On a private employees’ group Facebook page, an EMT posts a video of a man standing on a street corner, clearly on the nod, asleep on his feet. Another man sneaks up on the nodding man.  He reaches back and then slaps the heroin user hard across the face with an open fist. The victim […]

An older man with a cell phone meets us at the door to the apartment lobby. His hands shake. He motions for us to follow toward the stairs. “What’s going on?” I ask. “I just went out for ten minutes and I came back and found him.” “Is he breathing?” I ask. But he does […]

You are called for a seizure in the men’s room at McDonald’s. You arrive to find an approximately thirty-year old man stiff and purple, gurgling. “Versed?” Your paramedic student says as you break out an ambu-bag. “Check his pupils.” “Pinpoint.” You hand him Naloxone. “Give him 1.2 IM,” you say. He looks at you like […]

  Case # 1 You find the fifty year old man supine on the floor with the fire department doing CPR. Their AED announces, “No shock advised. Continue CPR.” You set your monitor by the man’s head and connect the fire department’s pads to your monitor, while your paramedic student quickly places an IO in […]

You find the patient – a young man – in respiratory arrest in a Honda with tinted windows behind a service station.  His head is back, his mouth is open, and he is deeply cyanotic.  His skin is warm and despite having no respirations, he has a pounding carotid pulse.  On the floor board you […]

There is an anxious crowd on the corner of Hungerford as we come lights and sirens down Park Street.  A woman with tattooed arms waves for us to hurry.   A man is on the ground with a crowd clustered around him.   I can see another man kneeling over his chest. His arms together like he […]

“I’m a shit bag,” he says to me.  “I’m supposed to be taking my boy trick or treating tonight.  I can’t fucking believe I did this.  You said I wasn’t breathing?  After all I’ve been through to die like this.  Fuck me.  I’ve got shit for brains.” The young man got out of jail an […]

The man kneels in the grass next the pickup truck that has its door open. He vomits.  The fire department is standing over him.  “Citizen Narcan found him in the truck passed out, squirted him with two doses and then took off when we got here,” a firefighter tells me. I see the two 4 […]

Finally! The Federal Government has listened to the experts and released sensible evidenced-based recommendations on safety for first responders when encountering fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, including carfentanil. Fentanyl Safety for First Responders The document issued yesterday by the White House National Security Council is the product of their Federal Interagency Working group with collaborative support […]

The call is for an overdose in the stairwell of the apartment building. Fire has arrived just before us – they have propped the front door open. I enter with my house bag over my shoulder and carrying the cardiac monitor in my right hand. There is no one in the dim lobby to direct […]