To disgusting not to share
by

Ok....This ones too weird not to share. Yesterday we get tapped out for "woman down" in a residence. So, we go responding, me and my newbie partner arrive the same time as fire rescue, enter the residence, and we have a neighbor saying she has been over everyday trying to get our pt to eat or drink some water ( rather than the 1/2 gallon of gin she has been nursing ).

On the floor, in front of the couch is a skeletal 45 y/o woman laying supine, and naked in 3 days worth of urine and excrement. (yummy) At first glance, it looks like she has dark rings around her eyes and possibly some dried blood in the corners of her open mouth. My first thought is she is 1144, so I go over to her and see she is breathing shallow, so I give her a sternal rub and she begins to moan...... well the moan is what starts it all.

I suddenly realize those aren't dark circles around her eyes and mouth.......THEY'RE ANTS!!!!!....hundreds of them start scurrying around her face. Not much gets to me anymore, but that took me back for a second. I started brushing them off her face and neck but they were everywhere. I noticed there were small sores around her eyes and mouth where I guess they were biting her. So we brush most of them off and I ask fire for a NRBM and high flow O2 (everyone but me is standing like 10 feet away) They give me the mask, I strap it on, and apparently ants don't like oxygen because another 50 or so start pouring out of her nose and mouth and crawling on the inside of the mask ( talk about trying to keep focused ) I dump out the ants from the mask and get every body to just grab her and get her on the gurney and out of the house.

We get her in the ambulance and get some vitals...... B/P=60/40, pulse 60, resps12 and shallow...now that were in better light, I see she is yellow as a banana. She's so dried up that her skin will tent 1/2 inch above her hand and stay there. I try an oral airway to check for a gag reflex ( she still has one ) and of course she has no veins at all, cant even get an EJ to show up. I think about a nasal tubing her but what happens when you push 10 or 12 ants in to her lungs? ( by the way, ants are still coming out of her hair and starting to invade my ambulance) Decide to just stick with the mask and try for the IV enroute, 4 attempts...no flash at all, DAMN. Check the feet, pitting pedal edema. Of course sao2 won't read, I do a finger stick, comes back at 65, no line to do anything about it, probably doesn't have any glycogen stored up to even use glucagon. Finally arrive at the hospital with this train wreck, and the doc says " what do you want us to do with her? We just sent her home 4 days ago"

They flew her out 12 hours later with bad ascites, renal failure, and a pressure of 70/30. (Dopamine anybody?)

Sorry to burden you with that call, but I swear its true and I just had to get that off my chest

Graydog