Spin Cycle

Life has taught me that sometimes things happen to you as a casualty of someone else's blessing.

It was February 14, 2013, Valentine’s night. My partner Joe and I were dispatched to a possible stroke. Joe had been my EMT partner on the truck for several months at that time, and I was the Paramedic in charge. When we arrived to the house, we were met by a frantic woman who said she had just left the bedroom to toss a load of laundry into the wash, and when she came back she found her husband lying in the bed, unable to talk. We quickly made our way to the bedroom where the patient was lying in bed, trying to talk while reaching for us with his right arm. “Mmmllleeeeeeehhhh” was all that came out of his mouth when he opened it, which sounded more like a llama yelling at us. This guy had a textbook presentation of someone having a stroke. He had complete left-sided paralysis, left-sided drooping of his face, and speech that was so slurred, it was incomprehensible. Joe was right behind me with the stretcher, so we immediately lifted this 200+lb man over to it and headed out the door with him. When someone is having a stroke, time lost is brain tissue lost. The quicker we could get him to the hospital, the better his chances were for recovery.

Once we got in the truck, we quickly assessed his vital signs, and my partner set up IV equipment so I could obtain IV access on the way to the hospital. Joe was “brand-spanking-new” when he became my EMT partner. I had been a paramedic/firefighter for over ten years and he was as “green” as they came in the beginning. But after several months together, we really developed a good working relationship and he was typically able to gauge what I needed from him during each call. We worked like a well-oiled machine for the most part. I taught him that when he is driving and I am in the back of the unit tending to patients, he needed to drive like there was a full cup of sweet tea sitting on the dash that he didn't want to spill. No one wants to clean up spilled sweet tea--it’s a never-ending sticky mess of flavored sugar water. “Spilling the tea” was the same as spilling me all over the back of the truck, making me useless to our patient. Joe flipped on the lights and sirens and quickly headed for Memorial Hospital, just a few miles up the road.

We weren’t far from the hospital, so I called in the report to the ER nurse so they could prepare for the stroke protocol that we were bringing to them. At the same time, I was also preparing to start an IV on the patient. I reached over for the needle that Joe left for me to use but as I looked at the patient's veins, I realized that I could use a bigger needle, and in this case, bigger was better. If the ER Physician cleared him to receive clot-busting medication, he could get it more quickly with a bigger gauge catheter in place. I discarded the unused needle and opened up the packaging for the bigger one that I decided to use, but then my weight shifted abruptly. It was like gravity was playing tricks on me, causing me to “Spiderman” the walls of the truck with my arms awkwardly catching me as they pressed to the nearby wall while my right foot came up to the bench seat, so I didn’t land on the patient. I quickly regained my footing, but as soon as I stood up, I was hurled into the passenger side wall of the unit and my exact thought was, “Oh, we’re doing this now. Ok.”

We were t-boned by a 19-year-old college student who was speeding through the intersection. I guess maybe she thought she could beat us through it. Anyway, we were in a smaller van unit and she hit us just right, causing us to go on spin cycle. My “lights” flickered a little but my vision came back pretty quickly. The sound of dying sirens wailed in the background along with a ringing in my ears as though a bomb had just gone off in front of me. “JOOOOOOEEEE,” I yelled. It came out angry for some reason, but I was really just concerned. “TIFFANYYYYY?” came right back to me, in a very apologetic tone. “Are you okay?” I yelled to him. He quickly expressed that he thought he was okay and returned the question. I wasn’t actually sure. I knew I was hurt, but the pain wasn't registering quite yet. Our patient raised his right arm and as clear as a bell, said, “Help me.”

Thank you sweet baby Jesus. Before the impact, our patient was speaking in llama, so I really do think that the impact of the wreck knocked the blood clot loose in his brain. There was no better explanation as to how this man was now talking to me. I reached down to my duty belt for my radio, but it was gone. So was my phone. Joe was able to find his phone and call our dispatch to request additional help. In the meantime, I was able to grab my flashlight because that sucker was in a pouch that was threaded through my duty belt so it didn’t go flying with everything else. A bystander came up to the back of the truck. The new floor was the passenger side of the unit since we rolled completely and then finally landed on that side. My glasses were gone, but I saw something out of the corner of my eye, approximately 40-50ft away from me. I shined the light on it and asked the bystander to grab it for me. She did, and it was my phone. Thank you OtterBox case, my phone was unscathed. I called the hospital and immediately updated them to also get the trauma team ready because the stroke protocol was now also a trauma protocol.

Someone helped Joe kick the windshield out of place so he could crawl out. Once he got to me, we pulled out a spine board and I placed a sheet down on the new floor and cut the patient free of the seatbelts that secured him to the stretcher. Joe and I strapped him onto the spine board to prepare him for transport by the next arriving unit. An officer reached in to help us get him out. After I crawled out of the back door, a hand rested firmly on my shoulder and a familiar voice said, “Tiffany, you’ve done enough. Come with me.” I looked up and the cavalry had arrived. There were so many people and it was like they came out of nowhere. It was Brooks, one of my paramedic co-workers, who was leading me to a stretcher that was nearby. Our patient now had half a dozen EMTs and Medics tending to him, so I transferred the patient report information to them and Brooks wheeled me to his truck.

It was a very foreign feeling to be the patient. Brooks was a great medic who had years more experience than me. He tried to make me laugh over the fact that he had to do a rapid head-to-toe evaluation of me, which pretty much required him to cut off all of my clothing, but laughing made me hurt so he stopped kidding around and just went to work checking me out. The adrenaline dump that my body received from the crash was beginning to wear off, and quickly. The pain was beginning to set in, causing me to shake vigorously. When he asked where I was hurting, I didn't know how to answer him yet. I told him I thought my leg was broken, but I wasn’t really sure. Once he got my pants off, he found a puncture wound to my lower left leg that went all the way through to the bone. I later learned that it was the head of an oxygen tank that cut through me. When I saw the small hole in my leg, I immediately felt sick to my stomach. I think that my brain finally registered the fact that I was injured at that very moment. Brooks quickly covered me up and took me to the hospital. I ended up being a trauma protocol too. This is where half a dozen doctors surround you and evaluate you simultaneously while “minions” of workers do things like assess vitals and remove any remaining clothing for more detailed physical examinations. Although I did not break my leg, the puncture wound from the oxygen tank did follow through to the bone in my leg, bruising it. I experienced a minor closed head injury, pulled several muscles throughout my neck and back, and partially dislocated my left shoulder, along with a very minor rotator cuff tear. I was cleared of any critical injuries, but the recovery took months and I still deal with chronic pain as a result of this wreck. My partner Joe suffered minor injuries to his neck and back, and the driver of the other vehicle, to my understanding, was unharmed with exception of friction burns from airbag deployment.

All in all, I feel like this moment in my life was a casualty of saving someone else’s life. That wreck ultimately displaced a large blood clot in our patient's brain, which was obvious through his ability to speak again immediately after the impact. From a neurological standpoint, this is a really big deal because the patient's ability to speak and move was greatly affected by a clot that was blocking oxygen from a portion of his brain that controlled those things.

I could have easily viewed this experience to be a negative experience in my life. It negatively impacted my body, along with several other areas of my life, including my work. Yes, the wreck had a lot of negative impacts, but the overall scenario was positive because each one of us walked away from that wreck, our patient included. He made a full recovery, and I am not confident that he would have been so lucky had that wreck not actually occurred.

Sometimes, what happens to you is just a casualty of someone else's blessing.