Ok, I know, it’s been quite sometime since I’ve sat here in front of my keyboard, I got nuthin. Actually, that may be partly to blame for my lack of posts the last few months. I’ve got a partial draft of one, so I have taken a shot or two, but I decided today was going to be the day to put something out on the interwebz, so lucky you!
To kind of ease myself back into this, I decided to take the bulk of this from a side project that is currently floundering. It’s one of my personal fave job-related anecdotes and I think a large portion of you, dear readers, will get a chuckle out of it too. So, without further ado, let’s get some!
One summer afternoon we were called to a local manufacturing company, a place that made printed circuit boards for electrical devices, for a patient complaining of a headache and nausea. We pulled in to the back parking lot, by the employee entrance and were met by not one, but a handful of employees, each with the same complaint for which we were initially dispatched. As we started assessing our patients, a steady stream (well, maybe a trickle) of employees continued out to our location. Each of the employees we talked to expressed a similar comment about an unusual smell inside the factory. We started passing out oxygen masks like a Pez dispenser, trying to alleviate the symptoms more quickly than the ambient air was allowing. We also requested a second ambulance to assist, since our patient total was rapidly exceeding our capability to treat them all effectively. As the patient number approached twenty, we requested a third ambulance and the Battalion Chief to the scene. The BC got on the radio and asked if we needed to pull an Ambulance Box (in our terminology, a “Box Alarm” is a call to neighboring FD’s for pre-determined resources, depending on the nature of the call; whether Fire, EMS, Special Rescue, etc.) and we told him we were pretty confident we could handle things with what we had requested. The ladder truck, dispatched along with us on the initial call, geared up and went inside to evacuate the remaining employees and assess for the cause of the odor. I think it was in between the arrival of the 2nd and 3rd ambulance that one of our patients (all of our patients were female and almost all of them were workers from the plant floor) had worked herself into a little bit of a frenzy, convinced in spite of our best efforts to calm her, that she had inhaled some horribly toxic substance that would inevitably mark her demise, and started gagging, eventually producing a small amount of stomach bile. This touched off a chain-reaction, the likes of which I had never witnessed before and hope to never see again.
Sympathetic vomiting swept through our crowd of patients like Sherman’s March to the Sea, laying waste to the lunchtime intake of at least a dozen of our 23 total patients. Our location was bad in that, since it was summer and we were outside, we were unable to really isolate a vomiter to prevent her triggering the gag reflex of others. On the plus side, since we were outside, our location meant our ambulance wasn’t turned into a vomitarium so we didn’t have to take our ambulance out of service for an hour to decontaminate it after Puke-A-Palooza had run its course. With no end in sight to the circular firing squad of regurgitation, we determined it was in everyone’s best interests to transport the most prolific of the retchers to the hospital. In retrospect most of the six or eight patients we sent in probably didn’t really need to go, but it was the only way we could think of to shut off the tap on the stomach contents several of them kept on vigorously trying to empty; by finally, and definitively removing them from each other. I’m fairly certain the staff of our local emergency department didn’t share in the belief that this was a great plan, even though we never caught any grief from anyone there. And the plan did help to mitigate our situation more quickly, so there’s that, too. I don’t recall what particular chemical was determined to be the offender, but a malfunctioning ventilation system in the plant allowed the concentration to reach a level that triggered the symptoms we found. I do remember that, whatever the chemical was, it wasn’t the kind of thing that could potentially cause lasting harm, it was relatively benign, otherwise this whole scenario could have taken a much different turn. And I probably wouldn’t have felt the same way writing about it. Probably.
Well that was fun, at least for me. Looking back on the day in question, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, and if it hadn’t been for the “contributions” from the patients it might not have really registered. I can think of at least one call that had more patients, from a science project gone awry at a local high school. But that one didn’t involve a dozen or more people giving their lunch the old heave ho (see what I did there?) repeatedly.
One (I think) last thing before I hit the “Publish” button. Since AI has become ubiquitous, even in the creation parcel of this humble, little blog, I decided to give a couple options a try. I’m inherently opposed to non-human authors, but, when in Rome, I guess. Anyway. I tried the generate title option button and found them to be, well, lacking that certain je ne sais quoi that I had in mind. So I scrapped the AI reccos. Next I tried having the little bot create an image to feature with this post. Theoretically, images boost engagement. But no luck. Wait, hold that thought…
Ha! Well there you have it, a featured image to promote the post. Created by AI with a couple of nudges from me to get it a little more accurate. I’m particularly fond of the look on the face of the medic. I’m sure a few of you can relate, lol.
Ok, Imma wrap this beast up and go run a couple errands. Before I forget, The Beatles have provided the background music for today’s missive, specifically Anthology 4 and fwiw it is a delightful listen. Lastly, as always, and perhaps more than ever,
Peace
This made me laugh. That would be awful to have a group of ladies puking around you.
Good thing you weren’t there, lol, you might’ve joined them!