Thrity One

Crusty ER tech's first cor-0/code.

Since the current semester for nursing school is over (and fuck you very much I made it to the next semester) and I don't need to study and concentrate on the nursing process , I decided to finally sit down many years later and write about my first "code blue" or "cor-zero/0" ever.

I had made it through EMT school with out having to work a code ever during my rotations. I got hired on with a small private ambulance service who held the 911 contract with a couple of counties of the state I lived in at the time. We were working out of a voly fire fighter station #42 at the time which was where we were posted at a majority of the time. I was still being precepted at the time so in essence I was a third rider.

It was snowing big wet flakes, it was a pretty quiet night until as usual we got toned at O dark thirty. The service I worked for at the time worked a primarily industrial county on the east side of the city which I lived in at the time. It was a split truck, I was working with a EMT and Paramedic. It was the Paramedic's job to pecept me and sign me off medically (back of the Ambu) and the EMT to make sure I could drive and find my way around on a map (before GPS) We boogied on over to a ramshackle Mom & Pop diner off a major highway.

It was toned as a "party down" so we went in expecting the worst. It was in the sense that the person was just DRT (dead right there). It was the cook of the establishment, one second she was frying up a late night dinner for a trucker the next she collapsed, faster than what I just typed. I vividly remember the toast on the grill and the smell of burning eggs. She had false teeth, I pulled them out while the medic set up to intubate the patient. I put the teeth in my cargo pocket simply because I thought the woman would live and want her teeth back.

We get her loaded up and a voly FF shows up to help out with compressions. It takes forever to get to the closest hospital because the winter storm has gotten worse. It's a sweat box in the back of the Ambu because four people are back there. The Paramedic is at the head doing his thing and the voly ff and I are doing compressions. Plus I am doing everything else when I am not doing compressions like getting a second line and stripping the pt down more. What was usually a 10 minute trip took nearly 40 because of the weather.

We get to the old university hospital and roll her into the very ancient resuscitation room. Which was small, cramped and was around 120 degrees (steam radiators...yes radiators!) with all parties in the room. We drop her off the Paramedic gives a quick report and out the room we walk. We're out in the Ambu bay  we start cleaning up the Ambu. In the middle of this I remember the patient's teeth are in my pocket. I drop what I am doing, run (yes, literally run) back into the resuscitation room with teeth in gloved hand. I arrive just in time to have them call the patient right when I come tumbling into the room.

Everyone files out of the room except the lone ER nurse who was responsible for the resuscitation room that night. I am really surprised that the patient died. Simply because as far as I knew we did everything right. I catch the nurses attention and say "Ummm here is her teeth" The ER nurse laughs sticks the false teeth into a lab bag and places them onto the patient's chest. The ER nurse says a clipped "thank you" and goes back to wrapping up her charting.

I walk back out to the ambu, I can't believe the patient died. I tell the rest of the crew and they just shrug their shoulders. The paramedic knowing this is my first code ever tells me while we are cleaning up the ambu and doing paper work that really more often than not the patient dies for whatever reason. It's a long quiet ride back to station 42 and I just think about the previous run. I wonder if I could have anything differently to save the patient. We get back to the station, the voly FF goes home. My fellow Ambu crew members fall asleep at once. I stay up the rest of the night staring at the TV wondering if I somehow fucked up and killed a patient.

I did'nt

I learn in the coming weeks what they told us in EMT school, although I never learned it. That you can do everything right and the patient still dies for whatever reason. I learn to deal with codes as an Ambu EMT and do quite well with them. I move onto the hospital and learn even more. To the point that I can only remember my very first code/cor-0 as an EMT. I cannot tell you anything about the 2nd one up to the last current one I just assisted with. I cannot and will not speak for anyone else, it just gets to a point whether you like it or not you become use to people dying. Yes there are things that stick with me, that I remember for no reason, often though I cannot put a face to a barely (if at all) remembered name.

That's the story of my first code as well as I can remember it after a few beers on a warm May night.