“R82 respond to a CH1 outbound Airport Way at approximately
the 9500 block. You will find your patient sitting in their white four-door sedan."
While responding dispatch adds another message saying, “R82, be advised that
Police are now on scene and state that both husband and wife, in their 70’s are
experiencing chest pain.” Now how strange is that?  |
| VT...Ventricular Tachycardia |
We arrived and position the Rescue in a way to protect us
from oncoming traffic. I take the driver (the husband) and my partner takes his
wife. My patient is very diaphoretic (that’s sweaty in layman’s terms), he
complains of chest pain that began about 15 minutes ago, and it radiates into
his neck and back. All these are symptoms of (perhaps the obvious) a likely
cardiac event. I placed the paddles of our LifePak 5 onto the patient and see that he is in
V-Tach. Basically, as you can see from the picture, it is a very regular
looking rhythm that is coming from the ventricles and not what is typical, that
is from the atrium, called ‘normal sinus rhythm’. V-Tach, if left to itself is not able to sustain life. This patients symptoms are such that we needed to respond immediately. I begin charging the monitor to 100 joules and then shock the patient. His
rhythm immediately converts back to a normal sinus rhythm and he smiles just about
as fast, saying “thanks...man that feels much better!”
You ask, “what about his wife?”…oh, she was only having
sympathy pains. It would be two weeks later that I would be given another name to
add to my repertoire. It would come in the form of a ‘Thank You’ card from the
patient and his wife. It read, “Juanita and Vick, thanks for the zap!” So
‘Vick’ or ‘Victor’ has stuck all these years thanks to my first cardiovert
patient. Zapping is what we love to do:)
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