Getting shocked

As I have told you in many stories on my other County gal blog I hate being shocked and am terrified of electricity. To many incidents with the electric fence growing up. My career as an Emergency Medical Tech. suffered as I was afraid to move to the level where you shocked people’s hearts.. I was not sure I could shock people, even if they were dead and I sure did not want to shock myself.

After about 3 years and many times of wishing I could do more to help on a call because call where someone is not breathing or cardiac calls it takes all the hands you can get. I finally went and got my EMT3, Cardiac tech.

We got a call of a man down and not breathing, CPR in progress and off we flew.  We arrived on the scene and with the firemen and police we had about 6 to 7 people to help and everyone was busy.  The paramedic was attaching the heart monitor, 2 were taking over CPR, two were getting the gurney out of ambulance and myself and another EMT were getting an IV set up.  It is hard at this point to even find room to get to your patient so we were between the paramedics legs with an arm out getting the IV started and getting medication ready to put in the vein.

This was in an area where lots of people were around and traffic and it was hard to hear. The paramedic read the heart monitor and had decided to shock the patient. We are taught to yell “clear” and check to the left, across and to the right which he did. Yep, your right, he did not check between his legs and we did not hear him…ZAP! That arm we were working on jumped right out of our grip and dang that electric fence got me and the other EMT..ZAP…

Neither of us were hurt and it became a joke at the department, say “CLEAR”, look to the right, look to the left, look across and look between your legs to see where Linda & *Jim are.

The man lived, got his condition taken care of and is still doing good today and a funny memory for us to laugh at when things get tense.

*Jim not his real name