Solu-medrol doesn’t reach its peak effect for 6-12 hours after we give it, but that studies have shown the earlier it is given, the less likely the patient will have to be admitted to the hospital.

I rate it above calcium partly because it links me more closely with Johnny and Roy, and more importantly because it can be used for tricycliate overdose, and for crush injuries (I have never used it for these indications).

I don’t use calcium very much, but there is one situation I always reach for it in — cardiac arrest in a diaylsis patient. While we don’t have labs in the field, a dialysis patient is a possible bet to be hypocalcemic and/or hyperkalemic, and calcium can save lives if they are.

“We’re going to sedate him,” I say. (If this was movie, I would have said to my partner, “Fetch my dart gun.”)

“So, the Metoprolol finally worked,” I said to the nurse.

“No,” she said, “We gave him Cardizem.”

This is an old post I’ll be at Your Side from 2005 that I am contributing to this month’s The Handover hosted by Mac505 at Notes From Mosquito Hill.

If we did not also carry Amiodarone, I would rank Lidocaine higher.

When Fentanyl arrives in my kit, it will likely be ranked quite high on my list and push Toradol down even further, possibly to the point where we will have no need to carry it.

I am speaking only of the Tylenol in my kit and not my own personal stash. If I were rating my own personal stash of Tylenol, then I would have to add Tylenol and Ibuprofen to my as yet unrevealed list of Eight Essential Drugs, making it The Essential Ten.