I'm gonna tell you a story that's gonna make you really mad.
It's a EMS call that I had, like, 2,
3 years ago, and it showed me that day why I want to become a nurse.
I want to become a nurse, which I'm in nursing school for right now,
to work with EMS and believe them when they say,
I feel like my patient's gonna die,
something is really wrong.
Because in my case, on this call,
that did not happen. We were not working as a team.
They didn't give a shit about this patient,
and she died in the waiting room, okay?
And it literally crushed me
because I told her mom when we got to the hospital,
things were gonna be better,
and they weren't. And that is not okay.
So here we go. I'm gonna tell you how everything went.
One night, I got dispatched to a call for a 34 year old female
who is just extremely weak.
Her mom says she doesn't know what's wrong.
She just can't get out of bed.
And so that was it. She was just extremely fatigued,
couldn't get out of bed.
So we go there thinking it's gonna be a fairly simple call.
When we get there, I go up to the girl and.
And the mom is, like,
very frantic. And that's normal for, like,
families calling 9 1 1. It's the worst a day of their life.
You know, we see this all the Time.
But it's their emergency,
so it's okay to be frantic and to be concerned about your loved one.
This girl had significant health problems,
and I'm not gonna state them all,
but there were a lot of them.
And she was, for the past,
like, three or three or three or four days,
feeling really, really weak and really,
really cold and having really bad abdominal pain.
So I assess her, and I realize as I'm touching her,
she is frozen, but the house is, like, warm,
so she's not perfusing correctly.
And so I'm like, is she on any medications?
All that kind of stuff? Moms like, yeah,
she's on this, this,
and this, but nothing that, like,
cause any concern, you know,
nothing that she could have, like,
overdosed on, nothing.
You know? So I try and get the girl to wake up,
and she's, like,
barely with it. And now I know there are.
There's something really, really wrong here.
Okay? And tell the paramedic,
I was like, she's, like,
barely with it. I don't know what's going on with her.
Check her vitals. But the vitals,
they seem fine. And so paramedic was like,
we're just gonna get her out in the ambulance.
Tells the mom, we're gonna take good care of her.
We're gonna get her to the hospital,
and you can follow us over.
And I noticed, as we're, like,
getting her clothes on, her back is like,
it looks like as if Someone had died, and.
And all that blood is pooling.
It's all pulled into her back.
And I show the paramedic, like,
what the fuck is this? I've never seen that in a.
In a living being before. He's like,
I don't know. That's really weird.
So we get her into the ambulance on the stretcher,
and this girl, because we moved her,
her pain is so much worse.
And he. We are very far out.
So he's like, I'm just gonna fly us over there.
And I'm like, thinking,
maybe you should have taken this call first of all,
but that's okay, because I got her back,
all right? So vitals are still fine.
Everything's fine except for the fact that she's freezing,
she's purple, and the fact that her stomach is hurting so bad.
So I'm thinking bowel obstruction, probably.
So I go into the ER, and the nurse,
who determines whether she goes into a room
or she goes into the waiting room, says, oh,
she can go into the waiting room before I even explained.
And I said, no,
I have a really bad feeling about this.
Like, a really bad one.
I feel like she is not gonna make it very long.
Like something's wrong. And I know her vitals are normal,
but something isn't right.
The nurse goes, no,
she's 34 years old. She just being dramatic.
She probably wants payments.
I said, no,
I don't. I don't get that from this Girl at all.
I think she's being genuine.
And so I talked to the doctor,
and I said, can you assess her?
He assesses her, and he does the same thing the nurse did.
He goes, hmm,
I think she's a drug seeker,
and she's been here quite a few times for different issues.
And I'm like, I don't think that's the case.
Something is wrong with her.
You can even see it on her skin.
That's not normal. Something's wrong.
And no one listen. So I was forced to put her in the waiting room.
I tell her mother, keep an eye on her.
If anything happens,
tell that nurse up there and make a big deal about it.
So they take you back. And so the mom was like, okay.
And she's just, like,
crying because she's in the waiting room with her really sick daughter.
And I'm fucking stressed out of my mind because I gotta leave her.
I don't wanna leave her, but I have to.
So I leave the girl, and as I'm leaving,
I see her slouch over. And so I tell the nurse again, hey,
she's, like,
slouched over, barely with it,
but, like,
are you gonna do anything?
No, nothing.
She can wait. I think she's gonna pass out.
Doesn't matter. She's being dramatic.
She's been here many times before,
which is the worst thing you can think in healthcare,
because that's the thing that always gets you.
The people who have Come in a lot for, like,
chronic issues. You think it's just the same thing going on,
but it's actually something way worse.
Which was this case. All right,
I find out a few days later because my husband works with newspaper. Um,
her obituary was in the newspaper.
She had died in the waiting room of that hospital.
No one came to check on her.
She died, and she was only 34.
This is why we as healthcare workers need to listen to one another.
When someone says, I think something is wrong,
at least investigate it.
And if you are too burnt out and you are too tired to do that,
then leave the field or take a really long fucking break.
Because people are dying every single day because of this issue
that happened to me multiple times up.
Deaths that could have been prevented
if they were taken seriously sooner.
Okay, not everybody's drug seeking.
Not everybody has Munchausen or whatever you think they do.
They have actual chronic illnesses,
and they know their bodies more than you do.
So take things seriously.
And I know that we get a lot of bullshit in this field.
I know that there are a lot of fakers
and there are a lot of drug seekers,
but it's better to be safe than sorry.
And if someone who actually is seen death left and right is saying,
I think my patient's gonna die,
then listen to them. We need To work together,
or else. We're not helping anyone.
We're not helping anyone.
That poor mother has to live the rest of her life
thinking that she didn't do enough,
that she didn't call quicker.
That poor girl suffered to the very end.
And, yes,
it was a severe bowel obstruction that ended her life.
It's so heartbreaking, but it's the reality of healthcare nowadays.
And so I am in nursing school
to possibly change at least one person's life
if this ever happens, and advocate for them.
And that's what all you nursing students and doctors need to be doing,
is advocating, advocating,
advocating, investigating for your patients.
Don't just send them out to a waiting room
when you don't know anything that's going on
and not even check on them.
Okay? That's all I gotta say.