small town=only BLS, and we didn’t even have a lifepak. Anyway Mrs. Fyreman starts Compressions and someone else was bagging her. The Ambulance gets there we load her and Mrs. Fyreman did compressions all the way to the hospital…
I have never seen someone lose the skin from the palms of there hands from doing compressions….. Until that day.

There wasn’t a dry eye at Lana’s funeral, the community loved her and the tiny rural cemetery was crowded, Its hard to know your patients well, its hard to know that if you don’t do it ….Who will?

Epi I loved your Post it was really good, it made me think of this tale and this song

7 comments:

USA_Admiral said...

May she rest in peace.

You have my Sympathies.

Epijunky said...

Oh Jesus Doug... You made me cry.

Go give your wife a hug for me. And thank you for sharing this with us.

Count said...

That's gotta be tough. Not something I could ever ever do. RIP to you friend

Fyremandoug said...

Thanks people

Fyremandoug said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Evil Transport Lady said...

Umm, that's my biggest fear, working on somebody I know. If I go into ems, I may pick another town to work in.

Anonymous said...

My sympathies...when I was still a paramedic I worked a head on collision one night where a drunk driver went the wrong way on the highway...the victim was so mutilated that until I managed to find ID in his wallet after we cut the body out of the car...I didn't recognize my cousin. Give Mrs. Fyreman a hug for me.