PULSE Magazine | August 2019 Issue PE

Employee Recognition

JOB WELL DONE

Malone, Melody Hindman, Justin

I would like to express my thanks to my fellow rescue heroes for saving my friend’s life.

I am a volunteer EMT with Montgomery County Fire Rescue in Maryland and was in town this weekend for my bachelor party. While swimming in the pool at our Airbnb on Windsor I noticed my friend exit from the pool and look distressed. I asked him what was wrong and he advised he was losing his vision and was experiencing chest pain and began to fall to the ground.

I quickly rushed to his aid, first attempting to determine if he was faking it or not- you see- my friend is affectionately known as “Mad Dog,” and one of the toughest but sweetest friends/colleagues of mine and loves to joke and have a good time when he’s not on the job, so we all thought it was a joke at first. But when I quickly realized it wasn’t, I had my friend call 911 and ask for ALS for an adult male with chest pain. I immediately thought it was cardiac and had another friend who is in EMT class run for my BP cuff and some Aspirin...Mad Dog said he had gotten stung by a wasp approximately 20 minutes prior but denied any allergies and was not presenting with symptoms anaphylaxis. I had a weak radial pulse that was hard to get, his respirations were high but he denied trouble breathing and it was hard to get a BP.

Engine 2 was on scene within minutes- Medic 4 was on scene very shortly after. The engine crew was doing their primary assessment and was also considering allergic reaction but agreed that it might be cardiac and we should get him on the monitor and not administer epi immediately but they had it nearby. At this point he was tachycardic with a low sat but not of us knew his BP.

Paramedics Malone 2698 and Hindman 3025 quickly got Mad Dog into the unit, as I stood by waiting to see what had happened. Turns out his BP was 59/35 ! I was amazed at how hypotensive he was. Para- medic Malone quickly determined it was anaphylactoid and administered two rounds of epi and albuterol, quickly stabilizing Mark who trended upward during transport thanks to your crew. I am grateful for their swift assessment and intervention for our friend, who without knowledgeable and quick EMS intervention would have died. The care throughout the response, transport, and transfer of care from the ED was also impressive and we are also grateful for the quick triage from receiving nurses and doctors. As an EMS provider, I recognize a lot of the calls we run for the low priority sick person who doesn’t *need* EMS intervention can be frustrating. But then sometimes we get those calls that stick with us, where you go home knowing you made a difference. This was one of those. And a lot of times some of these higher priority saves don’t get the recognition they deserve, so I want to make sure that doesn’t happen this time around. I would like to commend your medics for their work yesterday, and sincerely thank them for doing their job with professionalism and saving our friend’s life.

Thank you for your service,

Noah G.

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