Medic Fuster Clucks
Cabbage Anyone?
By
Jun 14, 2004, 10:36

Courtesy the EMS House of DeFrance http://www.defrance.org

My partner and I got a call to a local fitness center one HOT July afternoon. Communications told us we had a male patient who had fallen off a tread mill and was unresponsive. Okay, no big deal. Guy's sugar probably bottomed. Anyway, when we arrived on scene, there was a woman holding the door for us and she said, "He's breathing like this" and imitates the "guppy" breathing.

Well, my curiosity began to rise. While my partner is gathering our equipment I go in to check it out. When I get to the spot where the pt is, there is a bystander doing chest compressions!! Great! I move the bystander aside and check ABC's. The pt is unresponsive, agonal resps, and a rapid pulse. I yell at my partner to hurry up cause we're going to have to tube the pt and all I hear from him is "sh#$".
By this time the fire dept is on scene with us. I hook the pt up to the LP12 and he has wide-complex tachycardia (hurray). I relayed this info to my partner who did the infamous double-take and proceeded to curse under his breath. While my partner takes care of cardioverting and all that good stuff, I try to establish an airway. Oh boy, that's when the fun started.

The pt was a hard tube and my first shot went into the stomach. A fire fighter began to bag the pt when I extubated and prepared for the next go-round. Well about that time the pt begins to vomit. And vomit, and vomit some more. Freshly eaten cabbage come rolling out of his mouth and there was no stopping it. It was one of those times when you wished that shop-vacs were in the formulary.

We decide it's time to hit the road and get the pt in the truck and one of the fire fighters goes around to drive. My partner steps in the truck first and proceeds to the pt's head to try to clear his airway. Keep in mind now that it is scorching hot outside and cabbage doesn't smell that great anyway. When my partner bends over to begin suctioning, he starts gagging uncontrollably. In between gags, he yells at me to take care of the airway cause he can't deal with it. So I step up into the truck and as I pass the pt's head, out comes a fresh river of some more cabbage! I now have cabbage on my leg from my thigh down to my boot. I can hardly see my pants through all of it. I proceed to attempting to secure an airway and yell at my partner (who was busy grabbing sheets to throw on the floor to cover the existing puke) to grab a towel and clean some of the vomit off my leg. By this time we are screaming down the highway towards the hospital.

When my partner turns around and sees the cabbage all over my leg, well that was his breaking point. The next thing I know, the back door of the truck is open and all I can see is his back and the highway. While I'm covered in puke and playing in puke, he was puking out of the truck. I saw the fire department's brush truck start swerving to miss the onslaught being issued by my partner. I had to drop what I was doing and take a moment to recover from laughing my a@# off. When we finally arrived at the hospital we told the doc we were not able to establish an airway and he took one look at the garden on puke that was covering me, the pt, and the stretcher and shook his head and said "I can see why".

Fortunately, the pt and my partner survived the ordeal. And I was finally able to see my boot again.

C.Taylor

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