Good morning!

If you are the type of person who would help another if they were injured please buy appropriate gloves asap and keep some EVERYWHERE!

My hubby and I were driving home yesterday afternoon and suddenly traffic was stopped. I could look ahead to people getting out of their cars and spotted debris in the roadway. I asked my hubby to pull over far to the right and began looking for the EMS gloves I had stashed about 6 months in the "glove box" of his car. They weren't there. Shrugged and said well, let's see what we have. Turned out I was the only person with medical training on scene of a very bad car versus bike accident - and no gloves. A Bronco had rolled, ejecting the unrestrained driver and rolling over her - now she was trying to breath but not well at all. Lots of facial trauma, unconscious and "guppy breathing" - her head was turned and back and you could see her stomach and chest trying to draw a breath and yet you could hear a snoring sound in her throat. I reached down and carefully straightened her head and neck and she started breathing well again. A bystander offered to help and I recruited him to hold her head and neck steady while I checked for more victims.

There was a cyclist dead in the roadway - apparently struck by this woman's car. A 15 y.o. passenger in the Bronco who had been wearing a seat/shoulder belt was hysterical but walking and ok. I went back to the driver who by now was recovering enough to writhe around and become beligerent but thankfully I could hear sirens in the distance. I did my best to help keep her from hurting herself more and as soon as possible (about 15 minutes from first contact) traded places with a gloved firefighter who took over.

Up to my elbows in this woman's blood I looked for someway to clean up. Used some of that new "dry/rolls off" hand cleaner from a firefighter (the stuff worked great!) and then a disinfectant from the ambulance but still needed hot soapy water when we got to a Burger King about 30 minutes later, to get the gunk out my fingernails and cuticles. And peeled the soaked bandaid off a little cut on my finger from the day before. Oooooops.

Driving home I had to start thinking about going to the dr. for bloodwork - ended up in the ER while they drew blood for all sorts of disease panels and injections to help boost my immune system against hepatitis, blah, blah, blah - no fun. The patient was young, tattooed, tongue (and??)pierced, and had been drinking and driving - does this sound like "high risk"?. Hopefully infection control from the hospital can get her to voluntarily submit to hiv and other tests asap - legally can't force her. If she won't test then I have to keep getting checked at 3 and 6 months - even had to sign a form that I would not try to get pregnant while undergoing treatment.

The chances of infection from this exposure is small but the doctors grimaced and said that there is no guarantee so because of the small cut they need to be aggressive about all this.

Do I regret helping the victim? No. I couldn't standby/walk away and let her choke to death when a simple action on my part could restore her breathing. Should I have checked my glove/ems supplies I had packed in the cars over the years more regularly? Of course. In hindsight I should have tried to find even an old Dorito's bag from behind someone's car seat to protect my hands somewhat, but I didn't.

If you are like me in that you want to help (especially if trained for it) PLEASE learn about proper precautions and take responsibility for making sure they are with you at all times.

-- Kristi (securxsys@cs.com), August 10, 1999

Answers

Kristi -- I hope you're ok. Maybe someone can talk the injured into the test.

-- Helen (sstaten@fullnet.net), August 11, 1999.

Kristi -

Thanks for the reminder. They hammered away in my First Responder course at bodily substance isolation, but you just reminded me that I have gloves at the house and at work, but not in my car. DUH! Like I'm not likely to come across an incident when driving California freeways.

Thanks.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), August 11, 1999.

Kristi,

I hope it all turns out well for you. I don't think I would have done that for a total stranger with no gloves and an open wound. I let my EMT license lapse several years ago and stopped working volunteer rescue/ambulance runs because I didn't want to get bled on by strangers any more. It was a selfless thing you did but I hope you won't make a habit of it. Again, I hope it all turns out all right.

-- Lee (lplapin@hotmail.com), August 11, 1999.

If there is one thing we are truly "paranoid" about it is running out of gloves. We wear scrubs at all times with multiple pockets stuffed with gloves, have gloves in car and on job and in storage -- everywhere. Other nurses think we're maniacs but they'll go into isolation rooms in a hurry and do things with bare hands and bodily fluids that we would never ever do.

Get some latex gloves that are non-powder (the powder smells awful and gets chalky goo all over everything) and put big handfuls everywhere, in all types of nooks and crannies, in ziploc see-thru plastic bags so they're an easy grab.

Kristi, hope you're A-OK. The driver was very fortunate that you happened to be there and willing to put yourself at risk. A few more minutes of that type of semi-obstructed breathing and she could have had permanent brain damage or cardiac/respiratory arrest.

It would be cruel of her not to agree to have her blood tested and disclose all results ASAP to you.

We've thought about all this in the past quite a bit, and as helpful as we are, we will not render direct care without gloves, under any circumstances. We don't have medical insurance, and we're not spring chickens any more, and can't afford to get ill ourselves.

And since we deal with an elderly and quite ill population, mostly hospice, we generally do not accept a case without a DNR. Won't even get into *that* one!

@}->-- 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 @}->-- 3~0

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 11, 1999.